I first learned of Carla Baron while watching a TV psychic detectives program on truTV called Haunting Evidence, which featured her work as a ‘Psychic Profiler.’ Working within the same field of missing persons and murder cases, I immediately felt connected with her and her work. Never did I dream that I would be speaking on the telephone with her, much less sharing a conversation that would last for 3 hours! I could see why millions of TV viewers enjoyed watching her on the various programs she has been featured on. Carla has not only starred on Haunting Evidence, she has also been on MysteryQuest (History Channel), Psychic Hollywood: The Search for Truth (E! Entertainment), Dead Famous (Biography), MTV’s FEAR, Psychic Detectives, ABC’s Primetime, and 20/20 on WE tv. She has worked with many high profile cases such as JonBenét Ramsey, Madeleine McCann, George Allen Smith, Natalee Holloway and the “Zodiac Killer.” Quite an amazing resumé! But Carla is not all about the fame and recognition that has been placed upon her as an internationally renowned psychic. Her main focus is in helping people. Whether it is through personal readings (which are her favorite), or assisting with missing persons and murder cases, she derives her greatest joy in knowing she’s made a difference in someone’s life. Belle: This is probably a very common question asked of most psychics, but when did you discover you were psychic? Carla: Well, I’ve blogged about it. I have an official blog at http://psychiccarlabaron.wordpress.com/.  I’ve actually talked about the beginnings- the awakening of what it is I have.  I mean, I wasn’t one of those who had a near death experience or a major traumatic accident or something happened where psychically I was awakened.  But I did write about an incident where there was a freak accident with a bee sting in the back of my head.  I was playing and I think I was around 8 years old. I was swinging on a swing set in the back of our house.  I was swinging from this kind of bar thing on the top like I was a monkey girl, and of course I wasn’t, so I fell backwards. I swung too high and fell backwards and hit my head…my skull….on a rock that apparently had a large bee on it.  The stinger made it through the soft part of my skull. B: Oh, wow! C: Yeah, that’s the freak part because there is a very small surface there where you can actually penetrate the skull…the skullcap itself.  Apparently, I did that and the venom made it into my brain.  It was the weirdest thing and there is something with bee venom that has magical properties.  I have to say that right after that incident, I started having prophetic dreams of accidents in my family and they were all coming true.  But it would be more metaphorical.  For instance, one of the last dreams I had was where my sister had died from eating canned peaches. I remembered the dream in full detail and I told her that I dreamed she died of canned peaches, oddly enough. So, let’s scroll forward about 6 months, my mother and my sister went to my Grandmother’s house and my Grandmother was canning peaches, so it was wintertime.  It was very cold, icy and snowy.  They were coming back off this hill and my mother tried to make a turn and she hit a patch of ice.  They fell into a ravine and the car was hanging upside down and my sister would have been decapitated if she had not been wearing her seat belt. They were hanging there for 45 minutes.  But what’s weird is that in my dream, she died of canned peaches, and in actuality my Grandmother was canning peaches that weekend. I would have dreams with stories like that where they were sort of metaphorical.  They weren’t exact replications of what was going on, but they involved the same characters, the same individuals, and near death experiences.  That’s how my mind would work, that’s how I would dream it.  I would wake up thinking it was one of those weird dreams because it felt different than regular dreaming. The lucid dreaming, where I was dreaming of things on a future timeline, had a stamp on them.  There was a certain energy about them where I woke up and knew that was one of the prophetic dreams that I had to pay attention to.  I would have dreams in that form.  That’s how it started.  Then, I went to my first psychic. Her name was Mary and she told me I would become a famous psychic and that was kind of the beginning.  I’ve written about that experience in my blog, as well, if your readers want to read more about that experience. It was better than Disneyland, it was better than anything I could have asked to do because I was bored as a child.  Like, really seriously bored.  I was a concert pianist and I was a singer, and I competed in both.  