Medium Reveals Where Your Loved Ones Actually Go After They Die | John Edward
In a Nutshell
Medium John Edward explains that people seek readings for connection, not closure, and that genuine mediumship provides specific validation—names, dates, trivial details—rather than generic philosophy. He warns against red flags like curse removal or blaming the deceased for failed connections, and emphasizes that nobody needs a reading; they need understanding and tools to maintain ongoing relationships with those who have passed. Grief begins before death and requires acknowledgment, expression, and active participation in keeping loved ones present through stories, traditions, and daily inclusion rather than relying on readings as a crutch.
These notes were generated by AI and may contain inaccuracies.
When clients first decide they want to see a medium, they are thinking they want to make that connection back with the person who's left the physical world. What they think is closure is actually really connection. The medium will not fix their grief. Nobody wants to sit with a medium - they want their loved ones and friends to be here in the physical world. There is always an expectation that somebody has when they go for a reading, and then that kind of reflects back to them. People may not hear from the person they want to hear from, or they may hear from multiple people. There is always a level of expectation management and disappointment that comes into a reading.
"If you're not ready for this, don't go. Process your grief in a different way because you can't make someone come through and you cannot make them say the things that you want them to say."
People want to know that their loved ones are okay. The physical death process takes them away from us, and as a result it makes us feel absent, empty, and vulnerable. The grieving are projecting onto them their not being okay. The process of loved ones coming through is to help assuage some of that by saying they are okay, and then work on what the passing has now done.
John Edward's approach to skeptics is to come on the journey because he was that person. At a very young age, he had a reading that put him on this path and he had no choice but to come to the understanding that this woman was legitimate with what she was doing because there was no way possible that she could have known what she had known. He ruled out mind reading for the simple reason that she could not have known something that was going to happen when it was not in his mind and he did not know about it. He is an analytical person and needed to understand what this was and how she did this.
The woman told him that he had this ability and that in that first reading she said he was going to change the way millions of people look at this subject matter. He was 15 years old. The reality is that sent him on a journey and he became a seeker. When seekers explore, his exploration took him to the public library where he read every book back in 1985 on the occult. He was insatiable with information. His discovery which raised his awareness was that this is common sense - everybody has this. This is not psychic, this is just basic.
He started asking high school friends if they had ever seen their dead grandfather, had an apparition, or had dreams that came through. The answers were no. He started to recognize that maybe his understanding of himself at that time needed to reframe certain things. Then he went into the active development part. Before that, he was the person who was debunking the people that came to his grandmother's house to do readings.
There is a difference between skepticism and cynicism. Skepticism says "I'm not sure. Show me." Cynicism says "I'm sure. No matter what you show me, I'm not going to believe you." You cannot give somebody a belief system. Skepticism is helpful, but be objectively skeptical. Do not be judgmental and skeptical. He has had every possible scenario - scammer, fraud, con, grifter - and they fall off him now after 40 years of doing this.
In 1999, HBO was doing a documentary called America Undercover, Life Afterlife, produced by Linda Ellerby and her production company, Lucky Duck Productions. Dr. Gary Schwarz was going to study mediums. The participants were John Edward, Anne Gaiman, Suzanne Northrup, George Anderson, and Lorie Campbell. They were five people that were lab rats basically. Dr. Schwarz compiled all that data and it ruled out that body language, verbal cues, and all of the things that cynics would say they were doing. They were able to establish they were not. The data was compiled into the book called The Afterlife Experiments.
When the studies came out and the book got published, people attacked the scientist instead of accepting the findings. Twenty percent of the population are going to believe, 20% of the population are not going to believe, and some people fall somewhere within that range. Be skeptical, question everything so they are not taken advantage of by people who are claiming to do this. Make sure you are getting information and validation evidence that that person is talking to your relative and they are not just giving you philosophy.
He travels around the world doing events constantly. The first part of his events are always to establish that because he wants to protect people from anybody who walks in front of a crowd of people and says "who here connects with a butterfly" - well guess what, somebody is going to connect with a butterfly. Every afterlife book has a butterfly on it because it is the quintessential transformation. He tries to do the debunking of his own field while raising the bar and trying to put out there what he thinks people should be looking for in his professional opinion.
