John Edward is an internationally acclaimed psychic medium, and author of the New York Times bestsellers, One Last Time, and What If God Were the Sun? In addition to hosting his own syndicated television show, Crossing Over with John Edward, John has been a frequent guest on Larry King Live and many other talk shows, and was featured in the HBO documentary, Life After Life. He publishes his own newsletter and also conducts workshops and seminars around the country. John lives in New York with his wife and their two dogs. For more information regarding John Edward, see his Website at: http://www.johnedward.net.

PREFACE

This is a book about Crossing Over. Not just the television show. Not just the metaphysical process that inspired the television show. To be sure, you'll read a lot about both the show and the process. But this book is also a chronicle of personal transition. It seems like a lifetime ago - and it seems like last week - that I was a young, suburban newlywed with a job in a hospital computer department and some unusual part-time activities. Okay, so maybe ballroom dancing isn't so strange. I guess it's the other thing that gets all the attention. Even as recently as 1999, I was doing readings in my house, and you had to be pretty plugged into the psychic world to know who I was. Two years later, I'm on TV five nights a week, and reading about myself in newspaper and magazine stories with headlines like, "My Next Guest is. . . Dead." I'm a media medium who not too long ago had stage fright on the radio. Talk about crossing over. This is the story of that wild ride.

If you have read any books by or about psychic mediums (including my own), you will notice that this is not like the others. No disrespect intended - some of them are excellent books by fine mediums, and I have them to thank for paving the way. But I intend this book to break some new ground, not only in de mystifying the process of spirit communication-my whole reason for doing my work so publicly-but in offering a glimpse of this world I live in. I want you to know how things look from inside my head. Because, I've got to say, you have no idea what it's like being a psychic medium these days. I hope you will after reading this book. That's why you'll find me discussing some difficult and controversial questions - money, motivation, celebrity, and the private and public battles I have to confront in my work. These are issues I can't avoid if I'm going to stand up and do what I do in front of television cameras.

This book was written in collaboration with Richard Firstman, an author and journalist with whom I wrote my first nonfiction book, One Last Time. As you will read in the coming pages, Rick and I first connected in 1996 through circumstances that only now seem to make complete sense. For this book, as for the first one, we spent many hours together discussing and exploring my work and my life. Unlike with One Last Time, we also spent a lot of time talking about what it's like to be the first television medium. We retraced all the steps that got me here, and Rick filled out the picture by spending many days on the set of Crossing Over, observing the action and interviewing and getting to know many members of the production staff and crew, as well as the key players in the show's development and creation.

One of Rick's most important contributions to both books has been to bring his journalistic skills to bear on the stories I wanted to tell. I realize that some of these stories are so extraordinary - even to me - that a skeptic could be forgiven for being, well, skeptical. That's why we've both felt it was important for Rick-an accomplished reporter and a skeptic himself by nature-to completely and independently verify everything in this book. In all the work we've done together, Rick has had free reign to interview anyone he wanted or thought necessary, and, weaving together the recollections and perceptions of the participants with my own, to write the episodes as he saw fit. It has not been uncommon for him to discover much more about a story than I ever knew from the limited scope of a reading. In all cases, we present here an accurate portrayal of my experiences, without embellishment or exaggeration.

One final word: I know you picked up this book either intentionally or by what you might consider chance. But I don't subscribe to coincidence, so I believe you are reading this book because you are seeking a higher understanding of life after death, most likely because you have had a difficult loss in your life and want to know about the possibility of spirit communication. But it's vital to understand that connecting with the other side cannot take the place of the natural grieving process. You still must confront and accept the physical loss of that person. As beneficial as it might be to connect with a loved one on the other side, either through a medium or on your own, it is imperative that you honor yourself and that loved one by grieving for them properly. That might mean reading this book only after you have sought out a counselor, a member of the clergy, or a friend. Only after you have accepted the loss can true healing begin.

I hope that what you find here is helpful to you on your path of learning and for your own soul's progression. And as I am a continuing student of this field, now you are, too. May the student in you become the teacher for another.

J.E.