You know, going to the governor’s school and competing there, so I learned discipline from practicing five hours a day every day. That was how I kept myself from going out of my mind with the boredom. Because my mind is literally on fire all the time. I have to keep it occupied with ten thousand things. Like when I do readings – I need lots of media on while I’m doing them.  I have music on and I have something visual going.  B: I completely understand.  I do the same thing when I’m doing my readings or working on a project. I have to have the TV on.  I call it the distraction, it just helps me hone in. It’s something I do to quiet the conscious mind so I can tap into the super-conscious. C: I can’t work in complete and utter silence, I can’t do it.  I don’t know how to meditate.  I’ve never meditated in my entire life.  I don’t know what that is. I do rhythmic things.  That’s why I do the cards.  I probably don’t need the cards.  I’ve been told that many times by producers when I was on Haunting Evidence, but I used them as a check. You know….double checking, triple checking my information because the stuff I was working on was so important, I didn’t want to screw up.  I just never went flying in with the information half-cocked and didn’t check it. B: I saw the segment of Haunting Evidence where you did the Natalee Holloway investigation. I actually followed that story and had my own feelings of what had happened to her. Then, when I watched the program, you and I were right in sync with our impressions of what had happened that night she went missing. C: John thinks she’s in the ocean somewhere. I said, she’s not in the ocean. I saw them burning the body. I saw the ashes. I was told hey are not allowed to bury bodies on the island because it’s not deep enough. There’s a law; you can bury pets, but that’s it.  They’re not allowed to dig that deep. On the show, I was asked if Joran van der Sloot would ever be arrested. I said Joran will be arrested for this same thing a couple of years from now. They asked me, you know, will they ever catch him and I said, yeah. He’s going to make the same error in a couple of years and they’ll arrest him for the same crime. B: Only this time he got sloppy. C: Well, I think when his father died, there was no more ‘audience’ left to impress. His biggest audience was his father, and he was trying to get his father’s admiration. B: I think so, too, but his Dad would always buy his way out. C: Exactly, and that’s what I said on the show and they left that part in.  The thing was, I saw her being burned at a very high heat in a furnace after they killed her.  She was already dead, they didn’t burn her alive. B: I felt his Father helped cover up this crime. C: He had to, you couldn’t have this American girl’s body lying around or somebody accidentally finding her.  How they dispose of bodies there is by cremation or in above group crypts. And here’s the thing, with the nighttime scenes on the beach, there were soldiers with rifles on the perimeter. Two of our crew members shooting B-roll were arrested earlier that day. B: Why? C: They were taking B-roll up the street.  They didn’t want us there. B: You know, I wondered how the Aruban authorities felt about your film crew being there on their turf. C: This was weird- our series producer, Tim Robbins, and I got into a wicked fight that night, wicked!  I mean it was our worst fight on that show because I was saying things about Natalee and how she was partying, and how she was with the boy, and, you know, the real stuff.  And yet, he wanted to “water it down” for the mother, who didn’t want to believe her baby could be sexually active. She partied like all girls. Natalee was a nice girl. I think all women have had their share of all kinds of boys, dangerous boys, whatever.  I knew what that was and he didn’t want me saying that.  He said, “You know you can’t say that, I can’t use that.”  And I said, “What do you mean you can’t use that, it’s the truth!” B: Exactly, if you’re wanting the truth, let’s speak the truth. C: And he said no.  We fought at the top of our lungs on that beach while rifles are pointing at us.  I’m sure he was agitated with the rifles, and he knew we had 45 minutes to do this and we had to get off the beach.  They went to our hotel room and they tried to ransack through all our rooms. Our hotel was so cool, they wouldn’t let them in.  They kept all the doors locked so nobody went through our stuff.  I would have been mortified if my psychic tools were disturbed on that show because nobody touches my cards, nobody touches my crystals or anything else that I have with me.  I don’t let people touch my stuff! B: How amazing! Good thing the hotel was protective of their guests. C: I went up to the hotel staff and said, “You guys rule, you rock!”  I love it.  