Jason Noble

jnoble2@dmreg.com

© Copyright 2017, Des Moines Register and Tribune Co.

Before she got into politics, congressional hopeful Kim Weaver was a professional psychic.

Weaver, a Democrat from Sheldon who lost to Republican incumbent U.S. Rep. Steve King in 2016 and plans to challenge him again in 2018, operated an array of psychic services websites, hosted an internet radio show and participated in online discussions of the supernatural, records reviewed by The Des Moines Register show.

Known as “Kimberanne” — a portmanteau of her first and middle names — and “the Spirit Weaver,” Weaver charged customers as much as $3.99 per minute for readings online and over the phone and dispensed advice on matters ranging from romance to careers to real estate.

In one recording obtained by the Register, Weaver performed a tarot card reading to reassure a distraught woman that her missing husband was not dead.

In an interview, Weaver, 52, did not deny dabbling in psychic services, but described her activities as "life coaching" and said they never amounted to more than a "hobby."

“I didn’t really actually do anything," Weaver said. "It was all for entertainment purposes. Did I make a living from it? No, definitely not.”

Weaver is currently the only declared Democratic candidate in the conservative 4th District, and has recently garnered substantial attention for her challenge to King, an eight-term incumbent. In addition to her candidacy, Weaver serves on the Iowa Democratic Party’s state central committee.

She lost to King by more than 22 percentage points in 2016, but has been buoyed this year by a surge of national support following King’s repeated inflammatory remarks on race and immigration. She formally announced her candidacy in a nationally televised appearance on MSNBC last month, and has been publicly endorsed by dozens of Iowa Democratic officeholders and activists as well as actress Rosie O’Donnell.

Weaver raised $179,000 in the first three months of 2017, according to her latest campaign filing. The vast majority of the donations came from out of state, including a $500 check from O’Donnell.

In a statement provided to the Register on Monday, Weaver's political director, Todd Prieb, suggested that information about her psychic activities originated with Republican campaign groups concerned that she could unseat King in 2018.

"Frankly, the idea that people would care about something Kim did 10 years ago on an entertainment website more than Steve King's horrendous voting record is insulting to the voters of this district," Prieb said in the statement. "Kim does not actually believe she has psychic abilities, but she does foresee Steve King being unemployed after 2018."

(The Register's reporting began with an anonymous package mailed with a Sheldon, IA, postmark.)

‘Internationally recognized psychic’

Although she appears to have made efforts to dissociate her past life as an internet psychic from her more recent political persona, a rich record of Weaver's business and social life as a psychic exists in audio recordings, internet message boards, archived websites and social media postings.

At the center of Weaver’s online life as a psychic was a website called “The Spirit Weaver” in which she advertised her own parapsychological services and those of other online psychics. The site offered psychic readings by phone at rates ranging from $1.99 to $3.99 per minute as well as email readings at $10 or $15 a pop.

“The Spirit Weaver” site was taken down in early 2012, but individual pages remain accessible through the Internet Archive.

Several archived pages on the site refer to Weaver as an “internationally recognized psychic.” On a biographical page, Weaver claimed expertise as a psychic, hypnotherapist, astrologer, medium, karmic path evaluator, life path facilitator, relationship coach, professional speaker, radio show host and licensed social worker.

The site advertised services including psychic, past life, tarot card and karmic record readings as well as astrological consultations, all of which could be done over the phone at $3.99 per minute or $50 for 20 minutes, $90 for 40 minutes or $125 for 60 minutes. She also offered to answer questions via email — one for $15 or three for $25.

A disclaimer at the bottom of the main site declared that all readings and consultations were for “entertainment purposes only and should not be considered to be legal or medical advice.” But in a section labeled “Our promise to you,” Weaver pledged that she and other psychics advertised on the site were “authentic,” “accurate” and “honest and truthful.”

“The Psychic readers on The Spirit Weaver are chosen because of their proven track record of consistently providing accurate psychic readings,” one of the archived pages reads.

On Monday, Weaver said she did not believe she had clairvoyant abilities.

"No, no, no," she answered when asked whether she had psychic powers. "If I did I would’ve known exactly what to do last time to win (the congressional race) — what doors to knock on and what else to do."

Readings by phone

The Register obtained an audio recording from a June 2009 internet radio show called “Truth Beyond Reality” in which Weaver performed readings live.