He stands in front of the crowd and says he is going to disappoint all of them right now. Instead of him telling them, he is going to show them why. He goes through cardinals, hummingbirds, dragonflies, finding pennies, dimes, and quarters, feathers, and seeing 11:11 and other iterations of numbers. By the time he is done, 90% of the room has raised their hand. All of that is off the table. When making connections, they are going to go deeper. It may have to be something that is not on the top 10 list of what you want to hear, but as long as it is a fact and a validation, then it is letting you know that it is them coming through. A lot of times it is really trivial stuff - conversations that just happened, things that they did when nobody else was around - but it supports that there is a survival of consciousness and that our loved ones and friends are still part of what we are doing.
John Edward sees, hears, and feels energy. His abilities are clairvoyance, clairaudience, and clairsentience. Clairaudience means clear hearing, clairvoyance means clear seeing, clairsentience means clear feeling. There is absolutely nothing clear about it - it should be like cloudy seeing, cloudy hearing, cloudy feeling. In this kind of downloaded vibe, he is basically telling what it is that he is seeing, hearing, feeling.
It is like when you are reading a book and your mind goes someplace else and you are thinking about something else and then you have to go back and reread what it was. It is not an out loud voice. Nobody is yelling the name. It is like having two thoughts that are happening. Maybe somebody is asking a question and while she is asking the question, it is like the name comes through. In the case of a reading, it is just a lot of that.
He puts himself in the zone of receiving. His style of reading actually changed from the University of Arizona study because the second time they went out there, they said they were going to do something called the silent sitter experience. The person was going to be put behind him and for the first 10 minutes of the reading, they were not going to talk. He had to train for months leading up to that. He recognized that he was already doing it because he would stop people from trying to say something because if they gave him a bias, it might take him in the wrong direction. By habit, while talking to somebody, he will drift over to a blank wall because he focuses on a blank wall to see what he is seeing in his mind's eye.
When doing his TV show Crossing Over, the original set had these big white sails all around the room. He did not look at the clients. That is how information comes through. He sees it, hears it, and feels it.
It is energy. He asked the producer if she had any experience with suicide in her friends and family or in her life because she has had someone in her life who died by suicide. Then he asked her if she had any artwork to do with that person, and she actually has tattoos on her body that are based on that relationship.
If you see somebody that is saying stuff like "you have a curse on you" - run. Pay me money, I am going to take off that curse. Pay me money, I am going to light candles for you. Those are red flags. Another red flag is when somebody who cannot actually do a reading, they may be intuitive and psychic, but they are calling themselves a medium when they are not, and they then blame the person in spirit for not coming through. They will say something like "your dad's not evolved enough in spirit, he needs more prayers." No, he does not. That person just could not make the connection. He will never blame his lack of connection on the person who has passed. He will just say "I am sorry, I cannot make the connection" which means it is a him thing.
He was live on Larry King and there was somebody that called up and he got nothing on this one person and said he was so sorry he could not make the connection. Larry looked at him and said he might believe him more now. He said because he could have said anything, but he had nothing, so he could not say anything.
He does not like when people give philosophy as information. He does not like when people go for the low hanging fruit. He thinks you need to be careful about things like that. If they are asking you for any type of questions like the relationship of the person who passed, the name of the person who passed, the date that the person passed, and how they passed - then what are you doing? If doing a radio show or call-in, he might say to the person "hey, how can I help you? Do you have a question?" And they may say "I'd like to try to connect with my dad." That is it. Then he is going to say he may not get your dad, but pay attention to everything that is coming through. His job is to interview who is coming through. Who are you? How did you pass? When did you pass? Any pertinent dates? And then ultimately he is looking for the why now. At the intersection of you, me, and the universe, why now? Why today? And what is that nugget that he has to mine for that he is going to help them with.