Another thing is, I went to customs as I was leaving and the customs agent said she knew who I was. She said, “I love your show, I love your show, could I have an autograph?” (Stated in the local accent) B: How precious! C: I’m signing autographs after I’ve had rifles pointed at me only the night before. B: Oh, my gosh, I couldn’t imagine, Carla. C: I’m signing autographs through customs.  The customs agents were all big fans. B: Now, you know what was intriguing to me, Carla, in watching several of your shows, is that there was one episode about a murder and the girl had not been found. During the investigation, you were really tapping into her emotions, it was such a sense of being frightened and that she knew she was going to die. The emotions you displayed coming from her spirit were incredible. I know you’ve done hundreds of them.  It intrigues me, do you often feel those emotions of the victim when you’re doing this work? C: Only if I’m personally connected to the victim in some way, like if I have a personal soul connection.  I did with Natalee Holloway and a few of the other ones. Most of the time, emotions get in the way of me looking at a crime scene. If I’m personally connected to it, I can’t stop it.  So it is what it is.  You can tell which ones I was personally involved with. B: When I do this, I see through the victim’s eyes, I see what the victim saw. This helps me with descriptions of perpetrators, vehicles, or the surroundings. C: What I do is, I place myself in the crime scene and I can slow down the time stamp on it, and I slow the frames.  I turn to the left, I turn to the right, and I turn behind me.  I see what they are wearing on their feet.  I look at their hands and I can direct the frames to where I need it to go. B: Like a panorama? C: Yeah, but what I do is slow it down. The time slows and the events slow so I can see it. It’s hard to do this directly because you literally have to paralyze time in little capsules…time-ettes, little time-ettes.  You have capsules of time and you look at the scene at all angles, from a 360-degree type of deal. B: So what do you have in the works today?  Can you talk about anything that’s forthcoming that we can hear about? C: You know, I’ve been talking to so many producers and so many networks, it’s insane.  I mean, at one point, I was talking to ABC about a talk show for the afternoon. B: Oh, that would be fun. C: I would love to do a show. I’ve become known for doing crime scenes, out of all the things that a psychic can do, I just never really, in a million years, thought crime scenes would be the thing. I did the pilot for ‘Psychic Detectives,’ so I’m the one that kicked all that off. I ended up pioneering the field, I guess. I mean, if I had my choice, my psychic’s choice of any show I wanted to do, I’m intrigued by serial killings and demented behavioral criminology and what the human mind is capable of manifesting.  When I see shows like ‘The Killing’ and ‘The Following’, I want to do a psychic show that’s like a combination of those two. B: That would be so interesting. C: Serial killings, where you film every episode following the path of a serial killer.  The thing is, maybe you don’t get the resolution at the end of the season, but you have so many more answers. B: Like seeing inside the criminal mind. C: You don’t promise the public, ‘Hey, we’re going to make an arrest.’  A few people got pissed off at the show, ‘Haunting Evidence.’  We had no control over law enforcement.  When we were done, we just handed the information over, and if they wanted to pursue it, they could.  A few of those cops just wanted to get their 5 minutes on TV, and I’d say a handful of them asked me out on dates. B: Really?! C: Oh absolutely and it was kind of flattering. B: So, it was up to the law enforcement to do with it what they will. C: People just didn’t understand and they were mad at us.  You know, “why haven’t you solved these?”  “How many of these are solved?” We weren’t in control of that, we were a television show. The problem was the sheer number of cases on their desk, in all fairness to the law enforcement guys. You know, some of them had a personal connection to the cases that they were filming.  The FBI guy on the JonBenét case had very deep personal feelings towards the case and will always work it.  But they have to do it in their spare time.  It’s not something they’re getting paid for as law enforcement to keep cold cases alive. B: You were the ‘psychic profiler’ on the show and helped law enforcement with important information. C: The thing is, I coined the term ‘psychic profiler.’ I was the first one to use it in interviews and I can tell you the exact story of how I came by the name ‘psychic profiler.’  There was a show on NBC called ‘Profiler,’ which starred Ally Walker. They tried to downplay the fact that she was actually psychic.  She was, and it was clear on the show that she was psychic, and that was how she was getting her info.  