Long Island Medium

Posted by Jessica Jewett No Comments »

OCTOBER 5, 2012 NOTE: I AM NO LONGER ACCEPTING COMMENTS ON THIS BLOG.

I originally posted this blog after the first couple of episodes of Long Island Medium in September of 2011 but I didn’t expect to receive over 2,000 readers every week. So I decided to rewrite the blog and clarify my opinions now that we have seen a lot more episodes of this show.

For me, the effect of Long Island Medium has shifted from, “Is Theresa Caputo fake?” to, “Are Theresa Caputo’s practices ethically acceptable?” That question arises in my mind whenever I see the show, although I don’t watch it very often because it elicits such a negative response in me. I have been doing various types of readings for many years (I was a child medium) but my instincts told me from a very early age not to read people without those people approaching me first. I just don’t do it. Observing Caputo go about her daily life on the show and approaching nearly everybody she meets with messages from their loved ones strikes me as so very wrong.

This is my problem with approaching strangers and trying to talk to them about their dead loved ones: a doctor or psychiatrist would never walk up to someone in a public setting and start talking about the health of the person or the health of their loved ones.  I personally believe that intuitives, psychics and mediums should hold themselves to the same ethical standards as doctors and psychiatrists.  There is a time and a place to talk about such personal things and it is not, in my opinion, in the middle of the produce section or in a dentist’s office.  The process of going through a reading with a medium is extremely personal when it’s done correctly.  It’s an exchange of energy.  It’s intimate.  Both parties have to open themselves to the exchange of energy, which means it should be done in a private setting, not because someone came up to you in the produce section and said something like, “I’m a medium and I have your Uncle Fred here.”  We only see people react positively to this on the show, for the most part, but I would like to know what happens when people don’t react well.  Not everybody wants to be read.  In fact, when I ask people about this, virtually everyone says they would never want to be read without their permission.  It’s an invasion of spiritual privacy.

Then the excuse becomes about Theresa not being able to control who comes through and when.  It’s just that – an excuse.  Mediums all over the world learn how to control the who, what, when, why and how of doing their work every single day and if she wanted to learn, she could.  There seems to be an enjoyment of the attention on her part that makes her reluctant to learn to control when and how she does her readings.  The vast majority of average mediums you will meet will tell you first and foremost that they are not in “medium mode” all the time.  If they were, they wouldn’t be able to function in their own daily life.  That’s exactly what’s happening here.  She does not appear to be in control of her daily life because she is always wandering off to read somebody new.  At least, that’s how the show portrays her.  When you are an intuitive, psychic or medium, you have to learn to control how and when and where you work, otherwise the work will control you.  There has to be work time and personal time.  In the way the show portrays Theresa, there are no lines dividing work from personal in her life and it does affect the rest of her family, not to mention herself.

At first I thought I was being a stickler about my own ethical practices, so I asked a few other intuitive colleagues who have many more years of experience on me. The responses were generally the same.

Me: What do you think of the way Theresa Caputo does things?
Colleagues: [exasperated sigh] Don’t get me started.

Discussions with other intuitives, psychics and mediums always lead to the same conclusion. It isn’t so much whether she has genuine abilities or not. The bigger issue is the way she conducts herself when she’s not “on the clock”, so to speak. Every intuitive, psychic and medium needs down time. The medium needs to learn as soon as possible after discovering such abilities to control them and develop a system of being in “normal mode” and “psychic mode” for lack of better terms. When you don’t learn to turn it on and off, the abilities begin to control your life. Before you know it, you can’t set foot outside of your home without being bombarded by psychic impressions and messages from the spirit world.  People who lived that way are on the fast track to forgetting to live for today and allowing their abilities to get in the way of personal relationships.  I see this happening with Theresa in the way that her family reacts when she starts reading people out of the blue.  When you can’t go to the dentist or go out to dinner with your family without approaching people to read them, you are letting the abilities control you too much, in my opinion.  Setting aside the emotional needs of your family and being largely absent even when you are physically present with them is a definite indicator that being a “medium” has completely taken over your life.  So my biggest concern about Theresa is that she’s not properly managing her abilities.  I’m playing devil’s advocate by assuming that her abilities are as genuine as she portrays, not saying that they actually are that genuine.

