by John Edward
“It was like a videotape running in my head,” Carol recalled. “As if I were watching a mystery movie. There was a distinction between my own thoughts when I started typing, and when this started taking over.”
Without missing a beat, Carol kept typing, only now she was transcribing what she was seeing in her head:
Baxter pulls up, walks over to Dan’s car, then opens the passenger door to come in as Dan demands that he show him the money. But Baxter grabs for Dan’s jacket and holds the door open, and Dan immediately cocks his gun and points it at Baxter, telling him to stop, put the jacket down, and leave. But Baxter angrily grabs for the gun, dropping Dan’s jacket, the keys in the pocket jingling as they hit the blacktop. Quickly Baxter leans into the car and overpowers the much smaller Dan, twisting Dan’s arthritic hands so that the cocked gun is now pointed at Dan’s head. Now Baxter begins to laugh, gloating at the situation. Dan uses his left hand to try to force the gun upward and away from him, but Baxter uses his other hand to keep it down. As they struggle, Baxter shoves the gun hard against Dan’s head, and it fires. The bullet casing ricochets off the ceiling, hits Baxter, and lands on the passenger seat near the door. Shocked, Baxter releases his grip and lowers Dan’s hands to his lap, still holding the gun. He backs out of the car, picks up the jacket and keys, hastily replaces them on the seat, leaving a bloody smudge on the jacket lining. He looks around and sees no one has responded to the gunshot, and drives carefully away.
Carol said the scene flowed seamlessly from one moment to the next, but seemed to be in response to her questions. She didn’t think they came from her imagination because the details—Dan’s elaborate preparations, the sound of the jangling keys dropping to the pavement—were too vivid and came too quickly. She contrasted it to the way she worked as a radiologist to come up with a likely diagnosis: In her mind, she would put together all the circumstantial evidence—what she knew about a patient’s history, symptoms, and physical examination, as well as the sometimes subtle indications she detected on an x-ray or MRI—to try to come up with a probable scenario.
“This didn’t feel at all like that,” Carol said. “Of course, you wonder if this is just your mind at work, but it didn’t feel as if it was coming from me.” She entertained the stunning possibility that this “videotape” had been sent to her by Dan, but she didn’t dwell on it because it was just too strange and unsettling. And she was careful whom she talked to about it. She tried to have the case reopened—or really, opened—but got nowhere. All she had, in the view of the police, was speculation.
Over the next two years, Carol became a regular at events I had in the West. She came to five more after the first one in Phoenix—in Salt Lake City, San Diego, Las Vegas, Scottsdale, and Detroit—traveling hundreds of miles in the hopes of connecting with her siblings. Not just her sister Louise, of course, but now also her brother, Dan, the one who had practically ordered her to come to that first event in Phoenix. I really don’t remember much about our first encounter, but Carol and her mother approached me after the next one, in San Diego, and told me the story. It was very upsetting to hear, but Carol’s mother said, “I just wanted to thank you. Knowing that everyone was there to greet Daniel was the only thing that got me through this.”
Carol went to San Diego, and all the other places, wanting more than the comfort of that knowledge. She wanted to know the truth. She hoped Dan would give it to me to relay. But these were events with a few hundred people, and she was disappointed each time. Most of the time I didn’t even know she was there. But her story has stayed with me. When I think of Dan’s apparent desire to literally show his sister what happened and compare it to the way Roger only wanted to ease Nicole’s mind in Tampa Bay, I can’t help but feel sure that spirits really do give us what we need. We’re all different, those of us here on earth, and those on the other side. If Carol still had any strands of belief that our individual personalities dissolve into some great universal abyss when we die, she could let them go now, into the wind.
In the midst of all these trips to see me, Carol did go to see another medium in Arizona. The medium told Carol that her brother had died in a car accident. That wasn’t far off. And the medium did detect that there was a mystery surrounding the death. She told Carol, “What you feel in your gut happened, did happen.”
