The theater seated about 3,000 people and the room was filled to capacity. Gil’s audience was mostly made up of young women, with a few cranky husbands dragged along against their will. Many of these women looked like they were going nightclubbing in their snug-fitting dresses and carrying clutch purses that were barely big enough to hold a lipstick. It was well known to them that Gil always gave private readings to a select few fans after the show, and each of them wanted to catch his eye.
With loud music pumping and colored spotlights dancing across the room, Gil’s psychic performances had a rock concert vibe. That is, if it wasn’t for the floral arrangement laid out on a table that made the stage look like a funeral parlor. Gil’s ushers looked like roadies, that is, if they weren’t carrying boxes of tissues for the bereaved.
At 8pm the lights dimmed and the crowd cheered. Over a loudspeaker a male voice announced, “Please welcome… Gil Godsend!”
Gil bounded out onstage to mass hysteria, looking stylish in a dark brown slim fit suit with a vermilion-colored woven silk tie that blended perfectly into his saffron shirt.
He had the air of a rock star about him.
“Good evening, everyone,” he said in his confident and measured voice. “Thank you for joining me here tonight for this special show. I’m Gil Godsend.”
This introduction set off the hooting and hollering again, and as the room slowly grew quiet a woman shouted out, “I love you, Gil!”
“I love you too!” he replied to her, but seemingly to everyone. Gil had a way of addressing an entire audience that made it seem as though he was talking directly to each person in the room.
“The living are fearful of death,” Gil began. “But we shouldn’t be. We were spirits long before we were humans. We’re just spiritual beings on a human journey,” he explained as he walked back and forth across the stage. “When we die we all have loved ones waiting for us on the other side. These spirits are loving, happy, and kind. There is no more pain. They are now healed and their souls are at peace. It’s usually the living who aren’t at peace; they’re grieving and need closure. And that’s what tonight is all about. We’ll be bridging the gap between the living and the dead. I’ll share messages from your family and friends in spirit to whoever needs a reading the most,” Gil said to hopeful faces across the room.
Attending one of these shows was no guarantee you’d hear from your loved ones. In a theater of thousands, only a few lucky people would receive a reading. It was like a psychic lottery, but even if you did score a reading you couldn’t be sure who might turn up.
“I know you all have someone in mind you want to hear from, but if you concentrate on hearing from Uncle Peter you may not be paying attention when Grandpa Joe tries to communicate with you. Please keep an open mind and an open heart...”
Gil put on his best cheesy comedian voice.
“Before we jump into some spirit communication, I’d like to tell you about a funny thing that happened to me on the way to the psychic reading,” he said to a smattering of chuckles. “I was driving here to the show when a spirit took control of my hands and the wheel. I don’t know this area very well, but this spirit had good GPS and knew where he was going. He drove me to a supermarket. In the store I felt compelled to buy eggs, flour, milk, butter, cocoa powder, whipped cream, and cherries. Then the spirit made a detour to the liquor store and forced me to purchase a bottle of port wine, but not any old port. This spirit has fine taste and demanded an expensive 20-year-old tawny port! By this time I was worried that I would be late for the show, but the spirit hadn’t finished his shopping spree yet. I was guided to a department store where I was lead to buy a three-pack of XXXL-sized men’s underpants.”
The audience laughed.
“I feel there’s a “G” name attached to this spirit. Does this shopping list make sense to anyone?”
A woman sitting in the fourth row raised her hand and an assistant ran to hand her a microphone. She was sitting arm in arm with a man and another woman, who must have been her siblings. They clung onto each other tightly.
“Yes! Those groceries sound like the ingredients needed to bake a Black Forest cherry cake,” she said. “That was our father’s favorite. His name was Gus, short for Gustav.”
“Gus was born in Germany,” said Gil.
“That’s right! He was born near the area where the cake originated.”
“What about the bottle of tawny port?”
“Each evening dad enjoyed a glass of port as a nightcap. He liked the high-quality brands best. It’s now a tradition in my family to bake a Black Forest cherry cake on the anniversary of his birthday. In his memory we each have a slice of the cake with a glass of his favorite port as we sit around the table and reminisce. Tomorrow would have been his 79th birthday and I’m going shopping for these items in the morning.”
“What about the underpants?” Gil asked with a smile.
She laughed.
“When we were young, mom bought underpants for dad from us kids as a birthday gift every year. When we grew older, we continued to buy underpants for him every birthday as a private joke. When he died, he had drawers full of unopened underwear that we had to donate to charity.”
“Well, this year you won’t need to go shopping!” Gil said as he reached behind the curtain wings and emerged with a large gift bag. He came down into the audience and handed it to the woman who began crying. “These are for you,” he said as the crowd applauded wildly. “But the woman at the cash register didn’t believe me when I told her I was buying the whipped cream for a spirit…”
“Now let’s do some readings!” Gil shouted to the crowd’s excitement. “How often do we get a song stuck in our heads but we don’t know why? This happens to me all the time, and it’s happening right now… I have a feeling we’re having a shared experience here tonight…”
He walked down the aisle as he quoted song lyrics.
