The scams of spring part 2: How would you like to hear from someone in Heaven?

This spring, the famed Long Island Medium, Theresa Caputo, is coming to Utica. According to Caputo’s official website, she has been in communication with an entity she refers to as “Spirit” since she was four years old. In her twenties, she claims to have begun honing that ability into her current practice, which is talking to people in Heaven through “Spirit.”

Perhaps one of the cruelest scams, psychic mediums prey on one of our deepest emotions, our love for the family members and friends who have passed on. We want to know that they are okay. We miss them being here with us on earth. We wish we could have just one more hug, one more of our long chats over coffee, our girls’ nights, our boys’ nights out, our family gatherings, or our quiet afternoons alone with the one we miss. Psychic mediums offer us the closest we can get to that experience. 
Or at least they would, if the services offered by psychic mediums were not scams. 

Here is what really happens when you visit a psychic medium. First, the psychic will claim that they are just beginning to get a picture or a message. They will throw out some vague terms. “I sense a man. He passed on.. a…heart…I’m getting something to do with his heart.” 

No matter who you are, you are very likely to have some connection to someone who is male, who passed on when their heart stopped beating. Having a great-grandfather,  grandfather, father, husband, brother, close male platonic friend, boyfriend, fiance, cousin you saw every year at the family picnic, or favorite uncle who died of a heart attack or stroke qualifies you to start waving your hand around in a group setting, or lean forward and say “yes” if you’re one on one with the psychic.So does having any of those relationships to a man who died of something else, but had a weak heart, or had a weak heart that later became strong. Or maybe none of that applies to you. But then you probably had a supervisor, or a coworker at some point who you later heard had died because of something related to his heart, or who had a bad heart but died of something else. You can jump in over that too. And if that’s still not you…didn’t your Mom once tell you that you had a great Uncle that you never met, who died of a heart attack, or who had a heart attack when he was young, then lived a long life for his time? Better raise your hand. Somebody from a few generations back in your family might have a message for everybody on earth today. 

Once somebody responds in this way, starts waving their hand, nods, or does anything to indicate they’re falling for it, the psychic begins to insist they are getting “more details.” And they are, from you, because if you went for the first piece of bait, you said something they could use. Maybe it was “That’s my Dad!” or maybe it was, “Ehhh…I think my boss at my first job had a cousin who died of a heart attack. I remember we all had to work longer because he was gone that day for a funeral..” Either way, the psychic now knows enough to keep throwing out more slightly less vague details. 

You think the psychic is gradually picking up clearer and clearer details  from “Spirit” or “an angel” or your loved one, or all of the above, but all they’re really doing is throwing out word prompts, waiting for you to offer up more details, then incorporating those details into increasingly personal prompts until you and everyone around you believes you were talking to someone from Heaven. The “conversation” typically ends with some loving message that we want to believe because it’s what we want to hear. Notice that no psychic reading ever goes, “This is the third cousin to your ancestor from eight generations back. We’re allowed to look down upon Earth from here, but I rarely take my turn because I keep seeing you, and you bore me.” 
And this is just when the psychic does a true “cold reading.” They..or someone who works for them, may also be scanning the audience for clues in peoples’ clothing, demeanor, or behavior before they begin, learning  names of audience members or customers and searching for information about you online, or even sending someone out to walk around and take note of what they overhear. 

And that is just the secular, mundane part of the explanation. Those who believe in the Bible as the word of God should remember that some messages passed on through psychic mediums may indeed be flashes of information the person randomly got into their head and decided to blurt out, but those will have come from agents of the enemy, or demons, not from your loved one in Heaven.Their goal is to get you to talk to them instead of Jesus, and they are not above using your love for someone in Heaven to do that. 

According to the Bible, you do not need a psychic medium to know of the fate of your loved ones. Your loved ones who have accepted Jesus Christ are indeed alive and well and with Him in Heaven. Nobody truly knows if they can see or hear anything that goes on over here on earth. Some believe they can. Others don’t think so.  A search for the answer to the question, “Can people in Heaven see us?” and “Christian” or “Bible” results in articles in which pastors offer their own opinion and cite passages to back it up, but admit that there is no definitive answer either way.  

What is clear is that we cannot needle, coax, call, or force anybody to revisit earth in any form and talk to us. We are going to have to wait until we see them again when we get there. 

Anyone claiming otherwise is only out for power and control over you, money, or both. To truly honor and remember someone who has passed on, take the money you were going to spend on the psychic medium and use it to further the work that person did here on earth. Make a donation to their beloved club, church, or synagogue, or pass it on to help the homeless, or animals, or children. Plant a flower, or a whole garden in their name, or start a project dedicated to their memory. 

by Jess Szabo'
originally published  Artist Cafe Utica
​www.artistcafeutica.com