Carla Baron sits in her living room, eyes fixed on a blank wall and tarot cards spread in her lap. Then the visions come.

A body floating face down underwater. Clothed, but coatless. Caught on a rock.

A sickly, sweating, maladjusted stalker. A threat. A borrowed taxi. A river leap, and death.

Baron, a Los Angeles-based psychic consulting with the family of Svetlana Aronov, says the Upper East Side book dealer whose disappearance in March sparked a media frenzy relays these grisly images from the afterlife.

Friends of Aronov, who reached out to Baron and other psychics for help in the weeks before her body was found May 6 in the East River, now say they wish they hadn't. They described late-night calls and outlandish scenarios that led them on roller coasters of hope and despair.

"So many of them contacted the family — you should have heard the obscene stories we heard from them," said Olga Dolgicer, an Aronov family friend. "The only difference between those people and us is we do not have this imagination."

When people disappear in high-profile cases, cloaked in mystery and lacking leads, psychics claiming insight are sure to materialize. Though well-intentioned help can comfort loved ones and give investigators ideas, families and experts say, it can also raise false hopes with devastating results.

Kathy Kupka, whose sister Kristine disappeared in 1998 after leaving her Brooklyn home with her former boyfriend, said she, too, was at first receptive to psychics' tips and visions. But following some unlikely leads left her more upset and as unenlightened as before, she said.

"At the very beginning, everything a psychic said I totally went on, because I was totally sure I was going to find her, I was sure it was going to work, and then I was totally mortified," said Kupka, of Brooklyn. She now thinks her sister, whose body was never found, was murdered. "Finally, I just had to give it up."

Many psychics, including Baron, say they have solved cases, but skeptics discount their visions as intentionally vague and say they have achieved no successes, only a handful of coincidences.

"Enough of them call in and enough of them make enough kinds of claims that are general enough — 'I see a body of water' or some trees, the woods, typical places where people get dumped — that they can claim hits or claim credibility," said Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic Magazine. "When we've investigated these things and talked to police departments, we've been told they never ever once had any help. It never worked. There's not a single documented case where a psychic solved a case."

Even if they don't claim money when they try to help solve crimes or missing-persons cases, Shermer said, psychics typically get their time and money's worth in publicity, he said.

"They'll use it to promote themselves," he said. "They make elsewhere, their books, their clients, their TV appearances."

Baron's certainty about Aronov's fate — that she jumped into the East River to flee an obsessed kidnapper — provides contrast to the gaggle of questions that still surrounds the wife and mother's death.

Even the medical examiner's office said last week that it lacked the evidence to determine if Aronov's death was a homicide, suicide or accident. But Baron's scenario, in which the kidnapper keeps the dog Aronov was walking as a memento, accounts for everything.

"I communicate with her, with Svetlana about this, as you would with someone living," said Baron, who hosts a radio show and has appeared on Court TV's "Psychic Detectives." "It's not a conversation in your head, and you definitely know the difference between talking to yourself and talking with another energy."

Aronov's husband, Alexander, continues to consult with Baron free of charge and describes her as "nice and perceptive."

"I am a skeptical person, but I am an open person as well," said Aronov, a doctor, who called Newsday to vouch for Baron at her urging. "We know there are certain facts that do not constitute the accepted belief, but I also know these accepted facts have their limits."

Baron says she had a lengthy conversation with a detective in the 19th Precinct, where Aronov lived, a few days after she vanished. Police could not confirm this, but said that they will generally take a tip from a psychic just as they will hear out any member of the public. Officially, the NYPD does not solicit help from psychics, a department spokesman said.

Baron said she believes the kidnapper borrowed a cab from a friend and lured Aronov inside by threatening to harm her family. This corresponds to a newspaper report that a parking-lot attendant saw her getting into a taxi, but police have largely discredited his tip. Baron, however, said her vision of a second witness to the taxi turned out to be "uncanny." Though an associate of the family confirmed the existence of this witness, he declined to specify what Baron seemed to know and what she didn't.

"It's hard to say what people might make up, what might be coincidence and what might be correct," he said. "But she's lovely and I think she's decent."

A police source close to the investigation said that Baron's version is farfetched. Investigators' strongest suspicions pointed toward Aronov's husband before her body was found, the source said.

Now, he said, it looks more like a suicide. "Her body surfaced with no signs of force, no contusions, no abrasions," the source said. "No one is going to get thrown into that freezing river without putting up a fight."

Dolgicer and another close friend of Aronov's, Elena Pechersky, both said they distrust Baron, who they say has provided no useful insights and has demanded media attention from the start. It was Pechersky who reached out to Baron in an e-mail, but she said that none of the psychics she contacted in the United States or eastern Europe yielded anything but aggravation.

"I just wanted to do something, but then I felt sorry that I did," Pechersky said.

Dolgicer recalled how Aronov's husband and daughter were once wakened by a 3 a.m. phone call from a psychic who told them Svetlana was alive but hurt on a New Jersey riverbank. When that didn't pan out, they were devastated, she said.

"I was a believer before," Dolgicer said. "I truly believed that there is somebody out there who has that power, and I know now that there is no special power. We are human beings. If we don't see it with our own eyes, we don't know."

Once, Kupka said, a psychic told her Kristine was in a bar in a New Jersey town with a "c" in its name and a crescent flag flying nearby. A well-known television psychic, Sylvia Browne, said a stranger had picked Kristine up in a van and driven her to Albuquerque. One man told her to go into some "crazy neighborhood," she said, and take 10 steps east and 20 steps west.

In each case, she found nothing.

"Oh, it was awful," she said. "And they get you all riled up — you're kind of crazed in the beginning anyway, you're not yourself. You're absolutely desperate."

The private investigator working on Kupka's disappearance, Gil Alba, said he sometimes humors clients by following leads from a psychic or two — "just to get them out of their system."

"Families always go to psychics," said Alba, a former NYPD detective. "If somebody's missing in your family and somebody calls on the phone and says, 'Listen, I think I could help,' you're going to listen."

Though most who call and offer advice seem well-intentioned, he said, they often end up hurting those they're trying to help.

"They have high hopes and when they don't find somebody like the psychic says, the hopes evaporate quickly and depression sets in," he said. "Everyone you talk to says they helped the police solve a lot of cases, but I don't know of any. However, on the other hand, when they say these things, it gets you thinking. To be a good investigator, you've got to listen to everybody."

Alexander Aronov declined to say whether he believes Baron's visions are accurate.

"She's been helpful," he said. "Once we know the truth, then we can figure out how it all went, and who was right and who was wrong."