People coming to this blog do so largely because they have searched the phrase “Theresa Caputo fake” and that clearly means people are looking for me or anyone else to provide some magic answer as to whether she is genuine or fake.  I don’t have that answer.  I personally don’t believe in declaring someone fake or real when I have never met them.  I have friends in the paranormal television industry and the fact of the matter is the way the shows turn out are not in the control of the people in front of the camera unless they are directing or editing the particular episode.  A television show can be edited in a million different ways depending on who is in control and any television show can be edited to show a person as being genuine or dishonest.  This television show does portray Theresa as a genuine medium but I have seen enough shows edited to death that I can’t say for sure if she is real or not.  We are only seeing twenty-two minutes of Theresa’s life every week.  Nobody can accurately judge the reality of her world from twenty-two minutes of a seven day period, especially when there are production crews and editors in control of how she is portrayed.

That being said, I have seen some red flags in the way she does things on the show.

My primary concern is that she has a habit of asking a lot of questions of her clients.  In a lot of readings, she starts with broad topics and, depending on the answers provided by the client, she will narrow it down from there.  That is a classic example of a cold reading.  Anybody can do a cold reading if they know how to look at body language and understand the subtle responses by the other person.  This is an example from one of her early episodes.

Theresa: What’s going on with his head?
Client: He was shot in the head.
Theresa: Because I feel like bam right in the head.

Of course, playing devil’s advocate, I will have to say that it simply could be her reading style and the way she conducts conversations in other settings as well.  I don’t know.  I do know that asking so many questions during readings is a red flag for me that perhaps there is cold reading afoot.

My educated guess based on strictly watching the television show is that Theresa Caputo probably does have some kind of intuitive ability but I truthfully don’t think it’s as amazing as the show portrays.  Very few mediums have such an accuracy rate as what is being portrayed on her show.  I’m much more concerned about the fact that she’s approaching strangers in public places trying to talk to them about extremely personal things.  One day it’s not going to go very well for her and she could get hurt.  It’s also impossible to measure her accuracy rate when she is being edited by a production crew.  I have seen it happen before in paranormal television where the talent will feel so much pressure to provide results that the original reason why they began the work no longer exists and it all becomes about producing results that shock and stun their audiences.  The pressure will make otherwise intelligent, honest people do things that would ordinarily be called shady and greedy.  Alleged mediums who put themselves on television or in the public eye are under a lot of pressure to produce shocking results, which will inevitably push them to exaggerate their abilities.  Theresa may be headed down that road if she’s not careful.

In short, do I think Theresa Caputo is real?  I think she does care about the people who come to her and who she approaches.  I think she has some kind of intuition.  Do I think she’s a full-blown medium with shocking and amazing results every single time as portrayed on her show?  No.  I don’t believe that just because I know how the shows are edited and also because all of the mediums I work with every day don’t have such amazing and stunning results like that every single time.  Mediums, like anyone else, are fallible people who will misinterpret things.  Do I think television shows are an accurate portrayal of any paranormal subject?  Absolutely not.  Television shows should be rated as entertainment only and should never be something to teach people.

Whether or not you choose to get a reading from any person claiming to be an intuitive, psychic or medium really has to be up to you.  Use your best judgment.  If the person you’re considering getting a reading from makes you uncomfortable in any way, that’s probably your intuition telling you not to do it.  Also, consider why you want the reading in the first place before you go into it.  If the fees the reader charges seem excessive, listen to your instincts.  Don’t wait around for someone like me or anyone else with a blog to tell you if someone is real or not.  You are very capable of deciding that for yourselves.  My only cautionary reminder is that you can’t possibly reach an entirely complete conclusion about any person just based on watching them on television.  That’s why I’m not going to say whether Theresa is absolutely real or absolutely fake.  I’ve never met her, so I don’t know.  I only know what is being conveyed to me through her television show and that is the only evidence I have to go on at this point.  I have drawn my conclusions based on the television show but it is possible that if I met her in the future, my opinion could change.  I don’t know.  I do know that we are very different in our practices.  I also know that her television show has opened up a dialogue about standards and practices among other mediums.  I consider those to be good things.

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Do ghosts have sex?

Posted by Jessica Jewett 46 Comments »
This is one of the most common questions I get asked, whether there is sex in the afterlife or not.