PROLOGUE
Unitel Studios, New York City June 14, 2000

I'm standing in shadows, waiting to walk out in front of a hundred people and explain that I'm about to connect some of them with their departed relatives. To your side means husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, above you parents, grandparents. . . appreciate the messages. . . just answer yes or no... I've given this litany a thousand times before, in living rooms and offices and Holiday Inns in states I can't even locate on a map. But this is different. This is like nothing I've ever done before. It's not something I've ever really aspired to. But here I am.

Across the dimly lit set, I see Doug Fogel watching me. He's the stage manager, a Martin Shortish man with a twinkle in his eyes who's done Cats and The Lion King, Radio City and the Metropolitan Opera. Now he's working on a TV show about a guy who talks to dead people. He's in control of what's happening, unlike the person he's looking at, the person whose name is in the title of the show. I'm told that this studio was the original home of Big Bird, Bert, Ernie, and Oscar the Grouch. They shot Sesame Street right where I'm standing. And right before me, Chris Rock did his HBO show here. So I guess I fit right in. I like to think that this show is going to be educational. I won't break the news to the network just yet. I'm sure they think it's entertainment.

Doug hears the cue from the control room over his headset and begins counting me down with one hand. Five, four, three, two. . . . He points to the irregularly shaped white screen that plays the opening montage of the show. He looks at the audience, extends his arms, and begins clapping with a purpose, turning himself into a human APPLAUSE sign. Then he points to me. It's showtime. Time for me to walk out from side stage, make a quick left as I reach the middle of the screen, and bound onto the illuminated disk that will be my new home.

Something tells me we're not in the Holiday Inn anymore, Toto.

I scan the audience - the gallery, as it's being called - and try to smile the way I think a TV host is supposed to smile. Regis? Jerry? Oprah? I'm not comfortable. I am extremely uncomfortable. I'm not wearing clothes, I'm wearing wardrobe. I have makeup on. There's all this stuff around me. Up there, a constellation of lights. Over here, a contraption that looks vaguely like a camera. Back over there, a rolling screen that feeds me little bits of monologue to wrap around the taped segments.

And there's, like, an entire industry of people laboring over a cosmic version of something I've been doing for years by myself. Up until now, I've been pretty much okay with just God's help. Now I'm relying on Doug. Everywhere I look there are people in headsets talking to the producers and the director who's in a room somewhere staring at fifty-two TV screens with my face on more of them than really seems necessary. It's called the control room, and that makes me nervous. I'm a control freak - ask anybody. And I don't like surrendering so much control that they need an entire room to hold it. Will I be able to do what I do under these conditions? Will I get swallowed up like that mad-as-hell-and-not-gonna-take-it-anymore guy in that movie that came out when I was in, like, second grade? Was this really such a good idea? How the hell did I get here?

- CHAPTER 1 -

GREAT EXPECTATIONS

A PSYCHIC IN LADIES' LINGERIE

I was not a happy medium in 1998.

An example: Denver in November. I'm sitting in a radio studio, near the end of a two-week, city-a-day tour to promote my first book, One Last Time. The night before, at a signing at a bookstore, I spoke for about twenty minutes, then asked if anybody had any questions. A woman raised her hand. "Can you start over?" she asked. "You talk way too fast:'

It's been that kind of tour right from the start. Back in New York, the publicity people booked me at a Bradlee's department store - in the ladies' underwear section. Attention shoppers, come see the psychic in ladies' lingerie on the lower level. I'm standing among the bras and panties, talking about dead people. Uh, the lady by the I-Can't-Believe-It's-a- Girdle girdles-did your father pass? My spirit guides - The Boys, as I call them - have one fine sense of humor. They're just hilarious.

No, things are not going well. Bookstores where I'm appearing bring out plenty of copies from the back room, but the others - one or two stashed in the New Age section, or no books at all. In a town on Long Island where I live, I went to a bookstore and they tried to sell me James Van Praagh's latest. The sales clerk said it was way better than the one by that John Edwards guy. And this one by Sylvia Browne's good, too. I ask if she's read the one by the Edwards guy. She says no. I introduce myself. Doesn't help. It's still Edwards to her.

There have been worse days lately. Last month, Montel Williams and Larry King canceled on the same day - my birthday. Definitely a message from The Boys. But what were they trying to tell me? The Larry people said we'd reschedule, but the Montel producer said I'm been-there-done-that. Yet another psychic, another guy who talks to the dead - so what else is new? They need a new angle. I don't think I have one.

