As I begin my one-hour session with Medium Fleur, psychic to the stars, a soft chill runs all the way down my spine. Maybe it’s the ASMR-adjacent crackle of her California brogue, maybe it's the fact that I've just turned down the thermostat. Or maybe it’s simply that 32-year-old Fleur Leussink – born in Holland – is Hollywood’s hottest conduit to the spirit world, rooting out deep truths to bring them home for us mere mortals. She's beloved by ‘good friend’ Lana Del Rey, Emma Roberts, and more than 29k Instagram followers.
And so, into the mystic – remotely. Medium Fleur boasts a three year waiting list. She has been a medium for 13 years but says she has been communing with spirits since the age of zip. She sees dead people, ‘tuning in’, as she puts it, like turning the dial between radio stations until static gives way to a channel you can hear loud and clear. Her book, Moving Beyond, and her online classes are a guide to tapping into your intuition, reading signs and communicating with spirit. She also costs $700 (£586) a session. Lucky me.
If you doubt Fleur’s powers, consider the fact that, while walking in a Los Angeles dog park in February 2019, she felt ‘this strong pull to say time to go’ from America, and hot footed it to Lisbon, Portugal – before the pandemic, the Capitol Hill riot and the rest. She now reaches most of her A-list clients by phone. Lana – who has also ditched the whole American thing – she says, found her via Yelp, other stars discovered her via, say, make-up professionals or massage artists. ‘Word of mouth operates in the same way for celebrities as it does for normal people.’
What she’s doing today is exercising another part of her cosmic arsenal: an energy reading, tuning into my 'radio frequency' remotely from her little room in Portugal and telling me, a stranger, everything I need to know. How? ‘Things slow down. I become quite meditative. Then I find something to focus on, some point of information that's tangible in front of me. For example, I look out here and see a window and the shadow of plants, so I really focus on the information that shadow is giving me ... then I shift that focus to you.' What's that like? 'Like I take a walk around your energy space. It's almost like I enter your room and point out what I see. I get curious. But I often find that information is accessible to anyone. Everybody can do a lot of this.'
She tells me that I am ‘a spiritual being, with spiritual energy', and that there is something about me that is 'more than the physical, all of me that we don’t know how to measure or define, scientifically or otherwise’. This I can vibe with. Matter moves in mysterious ways. Frankly, it all makes around as much sense to me as quantum physics, or my toaster. She turns the camera off (‘oftentimes I find a face distracting’) and pauses to tune in. There are a lot of silences beneath between 'interpretations'. Every now and again, there's a bit of humming. No tarot cards, tea leaves, or sage feature. It's just me, my energy and Fleur.
What transpires next is an assessment of where my energy is taking me. Fleur tells me to answer the statements she’s making about me: yes, or no. She says I am ‘super extroverted’ in my energy, a 'relationship person' who 'really likes company' — shucks, all true. ‘Like, it’s unusual to see how big of a network this is,’ she says. That's nice. She is, frankly, a treat to talk to. What she says is largely upbeat and inspirational: a guided mediation on me just being me — an expansive experience with which she is keen to 'impact' me positively.
It's not all good news. She also says I’ll have to rely on said network for help in finding work, implies that I'm a little lazy, asserts that I shouldn’t bother writing a book, and warns that unless I start looking after my digestive system, 'a weak spot in my space', I’m going to be in ‘a massive problem for you in about ten years’. (This, spookily, is exactly what my GP said last time I saw him, too). At least I'll have people to remember me fondly. She correctly pulls out from the aether the fact that I had dodgy ear drums as a kid. That my value system is based around trying to make a 'practical, smart choice'. That I am risk averse. 'Insecurity is not for you.' Fun. Over '90%' of my energy is 'deeply rooted' in the UK which means that, while I might travel, I'm stuck on this this cursed island longterm.
I’m also getting married this month. Fleur doesn’t know this beforehand. She nevertheless picks up that I’ve ‘connected or found someone who I feel like is my person’ and ‘if you haven’t proposed yet, that’s where this is going’. (Fleur also intuits, correctly, that she is a she). That we 'met first and dated later'. And that ‘she’s got a really good heart, and I think you two are a good match in your good heartedness [and] in your deep respect for people. You both have this ability to accept people for who they are. We'll be in our 'practical' flat for 'a long time', and while I definitely want kids, she says, my partner apparently wants children ‘sooner and with more intensity than you’. Oh boy.
But enough about me. The point is to take from all this what you will. Don't like what your energy is telling you? Vibrate to a different frequency. Pick up some new habits. Do something new. ‘Energy plus habit creates your future,' says Fleur. 'Do you like what you’re creating? If not, you can shift it.’ Maybe I will write that book after all.