It is not only better to talk to loved ones while they are alive, it is cheaper. While perhaps fraught with emotional challenges, having the hard conversations with those while they are on the earth plane is easier than paying a medium to connect with them on the other side.
My parents were both believers in spirit, and my dad, who died first, promised he would connect with us. There is a distinct doorbell ring in the house where they lived, almost like a choir of church bells, and my sister, mother, and I would know he was saying hello. This freaked out some guests and also an electrician, as the front doorbell had a short circuit and did not work, so no one was at the door when they went to check. This was unfortunate as this particular electrician was young and cute, but when I walked him outside to reassure him, a bird took a giant shit on my head, and I figured that was a sign not to pursue it.
My parents connected with channelers to the other side when they were alive, especially a lovely woman from California who channeled an 18th-century Scottish physician named Dr. Peebles. My mother had to assure my Aunt Judy she did not take financial advice from him.
I have a strong faith as well, so when I had the chance to visit an 18th-century spiritualist community in a small Victorian gated community on a lake in upstate New York, Lily Dale, I jumped at it. Lily Dale dates back to the late 1800s as a bucolic lakeside “camp” known as the City of Light, filled with spiritualists and free thinkers, including a strong suffragette movement for women’s vote. It still exists today with rows of pastel Victorian houses decorated with flowers, chimes, and angels set alongside a verdant forest and lake. Each of the 40 mediums registered there have been tested and credited by the Lily Dale Assembly and offer paid readings. There are also daily free readings from the “Inspiration Stump” and “Forest Temple,” as well as hands-on healing.
The free public readings have several mediums appear before the crowd, almost like a standup comic looking for a laugh but receiving tears as the best compliment at connection. Some look out on the crowd and identify someone only to have their messages be met with blank looks of disappointment. Others are killing it, pun not intended, when they deliver messages to an audience member who grabs their partner to say, “Oh my gosh, that’s him/her,” or burst into tears like my friend’s mother who received such a specific message of gratitude from her mother. Inevitably, it is the specificity that makes a believer of those receiving the messages, the fact of the sister who was obsessed with her nails or a problem with a car’s rear tire (the woman’s new car had just been hit in the exact spot) or the mother who at the end of her life while not demonstrative had been so grateful for her daughter brushing her hair, putting her special cream on her face, and dressing her in her favorite nightgown.
Looking out at the sea of expectant faces, I felt the sheer vulnerability of those who were there. The hardest to watch were those who had lost a child. Their raw wounds were palpable. Inevitably, the message they received was that their loved one was fine on the other side with relatives and even pets, and not wanting them to succumb to grief.
What came through from spirit was never anger, resentment, blame, or rehashing past grievances. They were messages of appreciation, thanks, support, encouragement, and apologies for not understanding and supporting them when they were here, such as one grandfather for a gay grandson.
I was on a meditative high from the Fairy Trail, Friendship Park, Wolf Clan ritual circle, and friendly cats (more calico than black) until I started chatting with the night clerk at my historic Maplewood Hotel. It was my own fault for asking if he had any ghost stories. These included lights flickering like a disco party (my electrician might have appreciated that), sounds of horse hooves from the upper level, which used to be the barn before they built up the building, and people so disturbed in one room that they would get up at 2 AM and ask to be moved to another room. Apparently, the girl ghost was appeased when a medium said it had to do with the curtains, and once changed, she was fine (a whole new use for HGTV). I was pretty wired when I went to bed and thought if I couldn’t calm down, I would just take my blanket and go sleep on the couch in the lobby. I am sure stranger things have happened.
When I reluctantly left Lily Dale, I felt my senses were more heightened, not only to the other side but to this side. As I was walking out of my parents’ old house, the doorbell rang, and it stopped me before stepping onto the sidewalk, just long enough to narrowly miss an oblivious kid speeding by on the sidewalk on an electric bike that probably would have killed me.