So now I'm doing this radio show in Denver. "Last week we had a psychic on, and he was a big phony, a total fraud:' says one of the hosts. "We don't believe any of this crap:' That's my introduction. There are times when I can handle the cynics, take all the slings and arrows in stride. And then there are other times. By this point on the book tour, I am, shall we say, a little cranky. I'm so drained, so frustrated with the entire publishing industry, that I'm pretty much a man without a personality.

I love doing radio. I like the exposure it gives my work without making my face -by that I mean me - the focal point. As long as I have a headset on - for some reason, handsets don't cut it - I'm good to go. And nobody can accuse me of reading facial expressions or body language. So for me, radio is the medium's medium. But the last thing I want to do on this particular day in Denver is another call-in show, with hosts who are giving me the morning-zoo treatment, even though it's four in the afternoon.

I'm pretty good with the first few callers, although a couple of them seem to take the hosts' cue and don't make this easy for me. A man to the side comes through for one caller. He's saying he had a brain tumor. I pass on some other details, and I ask the caller if he understands that.

"Well;' he says, "is there something, you know, something you can tell me that's a little more detailed?"

He's neither validating the brain tumor nor denying it. He's just ignoring it. I repeat the messages I've given him, and ask him again if he under- stands them. It seems he doesn't want to say yes. The host asks him who he's trying to connect with. He says a friend with a brain tumor. I snap.

"Did I not just say that? What's wrong with you people in Denver? Is it the altitude?" I actually say that on the radio. At which point Kristen Green, the book publicist accompanying me on my tour, comes flying in from the control room with her face wrapped in an extremely tight smile. "Do you think you might have been a little short with that last caller?"

I'm fuming, ready to leave, but the Rocky Mountain DJs think this is fantastic. Hey, this is a New York psychic! He's like a psychic with an attitude!

SOMEWHERE ON THE ROAD, it hit me like a punch in the face. Things are not turning out as I thought they would. No, as I knew they would. Go ahead, say it: Some psychic you are.

I was about to turn thirty, and I could look back across the years and see where I came from and how I got here. And I had thought I could see around the bend, because my spirit guides had given me glimpses. They had told me years earlier that I would be a teacher in this field. What they didn't tell me was when or how. I would have to find that out on my own. Not that they didn't shine a light. They always had.

Years ago, the summer I was fourteen, my Aunt Joan took me on my first real excursion, a cruise to the Caribbean. Docking in St. Thomas, we spent hours shopping, eating, and walking along the shore. Mostly walking. And walking. And walking. After seven or eight hours, we thought it might be a good idea to turn around and head back. About twenty minutes into our return hike, my feet tired and burning, I looked across the horizon and saw our ship in the far distance -about half an inch wide in my perception. "Oh, my God;' I said, "look at how far we still have to go."

My aunt laughed, reminded of something her mother, my paternal grandmother, Mary, used to always say: "Don't look at how far you have to go. Look at how far you've already come."

My grandmother's favorite saying was prophetic - she didn't know she was passing down from her daughter to her grandson nothing less than words to live by. Trying to look too far ahead, worrying how and when and even if you're going to get where you're supposed to go, can stop you in your tracks. It's a lesson I would have done well to remember fifteen years later, when all I could do was squint at the half-inch ship across the horizon and stop to rub my burning feet. I wasn't in much of a mood to look back and appreciate how far I'd already come.

There was irony in this, because I had spent a lot of effort recalling my earliest years for the opening chapters of One Last Time - how, as a young child, I had experiences that only years later would I realize were not part of the average childhood. How I knew things I shouldn't have known, family events that happened before I was born that no one had told me about. How I knew who was going to call on the phone or walk through the door. And how I could spell complicated words I'd never heard by actually seeing them in front of me. My dad, a cop, thought this was very cool - his boy was a genius. From an early age, I also had several experiences where I found myself momentarily outside my body, trans- ported to another place in my house, or outside on the street, and then brought back. And I had the sense that I'd had a prior life, of having done things "before I came down here;' as I explained it to my family. In elementary school, I saw auras around my teachers, and sometimes told them so. Not a great idea. My mother was always telling me I was "special" but only later did she tell me she wasn't just being a mom. So let me get this straight. You're telling me having out-of-body experiences in nursery school is not normal?