When she heard this, Carol took it as a validation, if something short of a definitive one. She had tried not to think too much about the videotape that had rolled through her head, but now she allowed herself to believe that she really hadn’t made it all up. For the second time, it seemed, her brother had put a thought in her head and told her to go with it.
It’s impossible to know the true intent of that thought. Maybe Dan wanted his family to know that he did not commit suicide. Did he want something more than that? Spirits have will. Sometimes their purpose is clear, sometimes not. Sometimes I get it wrong, sometimes I get it right. I remember once reading a woman at a lecture in Boston who had lost her five-year-old daughter. When her little girl came through, she gave me one detail after another—her name, the name of the doll she was buried with—and her poor mom was terribly shaken and crying. It was one of those times when everyone in the room was affected by one person’s pain. And then the spirit of this little girl gave me a feeling of intense concern for her mother.
“I’m going to give you this in my interpretation,” I told the mother, “and I’m sorry for having to ask you this, but were you planning to kill yourself?” The woman seemed as if she was going to pass out. The person next to her had to hold her up.
And she acknowledged it. “Yes, I was planning to,” she said, crying. I told her that her daughter wanted her to know that they were still connected, and that she should allow herself to move on. “She’s telling me you have to stay here, you have more to do. She says, ‘You’ve got to take care of my little sister.’ ” She was literally talking her mother out of suicide from the other side. A friend who was with me that night told me it was the most intense reading he had ever seen. I can’t know for sure; I only hope I’m right. But I think the spirit of this little girl managed to pull her mother in from the ledge.
It would be understandable for Carol Maywood to take her brother Dan’s “videotape” as a push from him to pursue an investigation and, hopefully, justice. But as a medium, I prefer to see Dan’s message more simply and purely: that even though his death was horrible and it remained a mystery, her family should accept it, and know that it was all right for them to move on. I’m constantly getting a “let it go” feeling from the other side. A tragic death, a mystery, doesn’t alter that desire. Dan and Carol were still connected. And she didn’t need a medium to know that.
— CHAPTER 6 —
Legends
of Rock
Debbie’s Daddy
One day during the winter of 1998, I got an e-mail from a friend of mine, Stephen Reed, wondering if I might do him a favor. He hated to ask, he knew I was busy, but would I be able to squeeze in a reading for someone? She had just lost her dad, and it would really mean a lot. Like most of my friends, Stephen knew I don’t like to do readings as favors because it’s not fair to the people who are waiting and don’t have a back way in. So for him to ask, I figured it must be pretty important. And I was getting a “do it” feeling from The Boys, so I said sure, no problem. But I was on the road a lot, so I wasn’t sure when I could do it. I was about to go to New Orleans. Hey, she’s in Tennessee, Stephen e-mailed back—maybe you can stop there on your way down. Don’t push it, Stephen. I told him I would do it by phone when I got to my hotel in New Orleans.
The woman’s name was Debbie, and she sure was from Tennessee. I told her I knew she had just lost her dad but that I had to be honest with her. I had no control who came through. Sometimes it’s the person we least expect or want to hear from.
Two women came through first. Debbie identified the first as an aunt of hers who had died of breast cancer. The second was a black woman with a bea
utiful smile. She was bringing in a tall man wearing creased blue jeans, a blue shirt, and white tennis shoes. “He’s telling me he’s your dad. He says this lady was the one who greeted him on the other side.”
“That’s Gracie!” Debbie said. “She helped raise me. She came to work for my family when I was very young, and she was like a second mother to me. My dad used to drink, and when he got rowdy, we always called Gracie. She was the only one who could calm him down.”
I thought it was a little odd that Debbie was trying to connect with her dad, and here he was, but the one she was excited about was the maid. She said later she didn’t acknowledge her father at first because she wanted more evidence, even though everything I said made sense to her. Her dad never wore a pair of blue jeans that weren’t starched with a permanent leg crease, he loved white tennis shoes, and in her hands as we spoke was his favorite blue shirt. She was ready to acknowledge Gracie with far less. But Daddy was special. She was holding out for more. She didn’t validate anything. But just in case, she had a friend listening in on an extension, taking notes.