Short answer: yes.

Aside from the need for procreation in the physical world, sex is the most intense expression of love that people can share. It’s healthy and nature’s way of relieving pain, improving moods, releasing endorphins, and so forth. The moment of orgasm is as close as we can get to exposing the soul and experiencing the level of bliss that souls experience in the afterlife. Sex is a gift from the universe, your higher power, God, whatever you want to call it, and should be enjoyed freely and safely.

Just as there are a million different types of sexual activity in the physical world, so too are there in the spirit world. Some are dangerous. Some are to express love. Some are recreation based on lust. Here is a basic rundown of the terminology.

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Spectrophilia – This is defined as sexual attraction and/or sexual activity with a ghost. This connection is between a living person and a disembodied soul. It’s an umbrella term that covers all types of sexual encounters that concern interaction between the living and the dead. Not to be confused, however, with necrophilia, which is sexual attraction to dead bodies. We are not talking about that.

Succubus – On the dark side of spectrophilia, an encounter with a succubus is a dangerous thing. Succubi (plural) are, according to longstanding mythology, demons that take the form of women and drain energy from living men by having sex with them. The Biblical figure, Lilith, is often described as a succubus and also as a vampire. She was Adam’s first wife but was cast out of Eden because she wanted to be on top, aka dominant, during sex. Her image became dominant after that and, depending on who you ask, she is now a succubus or a vampire taking out her anger on men and babies.

Incubus – Just as the succubus is a female demon controlling and draining men through sex, an incubus is the male demonic counterpart. He is known to lie upon a living woman, have sex with her, and according to some traditions, impregnate her as with Merlin.

While much of the incubi and succubi mythology is exaggerated and expanded upon over time, the basic concept is based in truth. There are a few known cases in the paranormal community of sexual assaults, sometimes rather violent, associated with hauntings. People who toy with the spirit world without really knowing what they’re doing often unknowingly welcome demonic activity and sometimes it takes the form of succubi or incubi. In many cases, people are quite embarrassed to speak of being sexually assaulted by something they can’t see, so many of such attacks remain unreported. It’s unclear how often this sort of thing happens due to the stigma attached to it.

Astral travel, astral projection, out-of-body experience – The majority of people are not aware of it consciously but we all can and do leave our bodies from time to time. Think of it like a vacation for your soul. Living in the restrictive confines of the body is like being stuck at work 24 hours a day and a break is necessary sometimes. While we sleep, we have the ability to leave the body and visit loved ones in spirit, see different places in the world, etc. Those who aware of leaving the body have reported merging with other souls at times.

Merging – Merging is the word most used to describe the sexual union between two souls outside of the confines of the physical body. We say merging because the act is quite literally two soul energies merging together. It causes the same euphoric release that people experience at the point of orgasm. It is possible to merge with a disembodied soul while outside of your body but it is rare. It takes an extremely strong emotional bond with the other soul and the right conditions. Usually the intensity of the act causes the person to retreat back into the body before they want to but they never forget the encounter.

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The need to express love in a physical and spiritual manner like sex does not go away when we die, as you can see. Death is not really the end. It’s just life taking on another form more comfortable for the soul. Sexual encounters with spirits don’t get talked about very much, but when they do, it’s generally with a snicker and juvenile giggling. It does seem a bit far-fetched until you’ve actually experienced it. However, those who have experienced it are quite serious and genuine in their claims.

I have heard several stories about spouses dying seemingly before their times and leaving widows and widowers behind. It appears that in cases of exceptionally close spouses very deeply in love, sexual encounters do still happen. Sometimes the person won’t see anything but goes through the entire sexual encounter feeling real sensations of hands, breath, lips, penetration, and so forth. The legitimate cases for me have a ring of truth when the person doesn’t know what to make of it and didn’t go seeking such a thing. While they feel love and physical bliss through these encounters, the legitimate cases tend to wonder why it’s happening and they become concerned that their loved ones aren’t moving on in death. Only when people seem overly excited about spectrophilia do I become suspicious about their claims. It is a romantic idea to think that your spouse loves you enough to continue making love to you in death, but the truth is, such activities should not be encouraged because it keeps people from fully living their lives. It is necessary for both parties to move on and continue their journeys when death parts them. Contact between spirits and the living should never be so constant or intense that it holds back the natural progression of life.

