'Intuitive' tapped to evict spirits

SAVE YOUR LIFE NOW! GRAB YOUR HOW TO QUIT SMOKING IN A WEEK FLAT BOOK NOW! SANTA ANA, Calif. -- The house is one that might prompt fantasies: three stories, a deck with an ocean view, a Laguna Beach address.

Yet, like a house from a scary movie, it gave Lori Duarte the creeps.

She woke up screaming from nightmares.

She also saw images out of the corner of her eye and heard strange noises.

"It was a pretty house, but it didn't feel that way," she said. "I would rather be in a shack."

In November 2007, after 18 months with her husband, Duarte joined him in deciding to end their marriage -- and sell the house.

The home stayed on the market for the next seven months, without any takers.

Whatever it harbored, Duarte said, kept buyers away.

She talked to her ex about a woman who could be hired to chase away the spirits.

"If you can get it to sell," he replied, "do whatever the hell you want."
A young discovery

Julie Belmont, an artist in Laguna Hills, Calif., works in oils, pastels and charcoal.

She makes Victorian chokers. She knits scarves.

And, she said, she sees dead people.

As a 4-year-old living in Madrid, Spain, she awoke one morning to find an aunt standing at the foot of her bed, smiling kindly.

Her aunt said she had come to say goodbye. Then she faded away.

"OK," Belmont remembers thinking, "I am awake."

She went to her parents with what she had seen, she said, and they didn't flinch.

"Get your coat," they told her.

The family went to a hospital where the aunt had been ill. The old woman passed away soon after they arrived.
A fateful meeting

Duarte, a flight attendant and mother of three, met Belmont at the Chakra Shack in Laguna Beach in the fall of 2007. The woman who usually reads Duarte's cards wasn't in, but Belmont was.

Some people might call Belmont a psychic; she prefers the term intuitive.

"People still stereotype," she said.

Since childhood, Belmont said, she could see, hear and feel things that others couldn't. The more she focused on her intuition, the more it developed. But, until recently, she shared it only with friends and family.

After growing up in Madrid, she moved to Toronto, where she fell into modeling, becoming Canada's first poster girl.

A 1980 magazine spread titled "Battle of the Poster Girls" shows her in a bathing suit alongside cheesecake swimsuit photos of Cheryl Tiegs, Suzanne Somers and Cheryl Ladd.

Soon, Belmont moved to Newport Beach, Calif., where she decided she wanted to be a police officer. She enrolled in the Golden West Police Academy and, in a few years, became a reserve officer for the Costa Mesa Police Department.

Less than two years later, she became pregnant and quit her job to raise what would be her only child, Krystle.

For the next decade or so, Belmont was mainly a mom, living in the exclusive Nellie Gale neighborhood, making and sometimes selling her art.

About five years ago, though, some of her friends who work as psychics told her: "You're just as good as us. Why don't you get a job?"

She was hired at the Chakra Shack, reading cards. She also does hypnotherapy and has written some books.

Then, about two years ago, watching yet another TV news report on foreclosures, Belmont fell into a reverie about all those people leaving their homes in sadness and anger.

What sort of negativity, she wondered, are they leaving behind?
An energy cleansing

Belmont arrived at Duarte's house armed with crystals, candles and rose water. Duarte took her from room to room. Then Belmont told Duarte to go outside and wait -- standard operating procedure because the person who lives in the home might become frightened.

"Spirits gain strength from fear," Belmont said.

Once alone, she walked through each room, counterclockwise, burning sage.

"It's a modern, everyday house, and that day was sunny," she said of the house that is, at most, a few decades old.

"Yet it felt dark, like something was there that shouldn't be."

Belmont emerged about 40 minutes later. Then, she and Duarte sprinkled rose water in the backyard and said a prayer, asking for "whatever it was that was there" to leave.

Belmont calls what she does "spiritual home staging."

Her flier reads: "Don't live in somebody else's past."

Her fee -- for everything from basic "energy cleansing and balancing" to "communication with the unseen, and evacuation or dismissal of unwanted energies or other phenomena" -- is $200 an hour.

Never mind that some people might consider her a kook -- or, even worse, a fake.

"There're always skeptics."
A positive outcome

Duarte isn't one of the skeptics. Still, she worries that people who read about her decision to hire Belmont might think she's "a fruitcake."

"Some people just don't believe in this sort of thing," Duarte said. "And that's fine. But unless you've experienced it . . ." Her voice trailed off.

The bottom line: "I would wake up at night screaming, open my eyes, and see people standing next to me. It felt like I was hallucinating. I hated being alone in that house. It just felt creepy.

"And everyone who would visit would say the same thing."

After Belmont left, Duarte said, her house felt lighter. The cold, dark feeling was gone. And within a month, she had a buyer.

Today, Duarte and her children live only a few blocks from their former home. Her daughter still plays with their former next-door neighbor's child, so they pass by the old house frequently.

"And it looks like a different house," Duarte said. "I don't know how to explain it. Physically, nothing's changed.

"There are things out there you just can't put your finger on. I don't know. Do you believe it?"

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