Do Dead People Walk Their Dogs?: Questions You'd Ask a Medium If You Had the Chance

Can the Dead joke with us?

One time I was doing a reading at one of my big shows and the questioner’s mother-in-law came through. Unlike my own situation with my mother-in-law, they had been very close. Most of the time I can validate who the spirit is by asking them the means of their crossing, how they died, which the person is able to confirm. But in this case, her mother-in-law didn’t want to talk about that at all. She kept saying to me, Just say T—she’ll know what it means. Well, I sure didn’t know what it meant. Was it an initial of somebody? The first letter of a place? Who knew? But the spirit was insistent so I told her, She’s saying to just mention the letter T and you’ll know what it is. She looked puzzled. She said to herself, T? T? then she laughed. She said, Oh! I get it! Tea! Like you drink, a cup of tea. After my mother-in-law died, her daughters and I had to go empty the house so it could be sold. In Mom’s kitchen were boxes and boxes and boxes of Lipton’s tea! No English Breakfast or peppermint or Darjeeling or chamomile. No. Every time we opened a cupboard, there was more Lipton’s tea! My sisters-in-law and I still laugh about how much tea Mom had. Clearly they weren’t the only ones laughing—her mother-in-law on the Other Side was enjoying the joke, too.

I think even souls who were very sober when they were here lighten up when they get to the Other Side. We’re all different so not every dead guy is a comedian, but when they see the big picture they just get a little lighter. And they appreciate it when we can be lighter, too. I had four women come to see me for a group reading. They didn’t look anything alike so I was guessing they were friends, not sisters. It didn’t take long before I saw, standing behind all four of them, the spirit of a woman who told me she had died of cancer. When I asked why she was claiming all of them, did they know who she was, they all nodded somberly and told me that she had been a well-liked coworker of theirs named Viola. Viola had a big smile for one of the four women and I said to her, Why is it that Viola is telling me that you were the funniest one of the bunch? And what is it she’s showing me, like this? I picked up a pen that I’d been signing books with and pointed it at her. Finally that got a smile out of her. She told me that while Viola was still able to work, sometimes she’d have a pretty bad day and to get her out of her mood she would shoot rubber bands at her with her pen. If Viola was having a really bad day, she’d take the whole box of rubber bands and empty it on Viola’s head! So silly, but such a loving gesture at the same time—we all appreciate that kind of thing, don’t we?

Why is it that mean, rich people keep on getting richer?

If we’re just looking at the external evidence, it sure can seem that life is not fair! So it shouldn’t be surprising, I guess, that this is one of the questions that I’m asked most frequently. Why does this guy who treats everyone so badly get the promotion and pay raise? How come that nipplehead wins the Mega Millions or the 50-50? Why doesn’t it go to somebody who really deserves it? He doesn’t even need it! What’s up with that? Well, the guy who got the promotion might have been kissing up to the boss, for one thing, but I know what you mean. It always seems like those who have, get more, and are frequently the least deserving. But the answer is this: When you see someone who looks like they have plenty and doesn’t even appreciate what they have getting more, you can be sure that it’s God giving them another chance to learn a lesson—what it’s like to be generous, to help someone less fortunate. That’s the simplicity of the Other Side—if we’re paying attention, we get opportunities over and over. God doesn’t need our gratitude; we need to experience gratitude. We need to experience sharing.

When we share, what we receive back is so much greater than what we’ve given. Some people never seem to learn that one. But God keeps giving them chances. I don’t know if there’s ever a point where, if the lesson is ignored or failed over and over, that God will cut them off—at least for this lifetime. I’m just not sure about that. Being human, I’d like to think He would, but that’s me making a judgment—I’d cut ’em off—and that’s not my job. That’s His job. None of this stuff we have here belongs to us—not our cars or our clothes, our homes or our cash. All we have that is real is our love for God and for each other. If we don’t express our love by sharing our so-called material possessions with others, we’re gonna get an F on that test and the next lesson is guaranteed to be a harder one.

We also need to practice generosity of spirit, to be giving of ourselves, not just of what we have. We need to make a circle of sharing. People who have trouble receiving attract people who have trouble giving.

