There's More to Life Than This: Healing Messages, Remarkable Stories, and Insight About the Other Side from the Long Island Medium

by Caputo, Theresa

  #6: Most of Spirit’s messages are for you, and only you.

  Although Spirit piggybacks messages in a large group and viewers have emailed me to say that a reading on TV resonated with them, it amazes me that Spirit’s communication is usually really specific. The best example of this is when I channeled the same soul for two sisters, in back-to-back readings. I didn’t realize they were related when I booked them, because I don’t ask for last names. But when I channeled the first woman’s father, his soul gave me a message and said, “That’s for the next reading.” The other sister was waiting in the car, and I had no idea. So when the second woman came in for her session, I asked how she knew the person before her. “I feel a father figure hanging around,” I said, “and I’m not sure why he’s still here. Usually Spirit leaves when you do.” That’s when I found out that the two women were related, and the only thing these sisters had in common was the person they lost. Their father’s messages were different because the women have different needs, and those are what his soul specifically addressed.

  #7: Cherish your loved ones’ memory, not their booty.

  It’s no secret that people tend to get a little grabby when a loved one dies. I’ll take the Venetian mirror! I want the cordial glasses! Dibs on the cocktail ring! The point of inheriting a prized possession is to have an item that reminds you of your family member or friend, not to acquire a piece that gets you on Antiques Roadshow. When Nanny died, it’s surprising that she came to me as a big, fat fly instead of as a big, fat diamond because the woman had a lot of gorgeous gems. When we divvied up her stuff, one family member got a stunning ring, another got a fancy bracelet . . . and I was given her simple, gold cross. Though I was only sixteen years old at the time, I won’t lie—I felt slighted. I know that sounds shallow, but it’s true. Then about fourteen years later, on Christmas morning, Nanny came to me and said, “You have my most precious piece of jewelry.” I don’t know the history of her cross, or why it meant so much to her, but I began to treasure it more after that. The cross wasn’t her most expensive possession, but it was one of her most valuable pieces. Her visit also came when I was building my library of signs and symbols, so whenever Spirit shows me Nanny’s cross, it means that a soul wants to talk about how a person has their most precious piece—be it a quilt, journal, scarf, you name it. And surprise, surprise, the meaning that Spirit attaches to their most cherished items usually outweighs their monetary value.

  #8: Don’t waste energy on survivor’s guilt.

  This subject is important to Spirit, mostly because survivor’s guilt keeps you from embracing life without your loved ones, which is the opposite of what they want you to do. One of the most amazing times that this came up was when I read a woman on the show who had stage-four breast cancer and her sister-in-law died from the same disease when it was only in stage one. The two women bravely fought their condition together, and the one who is still here felt tremendous survivor’s guilt for outliving her sister-in-law and also for all the energy that her friends and family devoted to helping her feel well, when in retrospect, she wondered if her relative needed it more. Another time, I channeled the soul of a girl who’d asked her friend to pick her up from a party, but it was late at night, and she was tired, so she asked her pal to grab a cab or find another ride. When she did, the car crashed and the girl died. You can imagine the guilt her friend had for not dragging herself out of bed to pick up her friend from the event. But her soul told us that even if the friend had picked her up, they still would have had an accident, and then the girl would have also felt guilty about contributing to her death. She wouldn’t have saved her friend’s life. In both situations, Spirit wanted these people to release any survivor’s guilt they felt connected to the passing and try to move forward. The recurring thoughts, images, and dreams that people experience when they suffer from survivor’s guilt can be torturous and haunting for them, and your deceased loved ones don’t want you to experience these feelings. They want you to release this burden, and recognize that you still have a lot to do and appreciate here in the physical world.

  #9: Don’t take your life for granted.

  I will never tell people who are grieving a loss that they need to move on already. But Spirit does want you to embrace your life without your loved ones, if just in baby steps—first in moments, then days, then entire months . . . as best you can. During a show in Tampa, a boy’s soul came through to say that two weeks prior, he died from what was ruled a suicide but was truly a homicide. He was shot point-blank in the chest by a shotgun, which, he reminded me, is nearly impossible unless you have Go-Go Gadget arms. He showed me that his mother was in a dark and heavily medicated place, and his soul validated its presence by saying that Mom had his car deed with her (she then pulled it out of her purse) and that he supports how she’s laying him to rest (she’d made the decision the day before). And though this concerned soul was trying so hard to say, “Look, Ma, it’s me. I’m okay,” the mom told me that all she saw was despair.

  What the boy’s soul said next, however, did resonate with her in a significant way. He told her that he knows that she prays to fall asleep and never wake up, but that it is not her time to die, and she needs to stay in this world for a while without him. “I was all my mother had,” he told me, as an explanation for her crippling grief. He went on to say that she doesn’t need to take her life to be with her son, because he is with her every time she feels sad and misses him. Equally startling, perhaps, is that the woman was invited to my show at the last minute by a friend with an extra ticket, so she easily could have missed this enormous message from her thoughtful and sympathetic son. I really feel that his soul’s words opened his mom’s eyes and possibly saved her life.

