Theresa Caputo - Long Island Medium

Image courtesy of TLC.com

Laugh all you want, but for many years, I’ve been a believer in psychic mediums – you know, those people who can “talk to the dead”. Weird, maybe, but I find the whole process to be extremely intriguing. I’ve seen a handful of mediums in person, including Long Island psychic John Edward (both before and after he became “famous”), Jeffrey Wands, some guy in the city who looked like Dom DeLouise and Lynn the Spiritual Medium in Roslyn. I’ve read books by George Anderson and was a huge fan of The Ghost Whisperer, on which James van Praagh was a consultant (the show was scripted, but there were some parts based on his life’s work). Although I will be the first to say that not all people claiming to be a psychic medium are legit, the ones that truly have the gift can be absolutely amazing. So last week, when I had the opportunity to attend a fundraiser for a Commack soccer team that would be a group reading by Theresa Caputo, of TLC’s reality show Long Island Medium, I did not hesitate for a minute.

If you don’t know who she is, Theresa Caputo is a lifelong resident of Hicksville who has been a practicing medium for the last 10 years. She’s a mom of two and married to her husband for more than 20 years. If you saw Theresa out and about, you’d never know she had any special ability – she looks, and sounds, like a typical Long Islander, complete with heavy Long Island accent. Last year, her reality show, Long Island Medium, aired on TLC, with cameras following Theresa while she helps clients (and some random shopkeepers and people she meets on the street) on her journey with the afterlife.

One thing about Theresa, and she said it before she started the group reading – if you’re a skeptic, that’s great. She’s not out to convert you to a believer or convince you to join a cult that she’s running. She looks at her “job” as a way to validate that although our loved ones have left the physical world, their spirits live on. And don’t accuse her of Googling her clients or others that she reads unless you want her to laugh at you.

There were approximately 200 people at the fundraiser I attended, each and every one wanting a reading from Theresa. She worked the room and her reading subjects varied – from a mom who lost her son many years ago to a mom who lost her young daughter recently to a woman who lost her mom just last week. She spoke to a family who recently lost their father/husband and told his young daughter that he felt she was too young to get a tattoo. She spoke to a young mother who lost her husband to a brain tumor and pointed out specific things that her husband was glad that she had at his funeral. She spoke to a woman whose husband attended the event with her but left in the middle because he felt that the whole thing was really crazy – his mind changed when Theresa had his wife call him and put him on speakerphone for the whole room to hear while she relayed some pretty specific messages from his mother (note that his opinion changed pretty quickly). Her mood varied from serious to seriously funny within seconds, based on the messages she was giving, but every message followed the same theme: love. That’s why everyone was there, right?

Long Island Medium comes back to TLC for a second season in March. Oh, and if you want an appointment with Theresa, her waiting list is over two years long.

Amy Platt

Amy Platt is a Long Island native, currently raising two kids here. After the birth of her second child, she realized that parents need a place to find information about parenting on Long Island and LIParentSource was born. Shes loves to be involved with all things happening locally and getting that information out to parents.