BY JAIME GATTON

According to folklore and legend, Halloween marks the time of year when the veil between the physical and spiritual worlds thins and becomes permeable, facilitating contact with those who have crossed over.

Tara Caputo doesn’t have to wait for Halloween. Dead people talk to her all the time, she insists.

Not to be confused with Teresa Caputo, the popular TV “Long Island Medium” who is no relation, Tara is a Tarot reader and psychic medium in Mooresville. For years she has used the spiritual gifts passed down from her grandmother and two great-aunts, all three of whom passed away before Tara was born.

“My grandmother on my father’s side and her sisters were big spiritual healers in Italy, so that’s where my background comes from,” Tara said from her small shop in Phenix Salon Suites at 591 River Highway in Mooresville, where she has been since last Halloween. Before that, she was on Marketplace Avenue as My Little Angel Holistic Shop.

“When I started to get into Tarot as a little girl, I was always told to sleep with your first deck under your pillow,” she remembered. Through this practice, “I got to encounter my grandmother through a real dream. I had found her. She’s the one who tells me sometimes what I need, and she comes when I need her.”

Originally from Staten Island, N.Y., Tara holds a bachelor’s degree in criminal psychology. She worked in real estate law for almost two decades, but when she moved to Mooresville eight years ago, she decided to pursue her true passion full time by helping people through her psychic gifts.

“When I came here, I felt I had a different purpose in life,” she said. “I got more into medium than anything else because it gives people peace. My whole purpose — I’ll always feel — for being here is to help people.”

Tara began realizing she had a gift when she was about 12 years old. “That’s when I felt it a little bit more,” she said. “I used to see things even when I was younger, but I didn’t understand it.”

Being part of a Catholic family, she said, made her gift a bit complicated to use — at least at first.

“I hid my first deck of cards for a while because my mom was like, ‘Oh my God, the Devil’s in the house!’ ” Tara said, laughing. “To her, the thing was: Don’t play with something when you’re too young. You may think you understand it, but you don’t.”

Tara said her mom, who has now crossed over herself and is a “fore-warner” of things to come for her daughter, would have felt more comfortable with Tara practicing Tarot if the females in her father’s family — Tara’s grandmother and her two sisters — had still been alive to help Tara understand and develop her gift. “I would have needed them to help my mother feel that security,” Tara said.

By the time she was a freshman in high school, Tara started reading Tarot cards more seriously. Since then she has used her gifts to help countless people, locating missing people — some alive and others not — in North Carolina and Georgia. She has helped raise money for charitable foundations in New York. Locally, she has raised money for the Jake Ziegler Memorial Scholarship.

Jake, 18, and his friend Ray Pierce, 17, both of Sherrills Ford, died in 2012 on their way to Myrtle Beach, S.C. The two were missing for two weeks before being found in their car, which was submerged in a South Carolina river.

Tara said she donates money from these readings back to the scholarship fund in Jake’s name, and she offers a free reading to his parents “so they can connect with their son on his birthday or (death) anniversary every year.”

Tara has provided readings for people in almost every state, often using long-distance calls and Zoom. She has created two oracle decks: Guidance to Healing, which provides affirmations to help people work on themselves daily, and Angel Cards, which help people connect and understand messages from their angels. She also authored a book, “Prayers for Guidance,” and has a weekly podcast called Coffee & Sage, in which she offers “sage advice and intuitive insights on all things woo woo and spiritual,” including monthly horoscopes and cleansing and protective recipes.

Tara also loves crystals and making jewelry with them, including custom pieces. She sells some of her jewelry, along with candles and other spiritual items, in her shop.

“Anything that helps people every single day in the easiest way, I give it out,” Tara said, adding that she knows her late grandmother approves.

“My grandmother is my rose quartz. She’s the one who always said I had to have a rose quartz to read and that I was finally on the correct journey instead of just staying in the same place, wasting my time.”

After a pause, Tara laughed and said: “So I guess that’s what she considered me working in real estate law — a waste of my time.”

Curious for a reading? Learn more about Tara and her services at www.psychictara.com or call 980-434-3440.