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Do Dead People Watch You Shower?
And Other Questions You've Been All but Dying to Ask a Medium

Chapter One

What is the difference between a medium and a psychic?

A medium is a psychic, but a psychic is not necessarily a medium. Someone who is just psychic can give you a prediction, but they can't tell you where or who they got it from. I (and other true mediums) not only can tell you what is going on and what will happen, but we can tell you who on the Other Side is bringing the message. I'm the whole package, baby! When did you first start talking with dead people?

I can't say exactly, but certainly it was when I was a small girl. It wasn't really having a conversation, I just knew something. I understood so little at that time, I had no one to explain to me what this "knowing" was. One of my very earliest memories of this was walking home one day when I was about nine years old (this wasn't the first, but one that I strongly recall) and "realizing" that my older brother was going to be taken from us at an early age. As I was walking into my backyard, I "heard" the Other Side (I didn't know at the time that's who was communicating with me) tell me this. I can't recall the exact words I heard. I'm not even sure it was a full sentence. Nevertheless, I knew what they meant, and I remember it like it was yesterday.

Other messages like this one came to me at other times. I was told, for example, that I would never in this lifetime have children of my own. I was also told that in a past lifetime my soul had been married to my father's soul—one of the reasons, I'm sure, why I completely adored my father in this lifetime. Theeffect of these messages, for me, was one of grounding me. Even if I didn't like what I'd been told, even if, like anyone would, I fought against losing my brother and against whatever it was that decided I would not have children, the fact that I'd been told these things in advance eventually helped me gain perspective.

When did you first tell someone about the things you "knew"?

I don't think it even dawned on me to talk about these things. I guess when you're young, you don't really know what's normal to know or not know. But I remember one event that my mother has said was the first time she was aware that anything special was going on with me. I was just a small child playing outside in the backyard. My mother recalls that I came into the kitchen and declared that my uncle Jerry's leg was all bloody. My mother was shocked that I would say such a thing, and told me to go back outside to play. A short time later, our kitchen phone rang and my mother got the news that her brother Jerry had been in a motorcycle accident and they were going to amputate his leg. Fortunately, the doctors were able to save his leg, but my mother was never the same! She didn't know what to make of what I had told her and at the time she was really frightened.

When my father came home from work that night, my mother told him the story. As my mother tells it, he just sat there without any expression. Finally he said, "Well, looks like Pop was right. He said she had the gift."

My grandfather had been a gifted medium. He crossed over when I was very young so I don't really remember him from this side. But we're in contact now and I've gotten to know him from the Other Side. Maybe now is a good time to say that even though my grandfather said I had "the gift" I'm not really comfortable with that term. I would never say that about myself. To me, it kind of sounds pretentious to say, my gift. I think of it more as an ability, the way everyone has different abilities. But sometimes in this book I may use the term gift just because it's shorter and I tend to talk fast.

Why does mediumship run in families?

I believe that it is just like any other talent that seems to run in families, like the ability to draw and paint, or having a good ear for music and being able to sing or play an instrument. We don't really question that, it's almost expected: "Well of course she can sing—her mother was a music teacher!" Nobody would think it the least bit weird if Picasso had a son who was a painter. But, like any other talent, there's also a choice that goes along with it. Maybe everyone in your family was a teacher—they just had a knack for communicating ideas, and maybe you also have this knack. But you can't see yourself in a classroom with kids all day long, your whole life. You might choose to use that talent in another way. Or you might decide that that's not the most important thing to you, there's something else you'd rather do. You still have the talent, but you don't have to use it at all. That's our free will.

Right now, my brother Bobby and sister-in-law Choi's little girl, my niece Bobbie Concetta—she's six years old and a real sweetheart!—has the ability I have and that my grandfather had. She has spoken about people who are on the Other Side and has described a lot of things about her past lives. One time, when she and her mother were walking by a church, she pointed to a statue of a woman with clearly Caucasian features and said, "That's the way my last mommy looked." Being my sister-in-law, Choi knows all about this kind of thing and showed no fear, maybe just curiosity. So there is a strong likelihood that with this support Bobbie Concetta will retain the ability she has now. Is Bobbie Concetta currently giving readings to her little friends? No. And she may never do what I'm doing. It's up to her. She'll have to decide for herself.

Do Dead People Watch You Shower?
And Other Questions You've Been All but Dying to Ask a Medium. Copyright © by Concetta Bertoldi. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold. <%END%>