Why is it that mean kids who bully others don’t always get their comeuppance?

I think it’s pretty similar to the guy who needs to learn about sharing. They’ve got lessons to learn! At least if it’s a kid behaving in such an unkind manner we can hope that they will wake up sooner rather than later. I think we all know people—I’ve seen it go both ways, those who learn and those who don’t. I have a client whose history of bullying I know more than a little about. I didn’t know him when he was a child, but it’s not hard to imagine that he was a mean little kid and never grew out of it. He was horrible to his wife all their lives together, demanding, controlling, wouldn’t let her drive, made her wait on him, yelled at her. He was completely abusive to her. Then his wife was dying, and as she lay in bed she wouldn’t even look at him; all she was focused on was knowing that soon she’d be free of him. She said goodbye to her son, but would not even speak to him; he couldn’t understand it. She crossed over, leaving him here in his own bad company. Now he begs me for readings, he has all kinds of regrets, he feels sorry for himself, but it’s too late for him. He isn’t gonna get what he wants on this side anymore.

On the other hand, when I was a kid, there was a boy in our class who was very big, hefty for our age. He was a real brat. His size let him push other kids around and he made the most of it. Then, when he was around fifteen or sixteen, his sister died and everything in his life was just shattered, it was such a blow to him. That loss made him change. It taught him the real values, what is important, and ever after he became just the sweetest, nicest person.

I don’t want anyone to be confused. In neither case do I believe God was meting out some punishment by taking away someone who these individuals loved. (I’m sure even my client believed he loved his wife, even though he made her life such misery.) God’s not about punishment; when one’s wife and the other’s sister crossed, it was their time to do so, in accordance with their own karma, for reasons known only to God and that spirit. The point I’m making is how one woke up and changed and the other apparently won’t in this lifetime.

It’s never too early to consider the karmic debt we are taking on when we treat others unkindly. (By the time a kid is about thirteen, if not sooner, they should be able to understand this, and many very young children simply know it instinctually.) Or, conversely, the karma we burn away when we treat others with kindness. When you see that rotten kid who picks on someone different from them or weaker than them and getting away with it, God is giving them another chance to show kindness, and if they are lucky, they’ll open their eyes, realize how wrong their behavior is, and become a much kinder adult, aware of and grateful for the extra chances they got.

God also is giving anyone who witnesses such bad behavior an opportunity to champion the child who is being picked on. We’re all in this together—it’s rare that behavior like this goes on behind a curtain, so to speak, away from other eyes. Any one of us can offer friendship or protection to an underdog.

The last thing I’d like to say about this is more for the younger person who maybe hasn’t been around the block as often as some others of us, and that is, remember that the misbehaver will always want you to join them. If they can get you to join them in their bad behavior it makes them feel better about themselves. Believe me, someone doing crack will only be too happy to hand you some, too. I was at a wedding one time and at the reception this girl who looked like she was about seventeen was drinking alcohol and was frankly drunk. She wasn’t yet suffering from the guaranteed hangover she was going to have, so she was very happy and pleased with herself for her condition. Of course, then she hooked up with a thirteen-year-old and started in trying to convince the younger girl that she should be drinking, too. She went up to the bar and got another drink and put it right in the girl’s hands. That’s just the way it is. And someone being mean just loves it if they can get someone else to be mean as well. When someone tries to get you to engage in any kind of act that you know is wrong—whether it’s wrong toward another person or just wrong for you—you need to be strong, be yourself, don’t get confused about who you are or let them confuse you into thinking that their actions are right for you. You need to be your own person.

How do the Dead let us know that they hear us, or let us know they are there?