In addition to continuing sexual relationships in this lifetime, it also happens with souls from previous lives who are not incarnated at this moment. These incidences can be frightening for people who don’t have past life memories or the ability to really recognize a lover from a past life. Sometimes it can feel like violation or like something is wrong mentally if a person doesn’t understand it. Since nobody really talks about it out of embarrassment and fear, there isn’t really a fighting chance of figuring out the truth enough to resolve the situation one way or another. I have devoted my life to understanding the nature of the soul and even I didn’t know about these things until it happened to me and I worked up the nerve to ask my mentor. Luckily for me, I recognized the spirit involved by scent and overall feeling (my former husband, Joshua L. Chamberlain), so the potentially frightening situation was diffused quickly. His spiritual presence in my present life is as a background figure that sometimes makes more direct contact. Incidences this intense, however, are rare. I do not cling to the past like some people aware of previous lives and that is in large part because he keeps his distance enough for me to think of him lovingly but still desire new relationships and experiences.

I want to reiterate that incidences of spectrophilia are pretty rare. It takes a lot of energy for them to manifest in that way. They’re also not as wrapped up in earthly affairs as some might think, although the bond of love is not easily broken. Of course they miss us if we miss them. Sometimes love has to be expressed, even through the veil between spiritual and physical.

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The isolation of being an intuitive

Posted by Jessica Jewett 4 Comments »

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Last night I was looking at my calendar about a foot away from me when I saw a figure walk by my right side. It followed the path of my mother walking to her sewing table, so I started talking to her.

“Hey, are there any more of those mini chocolate cupcakes?”

No response. My mother is 75% deaf due to an accident with firecrackers as a child, so I thought she didn’t hear me. I asked again and still there was no response. I looked up and there was nobody there. Confused, I looked behind me and nobody was there either. A few minutes later, my mother came out of the bedroom on the other side of my apartment. She hadn’t walked by me at all, leaving me to the conclusion that it was another spirit.

Believe it or not, sometimes I still get creeped out even though I was born with this issue. I wasn’t in “intuitive mode” so I wasn’t even thinking about spiritual matters. It just happened.

I was up late last night again, unable to sleep as usual. There is nothing like the blackness of night to make a person feel completely alone in the world even under the best of circumstances. Slowly my thoughts drifted to what it might be like to actually live under the best of circumstances, a life not plagued by the feeling of responsibility for so many other souls. At any given time, I have dozens of people metaphorically pulling at my clothes asking for help because they just can’t handle things without guidance from a higher place. I remember sometimes when people used to look at me as a small child and tell my mother how eerie it was that I clearly exist with one foot in the spirit world and one foot in the physical world. I didn’t understand what they meant, being a little girl, but I become more and more acutely aware of it as I grow older.

I will be 30-years-old in February. As much as I have accomplished professionally, it seems like my personal life has been stagnate for a long time. Virtually all of the people who went to high school with me are now married with at least one child. Are they happy? I wonder that a lot when I come across them. That’s the thing about living in the South – you never really get away from the expectations people put on you when you were too young to really understand those expectations. I seem to be more aware now that I keep pushing off that ultimate personal relationship, not for a lack of desire, but more because of the underlying truth that the scope of people who would actually understand my life is so limited. The average person has no way of understanding what it means to live with an intuitive (or sensitive, medium, clairvoyant, psychic, etc., etc., etc.). We are night owls. We often struggle to sleep more than a few hours at a time. Some of us who are empathic feel crippling depression when worldwide tragedies happen. We are never really alone but we often feel lonely and misunderstood. We are basically “on call” constantly because spiritual problems don’t keep store hours. Regular people never seem to understand it enough to accept it as such a huge part of our lives. Giving it up is not really an option either, which is something that people rarely understand. It’s like trying to give up what you are, not just quitting your job. People can’t give up being their race or their gender any more than they can give up being intuitive.

