THE
GAZER
with’s megachurch in Culver City,
Calif., so anyone with an Internet
connection and a credit card could
be healed beyond the boundaries
of time and space.
This sort of work is new for
Sibbett. “She’s a little too poised
and a little too perfect for what
she’s doing,” said Jacobson, who
contacted her for his article. “The
way she was kind of interrogating
me and hedging her bets, giving
me disclaimers: that not everyone feels it the first time, that you
need to come back for more. If I
knew of somebody who had mystical healing properties, I wouldn’t
bend over backwards to qualify
the experience.”
Whitecliff, meanwhile, who lists
her interests as UFOs, telepathy
and angels on one online profile,
seems right at home. Opening
speakers at gazing sessions recite
the life story told in her book: that
before Braco was Braco, he was
Josep Grbavac, the son of wealthy
parents in Zagreb. He accompanied his mother to a psychic, Ivica
Prokic, who saw the future by
peering into a mirror. The young
Grbavac, with his master’s degree
in economics, was a doubter. But
Prokic won him over. The psychic
gave him his new name and fore-
HUFFINGTON
06.23.13
told his powers, saying he would
use them in America after a great
shift (Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential win, according to Whitecliff). A year later, in 1995, Prokic
died. Braco took his place at his
center in Zagreb.
Prokic’s demise is put down to a
freak accident, a “rogue wave” that
[Braco] may offer less
than any star healer on
the market: no mantras,
no dictums, just the sight
of him seeing you.
swept him away off the coast of
South Africa, where Whitecliff says
the two friends went on holiday.
(The story raises the antennae of
skeptics, who offer a more sinister
reading of two people going somewhere, and only one returning.)
By 2008, Whitecliff says, Braco’s fans were so great in number
— and his critics so irritating —
he came up with the idea of simply standing and staring at whole
masses of people.
“There’s a profoundness to him,”
said Martyn, the high-wattage facialist. “We all speak too much
and waste our energy and words.
He doesn’t speak that much, and
when he says something, it’s very