by Julie Rieger
“No, I did not. It wasn’t meant for me,” she clarifies with grace. “It was meant for you.”
I now summon my wolves whenever I need any kind of protection. I can even call on them to chase the shit out of dark spirits, and they still make their presence known to me with a howl. They even appeared to me once at a drum circle party at the Crystal Matrix. But meeting Jacob was like meeting an old friend. I now knowingly summon him everywhere and call for him whenever I need him. I feel empowered, at peace, protected. Through my work with Ima I learn that Jacob has never been in a human body before and that not every entity has been in one. Jacob comes to me with a specific name and a shape so I can recognize him. Spirit guides do this so we don’t get confused if other spirit guides comes through with guidance from the Other Side.
And it makes sense that Jacob comes to me in the form of an older bearded dude. I have trust and faith in elders. They know more, right? There’s wisdom and power that come with age. If a ten-year-old kid had shown up as my guide, I’d probably be pretty dismissive. Conversely, if I were a ten-year-old kid and some old grandpa showed up as my guide, I’d probably be dismissive, too. But if a cat named Fuzzy Butt (the name of my childhood cat) showed up, I’d pay attention. I’d also really pay attention if an invisible friend my age showed up when I was a kid, which is why it’s so common for kids to have imaginary friends until the “real” world starts to jam their psychic antennae.
There are occasional exceptions to that rule, of course. Filmmaker John Waters told his story on Celebrity Ghost Stories. He described a night when, camping as a ten-year-old kid, he wandered into the forest and saw a white light suddenly appear in the darkness. It was definitely not a flashlight. At first it had no form, then it coalesced into the face of an older man. “It looked familiar,” Waters recounted. “It wasn’t hostile and it looked at me with a kind of understanding. I should have been screaming. I don’t know why I wasn’t completely freaked out by it. I froze and looked at it in wonderment and excitement. I was raised Catholic, so I wondered: Is this a guardian angel? Weirdly, it brought calmness to me.”
I’d bet ten thousand pink flamingos and a lot of hair spray that it was his spirit guide. Like me, Waters was empowered after that encounter. “I knew that I wouldn’t be frightened of anything ever again,” he said. “It was a wonderful lesson for me as a ten-year-old kid. I think it helped me become what I am today. It gave me confidence to go ahead and believe in things: in behavior that I couldn’t understand; to be drawn to subject matter that I couldn’t understand. I felt safe with that spirit or whatever it was. It made me feel competent and inside and included in something that I had never felt before that night.”
Lucky for Waters he had that experience of the unseen world at a young age—and trusted it. He went on to become an unapologetically authentic maverick filmmaker. So here’s the good news, folks: Spirits are all over the place. Our guides are by our side, ready to give us information if we only pay attention. In my case, the three clairs of clairvoyance, clairaudience, and clairsentience came together to form a cohesive whole, like the caramel, peanuts, and nougat in a Snickers bar. Eventually, they became the foundation of mediumship skills that would guide my world forever.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Medium Rare
People need hard times and oppression to develop psychic muscles.
—EMILY DICKINSON
If it’s the Psychic Network, why do they need a phone number?
—ROBIN WILLIAMS
Meeting Jacob on the 405 freeway was a seismic event in my life. Until that moment, I’d been bearing witness to the spirit world: house clearing, getting rid of scary ghosts in bathrooms, taking ghost photographs, and plying my trade with crystals and rituals. Now, however, it felt like the universe had knocked on my door without warning. There’s no Google calendar invite from the cosmic wilderness. I haven’t showered and my hair is a mess, but there’s an important unexpected guest at my door and I’ve got to open it.
And so I do.
What happens when I open that door is this: To my great surprise, I begin to cultivate an ability to connect the spirits of deceased loved ones to their loved ones. This ability is like having a new superpower, and it affirms what Brenda told me long ago: When the people we love pass away, they don’t pass out of our lives. Grief is inevitable; in fact, it’s an essential part of being human, just like death. We all go in and out the same door, but that door, it turns out, is never entirely shut.