  #10: Seize the day, not just Spirit.

  I have a strong faith and know a lot about the Other Side, but Spirit doesn’t run my life for me, and they won’t do the same for you. They will intervene, assist, and guide you from Heaven, but the crux of your life is what you make of it. Thanks to free will, your decisions are what determine whether the majority of your time here is full of pleasure or despair, certainty or doubt, trust or skepticism. To pursue the most positive path, which is what I try to do every day, you really must choose to meditate, pray, visualize, let go of fear, be grateful, raise your vibration, and ultimately believe that God, other Spirit, and your loved ones are around you. Their presence means that your thoughts are heard, prayers are being answered, and that miracles can unfold. I have a lot of respect for Abe Lincoln, and I’ve always liked when he said, “And in the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.” I can only hope that my gift will continue to help you fill your years with faith, happiness, laughter, and an abundance of love.

  Afterword

  A Word from My Ghost—

  Er, Spirit—Writer

  One of the most fun parts of my job as a cowriter is that I’m forced to get inside my author’s head and understand what it’s like to “be her,” so that the story feels compelling and credible. This usually happens through interviews and over lunches, in a very natural and comfortable way. But when I initially thought about whether I could “be Theresa,” I was a little concerned. I adored her from the very instant we met and was a big fan of her show, but I’m not from Long Island, I don’t speak to dead people, and I haven’t bought hair spray since 1984. How would I pull this off? Well, as you know from the book, Spirit is a literal and well-intentioned bunch, and my thoughts must have doubled as prayer. Let’s just say that if I ever wrote a memoir about what my family went through as I worked on this project, I might have to call it That Time We Were Psychic.

  I’ve always believed that mediums can connect with the Other Side, and for some, this gift comes from God; my husband, Scott, however, is another story. He was a real skeptic, and when I asked him how he thought I should handle the few, small details Theresa wasn’t sure about, he joked, “Do what all mediums do. Make it
up!” (Don’t worry, we turned to Spirit and Pat for answers instead.) So it was pretty funny that when our household began experiencing Spirit, the souls went straight to Scott and not me. He began “seeing things,” which challenged his beliefs, so you can only imagine how thrown and scared he felt at night. All told, Scott saw kids floating outside our second-floor bedroom window, a little girl beside the bed, a man in a suit and hat at the foot of it, and a white dress floating across the room. Once, he even sat up and began pointing to the corner of the room, but in a way that looked like his arm was being yanked. Scott woke me with each sighting, but he said the souls disappeared when he did. I was later told that these beings weren’t attached to our house or property, but were coming around because of the book; they wanted to tell their stories. Because we all connect with Spirit differently, only Scott had the ability to see them. I said a quick prayer that these souls leave the poor guy alone, and the craziness stopped for him. Then, it began for me.

  First, I experienced physical sensations in and out of bed. I’d close my eyes, and before drifting to sleep, I sensed what Pat later said was Spirit being close to my body. One night, I felt a prickly energy push against my back and heard a whooshing noise in both ears, as if I were underwater. Another time, shortly after I closed my eyes, I could see myself lying in bed, as if I were outside my body, and then I felt like the inside of me (my soul?) was being shaken; when I opened my eyes, my chest felt very heavy. Needless to say, I beat it out of bed, grabbed the dog, and made Scott come to sleep earlier than he wanted. And sometimes when I wrote, I heard a high-pitched ringing noise in my right ear, or it felt full or turned beet red and very hot. This sent me running to an ear, nose, and throat doctor, who said I was fine and had perfect hearing. As it turns out, these ear symptoms can occur when Spirit is nearby.

  I shared some of my initial experiences with Theresa and Pat, who taught me how to establish boundaries and ground and protect myself, which we then put in the book. I did this every morning and night, before bed. I also saged the house twice a week. I never thought any of this was negative Spirit—just souls without boundaries, or at worst, a low-energy soul that had found its way in and was easy to smudge out. It all reminded me of how Theresa said she felt before she knew how to control the energy around her.

  I also had very vivid experiences when I closed my eyes. Most of the time, I’d see faces. I had clear, realistic dreams as well, where I was put into different scenarios we’d planned to cover in the book. Life reviews. Reincarnation. My soul swiftly leaving my body after a brutal death. They were like brief, rapid, back-to-back movie scenes, and they’d crowd my sleep so intensely that I’d be exhausted the next morning. I prayed that they stop, and they did. They were then replaced by visitations from my loved ones, which I cherished. My favorite was from my uncle, who was on a tour bus with people I didn’t know. He was wearing a Hawaiian shirt and had binoculars around his neck. The visitation lasted for seconds, as he looked at me and said, “I’m just passing through, but you need to know that what she says about lessons is real.” And then I woke up. He was a clever storyteller and witty man. Clearly, he kept his quirky personality in Heaven.