John Edward's Italian side of the family, his grandmother, his mom had psychics come to the house all the time. His dad was a New York City police officer and was not a fan of the subject matter. Made sure that he was never around it growing up. His mom and dad divorced and he moved into his grandmother's house, which was a paranormal hub of activity. For about 3 years when they would do stuff like that, he used to make fun of the people.
He remembers one guy that was a card reader that they had. After like three people came out, the third or fourth person came out and he went "Wait, let me guess. You're going to Florida?" And the person went "Yes." He said "I'm going to Florida." How did he know that? Because the person lived in New York. New Yorkers go to Florida and Aruba. Why is nobody going to Kansas?
The reality was he was that person. When he says he understands skepticism, but after he had that first reading, he went to debunk her because his grandmother came out of the room crying. She made his grandmother upset. He was very protective of his grandmother. His grandmother said no, she told her that Tony was with her. He felt bad because his grandmother was introduced as Mrs. Esposito, so it is not a big stretch that there is going to be an Anthony or a Tony in her family. But to his grandmother's credit, she said if you do not believe that your grandfather who loved me more than life itself is still with me, that is like a you problem, not a me problem. Then she said how would she know this? And then she proceeded to tell him things that apparently were true that he did not know having to do with his grandfather.
He did not leave it there. He went to the list of people that were in the room that this woman read before his grandmother to see who could Lydia Clara have extrapolated that information from and then given it to the oldest person in the room. None. There was nobody that that woman read before. Then his cousin went, and his cousin is 13 years older than he is, but she looked like she was the same age. She came out and she was like "Oh my god." And he was like "Come on, Ro, not you too." And she was like "You have to go. Like, you have to go." She said she would pay for him to go. He looked at his mother like could he go? And she said he could go, but he better treat her with respect. And he said oh he will treat her with respect, he is just not going to help her like the rest of them.
He went in armed with his attitude and she said "Can I have your high school ring?" He went "Sure." He took off his ring and handed it to her and she went like this, did not look at him, and then proceeded to give him information. That kind of sounded honestly batshit crazy. She literally said to him "You have highly evolved beings of white and gold light that are ready to work with you and I am here to put you on your path." And he remembered the way that she said it with such conviction. He was like "Oh, so she's crazy. Like, this is like this is crazy." So he was like okay. And then part two of the reading made sense, but yet it did not, but it did make sense. So she was two for two. And then the last part was where she just like rocked his world, flipped him upside down. He was like "Whoa, like there's no way that she would know this." That set him on his path.
From like 1985 to 1987, his readings were just what is happening now, what is coming up for a person. He had no interest in dead people. In 1987, his uncle died. That shifted his perspective. When you have a perspective shift, that is where lessons come in. If you are open, he was open. And it was the first time he saw what grief does to a family. And then unfortunately, a year and a half to two years later, his mom was diagnosed with cancer. And then his world was just rocked. And that was a catalyst for him. That was a huge catalyst. And it changed everything because then he was the client.
From like 1987 to 1989, when a client came in to see him, he would apologize to them and say "Hey, I know you're here because you want to talk about like relationship stuff and job stuff and like life." He goes "But I'm also a medium. So I'm going to have to get that out of the way in the beginning. Is that okay?" And people would look at him and go like "Sure." And then he would do the first part of the reading where whoever was going to come through was going to come through. And then he got into what he thought was the real part, their life, like why they were here and how he can help them.
And then he had this one woman where her dad, he was just loud, like he just and it was going, the session was like 50-60% over and there was no letting up. Papa was not stopping. And then he looked at the woman, he remembers saying "I am so sorry. But I can't get into other stuff." He said "Your dad's like legitimately like not stopping." And he says this often. It was the way she touched his hand. She leaned over and she touched his hand and said "It's okay. It's my dad." And he looked at her. He was like "So, you're okay spending your entire session with me just talking to your dad who's crossed?" And she went "Yeah."
When John Edward's mother passed away, he found himself processing his own grief through the readings he conducted for others. Every reading for strangers served as reinforcement for himself. If their loved ones were present with them, then his mother was present with him. This approach became central to how he dealt with loss, using the constant validation and the reactions of clients as a form of ongoing confirmation that helped him navigate his mourning process.
