The Chain-Smoking, Kitchen-Pacing Spirit Messenger

Fascinating insights gained after discovering a second legitimate medium.

Bob Olson is the host of Afterlife TV, author of two books, Answers About The Afterlife and The Magic Mala, and creator of the reputable directory of psychics and mediums, BestPsychicDirectory.com.

Photo by Sabine R on Unsplash

Many moons ago, while investigating the afterlife, I decided to get a reading with a second medium. Up to this point, I had been testing a medium named Sally for about eighteen months to determine what was possible with mediumship. A holistic practitioner had given me the name of another medium named Joe, so I called him.

Joe answered the phone, and I began to introduce myself. That’s when Joe interrupted, “Wait, what’s your name again?”

“Bob Olson,” I said.

“Has your father passed, Bob?”

“Yes, my father has passed.”

“Well, he’s here with me now, and he was coming through last night during a group session I gave at my home. He kept giving me your name, but no one could claim it when I asked the group if anyone knew a Bob Olson. Now I understand why I was getting it. Your father knew you’d be calling this morning and wanted me to pay attention to it.”

I laughed. “I don’t know how my father knew I’d be calling you, especially last night. I didn’t know I would call you until this morning.”

“People in the spirit world can see a little into the future,” explained Joe. “Your father knew you’d be calling. He has an important message for you, but I’m with clients right now, so I’ll call you in two or three days, okay?”

“Um, okay,” is all I could say before Joe said, “Bye,” and hung up.

I must have had a peculiar look as my jaw dropped due to the shock of what Joe had just done.

It wasn’t that I was shocked that my father came through. I was no longer surprised by spirit communication. It was that Joe told me my father had an “important” message for me and then said he wouldn’t call me back for two or three days. Many people in that situation would have freaked.

What’s the important message my father’s spirit has for me? Am I dying? Is someone I know going to die? Am I in danger? Is someone I know in danger?

Those are a few possible thoughts that might go through a person’s mind after hearing that their dead father is trying to get an important message to them.

A psychic once told me that, like most people, he’d say goodbye to people leaving his house by adding, “Drive safe.” For the rest of us, our friends take that as a thoughtful statement. But if you’re a psychic or medium, people get nervous and ask, “Drive safe? Why? What do you know?”

I got off the phone and walked into the office to tell Melissa what had occurred. Her immediate reaction was one of concern. “What do you think the important message is?” After a few seconds passed, she added, “What do you mean we have to wait two or three days?!”

I chuckled. “Honey, if my father had anything important to tell us, don’t you think he could just tell Sally?”

“I don’t know,” she said, “We haven’t talked to her in a couple of weeks. Maybe we should call her.”

“I’m not going to call her. I’m sure it’s nothing. Just forget about it for now. We’ll know in two or three days.”

Melissa wasn’t comforted by my aloofness, but I couldn’t help to see the humor in it. Nonetheless, as the day passed, I realized there was an important lesson for Joe that he needed to hear. I called Joe the following day. Disappointingly, I got his answering machine (this was before cell phones), so I left a message.

“Hi, Joe, Bob Olson calling. Joe, I don’t know if you realize what you did yesterday, but I thought you’d want to know. You told me you had an important message from my dead father and then said you were too busy to tell me what it was and couldn’t call me for two or three days. Fortunately, I’m familiar with mediumship, and it didn’t scare me. But if you say that to most people, you might really freak them out. I just thought you should know.”

Joe called back when I wasn’t home, leaving a message on my answering machine. The voice on the message was a different Joe than I’d spoken to the day before. His manner was calm and caring. He expressed regret and apologized for the way he handled our phone call. He even recognized how some people might have panicked at what he said. He invited me to call him as soon as I arrived home.

When I finally contacted Joe, he said a few things that led me to deduce his gift was genuine, so we scheduled an appointment for a reading about two weeks later—his earliest appointment. I would now have to wait two weeks to learn my father's important message for me from beyond the grave.

I knew this scenario could be a sneaky way for a medium to pick up business. Tell people you have an important message from a loved one in spirit, then make them schedule an appointment to hear it. But this didn’t feel like that situation. Perhaps Joe was being insensitive or lacking in empathy, but I didn’t feel he was being manipulative.

The Reading

When I arrived at Joe’s home in the countryside, it was a perfect day for a spiritual experience. It was mid-summer, and the sun was bright and warm. I walked up to his historic old house and found a sign on the door: Please enter quietly and have a seat in the waiting room.

Walking in the door, I faced a stairway with rooms to either side. On my left was a room with a massage table where candles and crystals scattered the space. I saw some business cards on a table that read, Spiritual Medium: Talking to Heaven. Would You Like to Place a Call? The slogan made me smile.

I entered the waiting room to the right of the stairway. I sat on the sofa and was greeted by an overstuffed cat that was as soft as it was fluffy. “I see Joe’s feeding you well,” I told the cat. He gave me a smirk that indicated he was more than content.

I looked around the room like an investigator. I saw a dry-erase board listing Joe’s workshops (empty at the time), a Spirit of Change magazine on a coffee table, various books about holistic subjects on a small bookshelf, and photographs of what I assumed were Joe’s children, both adorable (a boy and a girl).

