Do Dead People Watch You Shower? (4 page)

At that time,
my parents discussed the situation and made the decision not to say anything to me until I was old enough to understand. My mother was especially concerned for me as she had been raised in an orphanage and knew all too well that being
different
could mean being punished.

My father was already experienced with this because his father had the ability and he knew how his father had helped a lot of people in their neighborhood, bringing them comfort and understanding about death. He wasn’t frightened, so right away that helped me. He talked with me about it, and made it seem
normal
, even if somewhat special. My mother may have been a little freaked out at first, but she trusted my father, and so pretty much followed his lead. And both my parents always made sure that I felt loved and safe. They didn’t treat me like I was weird in any way.

Not at all.
I was sixteen and wanted to be normal, to be like everyone else. At the time I was certain that I didn’t want this gift. My father told me that if I didn’t want to hear Them, all I had to do was envision myself surrounded by the white light of God and simply say, “In the name of God, be gone.” I couldn’t believe it was that easy, but it was. The voices went away. Completely. For four years.

After the spirits left me, some time later, it got to the point where I was actually thinking that maybe I’d imagined the things I’d experienced. My experiences were beginning to seem unreal to me, and eventually I just wanted to know the truth.

At first I didn’t want to talk about it at all. But soon I became curious and began to go see other psychics to see if they could explain what was happening to me. I saw a bunch of them because each time I didn’t really trust what they said (and definitely some of them are what I call boardwalk psychics, completely phony, just there to take your money). I wondered sometimes if I’d imagined everything, if I was sick somehow, like something was wrong with my mind, or if what I’d experienced had even happened at all. Over the next eight years I searched and sought to understand. I discussed it with my father and he explained that one of my lessons was about choices and consequences. I didn’t have to take the gift, but that choice would have a consequence, just as accepting it would. During this time, I was flirting with the idea of wishing it back. It wasn’t until I was twenty-four, when I met a man named Alfonse Demino through an associate at work, that I got the push I needed.

Meeting Al was strange in itself because the invitation came from a girl at work whom I didn’t even know well. She said that friends of her parents knew me and wanted to see me, and she invited me to her parents’ house. I thought this was weird, but didn’t have any particular reason to feel nervous about it so I asked my friend Terry if she wanted to come with me. Terry didn’t have a car so we were going to take mine. But the day we were to go, my car got hit while it was parked and the side got smooshed in so we couldn’t take it. The next week, that side was fixed and I went to get my car again and the
other side
had been smooshed by a snow plow! Finally, the third week we got on our way. I knew exactly where we were going, but somehow Terry and I got completely lost and we didn’t find our way to the house for two hours. By the time we arrived, Al and his wife were just leaving. I was apologizing like crazy and Al said, “Don’t worry about it. I understand. Someone doesn’t want us to meet. We have to go now because we have a long drive home, but just come back next week.”

After four tries, we all finally got together the following week. Al and his wife seemed like relatives to me. We had a lovely night of cake and coffee before Al turned to me and said, “Concetta, They told me about you. They say that you refused the gift and They want me to help you understand.” To say I was flabbergasted would be an understatement. I had never mentioned anything about being psychic to anyone at work. Al told me that I had nothing to be afraid of because I was protected (even when my car got smooshed, I was never in it). I was in control of it at all times. I just needed to trust Them and They would help me.

But first we had to get rid of whoever it was who had been trying to keep Al and me from meeting. He asked our hostess to find a candle. She went through some drawers and finally came up with a little stub of a candle, about two inches high—I’m not even sure what she was saving it for, it was so small. Al had all of us sit in a circle and hold hands and he lit the candle. As we watched it, the flame leaped up about two feet high, like a blowtorch, then went back down, then leaped up again, then again. I’ve never seen a candle flame behave like this, before or since. I’m just glad Terry was there to witness it with me. After we were done with this Al said that whatever spirit it was who’d been making the trouble wouldn’t be doing it anymore.

I began visiting with Al regularly. He’d tell me things about living with this kind of ability and he suggested some books to read. Al told me that he had worked and studied with someone named Hans Byer (I’m not sure about the spelling of this name), who he said was a famous medium in Europe. I was curious about who Byer was, and when I later learned about Edgar Cayce, I thought that probably Byer might have been on par with him (but Google didn’t exist in those days), but to be honest, I was most curious to know how Al had known about
me!

