On the corner of 23rd and Madison, away from the busy bars of the Hill, there’s a window with jars of crystallized salts for chakra balancing and a large sign offering discounts for palm readings. The Capitol Hill Psychic Boutique has been around for six years and it belongs to neighborhood psychic Ashley Adams.

Adams has felt her psychic abilities since birth and began reading tarot cards before she ever learned how to read a book. The talent spans back through her maternal bloodline. Adams’ great grandmother is well known in Santa Monica where young Adams sat watching and eventually performing the readings on the pier. It is such a calling that Adams didn’t finish high school, leaving to go continue her family business.

“I felt like I was able to help people get to the next step in their life, get past their fears,” Adams said. “I felt more connected to this path than any other path.”

Now, 26-year-old Adams travels back and forth between her business at the nexus of the Central District and Capitol Hill and her other one in Burbank called Lola Psychic Shop, named after her mother. Adam’s great grandma was a healer, a psychic and clairvoyant but Adams herself specializes in chakras, spiritual healing and past presence. Adams is not a clairvoyant.

That doesn’t mean she can’t talk to the dead, though.

When Adams first moved into her shop at the corner of 23rd and Madison, she saw two men.

“There was a spiritual energy with the business, in the window, outside,” she said. “There were two male presences. You could see the face and everything, and their body outline.”

Her husband, who is not psychic, also saw the figures. They no longer appear, however.

“I’ve met people who aren’t really alive,” Adams said, through conversations in meditation.

She cannot call spirits or seek them out, however. This is where Adams differs from her great grandmother.

“If they want to speak, their energy will come,” Adams said. “I’m like an open doorway, but I’m not a ouija board.”

People often ask her to perform séances but she refuses. It’s too dangerous, she says. Instead, Adams mostly takes customers who want to know more about their love life or their job. She doesn’t read palms analytically, instead she references the lines but primarily relies on the energy she sees and feels. For Adams, this comes off as fluorescent colors and shades, along with vibrations and rotations.

“It’s just there,” she said. “I can feel the energies from chakras.”

Some believe there are four to seven chakras in the human body, depending on the religion. They’re psychic orbs representing various aspects of someone’s life and are often represented on the human body as being in the center from one’s head to one’s toes.

Adams believes in a sort of open religion. Her roots are Catholic and Greek Orthodox but she does believe in Buddha and God. She holds no beliefs in cults and doesn’t follow Wiccan direction but understands and sees it. More than anything else, however, Adams relies on energy.

“I’m using my energy to go into your energy,” she said. Adams can see past, present, and future but typically her clients come in with negative questions. “Whether it’s good or bad, I’m going to tell you. I try to make the client understand we’re not meaning this in a mean way, just how they can avoid it or make it better. I guess they analyze the bad more and expect the bad. I’ve had quite a few negative reads.”

As for her methods, Adams can cover financials, love, health, life-threatening diseases or issues, negative and positive energies, chakra balances, jobs and talent. She’s even capable of getting to the specifics, like months things will change or how long ago something changed in the past. From her client’s auras, Adams will see and feel numbers that determine her specificity.

Her readings are very conversational. She asks her clients if there’s anything they want to focus on, and continues to ask questions throughout the reading as she feels and sees things.

Adams also does Tarot readings, but they’re also the more psychic kind. She doesn’t prefer this as much — though her clients typically do — because they’re tools that only allow for specific aspects at any given time. If a deck wants to talk about love life but a client wants the opposite, there’s nothing Adams can do. Then there’s the first-timers.

“People who have never had their reading before are very scared,” she said. “It’s not a scary thing. You can’t read somebody when they are closed and doubting your abilities.”

Adams believes everyone has psychic abilities, though. It’s simply how you pick up on it, she says. Every person has some sort of energetic connection.

If clients have energy issues or didn’t ask questions they wanted to, Adams often offers her cellphone number. Clients can also take home her crystallized salts and she doesn’t charge when people return for a quick, one-minute evaluation of their chakras.

Adams sometimes finds that her business fluctuates with the weather. As for her own future, Adams doesn’t see her Seattle shop closing any time soon, but new customers might want to pop in before she leaves for her California business during the winter.

Capitol Hill Psychic Boutique is located at 2302 E Madison. You can learn more on the boutique’s website.