Joe did his readings in the kitchen at the back of the house. It seemed odd that he would do readings in the kitchen, but I was about to learn how sitting at the kitchen table with Joe was comfortable and welcoming. It reminded me of my childhood years when my mother would take me to visit her friends. I would play with trucks on the cold linoleum floor while the women would chat, drink coffee, and smoke their Kent cigarettes at a kitchen table. (Yes, I grew up at a time when nobody thought twice about smoking cigarettes in the house around children.)

From the waiting room sofa, I could faintly hear Joe talking. Occasionally, I’d catch some weeping sounds from the client being read, but for the most part, the conversation was barely audible. My thoughts were focused on what was to come. Now that the time had arrived, I was more curious than ever about the “important” message my father had for me. It had been two weeks since my first conversation with Joe.

When it was my turn to enter the kitchen, Joe seemed slightly frazzled. I sat down at a table that was covered with crystals. On Joe’s side was a big pad of paper and a black marker. Joe politely asked if I minded if he smoked. I didn’t. He lit one up and sat at the table across from me. He appeared to be making every effort to relax.

Joe gave me the impression he had no memory of our phone exchange. I contemplated whether I should remind him, deciding it might be more interesting if I didn’t.

Joe confessed that he was concerned about how well my reading would go. He said the reading before mine was a bust—he got nothing. I found that odd, considering I heard the client crying. I initially thought she was emotional about a reunion with a deceased loved one, but maybe she was weeping because he wasn’t getting any messages. Joe said he would give it ten or fifteen minutes, and if he weren’t getting anything, he would stop without charging me. I was disappointed but hopeful. After all, my father came through to Joe on the phone call two weeks prior. Surely, he wouldn’t let it go poorly.

Once Joe began the reading, he got up from his seat and began pacing back and forth across the kitchen floor. It was as if excess energy was flowing through him, and it helped him to release it by getting his ten thousand steps in during the reading.

He also chain-smoked as he paced. It was quite a sight. I felt like I was in a Saturday Night Live skit. Here I was, sitting at a kitchen table in a historic New England home, as a medium walked back and forth while giving messages from spirit and leaving a trail of smoke in his wake. The scene was a million miles apart from my experiences as a skeptical private investigator.

Joe began with some hot evidence right out of the gate. A man with an “R vibration” was coming through (my father’s name is Robert). Then, there was a “Mary” on my mother’s side coming through (my grandmother’s name is Mary). Then, a “Katherine” came through (Melissa’s grandmother’s is Katherine). All three were deceased.

I was furiously writing everything down, so I wasn’t giving Joe much feedback, which I don’t tend to do anyway.

“They’re showing me that you’re currently looking at real estate or property,” said Joe. Melissa and I were looking for a new place to live and had been checking out several places listed in the newspaper.

“Your father’s showing me that he had an awkward gait to his walk,” added Joe. My father had disabling back problems that caused him to walk as if every step triggered a shooting pain from his back down into his right leg.

“Your father says he’s with Paul, who died from something related to his stomach.” My father’s favorite uncle was Uncle Paul, who died from malaria during the war.

This is how the reading continued. Joe hammered me with evidence as I furiously wrote everything down. Taking notes dominated my focus. Consequently, my lack of response caused Joe to think he wasn’t doing a good job. It didn’t help that he expected to do poorly.

Having spent the previous eighteen months researching mediumship and testing one medium’s abilities incessantly, I wasn’t as expressive as most clients. I know I wasn’t reacting with surprise or tears when Joe hit upon significant evidence. After all, that’s what I was expecting. Unfortunately, my lack of response gave Joe the impression that he was botching up the reading when, in fact, he was being a rock star.

Joe received the message that my father lost two children. Joe gave me the name Peter. This confused Joe because my father gave only one name after mentioning two children, but both were named Peter. Since the first Peter (Peter Bart) died at birth—and my father wanted a boy named Peter—my parents used the name again years later with another child (Peter Bret). That child died at birth, too, so I’m glad my parents named me Bob.

Joe also knew I’d just talked to a friend named Rick at the post office who had been suffering from anxiety. I had seen Rick the day prior. He told me how he was waking up in the middle of the night with panic attacks. Sadly, I didn’t remember this when Joe gave me the message because I only knew Rick because he worked at the post office. It wasn’t until I got home and was telling Melissa about my reading that I remembered picking up the mail the day before. Poor Joe.

Joe said my father was with me early that morning when I woke up at ten minutes to four. It was true. I’d woken up at ten to four that morning. I was amazed by Joe’s accuracy, but then he said, “Your father says you were trying to see him. He was trying to manifest himself so you could.” This was remarkable because I was trying to see my dad that morning. I could feel his presence but wanted to see him, too. So I tried. It didn’t work, but it was validation enough that Dad knew about it and told me through Joe.

