DETROIT -- When you're a self-professed psychic medium and you hear dead people, sometimes you just have to turn down the volume.

Rebecca Rosen says she'll be in line at the grocery store when she's mentally bombarded by spirits, specifically the deceased loved ones of the strangers in front of her.

"If I'm standing in the checkout line behind them, and I hear a name in my head over and over again, the only way to know if it's real is to ask the person in front of me," says Ms. Rosen, a 33-year-old mother of two who first started delivering psychic readings in a West Bloomfield, Mich., coffee shop 10 years ago.

"But then I ask myself, 'Should I cross that line?' and 'Are they ready to hear it?' And I usually hear a 'no.' "

There are plenty of people, however, who are tuned in and ready to hear what Ms. Rosen says dead people are telling her. She is booked nearly three years in advance for readings -- $275 for a half hour or $500 for an hour.

On Monday, 800 people paid $30 to $60 apiece to attend a group reading at the Rock Financial Center in Novi, Mich.

"I think people are curious to know -- have solid validation -- that there's life after death and comforted to hear their deceased loved ones are OK and still with them," says Ms. Rosen. "They like having guidance and validation on the path they're traveling down."

Ms. Rosen, who now lives in Denver, has written a book about her life, "Spirited: Connect to the Guides All Around You" (Harper Collins, $24.99), that came out Tuesday. She's been featured on Rachael Ray's show and "Entertainment Tonight." She's given celebrity readings to Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox Arquette and Vanna White, and ABC's "Nightline" followed her around for a few days.

The fascination with psychics and "the other side" is long documented.

An August Pew Research Center Forum survey of 4,013 adults found that 29 percent of Americans feel they've been in touch with the dead; 1 in 5 Americans (18 percent) say they've seen ghosts, twice as many as in a similar survey 13 years ago.

Some 15 percent of Americans have contacted a fortuneteller or psychic, with women being twice as likely to do so as men.

Even if we don't believe, we're certainly entertained by the paranormal, the psychic, the seer.

A top 20 TV hit on CBS is "The Mentalist," whose lead character feigned a career as a psychic medium, but now uses his razor-sharp observational skills to solve murders. The "Ghost Whisperer," also about a psychic medium, is in its fifth season on CBS, and is followed on Friday nights by the show "Medium," about a psychic mom who helps law enforcement.

The new film "The Lovely Bones," based on the 2002 novel of the same name, tells the tale of a dead girl who tries to contact her parents and siblings.

Pop culture's current pre-occupation with all things psychic makes sense, experts say.

"During times of economic difficulty and uncertainty, interest in the supernatural skyrockets," says Lynn Schofield Clark, a professor at Denver University and the author of "From Angels to Aliens: Teenagers, the Media and the Supernatural" (Oxford University Press, $25).

"We all want answers to the unanswerable questions in life. And when we're uncertain about our own futures -- which a lot of us are today, given the economic recession -- popular culture can provide stories that allow us to ask, 'What if?' "

Ms. Rosen grew up in Nebraska, but started working as a psychic medium when she and her husband were living in Michigan and working for her dad's mortgage business.

Her new book is part memoir and part how-to guide on living a more serene life, even in the face of tragedy.

Ms. Rosen always knew she was prone to depression. Her grandmother committed suicide when she was 11, and while she was in college at the University of Florida, her father tried to kill himself as well.

Through the journal she kept in college, she says she felt as if her late grandmother spoke to her. She says she wrote down what her late grandmother told her -- how to take better care of herself, how to guard against depression -- and that her grandmother gave her clues from the other side: The names Ryan, Rose and the numbers 9 and 24. She talked about an important man that would enter Ms. Rosen's life.

Several months later, she met Brian Rosen (which sounds like Ryan and Rose), who was born on Sept. 24. He went on to become her husband.

She built a career as a psychic, but even Ms. Rosen couldn't see the tragedy that came three years ago, when her father, Shelly Perelman, also committed suicide.

"I was comforted that he was at peace. But it doesn't take away the pain and the questioning of why, and why didn't a psychic pick up on the signs," she says. "He believed so much in the other side and what I did, and he wanted to find his heaven."

She says it took eight months after he died for his spirit "to come through" to her, and assure her he was finally at peace.

Ms. Rosen says people can choose to believe -- or not.

"My brother is a rabbi and he was a big skeptic until he started watching my groups," she says. "I have rabbis who openly support it. Or they say they believe in the potential to contact the other world, but they don't believe it should be done. Some say, 'Don't you think you should allow the souls to rest in peace?'

"And I laugh. I don't go after them. They come after me," she says. "I'm just choosing to answer the call and listen and be the messenger."

Doug Oster writes a blog, "Growing With Doug," exclusively at PG+, a members-only web site of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.