There is really no limit to the different ways that those on the Other Side show us that they are always around us and know that we are thinking of them. They might keep showing you a particular time on a digital clock. (I know one woman, for example, who many more times than would be a natural average will feel compelled to look at her clock right when it says 11:11.) A lot of times they will arrange for events to be connected with unusual timing that will make us look at the event in a different way. That’s one thing I’m eager to explore when my time comes (though I can be patient about it!)—finding out how exactly they do this. But to give you an example, I had a couple come in, a brother and sister, and after the reading the brother told me he was very impressed. That made me feel good—I never get tired of hearing I’m doing a good job. Then he told me he had been a skeptic. Their mother had died five years before, and three years ago, his sister had made this appointment. He’d told her at the time that he didn’t believe in psychics and she could go to the appointment if she wanted, but he wanted nothing to do with it. Eventually, the three years passed, and about two months before the appointment was scheduled, he had an incredibly vivid dream. In it, his mother was saying to him, Go! Go! Go! The dream was so real that he felt it was important to do what his mother was asking but he had no idea what it was. He got in his car and drove out to the cemetery to visit his mother’s grave and talked to her, asking her to tell him what she wanted him to do, where she wanted him to go. Not hearing anything, he was frustrated. He decided to go see his sister and tell her about the dream and see if she had any idea what it meant. He had just finished describing how his mother had told him emphatically to Go!

One of my clients, a young woman in her twenties, told me that her cousin had died when she was only twenty-three after having an epileptic seizure in the middle of the night, bonking her head, and suffocating in her pillow. A few years later, after reading my first book, she was in a grouchy mood, and feeling skeptical about whether it really was possible to communicate with her cousin’s spirit, she decided to do an experiment. She thought for a while about her cousin, then, in her head, she said, Okay, Jamie, if you’re really hanging around me and care about me and are now enlightened, give me a sign. Show me a sunflower. (Sunflowers were her cousin’s favorite flower.) The next day, she was reading a book and she came across the word sunflower on the very first page. The following paragraph talked about an encounter with transcendence. Later that day, she told me, she saw a man carrying an armful of sunflowers. And that night, she saw a new TV commercial that flashed over a whole field of sunflowers.

My client’s grandmother had an experiment of her own going. She had pictures of Jamie all over her bedroom, and apparently for a year after her granddaughter’s death no matter how often she straightened the pictures, she’d always find them crooked.

Another of my clients, Jim, told me that when he’d started his landscaping business his father sometimes helped him with a job. One day they were excavating a job, making holes to put in shrubs and trees, when he dug up a box full of old bottles, in perfect condition. Jim was no bottle expert; he just thought they were cool looking and thought possibly they might be worth something. (He later found out that they dated from the early 1900s.) Without a lot of room at his own place, he asked his dad if he could keep the bottles in his garage. Eventually, he forgot about them. Then one day he was at a flea market and he saw bottles like the ones he’d found being sold—they were really pricey—and, remembering that most of what he’d found was in better condition than those the flea market vendor had, he got excited. He went back to his parents’ house, only to discover that at some point the bottles must have been thrown out or given away. Even though he realized these things happen, Jim was annoyed, and whenever the opportunity came up, he never failed to mention to his dad the valuable bottles that had been entrusted to him and that he’d gotten rid of. Since Jim’s father has crossed over, a couple of things have happened. First, again while digging on a job, Jim found an old milk bottle with the name Alfred written on it—his father’s name. On a separate occasion, Jim found another bottle. It had dirt caked all over it, but when Jim washed it off, he found the letter A. He said, Concetta, do you think this is my father trying to get my bottles back to me? Absolutely. Jim’s father found a very distinctive way of letting Jim know he was still around.

Yet another client had a daughter who had died and she would go from time to time to visit her daughter’s grave. On one occasion, after she’d spent some time at the graveside, she walked back to her car. Getting in she noticed she was holding a broken necklace in her hand. She definitely had been distracted, so thought she must have just idly picked it up off the path without even realizing what she was doing, because she really didn’t have a clear memory of having bent down and picking it up. She was shocked to see that it had letters spelling out Kathy, her daughter’s name.

The important thing is for us to notice. Especially if we’ve specifically asked them to show us some sign, but even if we don’t ask, we still need to keep our mind open to them, knowing that they will be trying to say hello to us in any way they can. Keep reminding yourself there’s no such thing as a coincidence, and realize that when these things happen that might ordinarily make us go wow! or cute! it’s most likely someone who was dear to us trying to let us know they are