She was making the mental, spiritual connection to the victims and whatever.  They called it ‘profiling’ because they were big on concealing psychics at that point. B: That is so very true! C: I kinda looked like Ally Walker and in a conversation I said, “Oh, she’s the profiler, and I’m the psychic profiler,” and that’s how it stuck. It was the beginning of the term ‘psychic profiler.’ I’m amazed at how many other psychics out there actually use that term as their own now. B: I see it a lot. C: And I’m the one who started it. In fact, Court TV liked it so much they tried to give it to John, and give me the title of ‘medium’ in the title sequence. I told them the story of how I came by the term.  So they had to change the titles and John became the ‘medium’ and I was the, ‘psychic profiler.’  They thought a man should be a psychic profiler.  That’s how backwards they were with that whole thing. Anyway, I want to do a show like ‘The Killing’ and ‘The Following,’ but a psychic version of it. B: That would be something I would certainly watch on TV. C: The combination of those two shows, you know, where I follow the path of a serial killer on each episode, different victims and other things that occurred. I would delve through the information and go through all those dark corridors. B: Have any networks shown any interest? C: I haven’t presented the idea formally, because the ‘The Following’ hadn’t even started until this year. But when it came on, I thought, ‘oh, there we go.’  Between that and ‘The Killing.’ ‘The Killing’ is very similar in tone to what I should be doing. The thing is, I never wanted to be known for the crime thing, but I have to solve the puzzle.  When I’m presented with an unsolved case, I can’t stop till I’m done.  I’m obsessed. B: Makes perfect sense. C: Just like when the serial killers are obsessed with their victims, I’m obsessed on the other end.   I can’t stop.  It’s like, I literally can’t do anything else until I’m done.  And when I’m working, I eat very little.  B: Now, you also do private sessions for people.  We want to promote that for you. C: Yeah, I’m very fortunate, you know.  I’ll be able to do this until you put me in a glass casket in the ground.  Or no, we aren’t going to put me in the ground.  We’re going to put me in a cave, like a saint, and you can come in and do the viewing. [Laughter] Put me in one of those air-tight glass caskets like Sleeping Beauty or Snow White.  You know, they put them in glass caskets.  We’ll do my hair and makeup and I’ll look perfect. [Laughter] B: No decomposition.  Just totally beautiful. C: I will never decompose.  They will make me like the perfect image of me and people will come, they’ll touch the casket, they’ll leave flowers.  [More laughter] Sorry, that’s my moon in Gemini. I’m a Scorpio with a Cancer rising, but I have the moon in Gemini that allows me to make light of all of this. My Gemini moon is the only thing that saves me sometimes because I’m just so obsessive compulsive with the Cancer rising.  It goes to a very dark place.  Thank God I turned it to cooking and domestic activities. B: Yes, I saw your recipe binder on your website at http://carlabaron.net and loved all of the recipes you have shared there. Our readers can check out your recipes by clicking on Contact Carla and then click on her recipe binder. C: Thank you for that, you can see all of my recipes from there. B: Do you ever find there are people you have difficulty reading for, or those who you feel are testing your ability? C: I always allow for that. Certain people can’t be read by other people.  It’s just the way it is, even with me, it’s unique…every connection.  The worst thing in the world is putting a psychic in a ‘testing’ ground.  They don’t perform well in that type of situation. People are drawn to me, or they’re not, I don’t care.  I really have no need to lead the masses, they come to me.  I’m happy to lead them because, you know what, it’s harder to do work that way – I do it with such a level of integrity.  B: You know how to allow your light to shine, Carla. C: Well, you know….I’m still working on it the same way everyone else is.  If I weren’t, I wouldn’t be able to council people at the levels I do.  B: Now are you booked way in advance for your readings? C: Oh no, I don’t book more than 48 hours ahead as far as readings go. It’s usually the same day or the next day.  I don’t like booking past that because I don’t know what I’ll be doing.  If a producer calls and wants to interview me, I have to be readily available. I like not knowing.  I like the surprise of what each day’s trove of psychic readings is going to be.  I don’t want to know ahead of time.  I meet such magical people when I’m doing all this. I like being surprised with what my day is going to bring. B: That’s a good way of looking at it. C: I don’t want some routine like that. I’ve got enough routine with the OCD that developed, so that’s enough routine for me.  