Lifetime Issues "America's Psychic Challenge"

Lifetime, like many other networks, including cable, is experimenting with originally developed programs. They hit it big earlier this summer with "Army Wives," an utterly charming and surprisingly hard-edged look at life in the American military.

Last year they also ventured into reality-based TV with "Lisa Williams: Life Among the Dead," which was also unexpectedly successful. Now they are taking the interest in psychic abilities one step further by hosting "America's Psychic Challenge.

According to Lifetime, they scoured the country and interviewed hundreds of self-professed psychics; finally narrowing it down to the top sixteen. Each week, four of those individuals will be put to the challenge through a series of tests aimed at measuring the reality of their clairvoyant claims.

On October 13, 2007, the program debut with the first four psychics vying for the title of America's #1 Psychic. In the season opener, the first four psychics competed in four challenges. The candidates included:

Jackie Barrett, a psychic medium and spiritualist with more than 23 years of experience who has assisted "America's Most Wanted" and other police forces across the United States;

Jamie Clark, another psychic medium, who uses the arts of psychometry, clairvoyance, and channeling in public seminars and private readings;

Karyn Reese, a professional psychic, who claims an ability to read people through spirits that surround her and give her information; and

Zenobia Simmons, whodoesn't work as a psychic full-time but who is eager to see how far her natural talents can take her in this competition.

The first test was designed to see whom, if anyone, could locate a person hidden inside a room of an old abandoned hospital. But little did the psychics know that wasn't the only challenge. It was also hoped that they would be able to pick up on the negativity of the building, which used to be a place that housed the mentally insane.

Jackie picked upon the negative feel of the hospital and even told host, John Burke that it had been an insane asylum. However, she was unable to locate the correct room.