It’s an ordinary Sunday night, you’re watching TV, flipping through channels, trying to find a show that won’t bore you to tears. You hit TLC (The Learning Channel) and think, “Aha! Now I’ll learn something!”
What you’ve chosen shows a couple, or a family, or just one person, sitting at a table in a well-appointed home, across from a woman taking notes, who keeps up a steady stream of comments, apparently speaking for someone who’s not in the room. Or are they? The woman is Theresa Caputo, known as the ‘Long Island Medium,’ as her show is called, who speaks to dead people. Specifically, she relays messages from the dear departed to the particular family member there with Ms. Caputo. The living communicate with the dead.
Is this creepy? Not the way Theresa Caputo reveals it. She speaks through Spirit, a guide of sorts that brings forth the deceased to let the living loved one know that they’re OK, they’re in Heaven and all’s right with their world.
She starts each reading with a prayer (often alone, before the client arrives) for the session to be surrounded by only good things, a bright light. Her aim is to ease the hearts and minds of those left behind, so they won’t carry a burden of guilt, or grief that won’t let go.
We were able to grab a few minutes of Caputo’s busy schedule to ask a couple of questions. As is her way, she took the ball and ran with it, Long Island style.
Folio Weekly: Sometimes you must get a negative reaction from the person you’re ‘reading,’ no matter how positive Spirit is. What do you do if the person reacts negatively, no matter what you’re communicating from Spirit?
Theresa Caputo: I never had that experience. No one has really ever had a negative reaction. I think that people are surprised as to what they might hear, or what Spirit might be referring to or talking to, but I’ve never had someone react in a negative way.
That’s amazing. I know people don’t get what they expect to get; maybe another loved one steps up instead of who they may have wanted to hear from.
What people don’t realize is that when you have an experience … I, first of all, I get that what I do is crazy: How can someone communicate with someone who has died? This is not about people believing in what I do; I want people to know their loved one’s soul is still with them. That they still have that connection and bond. An experience with me, [with the] Spirits … their job is to give you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear, which you need to make tomorrow a little bit easier-because it’s gonna be hard. Life stinks, it’s unfair, maybe you lost a loved one in a tragic way or they died from a disease that took away their personality-whatever it may be, Spirit is gonna give us that gift and that peace, in knowing that they’re not suffering, they’re OK, their souls are at peace, still living life through our eyes. And that’s what the experience is about.
The Spirit you channel isn’t a bad guy-you surround yourself with goodness, you do believe in God … there’s no negativity involved, right?
Right. Plus, you have to understand-it took me a long time to embrace my gift. I thought that what I was experiencing was normal, that everyone was seeing and feeling the things I was.
And you were four years old when you felt this?
Right. It wasn’t until later, in my 20s, that not only was I able to connect with my own loved ones, but I was able to connect with everyone else’s loved ones.
There are several reasons why I share my story. I believe we’re all born to do amazing things here in the physical world and what might not be normal to one is completely normal to another. So whether it’s what I do for a living, or whether someone wants to have a different occupation, or maybe they’re in a same-sex marriage, or whatever it may be-we’re born a certain way and when we feel complete is when we embrace who God intended us to be. I am a practicing Catholic. It took me a long time to embrace my gift with my faith, but I put my gift in God’s hands, over 15 years ago. I said, ‘If this is what I was meant to do here in the physical world, then You guide me.’
So He wouldn’t have given you the gift if He hadn’t meant for you to share it?
Right. I also believe we all have that ability to connect with our loved ones. I want everyone to know, when they come see my show, maybe in Jacksonville, someone will have that experience and be like, ‘Oh my God, I feel and see those things.’ People say to me all the time, ‘I didn’t know what to expect when I walked into that theater, but what I experienced was absolutely life-changing.’
So other people can channel, too, but may not know it?
Yes. Because you might get a message from someone else’s reading. You might witness someone else’s reading and be like, ‘I know the person’s she’s reading. There’s no way she would’ve known things that happened. I know the story.’ That might change someone’s life. These are the things we can go through in life and have a restored faith. Faith is not only religion. It can be faith in yourself, your family.
Do you recognize the gift in others?
Oh yes, absolutely. Spirit will tell me. It happens all the time.
FOLIO
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