But the rest of it, I like flying “Mach II with my hair on fire.”  B: How can people contact you to book a reading? C: From my website CarlaBaron.net. It shows people how to order reads and the whole thing.  I do readings on Skype audio only.  I have this thing when I do personal sessions, I get distracted visually.  Even when I’m on TV or a speaking tour, I will look to the side of the person.  I will never look right at them, even when I’m seeing something. I work better when I don’t have that visual distraction. I go off the vibrational rate of their voice.  They say their name, they say their birthdate, and for some reason that keys in.  And if they’re asking about someone else, they say their first name and then the birthdate.  That’s all I need, it sort of locks it in for me and I connect. I use tarot cards, but I have to because my mind is so active and I need to calm my hands down. I hardly look at the cards when I pull them.  I don’t do a tarot spread.  I think I just do it for the visual dance of images on the pillow I put them on.  I have a pillow that I set on my lap and I lay them on the pillow. I don’t even know how to do a tarot spread. B: Then you don’t even really need them, do you? C: It’s the imagery, it ignites my third eye and I see the whole thing.  All that does is either confirm it, or adds to it.  It’s my own language with myself.  But I first learned on regular playing cards. B: Cartomancy, how cool! C: For years, I was afraid to move off the regular playing cards because that’s how I learned.  It was an easy linear way of reading for me – to make the associations, but then I got bored.  I needed the pretty artwork in front of my face.  So my current deck, I’ve been using it for years, it’s the same one that I have for TV that I keep in a gold filigree type of bag.  It’s kind of a gold mesh bag, you can see through it, and it’s called The Quest Tarot. It’s what I’ve been using for the past couple of years now.  I mean, I’ve used other decks before, and I still have them, but that’s my favorite for the last couple of years. It’s because the artwork looks like me.  I gravitate to the artwork. I can look at that every day and get something new from it, something fresh.  So, when I do readings, I just randomly pull cards. I don’t sit here with any design.  I don’t know what I’ll see and I certainly don’t remember readings from the hundreds and hundreds of clients from all over the world.  People think I remember from reading to reading – even people I read on a regular basis (and I have a lot of those). I tend to remember their story, but they’re getting a fresh read each time!  I’ll throw myself in and I don’t know what I’ll see and sometimes I’ll surprise myself.  That’s how I know I’m in psychic mode – because the things I’ll see are against what I thought would happen consciously. B: Exactly, it just comes up and out of my mouth. It doesn’t have time to register. C: Right, I go with the read.  Look, I may personally disagree with it, but I see it, so there it is. I say stuff I see, I don’t hold anything back, but I say it in a way they can integrate.  You know, people ask, “Are you going to say bad stuff?”  If I see it and it’s part of your lesson, then yes, but I’ll say it in a way that won’t paralyze you. It’ll take you to the next step you need in your progression. B: Do you go on tour to speak publicly? C: I was asked just recently to go to this hotel for a three day event at a bed and breakfast in Panama City. B: Oh, nice. C: Panama and it’s beautiful.  And the thing is, it would be private sessions for 5 to 10 people with speaking. It would be a 3-day event, with a jungle tour and everything.  B: Have you ever been on an investigation where an image of spirit was captured while you were there? C: Yes, I took a picture with my cell phone when I was filming History Channel’s ‘MysteryQuest’ at Alcatraz. It’s so real, if there is proof of the afterlife, it’s that photo! And the ghost hunter I was with was in denial.  He was like, “That could be anything.”  I told him that’s a full body apparition of a woman, you can see her gown, the bodice of her gown, and you can see her face, her hair. Of all the pictures I’ve ever seen, of all the ghost hunters out there that do all the shows, this photo I took on my cell phone, my original cell phone, a low res cell phone, a flip phone, a Nokia…it’s still on that phone with time stamp and date unaltered. You look at that and you know there’s an afterlife, there’s no doubt. B: So, how did you come to take this picture? C: It was 5:30 in the morning and it was freezing and I was walking on the grounds to keep warm and I took that picture. When I saw it, it was just a burst of light.  