In the beginning, this new psychic ability comes to me unexpectedly at first, and in seeming random moments. My first experience with this happens one morning when I’m in my office at the crack of dawn. Seemingly out of the blue, I decide to text Tony Sella, though I have nothing specific in mind to say. Tony is my old boss and the guy who inspired me to tap into my own creativity. He’s spent nearly twenty-five years marketing films, and he does so brilliantly and beautifully, crafting marketing stories alongside great filmmakers like Jim Cameron, Ridley Scott, Oliver Stone, and Ang Lee. I think he’s won virtually every award for marketing creativity under the sun and has certain brilliant intuitive gifts. (Tony and I both felt the ghost of Charles Schulz one day at the Schulz museum before the release of The Peanuts Movie, by the way. I was moved to tears when Tony came up from behind me and whispered in my ear: “I can feel him, too.” I thought: How the fuck did he know why I was crying? It was an incredible moment—a testimony to our deep bond and to Tony’s amazing sensitivity.)
So there I am sitting in my office about to text Tony. I just know that I have to text him. I take out my cell phone and start writing as if I’m being guided, not consciously aware of what I’m about to say:
Me: Good morning, Tone. I’m sorry you didn’t get any sleep last night. But glad your mom was there to keep you company. Love, J.
Note: Tony’s mom died decades earlier. As soon as I hit send, I get panicky. What the fuck did I just do? Can I retract what I just texted? I suddenly feel like I’ve lost a minute in my life to some other energy working through me. I am actually jittery. Within seconds I get a reply:
Tony: How did you know? You’re freakin’ me out. Love, T.
Me: Ummm . . . I just knew. I’ve been told it was rude to get in people’s heads, so I’m sorry. But I felt it would be okay. XO, J.
Tony: Keep it comin’. I love it. T.
I’m relieved that Tony was so cool with this wild information I’d texted him. And sure enough, “it” keeps coming. Not long after that experience with Tony, I’m driving home one night when I get a strong hit of my friend Rebecca; I can actually hear her talking about me, so I call her. The second she picks up her phone, I ask: “Hey, Rebecca, I hear you talking about me. What do you need?”
“Oh my God!” she says. “I was just talking about you to my mother. How did you know?”
I don’t know how I knew; I just did. In fact, that moment I “heard” Rebecca she was telling her mother the story of when she and I first met. On that day, I “saw” a woman who looked like her hovering over her left shoulder. “Did you lose your grandmother?” I asked her, “and did she look a lot like you?”
Rebecca looked back at me flabbergasted. “Yes and yes,” she whispered with tears in her eyes. “How did you know?”
“Well, I’m seeing a woman who looks like you just over your left shoulder; your left side is your maternal side, so by standing there she’s letting me know that she’s your mother’s mother.”
Rebecca was telling her mother this story months later when I “heard” her talking about me and called her. A few seconds after we start talking, I see her grandmother again, only now she’s showing me an image of Rebecca trailing around some sort of raggedy doll or raggedy-ass blanket.
“Sorry if this makes no sense,” I say after describing the image.
“No, it makes perfect sense!” she replies. “I had a comfort blanket my entire life—my binky. I only gave it up at my wedding.” A pause, then: “Why is my grandmother show
ing you that?”
“I don’t know, honey. It’s your message.” And I really don’t know. What I do know is that the spirits are making house calls through me, and that I’ve become a vessel or conduit through which Spirit can reach out to the living.
This is clearly the case one day when Suzanne and I are driving to Sedona, Arizona. If you haven’t been there, Sedona overlooks one of the most spectacular red rock vistas in the Southwest, one that’s the site of what’s considered a sacred vortex—i.e., a power spot where concentrated energy is either entering the Earth or being beamed out of it. (The Great Pyramids in Egypt, Machu Picchu in Peru, Stonehenge in England, and Ayers Rock in Australia are a few other power spots on Earth.) This power spot was revered by Native Americans for centuries and is now something of a tourist hot spot. There are spiritual vortex tours, vortex retreats and centers, vortex healing therapies, vortex places of worship, and my favorite: Sedona crystal vortex massages and spa treatments. (And by the way, please don’t confuse a vortex with a portal. You cannot get a crystal massage and spa treatment in a portal. Trust me on this.)