During one of our weekly visits, Al told me he would visit me at my job the following day. I knew he lived far away, but I didn’t question it. The next day I was sitting at my desk, busy with a pile of papers. Terry was right there next to me. As I turned to type a letter, I felt this amazing breeze go by my face. I sat in a small, stuffy cubicle with hardly any air, never mind a breeze—but the breeze was undeniable. I looked up and everything seemed to be going in slow motion. Terry’s and my eyes met and I knew she was feeling the same thing. I moved my head and went to lift my hand to my face. I felt the breeze, then, go through my whole body. I heard Al’s voice clearly say, “I told you I would visit.” It seemed like the whole thing took ten minutes but it was probably only ten seconds. Before I could even speak, Terry said, “Don’t say anything! Just write on a piece of paper what you think just happened.” She and I both grabbed paper and pen and wrote down our experiences. When we compared, we’d written almost exactly the same thing, word for word. I made a note of the day and time, Thursday, 2:20 p.m., and told no one what had happened. The following week when I saw Al, the first thing he said to me was “Thursday, 2:20 in the afternoon.” I showed him the small piece of paper with that written on it, and from that moment began to trust the Other Side and myself.

When I met Al, I began to think, “Maybe I’ve given up something that might benefit me.” It was a selfish thought, like, maybe having this ability could help me get a better job or help me find my true love. I had no idea that this might be more of a calling or life’s work.

When I asked the ability to come back to me, it didn’t happen right away. I began taking a meditation course and asked for help from Them. I asked protection from God and really put it all in His hands. Slowly, I began to see proof of Their presence around me. They played jokes on me—I would turn off the lights and They would turn them back on. I would walk out of the bathroom and They would turn the faucet on full blast. Eventually, the voices came back, too.

For quite a
while I still wanted to keep it all a secret. I was always hesitant to tell people about my ability, mostly because of the negative reactions of unbelievers. There is, even now, a lot of misunderstanding surrounding what I do, and I didn’t want to subject myself or my family to any kind of attack—verbal or otherwise. So for the first forty years of my life, I kept a low profile. So low, I didn’t even tell my husband!

I know that sounds strange, and maybe even unethical to not reveal something like that to the person you’re sharing your life with. But when I began dating John, I learned pretty quickly that he did not believe in God or anything “supernatural.” John is a very concrete, real world kind of guy. He builds houses, he deals with lumber and tools, and—literally—concrete. He believes in the things he can touch or hold in his hands. “Ghosts” don’t really fit into that category. I had no idea back then what a huge part of my life being psychic would become. I thought of it as just a small part of who I was, and so made the decision not to say anything about it. It’s ironic, really because
They
had already told me that John was “the one,” so I didn’t want John to know about
Them
because I didn’t want to blow it with him! You have to admit, it’s a pretty unusual position to be in. Then, after we married, I already wasn’t getting along so great with John’s family. The last thing I needed was to introduce the subject over Thanksgiving dinner, like maybe tell my mother-in-law that
her
mother-in-law was sending her tips to improve her stuffing from beyond the grave.
I don’t think so.
I kept my mouth shut.

The trouble was that in my old neighborhood in Montville, New Jersey, everyone knew about my ability. So whenever a loved one died, I’d get a call: “Concetta, can you come and let us know that he (or she) arrived safely? We want to be sure they’re okay.” Or we would be at some family gathering and one of my cousins would whisper to me that someone wanted a reading. And without telling John where I was going, I just went. To be honest, in the early days of our marriage, things were pretty difficult, most of it due to family strains. But we were trying to keep it together, and had agreed to go to counseling—our therapist was a former nun. So in one of our sessions, John said, “She’s always whispering with other people, always keeping secrets.” The therapist said, “Concetta, what are you whispering about?” I said, “Nothing.” I didn’t know what to say, even though it was very clear to me that John thought the whispering was about another man, that I was having an affair. As bad as I knew that was, at the time, it seemed like saying I was talking to dead people would be even worse.

But along with our joint sessions, we also had one-on-one sessions with the therapist and she wasn’t about to let this go. As soon as she had me alone she asked me again what I was whispering about, and I told her. She asked me, “Do you see anyone around me?” I said yes, so she asked me to tell her what I saw and heard. When I did, she seemed pretty blown away. In our next joint session, she said, “John, Concetta has something to tell you.” She said, “In my reading and research I have learned that these things are possible, and Concetta has single-handedly convinced me that this is real.” So I had to come clean.

It was much better than having my husband think I was sneaking around on him, even if it didn’t feel like it at first. But still, I wasn’t hanging out a shingle.

It really was
not easy for John. When he married me, he had no idea that this was part of the deal—it wasn’t what he signed up for. And he didn’t really understand it at all. In John’s world, dead people were in the same category as elves. I remember when I first told him, in our therapy session, he said, “Oh great. Now besides worrying about
you
I have to worry about
little people
?” Once it began to sink in, I think he was pretty uneasy. He wasn’t sure where all this would go or what it would mean in our lives and our marriage. I have to give John a tremendous amount of credit. This went completely against his worldview, but he never tried to stop me and what I was doing, and he never placed demands on me.

