Do Dead People Walk Their Dogs? (16 page)

Yes, that is
true. It is not a malfunction in the camera—your camera can be brand-new, it can be regular film or digital, it doesn’t matter. Spirits are energy, so they often will show up in your pictures. Little bubbles of lights, also sometimes referred to as “orbs”—these are spirits or souls. Sometimes it seems I can hardly take a shot without one or more getting into the act. One story I heard about: A young woman’s father had died, and she was upset because she was getting married and her father would not be there on her wedding day. They didn’t hire a professional photographer; she had just some regular pictures taken by family and friends. After the wedding, she dropped the film off at a drugstore or someplace like that and sadly, the facility that had the film burned down. So now she had no photos of her wedding. Then she got a call from a friend who said she still had a roll of film she’d taken, but unfortunately, she’d taken mostly atmosphere shots, of the guests and the cake and so forth. She just had one of the bride in her gown. Lo and behold, when this woman saw the photo, there she is in her wedding gown with one of these glowing orbs right beside her—her father, without a doubt. When I was out in Chicago with producer Glenn Davish and his crew to get footage for a sizzle reel to show to television broadcasters, we had a green screen that I was being shot against so that they could superimpose different things behind me, do some fun effects. It was a very busy but fun day and lots of people on the crew were taking regular photos, besides the taping that was going on. When I saw the pictures of myself against the green screen it was like it was snowing! So many of these orbs—all the spirits—all around me.

As a medium,
I am clairsentient, which means that I don’t just see images and hear voices, but I will also get physical impressions in my body and I will also often
smell
a spirit I am working with. If a spirit while living was an alcoholic, I’ll often get a strong whiff of alcohol. If they were a smoker I smell the smoke. I might also smell a particular aftershave, or sometimes the scent of flowers. I was doing a reading for one of my clients and I suddenly got a whiff of this unusual smell, very strong, and I couldn’t place it. I said to my client, “What am I smelling? It smells sort of like medicine.” She told me about her child, a little boy, who had a particular disease that caused his body, especially his legs, to be terribly painful. His legs just hurt so bad. The only thing that ever gave him any relief was the muscle rub BenGay. She used to rub his legs with BenGay, which helped him a little, at least. After her child died, she was in a toy store, because she had to pick up a gift for one of her deceased son’s former playmates’ birthday. As she stood in the aisle of the shop, looking at the different toys and trying to decide what she should get, she suddenly got a whiff of a really familiar odor. Immediately she recognized it: BenGay. She knew even though she couldn’t see anyone else in the entire aisle that her son was right there with her. She told me that now, from time to time, she will smell this sweet, medicinal smell and she’ll know it’s her boy paying a visit. To someone else, it might be an unpleasant smell, but to this woman, it brings comfort.

When I’m doing a reading it’s not like being handed a script and going on air to read the news. I’m getting all kinds of clues—names, odors, manner of crossing (which can be given to me verbally in a thought, or I might see an image or feel a sensation in my body), etc. Even when I see an image, I still have a tendency to try to guess what I’m seeing. Often it’s better to just simply describe and let my client do the guessing. One time I was telling my clients that their deceased loved one was always with them and in fact had recently been with them at a family event. I said, “He tells me he was just with you at a wedding.” They seemed puzzled, had no idea what I was talking about. I said, “He’s showing me a girl in a white dress, a wedding.” They laughed and said, no—it was their daughter’s Communion! I guess that would be a little young to be getting married.

As I go
about my day, I can see and hear spirits around everyone. For the most part, without even thinking about it, I am filtering them out. They are really none of my business and I would go completely crazy if I paid attention to all of them. If I am doing a reading, a person is in front of me who has come for the express purpose of receiving messages from their deceased loved ones. Even with them coming to me for this, I’ll always still try to ask, aloud, for their confirmation, whether I have their permission to listen to the spirits around them. To me, this is only polite. The messages I’m getting from the Other Side are primarily messages of comfort and love from those whose earthly lives are finished—at least for this time around. While they have concern for us, they have no real concerns of their own, for now. The living, obviously, are still here and still have more business to do here, and it’s really not my place to get in the middle of that. It’d be a type of invasion or intrusion. Try to imagine, as an example, if you were invited to a friend’s home and you took it upon yourself to invite another friend to come over. The doorbell rings and before your friend can go see who’s at her own door, you jump up to go let the second friend in, like you owned the place. It’s trespassing. I don’t know how else to describe it.