  During those initial weeks, I wondered if my imagination was running wild because I was so close to the material, but then our dog Izzy started to act strange. She barked and growled at the landing of our staircase, hid under my desk as I wrote, and stared calmly at the end of a bench in my office. In various rooms, her head darted around as if she were tracking a fast-moving object in the air. Her eyes grew really wide each time, and she’d look up at me like, “Did you see that?” It was so cute, but also super weird. When she jumped into my arms shaking at one point, I asked Spirit to please stop scaring her, and from then on, her head continued to look like it was watching invisible entities, but she no longer seemed afraid. She’d watch for a while, and then take a nap.

  I had a theory about what was going on: Maybe I was experiencing the chapters as we did them. When we wrote about connecting with Spirit and recognizing signs, I experienced details related to the topic. My chest felt heavy, though an X-ray said I was fine, and when I was mentally obsessing over this, a truck with the words “Heaven’s Best Carpet Cleaners” pulled up in front of me (I think I may have blocked energy in my chest like Theresa did before she knew how to channel it). Both in our house and once at a restaurant, teeny white feathers floated down from the ceiling, mere inches from my face. When I went on Google Maps to see how long it would take to drive to Theresa’s house, I was told one hour and eleven minutes (111 is said to be a sign of, among other things, spiritual awakening and enlightenment). And in the middle of winter, a big, fat, hairy fly buzzed around my TV room, which I immediately assumed was Nanny. Scott tried to kill it with a magazine, but I refused to let him. After he swore that I’d officially lost my mind, he tucked me into bed, and when he went back in to watch TV, the fly was dead on his side of the sofa. It’s like Nanny was saying, “Okay, my work here is done. I’m out.”

  As we went along, I also felt heightened emotions related to each chapter. I was deeply sad while writing about grief and broke out in scary, unexplainable hives when we talked about negativity. They appeared as weltlike scratches, and while the health nut in me knows that can happen if you have high histamine levels, it was eerie to see and new for me. Spirit was also quick to squash any hampering disbelief I might have had. One night I woke up around three a.m. to see little lights flashing over my dresser. I felt like my eyes were playing tricks on me, so I dismissed it. A few days later, I interviewed Theresa’s friend Geeta, who told me, unprompted, that she saw the same thing years ago. She’s intuitive, and for her, it was Spirit.

  I didn’t naïvely accept that every sign was from Spirit. When my dog growled and barked in the kitchen, I snooped around and found a mouse, not a soul. I also debunked a rag doll that fell off a shelf; at first, I thought Gram did this because it happened after writing an email about her, but then I realized that when I stepped on the area rug a certain way, it made the shelf move and the doll fall. Most coincidences, however, were indisputable. My favorite happened when I interviewed a woman named Melanie about her reading for the show. She told me that when she sees light stream through clouds, she calls them “God’s rays” and considers it a greeting from her loved ones’ souls, including her husband’s. I wrote chapter nine on a dark, dismal day, but when I got to the part about Melanie, the brightest, warmest ray of light broke through the clouds and shone only on my hands as I typed. I don’t get direct sun in my office, so this has never happened. And then there’s the incident with the letter S on my computer. I initially spelled “Spirit” with a capital S, but decided halfway through the book that it should be lowercase. So I tried using the “find and replace all” function to change all “Spirit” to “spirit,” but the document wouldn’t make the adjustment. It would, however, change all “spirit” to “Spirit.” Out of curiosity, I tried this with some other letters of the alphabet, and S was the only one that didn’t work with this function. Okay, Spirit it was!

  Such a sudden and unexpected flurry of Spirit in my life made me wonder if God was addressing my initial concern—that I wouldn’t be able to convincingly “be Theresa.” Because she feels things in a way that most of us don’t, it was occasionally hard for her to describe her experiences. But when I felt them too, I had a baseline and examples to reference. Seeing and sensing also made it easy for me to believe in such an out-there project for me. I would never work on a book that I felt was deceptive or fake in any way.

  Though all of my experiences felt so real to me, when I shared my stories with friends, I got a quick lesson in Skepticism 101. Most were on board, but some looked at me like I had four heads. So I rambled on for hours with believers, and shut my trap with cynics who made me feel embarrassed and dumb. I figured that this must be how mediums feel when they’re grilled by doubters, because like Theresa, I eventually found myself thinking, I don’t eve
n care if you buy this. I’m not here to convince you. I just want to share the astonishing things I’ve experienced. Then I’d choose my audience more carefully the next time. Thank God my mom and sister couldn’t get enough.