Then I thought, I’m going to zoom first before I erase anything.  And I zoomed and all of a sudden this face came flying at me. I almost dropped the phone on the ferry going back to the hotel.  From my phone, I texted it to the producer at the History Channel.  She’s talking to me at the airport before I boarded the plane back home and she said, “What the hell is that?” It went viral in like 20 minutes. She sent it to everybody.  B: This picture is incredible! C: I think that may have been my Grandmother because I had just said Happy Birthday to my Grandfather, since that day was his birthday, a few seconds before I snapped that off.  They’re both dead and she’s the reason I became a psychic.  And I was thinking of him and my Grandmother, wondering “Are you guys together on the Other Side?”  They were very much in love all their lives. They were very enamored with each other. The image looks like it could be her.  I don’t know who else it could be, especially since that person doesn’t belong at Alcatraz, or in one of the cells, so it had to have been attached to me. B: That’s a prize photo! C: She’s almost solid.  You can see her, you don’t have to guess who she is.  You can see the outline of her face, her hair…the way it’s coiffed.  You can see the bodice of her dress, you can see her belt, and you can see the pleats in her gown. I was calling it my angel photo for a while because it was like my guardian.  The way it reached out to me as I was taking the photo because the arms reached out almost with adoring love. And just look at the cross on the wall! There was nothing in that cell that could have possibly created that reflection on the wall. B: Wow! You can just feel the spiritual energy coming from that photograph. C: I don’t know who it was, but they were reaching out to me.  Whoever it is sees me, so she’s watching all my nonsense. B: Carla, as you know, I’ve done a lot of work with missing persons and murder cases. Tell me about what it’s like doing murder and missing person’s cases that are more high profile. C: If you come to someone like me who is well known worldwide with what I do, you’re going to have to deal with media, whereas maybe not so much with you.  That doesn’t mean yours are any less important than mine.  I got to where I am with this, so media is part and parcel of the whole thing, and with a lot of these cases, that’s the problem.  Media presence will be very much a part of it if you go with someone like me. I do it for as many hours as it takes for free officially, but it’s usually a higher profile case obviously just because those are the ones that tend to go with the media. B: Exactly.  I look at it like this, Carla, it’s like you, and a few other bigger named individuals, paved the path for others of us to do the work that we do.  But you guys are the ones that opened the world’s eyes. C: Just because I made it further in television with my presence, it also comes with its own share of hell.  I mean, it’s not all glamour and when you get to that part of it, it’s hard. B: I’m sure of it. C: It is, and my life is not my own.  I run a tight ship.  I don’t have any assistants because nobody could possibly sort through this the way I do.  No one could have my voice the way that I do.  I tried it three different times, it never worked. No assistant is going to speak for me. B: That was surprising to me, too, Carla, that you answered my email request.  I was expecting a PR person to respond. C: Sometimes people will do that.  Even if I get on another series, I’m still going to answer my own damn emails! B: I was honored by that. C: Well if I can’t answer emails immediately…it may take a little longer.  You know, when my show was airing, I would get 400 emails a night. B: Oh heavens! C: I had to sort through it and I told people, hey, it’s going to be a little longer to get back to you, but I get back and I read each one. Spending the afternoon talking with Carla Baron was an incredible experience.  I thought I would be star-struck and mumble my words, but she made our conversation so enjoyable. Carla was easy to talk to, very down to earth and so very funny! Her magnetism and enthusiastic nature kept me hanging on to her every word as she shared stories of her life experiences. Carla Baron exudes the highest rank of Beautiful Spirit. Her message is simple, “You have a limitless, timelessness about you. Let your light shine and share it with the world. Casting the illusion is your mind projecting all the best, all the highest energy, where there is an aura around it and no one could possibly look less perfect than that.” You can learn more about Carla Baron by visiting her web site at http://carlabaron.net. And be sure to like her Facebook Fan Page at www.facebook.com/Psychic.Carla.Baron. You can also follow her on Twitter @Carla_Baron. ]]>