Joe kept firing off messages I later realized were accurate and evidential, but I wasn’t giving him the feedback he needed. I don’t remember names well during readings. It’s called “psychic amnesia,” which happens to many people. The medium is telling someone about a spirit named Sam who worked as a police officer, and the client keeps saying, “Nope, I don’t know anyone by that name.” Confident psychics and mediums are more persistent and, therefore, insistent, “You’re sure you don’t know anyone with a name like Sam who worked as a police officer?” Nine times out of ten, it finally clicks with the client. “Oh, of course, you’re talking about my brother Samuel, a security guard!”

Psychics and mediums must have strong eye muscles due to all the eye-rolling they must do.

Sometimes, the client doesn’t know the information, even if it’s true. Joe said my father kept talking about someone named Beth and a Labrador retriever. Unbeknownst to me, our friends Beth and Rich had just got a Lab puppy. Joe knew about it. I didn’t.

One message that I should have understood but didn’t is a little more embarrassing. Joe kept giving me the initials “L.P.” Several times, he repeated them, and several times, I denied knowing what they meant. When I got home and told Melissa about the reading, she cocked her head like a curious puppy, “You didn’t understand the initials L.P.?”

My father’s friend and Melissa’s former boss of three years was named L.P. His first and middle names were Lenny and Patrick, so people called him L.P. Lenny died about a month before my reading with Joe. It’s embarrassing I didn’t place the initials only a month after his passing, but I was trying to think of someone closer to me. It’s another common reason for psychic amnesia. We’re thinking of a spouse, sibling, or parent when our loved ones in spirit are talking about extended family and friends.

If you think it’s disturbing that Joe gave me such an excellent reading without me acknowledging half of it, it gets worse. I was so busy writing things down and struggling with all the names he was giving me that I didn’t have the opportunity to realize how well he was doing. About fifteen minutes into the reading, Joe told me his energies were depleted. He explained that I was his seventh reading that day but that his first five were some of the best readings he had ever done. The woman before me—his sixth—he claimed was a bust. Now, I was sitting before him, and he was considering sending me home.

Joe’s constant pacing and chain-smoking suddenly stopped. He plopped in his chair, looking defeated as he stared at the kitchen floor, leaning his elbows on his knees. For the first time since my reading began, I recognized the calm and peaceful Joe I had talked to on the phone when I made the appointment. His warm and compassionate charm peaked its head out.

I told Joe, “Look, if you want to call it a day, I understand.”

With that, Joe took a deep breath and said he wanted to give it a few more minutes.

It was clear Joe didn’t recall how we met on the phone. I reminded him, and he asked my father about the “important” message he had for me. My father told Joe that he wanted to congratulate me on my work. He wanted me to know that I was doing the right thing. My father explained that he was with me every step of the way. That he helped me. That he was proud of me.

Joe was unsatisfied with my father’s messages. He found it difficult to understand why this message was so important that it warranted interrupting his group session the night before I called two weeks prior.

“Oh, come on,” Joe said to my father, “there’s got to be something more important that you wanted to tell Bob.” But there wasn’t. “Congratulations” was the important message and was enough for me. Knowing I was moving in the right direction was immensely significant. Even though Joe expected something more newsbreaking, I was comforted by it.

Afterthoughts

Naturally, neither Joe nor I realized I was on a fateful journey. First, I met Sally. Now I was meeting Joe. Soon, there would be hundreds of other gifted psychics and mediums. This “important message” ordeal may have been my father’s way of getting me to take my investigation to a new level.

This meeting would soon affect Joe’s destiny, too, because I wrote about my reading with him, which got published in the magazine I saw on Joe’s coffee table, Spirit of Change. That article catapulted his career to a new level beyond his imagination. Thus, this reading was an essential event for both of us, which became evident before the year ended.

My first reading with Joe lasted only twenty minutes, not the hour I had booked. Joe sent me home, insisting I not pay, which confirmed my intuition about his ethics. He felt his abilities were tired and off-peak from a long day. I, on the other hand, didn’t recognize how well Joe had done until I looked over my notes at home.

When my first reading with Joe ended, it was hard to believe I’d found another legitimate medium. I would soon meet even more gifted mediums worldwide, then hypnotic regressionists, near-death experiencers, out-of-body experiencers, and even spirit artists. The floodgates had now opened. New experiences, knowledge, and relationships soon poured into my life. Had I known what was to come, I might have frozen in fear. But my ignorance was a blessing, as were the experiences heading my way.

I’ve shared this experience with you because I believe we learn a lot about spirituality by having personal experiences like these. I was a novice on all things afterlife at the time of this reading. Yet, look at how much I learned about spirit communication from this experience alone. That’s why I continuously encourage you to seek out your own experiences. Personal experiences like these take us from belief to knowing, and I believe they invite the Universe to send miraculous serendipities our way. That is what I wish for you: miraculous serendipities.

Thank you for reading, and I’ll see you in the comment section.

With love,
Bob

Bob Olson is the host of Afterlife TV, author of two books, Answers About The Afterlife and The Magic Mala, and creator of the reputable directory of psychics and mediums, BestPsychicDirectory.com. His newest venture is Bob Olson Connect, where you can read Bob’s articles before they become books.

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