Do Dead People Watch You Shower? (10 page)

Of course they
are. Animals are gifts from God. They give us comfort and joy, they sustain us. In all honesty, our pets give us the nearest thing to unconditional love we can know on this side. We need to treat them with respect, and never take them for granted. Just like the people who have passed on who are near to us, you can hear from them. Often when I’m doing a reading someone on the Other Side will tell me to tell my client, “Your dog is here.”

Sometimes a pet doesn’t even wait for you to cross, they come back and visit you on this side. I’ve heard numerous stories of pets who have been seen in ghost form, or heard barking, or even felt. My friend Ginger and her partner Wendy were sleeping one night and Ginger was wakened by this feeling of her dog Nino Guiseppe jumping all over her and licking her face, just like he used to do when he was a puppy. She knew realistically it couldn’t be, so the next morning she said to Wendy, “I had this dream last night that Nino was in the bed and jumping all over me and licking my face,” and Wendy said, “I don’t think that was a dream, because I felt him too!”

I don’t have
all the answers. I’m not sure how all this works. But any living creation is the energy of God, that God created and that goes back to God. How it goes back and where I’m not sure. If you have a wild turkey or a fox and it dies, it goes back to the Light, to the universe that is God. I’m not sure in what form. Does it go back as a fox? I’m not sure, but I do know that it goes back.

I really don’t
know. The universe is a big place, so it wouldn’t be a huge surprise if there were, but I wouldn’t know. I know only about those I have access to, and I have access only to those with a connection to the person I’m doing a reading for. I touch the person, ask permission to listen, and ask them who they are looking for. As far as I know, I’ve never done a reading for an alien so I’ve never been in contact with an alien spirit over there. But you never know who might make an appointment next—let me get back to you on that one.

Even on this
side we can have a deep connection and communication with animals, especially our pets. Our pets are also our protectors, just like our guardian angels. My friend Craig told me about his Jack Russell terrier, Earl, who saved his life. Craig was working out in his yard and he didn’t see that there was a poisonous snake in front of him. In complete oblivion, Craig was headed right toward the snake. Earl launched himself between Craig and the snake and the snake bit him. Fortunately, Earl didn’t die, but that dog was completely selfless—if either he or Craig was going to be bitten, he wanted to make sure it was him.

On the Other Side I believe our ability to communicate with animals is enhanced, but I think it is in a very simple form. It would be telepathic, as we communicate with other human souls, but maybe the ideas we expressed would have to be more simple, not sophisticated. For instance, I don’t think you’d suddenly be having a philosophical discourse with your Irish Setter, but maybe with your Siamese.

Cats aren’t the
only ones. All animals have a sixth sense. One of my friends lost her boyfriend and her dog kept seeing him. She’d hear her dog barking and go into the bedroom and the smell of cigar smoke would be really strong. Her boyfriend always used to smoke cigars so she knew it was him, but her dog would always be the one to alert her first.

Yes, sure. But
their way of being a spectator is different from ours. They may watch a loved one playing baseball. Or they may watch a loved one watching a game. But they are watching because we belong to them. I don’t think they’re watching to see who wins or loses—they’re not betting on the Subway Series!

Truthfully, I don’t
really think, from what I know about the Other Side, that anyone was really waving foam fingers around. I think they knew why the Sox won that year, and why they hadn’t won in other years. But what I can say is that anyone over there, who had a Sox-loving loved one still here, would have been happy for their loved one, even if they also appreciated that in the scheme of things winning a ball game or even a series is not that big a deal. They do appreciate it when we are happy.

There are many
dimensions of God, but I don’t really think that a bar scene is one of them—even though there may be plenty of spirits in a bar. The dead don’t drink so I’m thinking that there are not bar crawls on the Other Side. A Sex on the Beach or a Fuzzy Navel would no longer hold any meaning for them.

Well, there is
a Hall of Records on the Other Side, but it’s not what it sounds like. It’s not some big CD collection. And the angels are not jamming or hip-hopping up there. But there is definitely music. In fact, the Other Side is the source of music, they channel it to us, to those on this side who we think of as composers—they really are just receiving a channel. I am honestly not sure how it works. Obviously, it comes from God, it doesn’t originate with a particular soul on the Other Side as opposed to a soul on this side. But I don’t know what the mechanism is. What I can tell you is that, believe it or not, all music is intended for healing. What can I say? You may hate opera, or rap, or reggae. You may grimace at jazz, or tango music, or rock and roll. Classical music may leave you utterly cold or disco might make you gag. But all souls vibrate with a different frequency; we’re not all tuned to the same station, and with music it truly is a case of different strokes for different folks. What makes one person insane will be music to the ears and healing to the spirit of another. Music has the power to both calm and invigorate us and we don’t need to translate it to any other language—it can be appreciated universally. It’s magical medicine and all of it comes from over there. Mozart was a child when he began composing, Beethoven was both blind and deaf and still wrote music that has lasted through the ages. Their compositions were channeled to them, from God, as all other music has been channeled through all other musicians in this world.

