Do Dead People Watch You Shower? (11 page)

I have never
had a soul tell me they are sorry they left. Maybe they are not entirely happy about the circumstances of their crossing, but that’s something different—they don’t want those they’ve left on this side to be upset and grieving their loss so deeply. If they have left someone suffering or left someone feeling guilty, they are sorry for this.

Remember, we are not of this physical world. Ultimately we belong to the larger universe that is God. We’re here in this small part of the universe to study and learn and have certain experiences that only the physical world can offer. Dying and being on the Other Side is like summer vacation. It’s a rare child who will say that she wishes she could go back to school before September, and likewise I’ve never heard a soul express the wish to go back before it’s her time to reincarnate. Once they are on the Other Side, they understand the journey they’ve just completed. They love us still. Their love lasts through eternity. But the Other Side is paradise and unlimited and they don’t need to come back into physical form to be with us.

The best way
I can describe this is that I’m going on automatic pilot. Have you ever emptied the dishwasher or ironed a shirt? Probably a million times. So you don’t think about it. You don’t have to focus on anything, you don’t really have to bring your mind to it. It’s the same thing when I want to do a reading. I just stop thinking about it. The body goes into a lower heart rate, an alpha state. I don’t hear a voice, it’s a thought. And I might also see a flash of images. The family or other loved ones of the person having a reading (my client) shows up as a group to communicate. Around the client is energy—it’s an out-of-focus arc or horseshoe around the person. This is a gathering of the various souls’ energies. Sometimes I might also see a “pillar” of energy, which may be a tall person or a grandfather. When the reading begins, the energy around the client is hazy. Then, as the reading progresses, the energy is used up and it gradually clears or gets more focused.

If I’m doing a show with a lot of people, sometimes during a particular reading I will hum a few notes. This isn’t any special song, I’m not calling up my spirit guides or anything; it’s random. All I am doing is trying to block out sound around me. This puts me back in a subconscious state.

Every now and then I take a very strong short intake of breath. A lot of people ask me about this because it sounds strange and obviously they think it has something to do with my being able to let a message come through. Actually, all I’m doing is breathing! When I’m listening so intently to what they are saying to me, it’s like I’m thinking, talking, and breathing almost through the top of my head. Of course, you can’t breathe through the top of your head, so what’s actually happening is that I’m
not
breathing. All of a sudden I realize I need air and I take a breath that is almost a gasp because I’m just grabbing it so fast.

Another thing I do is I hold my fingers pinched together. I don’t really know why, but this somehow helps me to hold energy in, to conserve it in some way. Often you’ll see pictures of spiritual Masters or even just an ordinary person meditating and they are holding their fingers like this. It must be something that I just picked up instinctively, because it’s not anything I was told.

All mediums experience the dead differently. They won’t be drastically different in the larger experience or the messages. However, some mostly see the dead—those are called
clairvoyants
. Some mostly hear the dead—they are
clairaudient
. Some get an overall impression—they’re called
clairsentient
. The dead are energy and there’s a lot of room there for different experiences and interpretation.

A true medium
who uses tarot cards is not really getting a message from the cards themselves. When I first went public I used the cards just to have something to focus on because I was nervous and, to be honest, I probably looked like I was going to have a seizure. I put the cards between me and the client and told the client I was using them to tap into the energy of their loved one. But really I was listening, not even looking, and sometimes I’d be staring up into space and talking with the cards all spread out in front of me and the client would say, “Whadderya looking up
there
for?” After a while I realized it was better just to sit there and talk with them without the set dressing.

I never want
to be associated with Ouija boards. That is a dangerous game. You are opening a window and unless you know how to protect yourself you can call an evil soul who can haunt you and interfere with your life. When I do a reading, I always ask that God protect me and my home, and to let only those who walk in the Light come to me. I’m like Joan Crawford with her wire hangers:
No—Ouija—boards! EVER!

They come in
bits and pieces. Really, it’s like putting together a jigsaw puzzle. I try to gather up the pieces and then the client has to put the picture together. Of course, if I think I know where a piece goes, I tell them.

First I try to identify the person on the Other Side who’s talking—one person—stick with him, and let him introduce me to others. It’s kind of like walking into a party and starting to talk with someone, and then he gradually brings you into the mix. I’ll ask the spokesperson (mentally, usually not aloud), “Please step forward, do you have a message? Can you help me?” He does the heavy lifting.

In identifying himself, he might tell me his name outright. Or I might get just a first letter. When it’s the latter, I tell the client, but I might also suggest possible names that go with that letter—just to jog the client’s mind I might say, “It’s a
J
—is it Jerry? John? Jack?—because I find so often that the client is in a state of mild shock to have this connection, even if they have come to me expressly to have it. Names are something that I’m less than perfect on—and for that I can only apologize. The spirit on the Other Side will tell me the name and I do try and frequently will get it dead on. But I’m not God. If I tell someone, it’s a
D
—David, Donald, Dominick…I hope they won’t be surprised if it’s Donahue—but usually I can give enough other details about the person so that there is no doubt in the client’s mind. Often to verify who is speaking I’ll ask how they crossed over and they’ll show me how they died. I might see that they were horizontal and often this means that they were in bed—whether they had a lingering illness or died in their sleep. Or I might feel a sensation in my chest and ask the client, “Did she have something the matter with her lungs?” I get all different sorts of feelings, like I’m being hit, or a sensation of having water in my lungs, or like having the wind knocked out of me, depending on what they are trying to tell me. It’s never the same. Or I might see something going through the whole body and ask the client, “Was it cancer?” Or I might actually see blood and know that it was an accident or something worse. But I do this only so the client can know that the person I’m talking with is who they want to be in touch with. Sometimes they will actually name a specific illness, like diabetes, for instance. Sometimes dead people don’t want to tell me how they died—it’s still upsetting to them (often this is in the case of an overdose or some other thing that they are “ashamed” of or haven’t yet healed from) or they don’t want to upset the person here by talking about it.

