South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
What the Long Island Medium has learned about afterlife and death during COVID-19
The deadliest year on record has been a life-changer for Theresa Caputo, who has shared messages from the deceased on TV’s “Long Island Medium” for a decade.
The sheer volume of mortality in the past 12 months has created more interest in the afterlife and about what she does, Caputo admits, but the circumstances of many of these deaths, from COVID-19, also has changed the conversations she channels through the intermediary she calls Spirit.
While the dead are still reaching out with typical messages of love and comfort, Caputo says many seem determined to allay concerns about their lonely departure in the COVID unit.
Caputo says she has been able to describe for loved ones the care and compassion the patient received from nurses and doctors during the final hours. The stories, rich in detail she says she would have no way of knowing, are a reassuring balm not only to the family but to the nurse who may wonder if her presence had any effect.
“To be able to deliver those messages to people — so they knew that their loved one, they weren’t alone and they weren’t suffering — was such a gift,” Caputo says.
Her skeptics are legion, but Caputo has always had a disarming response ready: She’s a skeptic, too.
“It is crazy. How can someone communicate with someone who has died? I say it, too.” she says.
After a year without live appearances due to COVID concerns, Caputo is ramping up a handful of nationwide tour events through the summer that begin April 9 at the Broward Center for
the Performing Arts in Fort Lauderdale. Taking place in front of nearly 400 seats on the Broward Center’s outdoor, socially distanced Backlot Live stage, there will be five weekend shows through April 11.
These shows will be reminiscent of Caputo’s TV program — which in February moved from its longtime home on the TLC network to the subscription streaming service Discovery+ — and her previous South Florida appearances, except for the pod seating and mask requirement. Caputo will walk among the seats and, at the urging of Spirit, stop to “read” individual audience members. The show runs 90 minutes and might include 30 readings or half that, depending on Spirit, Caputo says.
Speaking by phone, Caputo answered questions about COVID — she did not lose any family members — her skills and the show.
You are from Hicksville, N.Y., on Long Island. How soon before you move down here, like the rest of New York?
Oh no, when I go down to Florida, I stay with my family [her father’s
sister and her cousin live in Wellington]. I guess because I travel so much, I love being at home. I live next door to my parents, right next door to where I grew up. There’s no place like home.
Can I assume business is booming?
I don’t look at it that way.
Do I feel that there are people searching for more faith, peace and understanding? Absolutely. Especially over this past year, people have lost so much.
We’ve gone through something that really stopped our world for an entire year. Some lost more than others, but we’ve lost so much. Even if someone might just feel, ‘I lost a year of my life,’ you know? ...
Right before COVID, I think people were finding a real interest in the spiritual world. Astrology, stones, crystals. Now it’s even more so. We look for things that we can hold onto that give us faith or hope.
I don’t talk about religion — my parents raised me in it [Catholic] — but people even lose faith in an afterlife after everything we’ve been through. How could there be, right? How could there be a God or anything after all we’ve been through?
You have your skeptics, of course, but …
I’m the first one to say that what I do is crazy. I don’t know how this works, how it starts to happen, even why it happens. I was born this way. I struggled with my gift for many years because I couldn’t understand why someone would want to come and even see a medium.
What I’ve learned is that, unfortunately, no matter how we lose someone or how they die, we’re left with burdens and guilts. That is what the [show] is going to be about . ... Spirit is going to give us what we need to hear and experience to make out lives here in the physical world a little
bit easier.
Has COVID changed the spirit world?
Yes, in the sense that a lot of people have passed, in the sense that people are left with the not knowing of what happened to their loved ones.
I use 9-11 as an example, only because that day people died and nobody knew what happened to their loved ones. They were unable to retrieve their loved ones’ physical bodies. How can people heal if they’re wondering, “Were they afraid? Were they alone?”
Is there a reading you had with someone in 2020 that stands out in your memory?
So many ... I read a woman who had lost her mom due to COVID, and when I was channeling her mom, her mom said: “Please tell my daughter that the nurse did come in and hold my hand, she started singing a song, and she showed me Facetime. Remind her about the song that we used to sing” and stuff like that. The [daughter] said to me, she was crying, “I always wondered if the nurse really did do all the things she told me she did.”
What I witnessed through channeling, these nurses and doctors, they really did go above and beyond their calling. It was astounding.
Seating is limited at these shows. For those who cannot attend, but are looking for communication from someone they’ve lost, what can they do?
I want everyone to know that they still have that bond and communication with their departed loved ones. Look and notice and embrace those little things that go on around you that remind you of your loved one. Maybe you see something and just think of them. Embrace that as a little hello from heaven, knowing that this is their soul letting you know that they are with you at that exact moment. And don’t take things for granted.
‘Theresa Caputo Live: The Platinum Experience” is at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts, 201 SW Fifth Ave., Fort Lauderdale. Show times are 7:30 p.m. Friday-Sunday, April
9-11, and 3:30 p.m. Saturday-Sunday, April 10-11. Tickets cost $95-$125, with pod seating for parties of
2, 4 and six guests. Visit BrowardCenter.org.