“This man is acknowledging a marble statue. Does this mean anything to you?”
“Yes, it does.”
“Okay. There’s some guy coming through now with dark hair and dark glasses. He’s standing beside your dad.”
“That would be Roy Orbison.”
“He’s saying he’s hanging out with the guy that always wore the dark glasses and dark hair. There’s someone else. He’s telling me he’s with the guy who had the belt that’s hanging on the wall.”
“Elvis.”
“Elvis? Who is this guy, anyway? Who am I talking to—who’s your dad?”
“My dad was Carl Perkins.”
I was clueless. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know who that is.”
“He wrote ‘Blue Suede Shoes.’ It was Elvis’s first big hit.”
“Holy shit,” I said, unable to restrain my shock. I’d gotten Andy Warhol once, but Elvis? I know how ridiculous this might seem. I mean, Elvis? Puleeeze. But it’s not like I was reading one of those Elvis impersonators from Las Vegas. Debbie really did have a connection. And I really didn’t know that. And her father’s name really did mean nothing to me, having been born two months after Woodstock.
“Okay, now he’s telling me there was some kind of incident with a dog the night after his funeral. He wants you to know he was there. Do you understand?”
“Yes.” Carl’s dog’s name was Suede Blue, and they were very tight. They had a trick they did together, Carl getting down on his hands and knees, and Suede jumping over him. It was a trick Suede would do only with Carl. After the funeral, Debbie and her mother looked out the window and saw Suede in the backyard, jumping as if Carl were there. Debbie had remarked to her mother that she felt her dad was there. Now he wanted her to know that he was.
Debbie was trying to take all this in when I told her, “Your dad says you don’t have to cling so tightly to the shirt you’re holding.” Remember, this was a phone reading, and she hadn’t validated any of the earlier information, so I didn’t know she was holding the shirt.
I smelled something. It was musty, dank. Like a basement with a moisture problem. Debbie said I seemed to be describing her father’s studio. It was next to the pool. “Elvis keeps coming in,” I told her. “He and your father had drifted apart in this life, but they are well connected on the other side. Your dad is acknowledging some special picture of Elvis.”
“Oh, yes, the famous Elvis picture. When Daddy built his recording studio, the first picture he put up was one of Elvis. I asked him if he was ever going to let Elvis die. He told me Elvis would live forever.”
“He wants you to know, Debbie, he knows you did everything to save him. He was so tired. His body was just shutting down. He made the decision to go. He wants you to know that. He realized his work here was done, and he was ready to go. He says he arranged this phone call himself. He’s smiling. Something about roses? He still works in the rose bed, but these have no thorns.”
Debbie said her parents raised beautiful roses, and every morning when they were in bloom, her dad would have a fresh bouquet waiting for her mom when she got up. He always fussed about the thorns. He described his funeral—“He compares it to Princess Diana’s. He liked the butterfly wreath Dolly Parton sent. He wants you to thank Billy Ray for the beautiful song.” I swear I’m not making this up. I was blown away by the amount and detail of the information Debbie’s dad was giving me. I told her he must have been a very spiritual man. Debbie said he was.
“Did you at some point ask your dad if you were doing the right thing or what should you do?”
“I sure did. Those were exactly my last words to him before they closed the casket.”
“Well, he wants you to know you are doing the right thing, and he will always be with you to help you. Now he’s holding up a coffee cup. An empty coffee cup.”
“He’d be sitting in his chair in the den. Mama would be in the kitchen. The den and kitchen are basically one big room divided by a bar. When his coffee cup got empty, he didn’t say a word. He just held it up and Mama would bring him more. One day I was there and I told him he was so spoiled. And he just smiled. He loved it, and so did she.”