“Don’t go trying some new fashion… Don’t change the color of your hair… You always have my unspoken passion… Although I might not seem to care…I don’t want clever conversation…I never want to work that hard…I just want someone that I can talk to…I want you just the way you are…”
Gil recited these lyrics to the star struck eyes gazing back at him. Every woman in the room wanted him to love her just the way she was.
“These lyrics are going around and around in my head,” he said. “How many people in the audience have been hearing this Billy Joel song too?”
Hands shot up everywhere around the room and people craned their necks to see that they’d definitely shared a group experience.
“It seems we’ve established a psychic connection across the room,” Gil said, “but there’s someone right here for whom this song has special meaning. This person lost a spouse with an ‘S’ name…”
“I think you’re talking about me,” said a woman nearby.
“Ah! So you’re the one who put us all on this musical merry-go-round!” Gil joked as he took hold of her hand to strengthen his link to the spirit of her loved one.
“I think so,” she said, a little embarrassed that she’d psychically affected the entire room. “I Love You Just the Way You Are was our special song. I was thinking about my husband Simon on the way here and the song came on the radio.”
“That was a sign from Simon,” said Gil. “It was his way of letting you know that he was going to communicate with you here tonight… Now he’s saying something about your “blonde hair”…but you’re a brunette,” he observed.
“Oh, my God!” she cried. “That’s the story of how this came to be our song. Years ago I wanted a change so I went to a new hairstylist. I walked into the salon with really long dark hair and I came out with short blonde hair! When Simon saw me he barely recognized me! He sang I Love You Just the Way You Are to me and emphasized the line, don’t change the color of your hair.”
She laughed and the room laughed along with her at this romantic story.
; “Simon passed recently, right?”
“Yes. He died six months ago.”
“His passing was unexpected.”
“That’s right.”
“I’m getting sharp pains here in my heart.” Gil said as he patted the microphone to his chest. “…I’m feeling shooting pains down my arms…I’m out of breathe… My spirit guides tell me that Simon suffered a severe heart attack,” he panted.
With a lump in her throat she looked to the floor.
“Yes. It was his first… and his last.”
“Your loss was so sudden that sometimes you can’t believe he’s gone,” Gil said with increasing sensitivity in his voice. “In fact, you thought you saw him in public once. You took a photo of the stranger because the resemblance was so strong, right?”
“Yes. Wow! Yes, I did!” she replied in amazement.
“You shouldn’t look at the photo so often. You’re making Simon jealous!” he said with a wink. “He says he’s sorry that he left so abruptly but it was his time to go. You were on his mind until his last moment. His final message to you is, I said I love you and that’s forever. And this I promise from the heart. But I couldn’t love you any better. I love you just the way you are.”
The woman wept softly and others around her dabbed at their eyes with tissues. Gil gave her a hug and walked back into the cheering crowd.
“The spirits like applause,” he said. “It lifts the vibrations in the room.”
He cocked his head back and looked around. Sniffing the air he started to wander the aisles as if he was being led somewhere.
“I’m sensing the smell of lavender,” he said as he wafted the phantom fragrance towards his nose with his hands. “It’s like I’m in a field of lavender on a summer’s day. The scent is getting stronger in this area here,” he said, pointing to a group of ladies who began exchanging knowing glances at each other. “Who loved lavender?” he asked them.
“That was my mom!” answered a woman wearing a lavender-colored sweater.
“I see you’re wearing mom’s favorite color too,” Gil noted. He was partial to a lavender-colored shirt or tie himself. It suited his complexion. “She’s here with us now. I’m getting an Elle name, like Elaine or Ellen.”
“Her name was Eleanor,” the woman replied. “She went by Elle.”
“She’s saying that some people also called her ‘The Lavender Lady’?”
“That’s right!” she nodded in excitement.
“Whenever you smell lavender, she is nearby,” Gil said. “Elle tells me she adored anything that was lavender-colored or lavender scented, such as soap, perfume, and flowers.”
“We had a lavender tribute on her casket. Even the lining was lavender-colored,” the woman said.
“She’s telling me that she had a beautiful funeral,” said Gil. “She says, “Thank you for putting me in that lavender dress and not that ugly pink one!””
The woman laughed.
“I wouldn’t have laid her to rest in any other color!”
Gil suddenly clutched his stomach.
“I’m getting sharp pains in my abdomen… I’m feeling nauseous… I sense that part of Elle’s stomach was missing… She died of stomach cancer?” he asked.
“Yes, she did,” the woman confirmed.
“She wants you to know that she is whole again. She is past her pain,” Gil assured her. “My spirit guides are saying something about your daughter, Claire.”
“…But I don’t have a daughter,” the woman said.
“You have another family member by the name of Claire?” Gil asked.
“No,” the woman replied with a confused expression on her face.
“Can you think of anyone named Claire in your life?”
“…No...”
“Think hard now…” Gil insisted.
She paused and shrugged her shoulders.
“I’m sorry,” she said, wanting so badly to please him. “I can’t think of anyone by that name.”
Gil addressed the audience.
“I’m hearing the name Claire in my head. My spirit guides are never wrong. Who is Claire, please?” he asked as he looked around the room. “I sense this young lady standing to my right side. She has an urgent message…”
A woman sitting right behind him piped up.