That’s funny! Well,
first of all, I use “guys” loosely just to mean all the spirits. On the Other Side there is no gender, no distinguishing body features because there is no body. We’re simply energy over there. When I do a reading the spirit will allow me to know, basically, what they were last time they were here, so I’ll say that it’s a male figure or female figure, but really the spirit that is communicating with me is neither. So the question of hanging out with guys versus gals is one for the physical plane.

While I’m here, I have to say that even though I’m basically heterosexual and married to a wonderful man, I love to hang out with women. I believe that I’ve incarnated as female more times than I have as male and I have a strong identification with being female, and I love hanging with my girls—my best friend Mushy, my friend Gingerbread. I really love hanging with women of all kinds—straight or gay. I have a lot of gay friends. In fact, truth be told, I’m only a bucket shy of being gay myself and I don’t care who knows it. Some people may like to judge that, but those who do are stupid people. You gotta love them, too. They can’t help being stupid. Stupid people don’t even know they’re stupid. I don’t know why it is such a concern for some people that they don’t want gay people to be able to marry. Really, what is the big deal? Personally, I don’t care if a toaster marries a toaster—so long as it’s between consenting adults—or consenting kitchen appliances, as the case may be. Love is love!

Anyway, it’s no big deal. As I always say, don’t make a mountain out of a mothball.

Not to go on a tangent here, but while we’re somewhat on the subject of women, let me share a quote I love from Eleanor Roosevelt. She said that “women are like teabags—you don’t know how strong they are until they find themselves in hot water.” Isn’t that great? I love that.

There are many
times when I have to stop and count my blessings and acknowledge how grateful I am to have been given the job that I have. It can sometimes be exhausting, but I really do love my work. Any time I do a reading, whether it’s one-on-one in my home office, or at one of my big shows with hundreds of people, I feel good that I’m able to help someone find some peace and hopefully even happiness. But there are definitely some moments that stand out. One of these was at a show I did at Mayfair Farms in West Orange, New Jersey, when I did get something of a return call.

I was heading down an aisle, stopping to do readings as I made my way from the front of the room to the back. I’d been down this row earlier in the show, but having completed one pass of the entire room, I was now going back to do a few more readings for people in this area who hadn’t had a chance on my first pass. I was moving quickly since there was not much time left—a wedding party would be coming in soon to take over the room. As I was walking I heard a very urgent voice that I was made aware was coming from a spirit who—well, to be honest, it was a little confusing. I knew he either had committed suicide or was
believed
to have committed suicide. He was saying: “Don’t let my daughter leave! Tell her I’m okay! Tell her I’m not being punished!” Of course I had no idea to whom he referred—there were people to my left and right, ahead of me and behind me—so what could I do? I stopped in my tracks and basically made a public announcement: “There’s someone right here who I think maybe committed suicide, and he has a message for his daughter.” I had to say it twice before a woman right next to me spoke up, saying, “It’s me.” I was surprised, because I recognized her as someone I’d already done a reading for earlier, and her father had come through, but neither he nor she had communicated to me that he had died by his own hand. I had no idea that, for her, her most important question remained unanswered. But her father knew. I said to her, “Your father wants you to know that he is okay. He’s been forgiven; he’s not being punished for what he did.” Her relief and gratitude were obvious. She had been desperate for this answer but had been too embarrassed to ask it. But her father would not let her leave that day without giving her that peace of mind.

Oh, boy, there
are really so many, but to just pick one, let’s see…There was a couple who came together to have a reading. I said to them, “Who is George? George is saying something about some furniture, and he’s smiling.” Well, immediately
they
were smiling, too, and they had to tell me the story. Some years earlier, the two of them had been house-hunting without a lot to spend. They went to see a house being shown by an elderly man, George, who had no family and was getting ready to move into an assisted living facility. While he showed them around, they chatted and they got along really well; they had a warm feeling for each other, and George ended up giving them a price they could afford on the house. When they concluded the deal, George said, “Maybe you could use the furniture, too?” He didn’t have enough room where he was going to take it, and even though, as the wife confided, it wasn’t their taste at all, they didn’t have furniture and couldn’t really afford to buy enough to furnish the house, so they agreed to keep it.