No. The word
does not even
exist
on the Other Side. Often when I’m doing a reading and I get a prediction from someone over there, my client will ask, “When is that going to happen?” Well, sometimes they will give me a number—let’s say they tell or show me the number 2. I don’t know if that means two hours, two days, two weeks, two months, two years. I might be able to get a little more info and tell the client that it
seems
like they mean two weeks. But this is a very imperfect method.

Sometimes they will mention a birthday, but it won’t be clear whether it’s a birthday that has just passed, or is just coming up. It can be a bit of a guessing game where the client has to give confirmation—I have no clue!

The dead have jobs, but don’t have to punch a clock. They don’t have appointments, but very often they will be aware of a big event coming up for a family member—maybe a graduation or a wedding, or some other family gathering, and they’ll tell me to tell my client, “I’ll be there!”

Yes, we all
do. But honey, they also break them! But seriously, I’m sure there are a few rules God has made, but I’m also sure they are simple ones.

Yes, we all
know that, in the core of our soul. Most of the time, though, we don’t have access to what we know, or we don’t know it consciously, but still we’ll behave in a way that in retrospect we might say, “Boy, he was always in a hurry. He must have known.” We have three levels of awareness. At the first level we’re aware of the input we are getting from our five physical senses. At the next level we have our introspection and our memories. Then there is our supraconsciousness, which is our “knowing” of our connection to God and all that entails. It’s at this third level where we do know how long our time on earth will be. Like I said, usually we are not focused on that level, but sometimes, in some people, it bleeds through.

One time, two sisters came to see me and told me the story of their brother, who was always saying, at different times, when he was talking about things he might like to do in his life, “Well, if I make it to thirty…” It really bothered his sisters; they hated that he would suggest that he might not live till the age of thirty. They always said to him, “Don’t say that!”

When he was twenty-eight, he met and fell in love with a girl and they got engaged. They decided to get married in Antigua and they chose his thirtieth birthday for their wedding date. After the wedding, he and his new wife were swimming and all of a sudden it got very dark and a storm came up. They swam for the shore, but the water was all choppy with a strong current. He turned to his wife and said, “I’m not going to make it.” She said, “Of course you’re going to make it! Come on!” But he drowned.

He had everything to live for. He wasn’t unhappy. He didn’t commit suicide. He just
knew
this was his day.

On the other hand, at one of my big shows in Verona, New Jersey, there was an elderly woman who was looking for her husband, Mike. Her daughters were with her in the audience. Mike did come through and to identify himself to his family he told me all about his projects, most of them unfinished, and all the stuff he collected in his backyard to build things with “someday.” He showed me this image of his yard—all sectioned off and filled with junk, concrete blocks, you name it. He had a real sense of humor about it, was actually making fun of himself, and his daughters were smiling and nodding, like, “Yep. That’s our dad.” But then Mike has something serious to communicate. He tells the woman, his wife, that she has to stop asking him to come and get her; Mike says it’s not her time, she has to stay here, that there is something more for her to do for the family. She is nodding her head, reluctantly, I can tell, and tears are streaming down her face. Mike tells me to assure her that when it
is
her time, he promises to come get her, and he promises she won’t suffer. She was more than ready to go, but it wasn’t her time. Even though she
wanted
to go, she did seem to know and understand that.

No, because they
are not there. The cemetery is purely for the living so that we have a place to associate with our loved ones. They do hear our thoughts there, but they hear our thoughts no matter where we are—the funny thing is that they are just as likely to be in the car with us as we are driving
to
the cemetery—it really isn’t necessary to sit next to a gravestone to talk to a spirit who has crossed. Really, leaving flowers and gifts at the gravesite is meant to provide comfort to the grieving friends and family members. For us, things we place on a grave are symbols of our love. But most likely They would be saying to us, “Don’t waste your money on those flowers, hon.”

I don’t think
so, because they’re here with us. Look at it this way: Right now, if you had relatives who lived in another state—let’s say you lived in New Jersey and they lived in Florida—you can’t see them all the time. Maybe you miss them, but you aren’t grieving that you don’t see them. Now let’s say you could lift out of your body and, just by thinking of it, be poolside or hanging out with them in some nice air-conditioned mall. They can’t see or hear you, but you see and hear them. As a rule, this ability to be close to loved ones still living seems to be pretty satisfying to those who have crossed over. I think the only time They might feel anything like grief of this kind is if there was some unfinished business, or something they had wanted to say. But even then they are in a place of total peace and forgiveness so I don’t think it’s the same.