“I had a daughter named Claire.”
“Ah! Then this next message is for you,” he said as a collective sigh of relief traveled across the room. Not that they believed Gil could ever be wrong. “What just happened is known as psychic interference,” he explained. “This is when I’m giving a reading but I get my psychic wires crossed and I receive a message that is intended for someone nearby instead. The spirit’s energy is so strong that it interrupts the existing reading.”
He turned back to the woman.
“Claire is showing me a bowl of cherries. Do you understand that?”
“Um…I don’t know.”
“Did she like eating cherries?”
“…No. Actually, when she was young a lot of her medicines were cherry-flavored and she developed such an aversion to it that she hated anything that tasted like cherries.”
“Well, there’s some sort of cherry connection here. Was there something in the house to do with cherries?”
Her expression was blank for a moment. Then she pushed her palm to her forehead.
“How could I forget? When she died we were living on Cherry Lane!” she said, excited that she had remembered.
“Drawing a complete blank during a psychic reading is common,” said Gil. “This short term memory lapse is known as psychic amnesia. But sooner or later the light bulb always goes off! Now, years before Claire died she was a happy girl. She enjoyed shopping, surfing, and hanging out with her friends.”
“Yes. And then everything changed. She became quiet and withdrawn.”
“One minute she was there,” Gil snapped his fingers, “and then she was gone…”
“Yes,” she said softly.
“She crossed herself over,” Gil said. “She took her own life… She says she is sorry.” One of Gil’s ushers ran towards her with a box of tissues. “You suffer a lot of guilt, but you have to let go of that. If she hadn’t died this way, she would have died a year later in a car accident. Part of her knew she was going to die young,” he said gently.
He addressed the crowd.
“We can’t be expected to understand all of our actions while we’re here, but our spirits do have a plan.”
Time was running out so Gil darted about the room trying to give as many personalized readings as possible. He dispensed messages and advice from his spirit guides to random people in the audience. Aunt Tillie warned a woman that she needed to quit smoking immediately otherwise she was going to develop emphysema. Will told another woman that her estranged son was willing to reconcile with her. Oleg reminded a man that he needed to return a lawnmower he borrowed over five years ago, which was getting rusty in his tool shed.
Almost two hours into his performance Gil jumped back up onto the stage.
“We’re going to close this evening’s show with a session of guided meditation,” he announced. “I’ll be using visualization to ease you into a state of relaxation.” Gil’s voice began to take on a slow, breathy rhythm. “Everyone can benefit from meditation, and you’ll get exactly what you need from it. For some, it will be an opportunity for stress relief and to restore calm to the mind, relax the body, and achieve inner peace. For others, this meditation will facilitate healing, or improve your sense of wellbeing.”
He scanned the audience as he spoke, as if he was gazing into each and every person’s eyes.
“Meditation also promotes our natural psychic abilities. If you’ve lost an item, this meditation will reveal to you where it’s hiding. If you’re sick, this meditation will help guide you to the cure. If you want to make a change in your life, this meditation will show you a path. And if you don’t get out of this what you were expecting, don’t worry, b
ecause you will have gotten something else you needed much more.”
Dreamy, ethereal new age music filled the room.
“We’re going to turn down the lights, and as they’re dimming, I want you to close your eyes slowly,” Gil said in a soothing tone. “Relax your muscles. Your body will continue to unwind as you meditate. Now I want you to take in a deep breath. Breathe in slowly…and hold… Now exhale very slowly…Do it again. Breathe in…hold…breathe out… Feel your chest and stomach gently rise and fall with each breath. See how your breath continues to flow…deeply…calmly… Now begin to quiet your mind. Notice any stray thoughts, but don’t dwell on them. Simply let them pass. You won’t be distracted by any little noises around you. Focus on the sound of my voice… and my words…”
“…Imagine that it’s dusk… Look up into the sky. Become lost staring into the swirling sunset colors… The sky is becoming darker and darker as the moments pass, until finally, the sky is pitch black… As night begins you start to see stars in the sky. First just one star…and then another…and another…until there is a blanket of stars filling the sky. Some are twinkling… See them shine and gleam like tiny diamonds… You notice that they twinkle to their own tempo… They slowly become brighter and brighter… The stars are pure light… Let that light stream into you through the crown of your head… Allow the light to fill your entire being... Feel it flowing through you… This is who you are… Feel yourself in this place... And as I stand next to you in this place in silence, I want you to explore your surroundings…”
As the hypnotic music continued, Gil stood on stage scanning the crowd, almost as if to make sure no one was cheating by having their eyes open. After a few minutes, his gentle voice mixed in with the music.
“Slowly come back down to earth… See yourself in a beautiful garden on a day in spring… It’s quiet, safe, and peaceful... Feel the gentle warmth of the sun on your skin... Breathe in the perfumed scent of flowers... You’re lying on your back in the soft green grass... Beneath you is the earth... It embraces you... You are now grounded…”
During the guided meditation an assistant walked through the audience. He was careful not to disturb anyone as he approached a woman wearing a scarf wrapped around her head.
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