I have so very few people who understand what my life is. Most of it is just because I simply don’t talk about it in constant detail. There are some parts of it that I talk about regularly but most of it I don’t – just as a doctor wouldn’t talk about his patients. I have two or three friends who I’ve known for so many years that I can talk about it if I need to but even then, my best friend since high school often says, “You’re the only one I know who has personal relationships with dead people.” I know. And when new people find out about what I am, I shrink into myself and clam up because I don’t know what they’re really thinking. I’m an intuitive, not a telepathic. For all I know, new people could be thinking, “This chick is crazy. Lock her up!” So that makes it tough to get closer to new people in my life. I live behind a wall and look out of the window at the rest of the world once in a while.

I’m not particularly interested in being married. I already went through that once with the big flashy ring and the man who walked all over me like a piece of property. Love is the joining of souls who enhance each other’s lives, not a piece of paper that says I’m legally bound to serve you for the rest of my life. Real, honest, genuine love from the purest place in the soul is so much bigger than the confines of marriage and even the short existence of this body. Love is holy. Marriage was invented for control. I want to find someone who loves me for every part of me, not just the “normal” parts. A big part of me doubts that I will find that in this lifetime. I have had it in previous lives and the burden of remembering it makes my standards high and I’m just not willing to settle for good enough. The life of someone who works with one foot in the spirit world and one foot in the physical world is fulfilling but lonely at the same time. I’m aware that I’m doing my best to help humanity evolve in my little ways but I’m aware that being public with who I am means I’m sacrificing a lot too.

Sometimes I meet some men who are involved with this way of living too but those relationships haven’t turned out well. I have found out the hard way that a certain level of ego skyrockets among some intuitives when they begin to realize their influence over people. It’s so easy to slip into taking the abilities into some dark place. If there is the slightest bit of an ego or something dark in a person, the realization of intuitive abilities is like throwing gasoline on that blaze. My ex-fiance didn’t bother to tell me until we were living together that he was involved in demonic activities. I only questioned him when the demonic activity he attracted started coming after my brother and me (a subject that I still can’t talk about openly without fear). Long after we broke up, I was involved with a man who was a medium and also had the ability to get into people’s minds in a way that I had never previously witnessed. Both of them turned their raw abilities into a means to exert control over things they should never have touched, whether it was other people or spiritual forces. I have yet to meet a man who uses his intuitive abilities for goodness and light rather than darkness and control in things that aren’t meant to be controlled. I know there are genuinely good spiritual men out there with honest intentions. I can name a few. I haven’t found one for my own though.

On another side of the issue, I have tried engaging men who are not involved with this way of life. That never goes well either. They’re either not strong enough to walk with me in the demands of my life or they refuse to believe it’s real by patting me on the head and pacifying me. I am not a woman to be patted on the head or pacified. While I am feminine and loving to those who I really do love, I’m also tough as nails just to survive coping with everybody else’s heartache – dead and alive – as well as my own. This is not a life for a sweet Susie Homemaker. It’s a long running joke with my best friend that I keep my feeling locked in a box with dust on it and she says I’d be bosom buddies with Pam on True Blood. I suppose a tough woman not willing to be totally dependent on a man to define herself can be a bit threatening to them.

So I go on doing my work because I have no other choice. I would like to know what real intimacy and trust feels like with another person but I seem to be a bit of a puzzle that men can’t put together right. Sometimes they force the wrong pieces together and I break. I can’t change what I am. I talk to dead people. I do readings for people to help my income along while I figure out what else I can do with these abilities. I write books with the sole purpose of helping people realize their own potential. My whole life is wrapped up in helping other people. It’s a full life but it’s an isolated life too. Who could really understand it? That question remains to be answered.

I write blogs like this, not because I particularly enjoy exposing my emotions and insecurities, but because there seems to be this romantic idea of what an intuitive, medium, psychic, etc., really is. People watch shows like Ghost Whisperer or see “TV mediums” like John Edward and think everything works within the context of that show and then the intuitive goes home to their loving family, having rescued spirits and their families from decades of turmoil. It’s never that simple. It’s not something you can just turn off, and not all bad spirits can be turned good with just a little reasoning and comfort. Our work follows us home much of the time. Our families have to put up with it too. My very skeptical uncle has been in my apartment and literally had his clothes pulled, heard voices, footsteps, etc., all by spirits. He always freaks out and leaves. And he’s my own blood family! My point is to help you understand this life and how difficult and rewarding it can be. I get tired and I get lonely but I do feel like I’m making a difference in my own way. Some people, I suppose, are just not meant to share their lives with someone else.

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