Wednesday Oct. 19th, “Theresa Caputo: Live The Experience” came to EMU’s convocation center. It was a crazy emotional night for a lot of the audience.
Theresa Caputo is a Medium. This means that she can communicate with the deceased. She is a devoted practicing Catholic, and has her own TV show called “Long Island Medium” in which she gives readings to her customers and gives them a chance to communicate with their passed loved ones.
One of the first people she read was an eighth grade boy who had lost his father. She said that she kept seeing the movie “Castaway” starring Tom Hanks. After trying to understand the connection to the movie she asked the boy if he had a picture of his father. The young boy looked around, and then looked down at the watch he was wearing. His watch opened up like a locket and in the inside was a picture of him with his father. In the movie “Castaway,” Tom Hanks’ character keeps his wife’s photo in a pocket watch and talks to her every night in an attempt to keep him sane while stranded on a deserted island.
After Caputo made this connection the audience went silent and the boy began to cry. He expressed that his father won’t be able to watch him grow up, and he shared that he had been longing to get a pat on the back from his dad.
Theresa embraced him and said, “your father is extremely proud of you and is always with you. All that's missing is a pat on the back, and I can help with that.”
Throughout the live show, she connected about 20 audience members with their deceased loved ones. The stories ranged from accidental deaths to murder.
One reading was of a mother who had just lost her daughter four months ago. “She knew a lot of things that there’s no way she could have known,” said Stephanie Carniak, mother of recently deceased 16-year-old. “She spoke to us, and it made me feel good,” she continued.
There was one moment when Theresa stopped in front of a section grabbed her throat and asked, “who here lost someone due to a drowning?” No one raised their hand. She asked again adding, “I just need someone to acknowledge this, I can't breathe. I am feeling this man drowning and I would really like to breathe again”. She continued to gasp for air. Someone finally stood up. The man stood and stated that his father had committed suicide by jumping into the Detroit river.
There were many incidents throughout the night where Theresa would have to repeatedly ask the same section, who in there had lost a person whom fit her description. One incident was in the case of a child being murdered. It took about five minutes before someone finally stood up and spoke.
The audience member shared that her cousin’s baby was shook and thrown against the wall repeatedly by her niece’s boyfriend. Theresa responded saying that she could feel that the baby was killed by the first impact, and she told the woman to relay that message to the mother of the child, and also relay that the child was sorry that he didn’t stop crying.
One of the last gentlemen read was a father who had lost an eight year old daughter. Theresa said that she kept seeing her riding a bike, and the man replied, “that was the last thing I taught her to do”. There was not a dry eye in the house.
The audience members that communicated with their lost loved ones believe in the connections and others believe as well in the capabilities of mediums, but EMU students Maddie Damrom and Nick Weston are still unsure, they said “mediums and communicating with lost loved ones are things we will never know the real truth about until we’re dead.”