I’m sitting somewhere I never imagined I’d be, doing something I never thought I’d do.
I’m leaning towards her, beads of sweat building across my forehead. My arms are millimetres from hers. My pulse accelerates. My pupils enlarge. I don’t blink. Neither does she.
It’s well intense.
It’s December 2019, and I’m sitting opposite a psychic medium in a one-on-one reading at a professional networking event for gay men.
And, to my alarm, I’ve just realised: I’m crying. In public! In front of potential future husbands! The shame!
As the tears tickle my face, I suddenly realise: I didn’t cry like this over my dad’s death in 2015 until months, if not years, after he died.
I couldn’t believe the medium’s words had provoked such a strong reaction in me – after all, I didn’t believe in them, or their ability to contact those who have passed.
In fact, I was only there because I made a promise to my younger sister, Taren.
After our dad died suddenly in 2015, her psychic intrigue intensified. She’s hired 10 different mediums in her lifetime – many of them after his death to, as she saw it, ‘bring him back’ in the room.
Up until this point, I’d ribbed her for her psychic addiction. Told her they were clearly bulls**t. But after we lost dad, I knew I had to tread more carefully.
His sudden death was unexpected and painful. It left us blindsided. We handled our grief completely differently. I coped by throwing myself into life, absorbing distractions, and refusing to wallow.
I felt the urgency to live more keenly than ever – even booking a solo trip around Japan.
Meanwhile, my sister withdrew from life to mourn him, and hired mediums to stay ‘connected’ to him.
I was concerned she was being freeze-framed in ‘denial’ or ‘bargaining’, the first two stages of grief. I was concerned her fragility was being exploited for money. ‘Of course you can see your dad again! Give me £50 and I’ll reconnect you!’
I’d scold her for how much she was spending to be told nonsense, but she kept going back. She insisted she thought it was true, and therefore didn’t hugely care, at that point, that I thought she was being conned.
In the end, in 2019, I eventually wanted to discover why people seem to desert all common sense when it comes to psychics – and whether they help, harm or heal people like my sister. I was curious: in addition to vulnerable people like my sister, I’d also perceived that some of my more secular friends seemed to have a blind spot when it came to psychics and mediums.
I’ve come to realise that, whether I believe it’s true my sister was speaking to my dad from the dead or not doesn’t actually matter
I promised to suspend my disbelief and step into my sister’s world by hiring, interviewing and living in the world of psychics, mediums and astrologers for two years as part of an investigation, to better understand them, her and the people I saw as being seduced by them.
And then, at a gay networking event, he was allegedly back in the room with me.
‘He’s extremely proud of the man you’ve become,’ the medium says. ‘And he’s sorry.’
Those emotive words trigger my waterworks. It’s the thing we all want to make our parents feel isn’t it? Proud.
Yet, despite my falling tears, I remained a hardcore sceptic. I didn’t believe that was my dad speaking at all! Didn’t believe in the afterlife or anything supernatural.
I learnt the medium was using a clever device called the ‘Barnum effect’. It describes when vague, ambiguous statements feel specifically tailored for you. Besides, what did he have to be sorry for?
Well, he died young, just 62. He could’ve taken better care of his health at the end. And he was no longer there for us when we needed him – like when his own grief-stricken mum died.
But as I progressed on my journey, my views softened.
I’d once thought anyone who hired a psychic was gullible, or naive. I was, I’ll admit, dismissive of and condescending towards them. I thought they’d allowed their vulnerability to cloud their judgement.
The psychologists I spoke to as part of my research somewhat surprised me. While they all gave caveats around hiring mediums, one reminded me that ‘everyone’s grief is personal to them.’
The others agreed, telling me that if it’s helping someone without ‘keeping them stuck in their grief,’ then it could be a positive thing for them.
But I’ve come to realise that, whether I believe it’s true my sister was speaking to my dad from the dead or not doesn’t actually matter.
What matters is that things don’t need to be true for us to find truth. That’s why we watch movies, read books and see shows.
Sometimes you just need to hear comforting words to get you through to the next day whether you truly believe them or not.
My sister needed more time in the ‘bargaining’ phase of grief than I did. She told me the mediums gave her that.
When she passed that stage, she stepped into my world by hiring a trained, accredited grief counsellor to move her through those five stages of grief – denial, bargaining, anger, depression and acceptance.
It helped her move on. And I felt relieved. Proud.
She hasn’t hired a medium since.
More from Platform
Platform is the home of Metro.co.uk’s first-person and opinion pieces, devoted to giving a platform to underheard and underrepresented voices in the media.
Find some of our best reads of the week below:
An anonymous writer shares what rules she sets out for taking back her cheating husband.
Writer Grant Roberts details the first worrying warning sign he noticed before his father’s steady decline with dementia.
It took a trip abroad for columnist JJ Anisiøbi to realise how screwed Britain is.
When Rowan Atkins started peeing blood, she was terrified – but doctors didn’t take her pain seriously.
Now, there’s a new sixth stage of grief. It was added during the course of my investigation when the co-author of those five stages, David Kessler, experienced his own unthinkable tragedy: his son died, aged just 21.
When someone close to you dies so young, what we consider ‘before their time,’ the tragedy is almost unbearable. Kessler, like so many others, needed to do what he could to make the unacceptable acceptable: find meaning.
This is what my sister and I did. While my dad is no longer here to see the things that might’ve made him proud – like the book deal I got to investigate this subject – our dad’s death helped us.
Via the unexpected tangent of the world of mediums, it helped us better know and understand each other as siblings in this world.
That was our meaning.
Join Gary Nunn and BBC journalist/podcaster Vicky Baker for an evening of psychics, sceptics and the journalists who bring them together, 31 August at The Two Brewers, Clapham.
Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing [email protected].
Share your views in the comments below.
Source: Read Full Article