Weaver — identified as Kimberanne — took several calls throughout the two-hour show, providing tarot and astrological readings and using her purported psychic powers to answer callers’ questions about relationships, jobs and major financial decisions.

In one exchange, a caller asked Weaver for information about her husband, who had gone missing. The woman, who identified herself as Shelby, told Weaver and the show’s hosts that her husband had gone out for a doctor appointment four months earlier and never returned. His vehicle was found abandoned, she said, with “a little bit of blood in it.” Shelby worried, based on an earlier tarot reading, that he was now dead.

Drawing on her psychic powers, Weaver told Shelby that she would hear something about her husband in six weeks, and invited her to connect on Facebook so that she could give a more in-depth private reading free of charge.

“I heard six weeks,” Weaver tells Shelby on the recording. “I heard six weeks and I am not seeing an actual death.”

In subsequent readings with callers, Weaver plotted an astrological chart for a newborn baby, advised a woman to break up with her boyfriend and warned another against buying a house, telling the caller she would find a cozier Cape Cod-style home with green shutters on a corner lot “in the next couple weeks.”

“I’m seeing some big trees,” Weaver said. “I like it. It seems like a happy house.”

A couple of the readings went awry.

When a caller named Lori asked about her daughter, Weaver said she saw “lots of positive things” — until Lori broke in to say that her daughter had just turned 18 and was involved with a man 14 years her senior.

“I’m throwing out all these different love cards, but then a separation,” Weaver then said. “It’s almost like it looks like everything is happy, wonderful and then all the sudden there’s a breakup.”

“Good!” Lori replied.

In another, Weaver intimated that a caller might be in line for a new job or a promotion, only to be informed the caller was legally blind and living on disability.

Beyond the readings, Weaver also chatted about herself on the show, noting that she lives in northwestern Iowa and has a son who attended MIT, details that comport with Weaver the congressional candidate.

She also referred listeners to her own websites and weekly radio show, pitched a special offer on her psychic readings — 30 minutes for $50 — and encouraged listeners to download hypnosis podcasts she said would help them lose weight or quit smoking.

Weaver said Monday that the primary service she provided to callers was a sympathetic ear.

"For me, it was more about just letting them talk to somebody who was able to listen," she said.

The Spirit Weaver trail online

Several pages from the archived “Spirit Weaver” site show a photo of Kimberanne Weaver that matches candidate Kim Weaver’s appearance. A link that remains live on the archived site refers visitors to Weaver’s active personal Facebook page — the one in which she now identifies herself as a candidate for Congress.

On Twitter, the verified account Weaver now uses for her congressional campaign was once associated with her psychic persona. For years, the handle attached to the account was @TheSpiritWeaver; sometime in June 2015, it changed to @KimWeaverIA.

Tweets from the account referring to psychic services and metaphysical matters have been deleted, but there remain on the site dozens of tweets from other users replying to and engaging in conversations with @TheSpiritWeaver — including several who identified themselves as healers, mediums, psychics and astrologers.

Weaver said her psychic activities were not an issue in the 2016 race and have not affected her political aspirations in the slightest.

"It wasn’t ever really an issue," she said. "I wasn’t trying to hide it or anything like that. It was just never an issue."

In addition to “The Spirit Weaver” website, Weaver built a separate site called ProPsychicChat. The platform never got off the ground, but was intended to be a marketplace connecting consumers with psychic service providers.

Weaver’s psychic services were always a sideline to her full-time work as a social worker and long-term care advocate for the state of Iowa. She never incorporated any of her websites or consulting services as a business, and told the Register that while she "made a little bit here and there," she never turned a profit.

"I didn’t make enough to compensate for expenses — the website publishing, things like that," she said. "I actually lost money."

Did she mislead?

Although psychics and other parapsychological practitioners operate throughout the country, the accuracy and legitimacy of their abilities are widely doubted. There is no scientific basis for precognition, clairvoyance and other parapsychological phenomenon, said Terence Hines, a professor of psychology at Pace University and author of "Pseudoscience and the Paranormal."

Psychics operate by providing vague information that a willing listener interprets as having a specific meaning, Hines said. Practitioners, then, either know they're engaging in a ruse or buy into the illusion alongside their customer.

“If she believes it, that’s a real problem,” Hines said. “If she doesn’t believe it, she’s dishonest and holding this out as a shtick.”

When asked if she believed she misled anyone by offering services as a psychic, Weaver was emphatic that she did not.

"To me, it was more for entertainment purposes than anything else," she said.