Excerpt from ad in San Diego Evening Tribune, October 10, 1934.

She was a psychic. And long before psychic hotlines, clairvoyants and mediums of various kinds were in demand, including in San Diego. How much in demand? The archives of the San Diego City Clerk’s Office include a copy of a “clairvoyance and palmistry license” issued in June 1910 to one individual, and the archive blog notes that there are “multiple similar licenses” on file.

“Madam Zelma, Truthful in her predictions, Reliable in her advice,” was the heading  of a classified ad that appeared on page 23 of The San Diego Union on Sunday, November 5, 1911, informing readers that “the noted clairvoyant and medium, who acquired such a wonderful reputation for her remarkable predictions and her sensational demonstrations which startled and amazed hundreds for the past two seasons at Coronado Tent City, is now located permanently in San Diego.”

In one ad, shown below, from the Union in January of 1912 on a lecture she gave at the U.S. Grant Hotel,  Zelma used a last name of Dentt. Your History Seeker team used that to find some background information on her and her husband Frank Dent (proper spelling) including their move from San Francisco to San Diego in the fall of 1910:

Judging by her media coverage, Zelma maintained her psychic business in San Diego from the 1910s until 1934, with ads that appeared pretty much weekly in San Diego papers during those years. The ads disappear after 1934. Interestingly, our attempts to find other info about Zelma and/or Frank in San Diego during that period, from census data to city directories to voter lists to obituaries, have come up blank. An early census we did find for the Dents, from 1910 in San Francisco, just before they moved to San Diego, gives Zelma’s age as 25. That would make her 49 years old when she ceased running pychic ads in 1934. So what became of her? Any psychics out there with any clues?