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Organized religion may be in decline, but the psychic business is booming. By Nick Harding DAVID SANDISON Futures market: Nick Harding found some of the psychics' predictions seemed spot on Heidi Sawyer remembers it vividly, how she saw her grandmother waving at her from the front door. She was in her early 20s at the time, and her grandmother had been dead several years. "Initially I thought she was a burglar," Heidi explains. "She was like a normal human, only more transparent." Heidi recounts the story to a room full of eager listeners. She is a psychic, and as course director at the Institute of Psychic Development is helping her audience to harness the psychic ability she believes we all possess. She rounds off the seminar by encouraging her clairvoyants-in-training to close their eyes and push "debris" out of their "bottom chakras". Across the hallway in another conference room, medium Maureen Flynn is about to share the proof that there is life after death.   It's just another day at Mind Body Soul – one of the UK's largest psychic-fests, where Scientologists vie for position with holistic nudists, Himalayan salt lamp peddlers, and enough healing crystals to stop the swine flu epidemic dead in its tracks. With an aura of spiritual energy fizzing like the aurora borealis, this carnival of new age hokum and quasi-scientific mumbo jumbo demonstrates that even in credit crunch Britain, while most of us have to forego the second (or even first) holiday, there are still people willing to invest in a new 'radionic chi generator'. This January more people than ever in the UK will be trying to look into the future, using astrology charts and, increasingly, the services of a psychic.

Read more: A skeptic seeks spiritual guidance from a medium

By Jane Fryer

Everyone is sitting on the edge of their red velour chairs. Throats are cleared, bottoms adjusted, arms crossed and uncrossed, tissues clasped tight in readiness.

Until, finally, at 7.45pm, the first Christmas message comes through.

'I've got a John . . . and a Tom. No, hang on - it's two Toms. . . or is it three Toms? And one's a grandad - but a youngish sort of grandad - old, but young at heart.

'And he must have had trouble with his breathing, because I'm feeling very tight in my chest. Oh, and hang on a minute, I've got the Honey Monster. Who here's obsessed with the Honey Monster?'

'That's us!' says a red-haired lady called Helen. 'It's my dad and he's called Tom. And Honey Monster is my son Chris's nickname,' she adds, now all pink and pleased as one of the microphone men rush towards her.

Read more: Christmas greetings from beyond the grave