Psychic Jeane Dixon dies

'Astrologer to stars' had legions of believers

January 26, 1997
Web posted at: 8:00 a.m. EST

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Astrologer Jeane L. Dixon, who gained national prominence as a psychic when her prediction that President Kennedy would die in office came true, died Saturday.

She was 79.

Sibley Hospital spokeswoman Jean Vincent said Dixon died at 2:30 p.m. from cardiopulmonary arrest. She said the hospital was asked not to release any further information.

An adviser to many famous clients, including Ronald and Nancy Reagan, Dixon rose to national prominence for her prediction regarding Kennedy. Parade magazine in 1956 quoted Dixon as predicting that a Democratic president elected in 1960 -- a tall young man with blue eyes and brown hair, would die in office. According to Dixon, she told interviewers that the president would be assassinated, but they refused to publish that.

She also told Reagan in 1962 he would be president someday.

Nancy Reagan, who came under massive press scrutiny for her reliance on astrologers to help set President Reagan's schedule, later decided Dixon had lost her powers and shifted her allegiance to rival astrologer Joan Quigley.

Prolific author

The author of seven books, including an autobiography, an astrological cookbook and a horoscope book for dogs, Dixon was a leading exponent of extrasensory perception, as well as an influential Washington socialite.

"Our lives are programmed at conception and are endowed with purpose and meaning," she once wrote.

After Kennedy's death in 1963, the national notice that Dixon received led political columnist Ruth Montgomery to write a book, "A Gift of Prophecy: the Phenomenal Jeane Dixon," that recounted hundreds of accurate predictions made over the years.

The book, published in 1965, sold more than 3 million copies and brought Dixon even more demand on the lecture circuit and a syndicated horoscope column.

She also wrote a series of books, including "My Life and Prophecies" in 1968; "Reincarnation and Prayers to Live By" in 1970; "The Call to Glory" in 1972; "Yesterday, Today and Forever" in 1976; "Jeane Dixon's Astrological Cookbook" in 1976; and "A Gift of Prayer" in 1995.

Dixon was the psychic people loved to hate. Every year someone would list Dixon's predictions that hadn't come true.

John Allen Paulos, a mathematician at Temple University, even coined something called the "Jeane Dixon effect" in which people loudly tout a few correct predictions and conveniently overlook the much larger number of false predictions.

Not all of Dixon's forecasts proved true. She predicted, for instance, that World War III would begin in 1958 over the offshore Chinese islands of Quemoy and Matsu, that labor leader Walter Reuther would run for president in 1964 and that the Soviets would land the first man on the moon.

For 1997, Dixon predicted that actor Alec Baldwin would become terribly ill, comedian Ellen DeGeneres would have a run-in with the Secret Service when she crashed the presidential inauguration; and a plane would crash in late October.

Early start

Dixon was born on Jan. 3, 1918, in Medford, Wisconsin, into a wealthy lumber family and grew up in California.

In 1939, she married James L. Dixon, a California auto dealer who later became a real estate executive in Washington. She worked with him in the business for many years while developing a local reputation as a psychic, giving "readings" to servicemen and government officials during World War II. She claimed to have been invited to the White House twice to give consultations to President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Dixon, a devout Roman Catholic, attributed her prophetic ability to God. At age 8, she was taken by her mother to a gypsy fortune teller who looked at her palm and predicted she would become a famous seer who would advise the most powerful people in the world.

In 1981 she unnerved actress Sissy Spacek by predicting she would give birth to a baby girl the following year. Spacek said she would decide the date and "not Jeane Dixon," but her daughter Schuyler was born in July 1982.

For many years she appeared uncannily gifted in calling the U.S. presidential elections. But as late as the summer of 1992, she was still predicting George Bush's reelection.

She also correctly predicted the Berlin Wall would be sold brick by brick for souvenirs, but not until the next century.

Dixon was close friends with Sen. Strom Thurmond, the South Carolina Republican, for over 30 years and became the godmother of his son, Paul Thurmond.

Dixon wrote a daily horoscope column giving people advice on everything from finances to love, and at the start of each year she released a list of predictions that supermarket tabloids loved to publish and then double-check.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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