Mansfield probate lawyer splits his time as psychic medium

By: Pat Murphy, Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly, January 11, 2018

For now, Steven F. Macek is happy with the balance he’s struck practicing probate law and working as a psychic medium.

But he can see the day when helping people connect with the spirit world becomes his full-time job, forcing him to leave the legal profession behind.

“I think that’s the route [the spirits] are taking me on,” Macek says.

Macek joined the bar in 2002, handling care and protection cases in Juvenile Court. Before long, he was mainly representing hospitals and nursing homes across Massachusetts in the creation of guardianships and conservatorships.

Then, in 2010, his life took a dramatic turn when he attended an event at which a well-known Massachusetts medium was giving readings.

“Right when she was about to start her event, she came over and told me I was a medium and didn’t know it — and then [she] walked away,” Macek recalls.

Nonplussed, Macek contacted the medium the next day, and before he knew it, she had set him on the path to becoming a medium in his own right.

“Spirits, as I collectively call them, knew I knew and started communicating with me,” Macek says.

In 2013, Macek earned certification as a medium from the Imagine Spirit Intuitive Arts Institute in Arizona. He gave his first reading that same year.

Now the Mansfield attorney gives four or five readings a week ($150 an hour for an individual reading), does local psychic events in front of audiences of 100 or more, and in July is hosting a cruise with three other mediums.

“If you had told me 10 years ago I was going to become a medium, I would have laughed,” he says.

Macek is careful to distinguish between psychics and “psychic mediums,” the latter being the term he uses to describe himself on his website. According to Macek, a psychic “reads the energy” from people, sometimes with the use of tarot cards, to tell them about their past, present and future.

As a medium, Macek says he converses with those who have “crossed,” relaying messages from spirits to their loved ones. He first became conscious of his gift at the age of 8, when his father committed suicide.

“It was devastating,” he says. “But throughout my childhood and adult years, I already knew he was around me. He would give me signs occasionally.”

Full understanding of his gift came when he connected with the professional medium in 2010.

Macek went on to become something of a courthouse celebrity in Worcester and Brockton last year when The Boston Globe ran a piece on him. He recalls a judge pulling him aside at the conclusion of a hearing to tell him she had read the story.

“She said she loved it and shared it with her family,” Macek says. “I was taken aback.”

But Macek is careful to draw a line between his two areas of work. When people discover he’s both a medium and a lawyer, they often ask if his psychic abilities can help him with the cases he’s handling. Macek is quick to dissuade them of that notion.

“For me, it’s not about giving me information on the other side or anything,” he explains. “It’s more about spirits wanting to connect with people, and less about me.”

And then there are the people — including his fellow members of the bar — wanting to connect with the spirits.

“I have attorneys and ADAs coming to me to make appointments for readings,” he says.

With much of the staff at the Juvenile and Probate & Family courts aware that he’s a medium, on occasion he even finds himself giving an impromptu reading with a clerk. After one such reading, Macek turned to apologize to the attorney waiting in line behind him.

“She [said,] ‘Are you kidding me? I want to be right after her,’” Macek says.