Tonight Ty and I have a night out. We’re going to a comedy club. It’s Wednesday, but we’re empty nesters, we do what we want. There are no school nights anymore.
We’re not going to see a comedian though. We’re going to see a medium- Cindy Kaza. I’ve never heard of her. I wonder if she’ll be any good. I have no doubt, none, that mediumship is real. I do know there are a lot of people who aren’t very good and probably a lot of people who are fakes. I’m skeptical and critical at the same time. And you don’t go to see a medium in a stage presentation to get a reading. When there are 500 people in the audience and the medium can get to 10-12 your odds of getting a reading are pretty low. Plus you’re only going to get 5 minutes- maybe and maybe you don’t want some personal stuff revealed in front of a room full of strangers. You go to prove to yourself that this stuff is real, that your loved one is still alive and is still herself and still cares about your and your life. Frankly, the messages are all pretty much the same. “I’m OK. I’m more than OK. I’m great. I love you. I forgive you. I’m still watching over you.” Any anger, any pain, any sickness- it’s gone. They don’t hold grudges. They don’t need to forgive you. You don’t need to go to a medium for that.
I wonder what this woman will be like. She walks on stage. She looks pretty normal. She warms up the crowd with some humor. She gives us the ground rules. Generally she will get a message from a spirit and she’ll get a general vicinity in the room within the range of a table or two of people. She will start with generalities and work to more specifics. I’m looking for signs of cold reading because this is a classic technique. You can look at a middle aged person and guess their parents are on the other side. You can be pretty sure a grandparent is. You can tell by the way a person is dressed and their demeanor quite a bit about them. I don’t see any of this with her BTW.
The entire performance is about 90 minutes. I didn’t count, but I think she probably gave about 10-12 readings in the hour or so of reading she did after the opening and before the closing Q&A session. If she’s not real then she paid a lot of people to do some really good faking. She would have to find people in each city she goes to and plant them in her audiences. She only does one show in each city. That would be quite an undertaking. Or she could have a crew that travels with her- also a pretty big undertaking. Plus I observed these people in the audience. None of them were alone. They were generally in pretty big groups. As she was reading one person I was observing the expressions of the people around that person as they nodded in the affirmative to evidence she would give and cry along with the person giving the reading. The other possibility would be to research the people coming to the show. That’s virtually impossible and probably more difficult than paying stand-ins.
Some of the reading she gave:
A woman who was shot. She saw two bullets. She saw a man who was dead also. The woman was pregnant, early along. Cindy thought it was probably a murder suicide. The name Brenda or Bren. This was very specific set of evidence and no one in the room claimed it for a very long time. I’m thinking “She must be wrong because surely anyone involved in this would recognize it right away.” Finally a woman reluctantly raised her hand. She had been a police officer for several years. She worked a case where a woman was shot by her boyfriend. The woman was pregnant. Cindy said she saw something with blood or blood evidence or fingerprints, something about contaminating the crime scene. The officer acknowledged, she had been holding the murder victim when she died and she was covered in blood. Cindy guessed that the officer had comforted the woman and said the woman was there to thank her for being there as she took her last breath (I have heard this is common in stage performances where emergency responders are present). BTW, the man who did the shooting was named Brendan. But, as far as the officer knew he wasn’t dead- he could be though. She no longer has contact with him.
Another reading she did. A woman named June was coming through. June grew up on a farm. Cindy saw her gathering eggs. This was also very specific. Cindy got that she was a grandmother. Again, the room was awkwardly quiet for a pretty long time. Finally a woman raised her hand. Yes, her mother June had grown up on a farm and had gathered eggs. But, it was her mother, not her grandmother. The woman though had a grandmother in spirit who had been very close to her. Cindy said “I’m seeing roses, lots and lots of roses.” The woman said yes her grandmother had had tons of rose bushes. Cindy said when the grandmother died, they transferred a rose bush. Yes, the woman acknowledged. The grandmother and mother were together in spirit and had come to say hi.
Cindy said she was getting a guy who had both a heart condition and diabetes. Diabetes had not killed him, but he didn’t take care of himself as well as he could have or should have. She got the name Brandon and the name Greg. A woman raised her hand. The man was her father. She had a son named Brandon. The grandfather was there to tell her he was watching over her son. He said to be concerned about him falling in the the wrong people. The woman looked confused and said her son was a good kid and very selective about his friends. There was no problem there. Cindy asked who Greg was. Greg was her daughter’s boyfriend. The grandfather said he was keeping his eye on Greg. But, he was only joking. He had been very protective in life and was still watching over him. Cindy said “I don’t want to press your son falling in with the wrong people. I don’t want to plant something that’s not there, but I keep getting this. It’s not about drugs or violence. It’s about money. Tell him to be careful with his money.” Then, the mother said “He’s been talking to a financial planner.”
There were several more. All of them were simply amazing. One a guy who had overdosed on heroin. She knew it was an accident, not suicide, that he had bought from a new dealer, that the drug had been laced with something else, that he had had a fight with his mother and his mother thought it might be suicide. One was a guy who had actually committed suicide. One was a guy who had been attacked from behind. He was running with the wrong crowd and had been carrying expecting to be hit, but he was caught off guard and robbed and murdered. In every single case, the details were verified by the people in the audience. These were not general things you could guess. Even in a room of 500 people how many people are going to know someone who was robbed and murdered, someone who was pregnant when she was shot, someone who not only cheated on his wife, but she burned all of his stuff in revenge? And, after she threw these things out, she gave details about the people details that sometimes the people in the room were not sure about.
The evening ended with a Q&A. Someone asked about Prince. “Is Prince OK?” Well, duh. Someone asked if Cindy could bring through anyone she wanted. Now here was a perfect opportunity to really try to impress people and bring through Prince, but she did not. She did guess as to the cause of his death, but offered no evidence and didn’t claim to have talked to Prince himself.
One question, at the end was “What do they do all day over there?” Cindy said she doesn’t know, but from the reports they are dancing (one couple came through, the parents of a group of siblings sitting at a table and she got “Waltzing Matilda” turns out the father used to play that tune), they are drinking (one guy said he still drinks whiskey) and just generally having a good time, But, she said she thinks we can’t really comprehend what they are doing with our brains and our perspective which put me in mind of this verse.
That is what the Scriptures mean when they say, “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined what God has prepared for those who love him.”
She closed with an acknowledgement of God and said that if we came expecting a message to be grateful for those who did get messages. There wasn’t enough time for everyone to get a message, but everyone could leave knowing that the messages they heard were real and our loved ones are still and always just a thought away.