“He’s saying he wants you to be sure she’s always treated like a queen. He’s so proud of her and knows she is very strong. He wants you to tell her he will let her know he’s around. He will meet her on the other side when it’s time. . . . Something about biscuits, and he keeps saying ‘hatch.’ ”
“Mama is a great cook. She’s known for her biscuits and what Daddy called ‘hatched-up meals.’ He loved those meals she just whipped up on the spur of the moment more than the big feast at Thanksgiving.”
“Is there a river behind your house? Did someone pull someone out of it?”
“No, but Daddy and I, along with a good friend, Randy Moore, started a song about someone saving a friend from drowning.”
“That’s it. He says to finish it. It’s important. He keeps referring to the word spirit. He says it’s important as it relates to you.” It would be a year before Debbie realized that this reference had a double meaning. Her father’s last business partner introduced her to a music publisher in New York named Mark Fried, who signed her as a songwriter. The name of his company was Spirit Publishing.
WHEN I GOT HOME FROM MY TRIP to New Orleans, I got a call from Stephen Reed, thanking me for doing the reading. Debbie had never had an experience like this, he said, and it really helped her. Her father had died only a few weeks before. I told Stephen that Debbie’s father’s energy was amazing for someone so new to the other side.
Stephen said that now he could tell me more. The person who had actually asked him to set this up was not Debbie, but a friend of Debbie’s father’s named Rick Korn (whom I’ve mentioned earlier in this book). He was a younger guy, about Debbie’s age, who had met Carl only three years before he died, but became extremely close to him. It was Rick who set Debbie up with Spirit Publishing.
Rick Korn was one of those guys who always seemed to be onto some new idea or project, always networking and introducing his contacts to his other contacts. He was in media marketing, to describe his career loosely. After growing up on Long Island and then living with his high school buddy Marc Gurvitz during Marc’s fledgling years as a comedy manager in Hollywood, Rick headed back east. He worked everywhere from the Home Shopping Network in Florida to Whittle Communications in Tennessee. Now he and his wife, A.J., and their three kids were up north again, on the Jersey shore, where Rick had started a company called Television Production Partners. He put together ten of the world’s biggest advertisers—AT&T, Sears, McDonald’s—and got them to put forty million dollars into a pot to create quality TV programs that they, rather than the TV networks, would own.
One day in 1995, A.J. answered the phone and found an oldersounding man with a major country twang on the other end asking for Rick. “Do we owe one of the gardeners fro
m Tennessee some money?” she asked Rick with a laugh, handing him the phone. But when Rick got on the phone, the man introduced himself as Carl Perkins. When Rick didn’t immediately recognize the name, the man said, “I wrote ‘Blue Suede Shoes.’ ” The song was literally his calling card. As mentioned earlier, Carl had a dog named Suede Blue and his daughter’s restaurant was named Suede’s. The phone number ended in 1956—the year Elvis recorded the song that made them both a little more famous.
Elvis Presley was the first singer hired by Sun Records, and Carl Perkins was the second. In 1956, Presley, Perkins, Johnny Cash, and Jerry Lee Lewis were rock ’n’ roll. They were known as the “Million Dollar Quartet” because each had recorded a hit song. Carl’s was “Blue Suede Shoes,” and it’s been called the first true rock ’n’ roll hit. Carl wrote it in 1955, after Johnny Cash joined him for a show in Mississippi and suggested he write a song based on a saying he’d heard on line in the mess hall in the service: “Don’t step on my blue suede shoes.” A few nights later, Carl was playing in Jackson, Tennessee, and saw a guy dancing in the crowd trying to keep his girlfriend away from his new blue suede shoes. He woke up with the song in his head in the middle of the night, went downstairs, and wrote out the lyrics in pencil on a potato bag.
Carl’s recording of the song sold more than a million copies, for which Sam Phillips, the owner of Sun Records, gave him a pink Cadillac. Carl had a band with his brothers, and they got into a horrible car accident that broke practically every bone in Carl’s body. Elvis came to the hospital and told Carl he was going to sing “Blue Suede Shoes” for him on the Perry Como Show. It became a mega-hit, but Carl didn’t get any money from it and had to sue the owner of Sun Records to get the rights back in 1975.