Well, time passed, and the wife ran into a woman from the neighborhood who had known George when he lived in the house, and she told the wife that George had passed away. Not long after that, the couple finally had enough money to replace some of the furniture, and they decided to get rid of the couch, for starters. But a few nights before the couch was to go out the door, the wife started having dreams of George sitting on the couch, and she began to feel a little bad about getting rid of it. Maybe it held some sentimental value for him. But then, she reasoned, George wasn’t even living anymore, and there was no reason why they should continue to live with a couch they didn’t really like, so in spite of her dreams, she called a couple guys to come take the couch away. The day they showed up, they picked up the couch and were going out with it when she noticed that somehow one of the cushions had fallen off, and she heard a voice say, “Look in the couch.” She said, “Concetta, you won’t believe it. I stuck my hand in the couch and pulled out an envelope full of money! Once I found that, I kept looking and found a total of four envelopes, each containing four thousand dollars—sixteen thousand dollars all together!” As you might guess, she then proceeded to tear up the rest of the furniture, but the couch was the only place she found any money. Clearly, George had no use for the money; he’d had no family, and he’d decided that this young couple were the folks he’d most like to see have it. As my client told me, “You have no idea what that money meant to us at that time!” But George did.

Isn’t that an amazing story? I love that one.

I definitely believe
in the concept behind
The Secret
, the law of attraction. It’s a real thing, without a doubt. But I think a lot of people have a hard time applying it because they get in their own way. Even if they tell themselves they are practicing the principles of
The Secret
, they are secretly undermining themselves because, in fact, they really don’t believe it’s possible for what they want to come to them or to happen. I actually practice this all the time in my own life
and I know it works
. It’s really amazing what you can do when you want something and put your mind and actions to it. But frequently I’ll have clients who will be talking about this: how they tried it and nothing happened. It’s frustrating for me because to me it’s simple.
ALL Mighty God really wants us to have ALL we want.

Let me tell you the real secret of
The Secret
.

Let’s say someone wanted to be an actress. She’s good at it, has the sensitivity to understand and portray a different person’s character; best of all, she can cry on cue. But somehow the process just beats her up—and quickly. She thinks, it’s too hard, it’s not going to happen, it’s taking too long. Then she begins to lose confidence and says, “I’m no good, nobody wants me, I suck.” And soon enough she decides to do something else and just spins it, “It’s not for me.” The reality was that she
was
good, but underneath it all, she just didn’t really
believe
that even if she tried her hardest it would come to her, and because she didn’t believe, she sold herself short way too soon and for dumb reasons. The point where it all broke down was in her lack of belief. If we really,
really
want to get, have, and be what we want, that’s where we need to adjust our thinking. I finally figured out a way to explain it so that most of my clients now say they get it, so just let me share the thought here.

Try looking at the thing you want as something that is actually yours (or anyone’s) for the taking just as soon as you fulfill certain ordinary requirements. Take, for example, getting a driver’s license. When you were thirteen or fourteen years old, you didn’t have a license and couldn’t get one, either. It’s not about you, personally, it’s simply not legal for someone your age. But you didn’t stress about it, like, “I know I’ll never get a license,” because you knew with certainty that as soon as you turned sixteen, you’d be eligible, and as soon as you passed the test, the license would be yours. It wasn’t like, if you were rich or beautiful you could get one, or if you were good friends with Jodie Foster you could get one. You could only get one by being a certain age and passing the test. Period. Still, you could plan. You could save money for your first car; you could think about how great it would be to get around where you wanted to go without asking your parents for a favor. Once you turned fifteen, you could go to the DMV and pick up the booklet to study for your driving test. Once you turned sixteen you could get your learner’s permit, then you’d be off to the races. It’s a process. Is it easy? Not necessarily—for some, parallel parking is a piece of cake; others might find it necessary to wear a miniskirt to take their test (I’m just kidding!). Some might have to take the test more than once. But the fact is that the license is obtainable simply by being the required age and doing what is required to qualify. If you can manage to think of your heart’s desire in this light—no more or less than getting a driver’s license—and just do the steps required, more than once, if that’s what it takes, you will succeed. No secret about it. You will do, have, or be what you believe you can do, have, or be.