Tuesday, June 16, 2015
James Van Praagh plans visit to Northeast Ohio
By John Benson
Remember the famous scene in “The Sixth Sense” where Cole tells his mother he sees dead people?
That in a nutshell is what medium James Van Praagh said his childhood was like, sans the scary characters and Bruce Willis.
“I used to run to church and see things,” said Van Praagh, calling from Laguna Beach, Calif. “I didn’t have scary visions or presence, but they’d come to me all of the time. I’d see lights around and the colors, and I knew it was a spirit.
“I remember one time I asked my mother, ‘Who are those people at the end of the bed?’ She said, ‘Those are God’s angels, I used to see them when I was a little girl, too.’”
Van Praagh is an internationally renowned best- selling author (“Talking to Heaven,” “Reaching to Heaven,” “Healing Grief,” “Heaven and Earth,” “Looking Beyond,” “Meditations,” “Ghosts Among Us,” “Unfinished Business” and “Growing Up In Heaven”).
He also was co-executive producer of the CBS hit television series “Ghost Whisperer,” which is based on the paranormal experiences of North Royalton resident Mary Ann Winkowski.
Overall, Van Praagh is considered a pioneer in the mediumship movement throughout the world, and has been recognized as one of the most-accurate spiritual mediums working today.
He’s said to bridge the gap between two planes of existence – the living and the dead.
A year after a sold-out presentation at the Kent Stage, Van Praagh returns to Northeast Ohio where he says the hills – and the city for that matter – are alive with the dead.
A demonstration is scheduled for Sunday at Kent Stage in Kent.
“The whole Kent area is like wild,” Van Praagh said.
“I went to Kent State University last year and it was still a pretty sick emotion when you go up that hillside. It’s like, ‘Wow. You can still feel it. I feel it. Anyone can feel it.’”
Naturally when clairvoyance is your trade, skeptics, cynics and eye rolls are commonplace. Van Praagh dismisses the negative energy, and instead said his job isn’t to convince anyone of anything.
“Who cares,” Van Praagh said. “My job is to help people. I think everybody has a responsibility for themselves to go on their own journey, so I just provide another way of looking at something. I’m not forcing anybody.
“Also, [my demonstrations are] a great opportunity, and once you see that there’s no death, it really forces you to begin living life differently and questioning how you treat people. So there are many levels. It’s just not the phenomena of spirit communication. It’s really about how to live your life.”