If everything you know about psychic mediums comes from movies and television, you probably imagine someone sitting in a dark room, surrounded by candles, waiting for a ghost to make a dramatic entrance. Maybe their eyes roll back into their head, their voice changes, or a spirit suddenly starts throwing furniture across the room. And while I love a good supernatural horror movie as much as anyone, I can tell you that my experience as a professional psychic medium looks quite different from that scene.
I’ve spent years communicating with the spirit world, and I always say that I have seen and heard it all, but I am open to being surprised! The human experience is solo, yet so many of the feelings that arise are very relatable and shared. Through all of these experiences, I wish more people understood that mediumship is usually much more personal, emotional, and, honestly, ordinary than Hollywood makes it out to be. This work means a lot to me, but sometimes the parts I love the most are how mundane the messages can be because love is universal. So, let’s talk about what pop culture gets wrong about mediums and what it’s actually like to communicate with the dead!
One of the biggest misconceptions about mediumship is that spirits make themselves known and that communicating with the dead means physically seeing them. Think of The Sixth Sense, where the dead appear just as vividly as the living. In my experience, spirit communication is usually much more nuanced.
When I’m communicating with the spirit world, I experience messages through all of my senses. Sometimes I do see figures appear in front of me, but more often I see images in my mind or hear words and phrases. Most of the time, I experience these messages internally, though occasionally it feels as though someone is speaking directly into my ear. Every experience is different, which is part of what makes this work so fascinating. Other times I experience physical sensations or emotions that help me understand what someone is trying to communicate. Sometimes several of these sensations happen at once! When I am channeling, I pay attention to what I’m seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, and feeling, and how those impressions connect. It’s a process of receiving information, interpreting it, and finding the language to communicate what I’m experiencing to the person sitting across from me. I share these messages as clearly as possible with whoever I am reading for, and we can talk so they can provide more context about what I am receiving, which sharpens the focus and gives me further access to the spirit.
One of my favorite aspects of mediumship is experiencing the personalities of the people I’m communicating with. Spirits are remarkably similar in death to how they were in life. Someone with a big, boisterous personality doesn’t suddenly become reserved just because they’ve died. They may come through with that same larger-than-life energy! Someone who was shy or timid might communicate more cautiously. Someone with a wonderful sense of humor may still find ways to make everyone laugh. I love these moments because our relationships are made up of so much more than names, dates, and significant life events. We remember the way someone laughed, their particular sense of humor, their habits, and all those little details and quirks that made them who they were. These personality traits can be some of the most meaningful parts of a reading because they remind us of the people we knew and loved.
Hollywood loves the idea of a medium who can’t escape the spirit world. Ghosts appear at inconvenient moments, interrupt conversations, and refuse to leave until their unfinished business is resolved. But being a medium doesn’t mean spending every waking moment communicating with the dead. One of the most important parts of developing a mediumship practice is learning how to establish boundaries. Just as we need boundaries in our relationships with the living, we need them in our spiritual work, too.
When I’m conducting a reading, I’m intentionally creating space for communication. That doesn’t mean I’m walking around New York City having conversations with every spirit who might be nearby. I have a life to live, errands to run, and the responsibilities of any other human!
Pop culture also gets it wrong when it comes to the idea that mediums are scary or exist to deliver ominous warnings. Someone makes contact with the dead, discovers a terrible secret, and suddenly everyone’s in danger because somebody is now demonically possessed—again, a great horror story, but not so. In my professional practice, mediumship is much more often about love, grief, memories, and the relationships that continue even after someone dies.
People come to readings for so many different reasons. Some are grieving someone they’ve recently lost, while others still have questions about a relationship that was complicated in life. Some miss someone terribly and finally feel ready to open communication because they hope to feel close to them again. These experiences can take many forms: emotional, surprising, funny, and sometimes incredibly comforting. Death doesn’t magically erase the complexity of our relationships, because we can love someone deeply and still have unresolved feelings about them. Mediumship can offer a beautiful opportunity to explore those emotions, but it isn’t a substitute for grief counseling or the personal work of healing.
There’s also a misconception that mediums should be able to answer absolutely anything about anyone who’s died, as though the spirit world operates like a supernatural Google. Mediumship, at least as I experience it, doesn’t work that way. Information may come through in fragments, symbols, memories, or details that initially seem insignificant. Sometimes something that means absolutely nothing to me has tremendous meaning for the person receiving the reading. Sometimes the information immediately connects, and sometimes it takes more time to resonate.
I also believe it’s important for mediums to be honest about what they don’t understand. I would much rather acknowledge that a piece of information isn’t clear than force it into a story simply because I feel pressured to produce an answer. There’s a responsibility that comes with working with people who may be experiencing profound grief. This work is sacred, and their trust deserves care, honesty, and respect.
Perhaps the biggest thing pop culture misses is how familiar these experiences can feel. We tend to imagine communication with the dead as something extraordinary, frightening, or completely removed from everyday life. But some of the most meaningful moments in my work revolve around the ordinary stuff that makes up a relationship. Messages don’t need to be earth-shattering or profound to feel impactful. I think we feel far more through a familiar expression, a shared joke, a particular memory, a quirky mannerism, or something that reminds us of the person we knew and loved.
Despite our cultural fascination with ghosts, hauntings, and the mysteries of the afterlife, people long for something beautifully simple: another moment with someone they miss. While I can’t promise what someone will experience during a reading, I can approach that longing with compassion, curiosity, and respect, because when you take away Hollywood’s special effects, mediumship is, for me, ultimately about connection. And isn’t that something we’re all searching for, whether we’re talking about the living or the dead?