I hear them much more than I see them. They speak to me in soft whispers. I do get images, though, if there’s something specific they want me to describe. Or I might smell smoke—cigar, cigarette, or pipe smoke—or alcohol or a particular cologne that will be recognizable to the person I’m doing the reading for. I can say, “Was your uncle Louie a smoker? Because I can smell it on him.” Sometimes I’ll hear a melody, which is a bit of a problem for me because I’m not much of a singer, but if I recognize it, I do my best to convey it to the client and often he’ll know what it means.

It can be that they come for only a few fleeting seconds, which happens quite often. The dead are an energy source and they have only a certain amount of energy, so they rarely stay too long. As soon as they come to me, they try to give me the most important messages that they want me to pass along, and most of the time they leave pretty quickly after that. If they come to me collectively, with several friends and family members, the meeting will last longer since they feed off one another’s energy.

This is something
that many people find surprising because they are used to the notion of going to a card reader and having what is really a consultation. A reader will lay out the cards in a particular spread and go over them one by one, which can take quite a while and the client might be asking questions along the way. It’s not unusual for this kind of reading to last half an hour or an hour. What I do is shorter but much more intense. The client is in direct contact with a spirit he recognizes and can validate, and a lot of information will be given in maybe just ten minutes. Then the spirit is gone. If multiple spirits show up, it can go to fifteen minutes, but longer than that would be very unusual.

No, of course
not. Nobody is pulling them away any more than God is being pulled away to hear our prayers when He’s already listening to somebody’s prayer in Italy. They are not limited so it’s no problem for them to be everywhere at once. They are always available to us.

I have control
over keeping a negative energy out. I always start out saying that only those in the Light of God may speak to me. I won’t have any negative entity around me. Not in my presence or in my home. I want no association with anything that does not come from God.

Well, first I
will ask my client’s permission to listen. I will touch her hand and ask her to say her name and that will in some way alert the Other Side that we will be looking for someone with a connection to this person, my client. Then the person who is getting the reading has control over who comes to speak with her. She can ask for a particular person. Or if there are several people there that I describe, the person can say, “I just want to talk to my father,” and the others will go away. There are some cases where spirits on the Other Side have an apology they want to give or may have a message that they want to have sent to someone. They don’t get that many chances to connect with people here on this side and don’t want to miss the opportunity, so they will be insistent.

I just think
it’s polite. If I don’t get permission I feel that it’s like eavesdropping. I mean, if I come visit you, I’m going to ring your doorbell, right? I’m not going to pull back your drapes and leave my nose print on the glass to see if you’re home. It’s only courteous to ask first. I try to give the respect that I’d like to get.

Oh, very often!
Nobody can know all the family members who have crossed before them. Frequently there is a spirit whom the living person has not even met in this lifetime, but who has a special relationship with that person as a soul over a number of lifetimes and he is checking in. Or sometimes it is a member of the extended family or even the deceased relative of a neighbor, someone with a connection of some kind to the family on this side. I’ve had people come for readings who will tell me, “You know, you were doing a reading for my neighbor and my family was mentioned.” The spirit is just using my client as a messenger. I always tell my married clients that if a name is mentioned and they don’t recognize it, it could be someone in their spouse’s family since everyone is together over there and his family and hers are all seen as one.

I once was doing a reading for a new client and her mother-in-law came through. I had no idea that her husband’s mother had crossed when her husband was still in college and she and her husband had not met or married until twenty years later so I didn’t know that she had never met her mother-in-law. Anyway, the mother-in-law gave my client some messages for her husband, and then she was showing me a kitchen cupboard and some little thing of hers that she said my client had saved in her cupboard, and she said that it made her happy that my client had kept it and would occasionally take this object out and look at it and think of her. I knew for sure that it wasn’t dishes—it was some small tchotchke kept in her kitchen cupboards—but my client said she didn’t have any idea what her husband’s mother was talking about; she said she’d ask her husband when she got home. But then something clicked for me and I asked my client whether her husband had a sister. She said, Yes, she did. I told her, “I got that wrong, it’s his sister who has the little thing in her kitchen cupboard—you need to tell your sister-in-law what her mother said.” As soon as her reading was over, my client called her sister-in-law and told her about the reading and asked whether she knew what her mother had been talking about. She said, “Oh my God, I have my mother’s charm bracelet in a little cup in my kitchen cupboard and I do take it out and look at it and think of her very often.”

When they want to get a message through, they will use any opportunity they get. Even on this side, you know, if you really want something you will be resourceful about getting it. They are like that, too. If they see the phone line open, they will grab the chance to talk.