Hear our full chat on my podcast “Beyond the Fame with Jason Fraley.”
You know her as the self-proclaimed psychic medium from the TLC reality series “Long Island Medium.”
This Friday night, Theresa Caputo performs live at MGM National Harbor in Oxon Hill, Maryland.
“I’ll come out on stage, give a quick speech on how I read and connect with souls of the departed,” Caputo told WTOP. “Once I start sensing and feeling things, which doesn’t take long, I come off stage and have Spirit guide me around the space. I have no idea who’s going to get read, what Spirit is going to have me say, I have cameras follow me around and a big screen so no matter where you’re seated in the theater, you can be part of the experience.”
The current show celebrates the 10th anniversary of her live tour, “The Experience.”
“To be in such a space and feel the energy of healing, I think everyone walks into the theater hoping and wishing to hear from their departed loved ones,” Caputo said. “When that moment happens, it’s almost paralyzing because you can’t believe it’s actually happening. The things that Spirit has me say is mind-blowing. After all these decades, Spirit continues to floor me with the validations of an afterlife and, more importantly, that they are still us.”
Born on Long Island in Hicksville, New York in 1967, Caputo claims she grew up experiencing the supernatural.
“I’ve been sensing and seeing the souls of the departed since I was 4,” Caputo said. “Growing up, I thought it was normal that everybody saw someone standing at the foot of their bed at night and heard someone speak to them when there was no one else in the room but myself. I used to say to my parents, ‘I don’t feel right.’ … It wasn’t until later in my 20s, early 30s … that I realized that people needed to hear from their loved ones so they can heal.”
So, she began conducting readings with nothing more than a business card and word of mouth.
“I never thought in my wildest dreams that it would be a career,” Caputo said. “I had a business card, I didn’t even have a website, I had an email address and phone number, doing private readings in homes, restaurants. I had a two-year waiting list when the TV show came about. … My manage lost her dad and came to me for a reading. … She was involved in TV and said, ‘This has changed my life so profoundly, everyone should have access to heal.”
Thus, her TV show “Long Island Medium” aired on TLC for 14 seasons from 2011 to 2019.
“I remember reading a woman, a couple on the brink of divorce,” Caputo said. “They unfortunately lost their son, who was disabled [and] got out of the sliding glass door without the dad knowing and drowned in the pool. The mom blamed the husband. … Their son came through and said, ‘Mom, Dad’s journey was to carry my death, not yours.’ … To watch the woman reach over and grab her husband’s hand, it was a moment. This is why I do what I do.”
After a long-running reality show, Caputo has entered pop-culture lore of psychic activity, including movie portraits like Whoopi Goldberg’s Oda Mae Brown saying, “You’re in danger, girl” in the romance “Ghost” (1990) or Haley Joel Osment’s Cole Sear famously saying, “I see dead people” in the thriller “The Sixth Sense” (1999).
“I think ‘The Sixth Sense’ and ‘Ghost’ are probably the two movies that I connect with on a personal level, that’s how it is for me,” Caputo said. “As a child growing up, seeing things, being afraid but not afraid [like ‘The Sixth Sense’] and in ‘Ghost’ when Whoopi Goldberg talks about the penny or the earrings, those are things that I have Spirit refer to and talk about to really validate that it is a soul connection and a bond that can never be broken.”
Of course, there are also phony psychics in movies like Frank Morgan’s Professor Marvel in “The Wizard of Oz” (1939), who fools Dorothy by rummaging through her basket to find photos of Auntie Em and other clues to make predictions. In a world of, “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain,” what does Caputo say to skeptics?
“I’m the first one to say that what I do is crazy,” Caputo said. “I sense and feel things that mean nothing to me but are absolutely life-changing to the person that I’m speaking to. This isn’t about people believing in me or what I do. I don’t care if they believe in what I do. I want them to believe in themselves and know that they still have that connection with their loved ones and that there is truly more to life than just here in the physical world.”
She’s since written four books: “There’s More to Life Than This: Healing Messages, Remarkable Stories and Insight About the Other Side from the Long Island Medium” (2013), “You Can’t Make This Stuff Up: Life Changing Lessons from Heaven” (2014), “Good Grief: Heal Your Soul, Honor Your Loved Ones and Learn to Live Again” (2017) and “Good Mourning: Moving Through Everyday Losses With Wisdom From The Other Side” (2020).
In 2020, she also launched the podcast “Hey, Spirit!” with nearly 150 episodes.
And yet, Caputo is still spooked out by the supernatural from time to time.
“I’m actually afraid of the dark, I still sleep with a night light and I still live next door to my parents, next to the house that I grew up in,” Caputo said. “I’ll never try to defend or prove my gift to anyone. I’m just being me.”
Hear our full chat on my podcast “Beyond the Fame with Jason Fraley.”