It wasn't until I was a teenager, after an encounter with a psychic named Lydia Clar, that I began to explore what was going on inside my head, and by college I was spending my free time as a psychic medium. But I never considered "psychic medium" as a viable career choice. It never even entered my mind. Imagine putting that on your tax return. I got a degree in public administration and went to work at a large hospital, first as a phlebotomist, drawing patients' blood, and later in the computer department. I continued doing private and group readings at night and on weekends, and developed a small following around Long Island. . But I envisioned a fulfilling, upward career in hospital administration, and a normal life. I married my dance instructor, and we bought a house on a quiet cul-de-sac. I turned professional and began to teach ballroom myself, and on weekends, Sandra and I traveled the country competing - sometimes against each other - on the pro-am dance circuit.

I had always loved to dance - there were always big parties with bands and DJs in my large Italian family - and Sandra turned me into a real pro (and gave me a steady partner). I found that doing the rumba and the cha-cha - anything Latin -was a great physical and creative release, and it kept me grounded as I tried to balance the different compartments of my life. To most of the people I knew at that time, I wasn't John the medium, or even John the dancer. I was "Sandra's husband." Most of my dance crowd didn't even know about my psychic work. I never talked about it.

By 1995, my spirit guides were pushing me to put more time and energy into that part of my life. In fact, they wanted me to change course - in their direction. They were leading me to the understanding that I was on a path to a life's work connecting the physical world to the spirit world. I didn't leap into it. I loved my job at the hospital, and had serious reservations about building my life around my psychic work. For one thing, I was very insecure about how people would perceive me. What do you do? Oh, I talk to dead people. But the stakes were even higher than that. What my guides were telling me was that I would be more than a practitioner. I would be some sort of noted figure in the field, and I would help a lot of people. Go ahead, roll your eyes-who is this guy, some possessed cult leader? But as pompous as that might sound, it wasn't anything that I aspired to. I had no interest in being well known- in fact, it's still not important to me. Celebrity is fleeting. It's the work that endures, if you're doing it right.

I had a major life decision to make. Stay with a job and a career I loved - and the financial security that came with it - or cross over into a peculiar blend of spiritualism and entrepreneurship. I had always followed my guides, and they had never steered me wrong.

That year, I made the biggest leap of faith of my life. I left the hospital and actually did put down "psychic medium" as my occupation on my tax return. I gave private readings in my home office, group readings in the living room, and started giving lectures to larger groups in hotel meeting rooms. Even those who had heard I was young were taken aback when they saw me, this twenty-something guy in jeans and a T-shirt who was now going to unite them with their departed loved ones. You didn't need to be a psychic to know what they were thinking: He's a kid. But because of my abilities, people old enough to be my parents or even grandparents treated me with a sort of deference I found a little unnerving. I was your average suburbanite, except for the parade of nighttime visitors to my front door. Some had out-of-state license plates. So you know what the neighbors thought. Two of them had moved past the awkward preliminaries and were onto a running discussion of whether it was cocaine or marijuana. They brought my next-door neighbor Hope into it, and she set them straight. No, no, he's not a drug dealer, for Chrissakes. He talks to dead people.

Not long after I left the hospital, my guides let me know that I needed to begin working on a book. My human reaction was puzzlement. Who wants to read a book by a twenty-six-year-old kid who says he has special access to "the other side"? But this became a persistent refrain, so I took it pretty much as a given, no more complicated than following a "bear right" road sign without having to slow down, as if just following some- one's instructions. I started thinking about it, making notes of the points I wanted to make in the book and the stories I wanted to tell. I started keeping a file of letters that validated past clients' readings.

I didn't have an agent. I wondered if I should get some help writing it. But my guides told me specifically no-I would do it by myself. I didn't find this surprising, or a daunting prospect. I felt I was a good writer, and was emboldened by the confidence boost my guides were giving me. Then one night in February of 1996, something very unusual happened. They slammed on the brakes and did a screeching V-turn. You need help with the book. This confused me. It was very odd for my guides to tell me one thing, stay with that for more than a year, and then suddenly do a 180. I was reminded of the 1982 movie Poltergeist - you remember, "They're ba-ack" - in which a medium named Tangina, who is an "earthly guide," seems to jerk around the parents of a missing little girl. At first Tangina instructs them to tell their daughter Carol Ann to stay away from the light. But later she tells them Carol Ann should go to the light. The lesson was that different decisions and tactics apply at different times. I wasn't sure why my guides were suddenly leading me in a different direction, but I wasn't going to argue with them. They're called guides for a reason.

