Mediums reach beyond to help bereaved

For those exploring spirituality or coping with the loss of a loved one, a medium’s claim to communicate with the dead may be a way to find comfort.

Amy Diggins, 29, an attractive woman with long brown hair and a trusting face, looks like someone you’d find working in a schoolroom. A special-education teacher, to be exact, is how Diggins made her living before she decided to devote full time to helping people communicate with their deceased loved ones. She doesn’t fit the stereotype.

Diggins doesn’t have any elaborate props in her Auburn, Mass., office. She doesn’t ask for your hand or for an article of clothing. She doesn’t pray or chant. She doesn’t have a crystal ball. Diggins simply sits at a table, facing her subject and observes. She says she senses the vibration of the spirits when they come into the room. From there she waits for the spirit to speak, and will relay the information to the seeker of the treasured wisdom offered by the loved one who has passed away.

“I’m not a psychic. It’s not like what you see you on television. I ask them, ‘is there anyone you’d like to get in touch with?’ I’ll ask them who they want to communicate with … or we’ll see who is here [in the room] and who wants to talk to me,” she said.

Diggins asks questions and will often describe to her subject what she sees in her mind, whether it’s an object, clothing the dead may be wearing or a physical attribute. The images flash across her mind like a movie projector showing a silent movie. Sometimes she hears a voice. It really depends on who it is, she said.

The Rev. Kathleen Hoffman, who is also a medium, is the pastor of the Onset Spiritualist Church near Cape Cod, which uses mediums in its services. She said she believes that everyone has intuition and some kind of psychic ability. It makes sense to want to explore that intuition with someone who is trained in medium-ship, she said.

The Spiritualist Church, first established in the 19th century, believes in communication with the spirit world, the souls of those departed from the living. Services are usually conducted by a medium, and open with a prayer, an address, hymns and, finally, a demonstration of mediumship: that the departed soul is indeed among them.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a medium is a person believed to be in contact with the spirits of the dead and able to communicate between the living and the dead. A medium is also said to facilitate communication with spirits who have messages to share with non-mediums.

“We believe in the difference, in the internal life,” Hoffman said. “We can communicate with our loved ones when they pass into the spiritual world. We can communicate out with our loved ones. We prove that through medium-ship.”

At the Onset Spiritual Church, services are held in which there are healing meditations and “spiritual unfoldment” to help people. Hoffman said even as a child she was interested in psychic ability and great intuition. When she was at a circus or a carnival, she’d find herself always looking for the person with a crystal ball. As an adult she learned about mediums in the early 1980s and when she went to the church, she was told she had healing abilities and decided to explore it. Now, roughly 30 year later, it still astounds her how she can help people.

“It’s very amazing,” she said. “We bring solace and comfort. [The passing of a loved one] can be devastating. Describing what you see that nobody else would know and then to see a person so grateful to help them move on.”

Diggins said most people who come to her are looking for closure.

“They want to know that that someone is OK,” she said.

Occasionally, Diggins says she will get questions such as when is “my daughter going to break with her boyfriend,” or something similar to that.

“I’m not a psychic,” she said. “That’s not really something that I can give them.”

Diggins didn’t always embrace her gift. When she about 10, her great-grandmother, with whom she was close, passed away, but appeared to Diggins few years later. She told her mom and each decided not to discuss it any further because it was too crazy and strange. Years later, when Diggins was in college, she went to a psychic fair with friends just for a few laughs. As the booth was closing up, a psychic came up to Diggins and asked her to wait until everyone left. She told Diggins “you know you are not crazy,” referring to the conversation Diggins had with her mother.

The psychic told Diggins she could see the energy all around her and tried to explain what was going on. Still, Diggins said she didn’t want to believe it, although by that time she had had many visits from her great-grandmother and other signs urging her to embrace her talent.