It’s past 11:30 a.m. and the crowd in the main ballroom at the Double Tree Hotel on Valley View is slowly beginning to grow as people gather in anticipation for the monthly Dallas Psychic Fair. Cheryl Andrea, the owner, is getting a couple of last minute things sorted out; her petite frame moves quickly and frantically behind a big, white table.

“I’ll be right with you!” she says cheerfully.

The walls of the ballroom are lined with small tables for readers and their clients. Toward the middle of the ballroom there is a colorful array of larger tables where the fair’s vendors put their products on display. There is everything from mineral stones to fun jewelry made out of old watch parts, incense, candles, natural skin care products, abstract art, bright Indian wrapskirts, and even chocolate covered pretzels. To the left, is the healing section of the fair, where wellness practitioners offer services like massages, quantum touch therapy, esoteric healing, and access consciousness.

“I couldn’t ask for a better community,” Andrea says. “Every single person here has heart and soul in what they do.”

The Dallas Psychic Fair has been around since 1979, and while it might look pretty ordinary on the surface, what it offers its visitors is something many other fairs do not: a place of personal growth and guidance, a kind of spiritual safety net.

Every first Sunday of each month 40 professional readers, 35 vendors, and around 11 wellness practitioners gather to offer their guidance in the best ways they can.

To Andrea, who has been the owner and producer of the fair for the past six years, it’s obvious why the Dallas Psychic Fair is still as popular as it was when it debuted in 1979.

“There is a real need for people to gain their answers,” she says.

Andrea says the main areas people usually seek guidance in are love, money, career and health.

Dee Curry, a longtime visitor of the Dallas Psychic Fair, finds it both helpful and fulfilling.

“I love the atmosphere, and I get to know what I want to know,” she says.

Curry says she likes to find out what’s going on in her life, and going to the fair helps her do just that. She has been seeing the same psychic for years.

“It’s all about clarity and understanding and helping people make critical life decisions,” Andrea says.

Andrea, 43, is a reader and an intuitive visionary, meaning that instead of receiving a flash of insight that often needs translation, Andrea needs no translation at all. She just knows. As far as becoming owner of the fair goes, Andrea says it was the advice of her guides that led her to it. One day Andrea was told to go to the Dallas Psychic Fair because her time was running out. She says the advice was vague, but that is one of the things that made the venture all the more exciting for her.

“I like the unknown. The uncertainty makes it magical,” she says. After beginning to work as a reader for the fair, it wasn’t long after it was announced that they were looking for a new owner, and that’s when Andrea knew that was the reason she had been guided to it.

While she says she has always been an intuitive person, Andrea believes being a psychic and an intuitive is very much a muscle that some people learn to develop better than others.

Leona Mayers, a New York City native, says she first knew she was meant to be a psychic when she was 11 years old and portrayed a gypsy at a fair doing readings for people. Mayers realized the things she was saying were pretty accurate and that she had a gift for reading people. However, it’s definitely not a job Mayers takes lightly.

“You have to do this type of work with integrity and you have to keep your own ego out of the reading,” she says. “You give people what they need if you can.”

Mayers, who has been a part of the Dallas Psychic Fair for the past 30 years, believes it’s all about helping people through the challenges they are presented with in life.

Michael Lin is one of the wellness practitioners at the fair. Lin and his wife Charlotte find joy in helping people through esoteric healing, which consists of balancing a person’s energy field and is often used to heal disease and disability. Esoteric healing is a process that grounds itself in the power of faith and human will.

Both Lin and his wife had very personal experiences with successful esoteric healing before they decided to become personal healers.

Lin’s wife first encountered esoteric healing when her sister used it help her through the pain of chemotherapy when she was diagnosed with cancer 10 years ago.

Lin saw the results with his wife when she was going through the hardships of cancer and again with his father when he fell ill.

“I used esoteric healing to remotely heal my father’s liver psoriasis and improved his kidney and organ functions,” Lin says. “Now we are offering our healing hands and loving hearts to the public,” he says.

Kristy Koesler, 45, offers the community a number of different mineral stones and gems, many of which psychics use to do readings and channel with. She has been participating in the fair since 1996.

“Gems and minerals have their own discrete vibrations,” Koesler says. “Amber, for example, is for good luck.”

Koesler earned her degree in metal work from the University of North Texas, so she offers unique pieces of jewelry as well. She even made her own wedding ring, which has a beautiful purple amethyst on it instead of a diamond. She also makes stone grids to set up energy patterns to help clients attain their goals.

“It’s my day out to visit with people, and it’s just a wonderful social activity,” she says.

Mayers, like Koesler, Lin, Andrea and many others at the Dallas Psychic Fair, says the most rewarding part of what she does is seeing people find their way knowing her influence helped.

“I know I can look back on my life and say I’ve done good. I have lived my life path,” she says.