If I had to do it all over again, I’d certainly be more open. But realize it’s a different world now. Back then might as well have been the 1600s instead of the 1980s! There were no TV shows featuring psychics or mediums, and certainly none that featured them so favorably! I’m relieved for those being born with the gift that nowadays it’s not such a big deal to say to your fiancé, “Uh, honey…what I do goes just a teeny tiny bit beyond intuition.” And you never know, they might have their own secret or superpower to reveal!

What finally made
me go public was the death of my brother Harold in 1991. Harold’s death was the first time I had ever lost someone I had known and loved so deeply. Before, I really couldn’t understand what everyone got out of it, to have me describe their loved one on the Other Side and pass along a message or two—most of them incredibly mundane and seemingly unimportant. Now I finally understood. I was devastated to lose Harold. He was thirty-eight when he passed away. He had been fighting AIDS for six years and at the end of his fight he carried only eighty pounds on his formerly fit six-foot-two frame. He looked so tired and so sickly and we all knew it was his time to go. He could not stay here any longer. I had been told that Harold would cross over at an early age and I understood he would be happier on the Other Side, but that didn’t make it any easier to see him go. I knew it was selfish—and I knew I’d get to talk with him again—but I still wanted him here with me. For the first time I understood the pain we associate with death on this side. I had been talking to the dead almost all my life, but before they were just spirits that I didn’t know, and to be honest, at times I found them to be nuisances! I didn’t always want to hear these voices, but now there was one voice in particular that I was desperate to hear. And it didn’t come.

For months I waited to hear Harold’s voice and I was crushed and confused as to why he wasn’t coming through to speak to me. But one cold December night I was sleeping in the guest bedroom—John had the flu and I did
not
want to catch it—and suddenly the bed was shaking off the floor. At first I thought it was an earthquake—not too common in New Jersey, but I was half asleep—then I noticed that nothing else in the room was moving. I was scared out of my mind! Until I heard my big brother’s laugh. “Hey Con,” he called out, “it’s me!” He was still laughing (he thought he was
so
funny) and I cried out, “Harold!? You jerk! Where have you been?” He didn’t answer me that night and he didn’t stay long, but after that he started to come through quite often and he would always tell me, “Con,
tell
them. Tell the world what you hear. We need you to. And they need you on that side, too.” I was still nervous about what might happen, but I couldn’t say no to my brother. I told him I couldn’t make any promises about how it would turn out, but I said, “Okay, buddy. I’ll try.”

For about five years I just “dabbled,” but Harold kept pushing me and also strongly suggesting that I should move to the country, which sounded like a wonderful idea. I’m a country girl at heart. I grew up in Montville, which at that time was all country roads and barns; there was a cow pasture right across the street from my school. The smell of cow manure is like roses to me! John and I had been living about forty-five minutes from Montville (or half an hour, the way I drive) in West Orange, which was way more populated. All the Oranges are urban/suburban and I was always getting lost—there are Orange, East Orange, West Orange, South Orange—I hated all those Oranges! Also, John had relatives on every corner and I was suffocating. We couldn’t make the move right away, but in 1996 when the kids graduated high school (John has a daughter and son from his first marriage and I think of them as my own) we made the move to the woods of Boonton, New Jersey. I could finally breathe and almost immediately I began to formally take clients.

Much to my shock and surprise, it was a kind of overnight success story. I was instantly booked for months in advance. Then it happened that James Van Praagh was doing this study to find “real” psychics. He had someone in the area who was going to see various psychics and report back to him which were legitimate. He had a reading with me and I guess I got a good report. Next thing you know, I was getting referrals from James. One person he sent was movie producer Jon Cornick, with whom I’ve become good friends. Jon passed my name to Federico Castelluccio of
The Sopranos.
He had a reading and next thing I knew, Edie Falco and Vincent Curatola were making appointments. When celebrities started to come all the way out to the sticks to have readings I had to admit that Harold was right.

Ten years after my brother’s death, my father, Manny, crossed over. It wasn’t long after that that I had my first big show. I was very nervous—even though I’m a total ham I had never had a crowd that big come to see
me
! My best friend, Mushy, was there with me acting as master of ceremonies and when she saw the blank look on my face as I approached the audience I know she was thinking: Oh. My. God.

I started out very slow, nervous, and choppy. But as I began to talk I suddenly was flooded with energy. It was almost like an old LP record being started up with the needle down—dragging at first, but finally getting up to speed and playing normally. But then getting switched to 78! Well, not quite. But to say that I soon felt extremely comfortable as the center of attention would be an understatement. I was in my element.

Later, going home in the car, Mushy said to me, “Your father is very proud of you.” Then she looked at me and said, “I don’t know why I said that!” But I knew. My father was with me the whole time. That night as I lay in bed, my father came to me and told me in person, “I’m so proud of you.” He leaned down and kissed me. I actually felt the pressure of his lips on mine. And then I was 100 percent sure that I was doing the right thing.