Irene Hughes


Irene F. Hughes was an American psychic.
She was a favorite guest on The Merv Griffin Show. She also made regular appearances on Regis Philbin's Saturday Night in St. Louis and A.M. Los Angeles. Her clients included Eva Gabor and Howard Hughes.
Roger Ebert profiled Hughes in the Chicago Sun-Times edition of Feb. 9, 1967, where he pointed out how Hughes' fame grew after correctly forecasting a January 1967 blizzard that paralyzed the Chicago region.
Hughes, in the interview with Ebert, predicted that Lyndon B. Johnson would not seek re-election as President, and furthermore that "the Democrats will come right to the brink of nominating Robert Kennedy but then switch to someone else." This was said more than a year before LBJ announced on March 31, 1968 that he would not seek a second term. Bobby Kennedy, then the likely Democrats' nominee, would be assassinated on June 6, 1968.
Born and raised on a Tennessee farm, Hughes settled in Chicago Heights, Illinois with her husband, a Ford Motor Company accountant, and became a professional psychic in 1959. Often compared to astrologer Jeane Dixon during their careers, Hughes told Ebert, "I consider her to be a great woman...but, well, I have been more accurate."
Hughes was a popular guest on countless Chicago radio and television programs. She died at age 92 at a nursing facility in Beecher, Illinois.