It’s believed that giant leaps in one’s spiritual transformation can occur at these sites. No one ever mentioned to me that giant leaps in one’s psychic abilities might happen en route, but as we’re driving to Sedona somewhere between Quartzsite and Phoenix, Suzanne mentions something about her sister Sally. Sally died suddenly in 2015 at the age of sixty-two from pneumonia. The family was devastated. Sally was a no-fuss, no-frills schoolteacher and librarian most of her life. She was fun but somber; in many ways nobody really knew the real Sally, but I think that every day was a pretty good day for her.
Seconds after Suzanne mentions her name, I see her. I don’t “see her, see her” with my eyes, yet my eyes are wide open and there she is, strangely superimposed on my vision in a way that still doesn’t obstruct my driving. I guess you could call it multitasking and multiseeing and no, I categorically do not recommend doing this in your car. In fact, I would not recommend doing it while doing anything else. I probably should have had a Post-it on my dashboard that said: Do not channel spirits while in your car or operating heavy machinery.
But I’m strangely in full possession of my faculties for driving and very clear that I’m not putting anyone in danger. And there’s Sally as I drive, looking exactly as I remember her after Suzanne and I met nearly twenty-four years earlier. For a few minutes I just drive and “look” at Sally in my mind’s eye. (By the way, I don’t know what it is about driving that brings spirits my way. Lucky for me California legislates everything on the roads except talking to spirits while you drive.)
Anyhow, I keep driving for a while, wondering if what I’m “seeing” is real. The last thing you want to do is tell someone, much less your wife, that her departed loved one is talking to you if it’s just your mind playing tricks on you. Finally I nod toward Suzanne.
“Honey, would you believe me if I told you that Sally is here?”
“Of course I would.”
“Well, Sally is talking to me right now. And I see her. It’s weird.”
I then tell Suzanne exactly what Sally looks like, from her hair (which had yet to turn gray) to her clothes from the 1990s. And Sally is laughing; in fact, she seems overjoyed to be seen. “The first thing she’s saying to me is something about Ari” (Ari is their ten-year-old niece). “She’s showing me that she sits next to her while she sleeps. I think she’s concerned about her.” Sally had deep bonds with all her nieces and nephews and would play endlessly with them. She was a phenomenal aunt.
“Is she saying anything else?”
“I think so. But you know, baby, I’m not a very good medium. This is clearly all new to me.” And right then, Sally “says” to me: “No, Julie, you’re not a good medium.”
I share that first comment with Suzanne and we all have a good laugh: me, my wife, and her deceased sister, Sally. After that, a solid two-hour conversation ensues while we’re driving through Phoenix heading toward Sedona. Their dad pops in a few times while Sally is squatting in my third eye. (I “see” him in the left corner of my eye, sitting on a bench.) He was a sweet man who makes my girl, Suzanne, cry a little when he appears now.
Every once in a while during this two-hour mediumship marathon, I get quiet for a few minutes and Suzanne asks about Sally: “Is she still there?”
“Yup. She won’t leave.”
And for the record, I don’t ask her to leave, either. I always loved and respected Sally. It’s nice to have her spirit with us.
After three incredible days of hiking into vortexes and shopping at every single crystal store in Sedona, it’s time to go home. As we’re on the road heading toward Palm Springs, another spirit pops by for a visit: a redheaded guy with a great body who wants to talk to Suz. I see-hear-sense him. Suzanne perks up the second I describe him. “Oh my God, honey, is that Phillip?”
Phillip Moore was the love of Suzanne’s life, not in the husband-and-wife sense but in a spiritual-connection sense. He died of AIDS-related complications in 1986. “What’s he saying?” she asks.
“Well, he’s really not saying anything. He’s showing me pictures. Who is Ed? Phillip just spelled his name for me with his finger.”
“You’re kidding? He wants to talk about Ed?”
“Yeah, seems so. Who’s Ed, honey?”
“Ed was my boyfriend when Phillip and I were roommates. I told you about him, right?”
“I think so; I just didn’t remember that his name was Ed.” Suzanne now has the biggest grin on her face.