THE NEXT NIGHT, a slender woman with long, dark hair came to my house for a private reading. She was very friendly and had a smile that lit up her face. Her name was Jamie, and when we sat down for the reading, I felt the kind of positive, open energy around her that makes my job so much easier, and a lot more fun. If this story starts to sound familiar, it's because I told it in One Last Time. But not completely. Jamie was called" Randi" there. And, for reasons that will become apparent, the context of the story was removed. I simply presented it as an intriguing and memorable reading, which it was. But I left out the ending, which was, for me, the most important thing about it.

Almost from the start, Jamie's reading was like an unfolding book - interestingly enough, as it turned out. I was getting information with clarity and detail. Jamie brought a notebook and began scribbling as names started coming quickly. Not the usual sounds or initials, but complete, unmistakable names: Helen. Jacques - not Jack, but Jacques. These were Jamie's grandparents. And they were with a younger male. "He's telling me Jon," I said. "But you know him as Jonny." That was their grandson, Jamie acknowledged - her younger brother. I told Jamie he

was coming through more like an older brother. No, she said, he was nine years younger. She was like a second mother to him.

"He's telling me that now he's your older brother. He's telling me that you have a piece of his clothing. A jacket, or maybe a sweatshirt. I'm seeing both:'

"I have two things of his:' Jamie said with a calmness she seemed to be working to maintain, as if trying to not let her emotions overtake her objectivity. "His jacket and his sweatshirt:'

Then suddenly, I felt a sharp pain at the back of my head, and in the next instant a startling realization. "Oh my God," I blurted. "This guy was hit with a baseball bat! He woke me up this morning!"

Jamie looked at me with a mixture of astonishment and confusion. 1 quickly explained that early that morning, I had been jarred awake by a voice that said, "John, wake up!" I knew it was the spirit of someone who had been hit in the head with a bat - I just didn't know who it was or why he was showing up in my bedroom before daybreak. I'd assumed a spirit so bold would be connected to me or my family, so I had spent most of the day calling friends and relatives, asking if they knew anyone who had been killed by a blow to the head with a baseball bat. Nobody did.

"Wow - it was your brother:' I told Jamie. "I guess he couldn't wait:'

Jamie explained that her little brother, eighteen at the time, had been killed by a stranger in a video arcade in New York City on New Year's Day, 1984. "These kids came in looking for someone else:' she said. "They had a bat. They wanted to hurt someone. My brother tried to leave, and this kid just hit him in the back of the head."

Jonny told me that his spirit had left right away, but his body lingered.

"He was on life-support:' Jamie said. "We took him off the next day:'

A strange look came over her face. "This is so weird:' she said. "I wasn't going to tell you this because you'd think 1 was some nut. But 1 had a dream about your mother this morning. You know how you just know something in a dream It was your mother. She was shrouded in smoke:'

"My mother died of lung cancer:' 1 said. "She was a heavy smoker:' 1 was blown away by that. I did not know this woman, and how would she know my mother had died? There was something very unusual about this whole thing. First, a spirit barges into my bedroom and wakes me up. Then I hear that my mother has dropped in on his sister at just about the same time. Yes, weird. Even to me.

The reading continued for more than an hour, and after Jamie's family pulled back, she and I began to talk. We were both intrigued by what had taken place.

"You know;' Jamie said now, "I'm a science writer, so I'm skeptical by nature. But I've always believed in this. I know that my brother has come to me. My husband doesn't believe in any of this. He wasn't too happy I was coming. He thinks this is all a bunch of baloney. "

"What does he do?" I asked, not something I normally ask a client.

"He's a writer, too."

At that instant, it was like my guides were saying, Ta-dahhhh. With - out even a second's hesitation - without asking what kinds of things he wrote, or knowing if he was any good, or even stopping to consider that Jamie had just said that he thinks I'm full of shit - I said, "That's why you're here. Your husband is going to help me write my book."

Jamie let out a big laugh. "I don't think so;' she said. "You've got the wrong guy."

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