About New York
April 12, 2006
By DAN BARRY
WHAT Yolana sees in her future is a condominium someplace nice and quiet for her, her cat and her special friend. Maybe upstate, maybe Massachusetts. Who knows?
Her cat, Samantha, is that puffball with attitude swanning about her East Side apartment. And her special friend, Max, is around here somewhere, only you can’t see him. He’s from the Other Side, which is not to say New Jersey.
Hi, Max.
Yolana sits at her dining room table with a cup of coffee, a cheap yellow lighter and a pack of Parliaments arrayed before her. She exudes the weariness of someone carrying the weight of the worlds, this one and the next. At 65, she has seen it all, in the full sense of the phrase, but she still has to work toward that condo in her dreams.
Some of us cook. Some of us build. Some of us teach. And some of us, like Yolana, predict the future, move objects telepathically and talk to the dead. It’s a living.
Her six o’clock appointment won’t be here for another hour or so, giving Yolana time to talk about her new memoir, ”Just One More Question.” Its foreword was written by her mentor, Hans Holzer, parapsychologist and author of ”Ghosts I’ve Met” and ”Where the Ghosts Are,” neither of which should be confused with ”Hold That Ghost” starring Abbott and Costello.
Yolana once tried to look the part, with talon-like nails and a helmet of teased blond hair. Now she looks like your chubby and slightly daffy grandmother, with hair dyed red and a left eye that tends to wander off.
But it is her manner of speech, evoking Entenmann’s, cigarettes and her Yonkers roots, that seems to ground her fantastic tales. She discusses communicating with people who have ”gone over” — i.e., died — as though she were recalling a chat with Mrs. Ectoplasm in the checkout line at D’Agostino’s.
”When I ‘hear,’ I do not ‘hear’ through my ears,” she says. ”If you ‘hear’ through your ears, you should go off to Bellevue.”
Her memoir tells of a psychically precocious young girl who has a hard life: a pregnancy at 14, infidelities and hard drinking as a young wife, difficult relationships, homelessness.
She fell into a job as a maid and then as a personal psychic to a Manhattan socialite who introduced her to Mr. Holzer. He assessed Yolana’s paranormal abilities, laid out what he calls ”the dos and don’ts of mediumship,” and suggested that she make a living out of it.
Word soon spread about the supposed gifts of a psychic living at the Martha Washington Hotel, just north of the Flatiron district. She became the featured attraction at private parties for the rich and the less so. The modest of means always served a lot of food, she says, while the rich served only Tab, which gave her gas.
She built up her clientele, moved to better accommodations, and, she says, occasionally helped law enforcement to crack cases — missing persons, murder, the usual. Asked about the last case she worked on, she says, ”Maria, with the bone of the husband’s head. That was a while ago.”
CLAIMS like these can drive skeptics to distraction. After thumbing through Yolana’s memoir, Benjamin Radford, the managing editor of a magazine called Skeptical Inquirer, has one question. Why don’t Yolana, John Edward, Sylvia Browne — why don’t all the psychics — summon their supposed powers and find Osama bin Laden?
Imagine: A Justice League of Psychics, working with the Department of Homeland Security to prepare for hurricanes, anticipate acts of terror and locate Natalee Holloway.
Yolana says that many people do not understand the vagaries of her gifts. Also, the life can be extremely demanding. She doesn’t even move objects telepathically anymore; it’s too taxing, and besides, she has nothing to prove.
Her powers are a blessing and a curse, she says. Yes, she can help people sort out life’s problems, for $300 a session. But if she goes to a party, people want free psychic advice. And sometimes, when she’s outside, she cannot help picking up the psychic vibes strewn about.
That is why Yolana, née Diane Elaine Lassaw, stays mostly in her rented apartment. After seeing clients in the evening, she retreats to her bedroom and watches sitcoms on a massive television. ”You’re releasing,” she explains.
She senses trouble for New York in the next few years: an earthquake, a nuclear accident, and problems with giant rats in the sewers. By that time, she hopes to be ensconced in a condominium with Samantha and Max, far away.
Then again, you never know.