“He’s showing me stuff,” I continue. “Actually, he’s showing a picture of a sliding glass door,” I continue. “I don’t know why. I think it’s not for me to know. Does a sliding glass door make any sense to you?”
“A sliding glass door? I don’t know.”
“Well, he keeps showing it to me. I think he wants you to remember something about a sliding glass door.”
Suzanne reflects for a moment, then lights up. She proceeds to tell me about the time she lived with Ed and friends in a town house that had a big sliding glass door. In the middle of the night she heard the doorbell ring. “So I went downstairs to the front door, looked through the peephole, and didn’t see anybody,” she explains. “I went back to bed and minutes later the patio door, which was a sliding door, came crashing down. Some guys were breaking into the condo. Ed got out of bed and chased the guys down the street. The cops said that was a tactic used by burglars to see who’s home before they break and enter.”
“Wow, that’s crazy.” I keep getting more images from Phillip, only now it’s like he’s showing me a little film. I can barely make out activity in what looks like a crappy Walmart throwback from the seventies. I ask him to “zoom in,” and am suddenly compelled to put my hand toward my head, as if I’m reaching for the bill of a hat.
Before I can explain this to Suzanne, she shouts: “Hats! Oh my God, hats! We used to spend hours at Goodwill and consignment stores shopping for vintage hats. We had so much fun doing that, just being silly.”
“He loves you, honey,” I say. “He still does. I can see it on his face.”
“I know; I love him, too,” Suzanne says with tears rolling down her face. “I really do.”
All of a sudden I can feel Phillip receding, tell me that he’s going away for a little bit because I need to focus on driving. Sure enough, the traffic outside on the highway around Palm Springs is suddenly maddening; for some reason people are weaving in and out of lanes like their pants are on fire. I don’t need another close call like the one on the 405, and realize that it’s time to work on this budding mediumship ability. I need to be more intentional with information coming to me from the Other Side. And for that, I turn again to Ima.
For several months, Ima brings me into sessions with her as a medium in training. The goal is teach me to be more in charge of the images and information that come my way; to learn to turn that info on and off, so to speak, while correctly
interpreting it. It’s about focus and paying attention.
One of the most remarkable sessions in this regard happens with two of Ima’s clients: a Hispanic woman and her ten-year-old daughter. After I get quiet and ground myself, I immediately start to see images of the little girl’s grandmother. She’s cooking, making tortillas and salsa in a kitchen filled with herbs.
“Does this make sense?” I ask the mother.
She nods. “Yes, yes. She cooked all the time and had herbs everywhere, all over her kitchen. She loved herbs.”
I get quiet again and close my eyes. The grandmother is here with me again, only now she’s writing words on a computer—backward. I immediately understand what this means.
“Is your daughter dyslexic?” I ask the mom.
She stares back at me, wide-eyed. “Yes, she is.”
Then I turn to the girl and say: “Your grandmother has some advice for you: She wants me to tell you that you’re so much better off not using a computer right now; it’s better for you to handwrite instead. That way you can see and feel your words as you write them with a pen and pencil and train yourself better, instead of typing on a computer.”
“But I really want an iPad,” the girl says.
“I know, but guess what, sweetheart? You can get that later. It will be really good for you to write by hand.”
The girl looks pensive and the mother appears relieved. I, on the other hand, am relieved. I may have dashed a young girl’s dreams of early iPad ownership, but the experience comforts me. I went into it a bit insecure, not sure if I’d be able to harness this power. The experience with the mother and daughter confirmed that I had the ability to translate images from complete strangers that would, under ordinary circumstances, baffle me. (I’ve never dealt with dyslexia, for example; it’s just not part of my experience.)
The more I’m able to manage my ability to summon Spirit in the service of others, the closer I get to jumping off the proverbial cliff without help from my psychic posse. In other words, it’s time for me to put on my big-girl psychic panties and go out on my own. This turns out to be deeply gratifying, particularly when I can help dear friends make connections with loved ones whom they thought they’d lost forever. This comes home in a big way one day when Suzanne and I go to Watsonville, a small town on the central coast of California, to visit our friends Debby and Joe not long after Joe’s mother has passed away. Joe is heartbroken, so Debby asks if I wouldn’t mind getting in touch with his mom.