Edward emphasizes that nobody needs a reading. He has maintained this position since age 16, despite this being his profession. Instead, people need an understanding. A reading can support what someone already believes or knows, but the goal is to help people become active participants in maintaining connection with those who have passed. Edward references the movie Coco as an example of keeping loved ones present in daily life rather than forgetting them.
Edward incorporates his deceased family and friends into his daily existence by talking about them. This doesn't mean having channeled conversations, but rather keeping their presence alive through memory and discussion. He draws an analogy to social media: people post their lives for others to see without directly texting them. Similarly, the living are like a reality show for those who have passed, who may communicate through dreams, songs on the radio, scents, dragonflies, hummingbirds, butterflies, or pennies.
In a one-on-one session, Edward sits with clients and shares exactly what he's seeing, hearing, and feeling. When conducting in-person readings, he may use psychometry by holding an object belonging to the client to tune into their energy, ensuring the object is theirs alone and not connected to someone who has passed.
The first part of a reading involves assessing where the client is in their current life. Edward may use numerology, examining their personal year to understand the lesson or framework they're experiencing. A personal year represents a yearly vibrational pattern running from birthday to birthday.
Edward demonstrates the numerology calculation using the interviewer's birthday. The life path number is calculated by adding the month, date, and year of birth. For September 6, 1987, the calculation yields a life path of 4. A life path 4 indicates someone who lays foundation and groundwork for the future, works hard, focuses on communication and progress.
Edward himself is a life path 9, which involves learning lessons through letting go and loss. Personal years provide timing information. For instance, a personal year 5 indicates a transformational period focused on change, adaptation, and transformation.
When conducting readings, Edward describes the process as similar to an interview. He positions energies in relation to the client: above meaning older figures, below meaning younger figures, and to the side meaning contemporaries such as spouses, siblings, cousins, or friends. He seeks relationship details, important dates, initials, or names connected to those coming through.
Edward compares developing mediumship abilities to learning tarot. Before studying traditional meanings, he encourages students to sit with each card and record their intuitive impressions, creating a personal notebook of meanings based on the feelings each card evokes.
Edward describes himself as persistent when receiving information. If a client initially rejects what comes through, he continues with what he's receiving because sometimes the person the client doesn't want to hear from stands behind the person they do want to hear from. He maintains that his responsibility is to convey everything he's seeing, hearing, and feeling.
Validation often occurs outside the reading when clients return home and discuss the information with family members, discovering connections they hadn't previously discussed. While most connections come from people the client knows, sometimes unknown connections emerge that require later verification with others.
Edward recounts a reading with a grief therapist who initially rejected all the information as unrelated to her family. The therapist suggested that someone else in the waiting room must be the intended recipient. When Edward informed her there was no one else present, she disclosed her profession. The information Edward received was actually for the therapist's five clients from that day, bringing through the deceased loved ones of people she had counseled.
Edward addresses concerns about whether deceased loved ones remain recognizable. He compares the afterlife dimension to the internet: one cannot visit it physically, but can access and connect with it. The connection occurs at the consciousness level, which has experienced all forms of existence.
He uses the analogy of a famous actor who has played many roles with different character names and backstories, but remains the same actor at the core. The connection is to the essential consciousness rather than to any particular incarnation or role.
Edward describes a childhood experience at age 12 while walking through Old San Juan, Puerto Rico. He became paralyzed in the street and stated he had been there before, but not as John. At the end of the block, he correctly identified remnants of a building with a plaque about a miracle and a location called Parque de Palomas. He suppressed this experience for three years until a reading led him to study reincarnation and past life recall.
Edward frames reactions to mediumship as stemming from two motivations: fear or love. When approaching from love, connection is understood as natural. Fear-based responses often stem from religious dogma. He positions his work as energetic and scientific rather than frightening, emphasizing education, empowerment, and enlightenment.
Edward encourages meditation and learning about numerology as practices that have nothing to do with him personally but serve the individual's own journey. His role involves raising awareness and supporting people wherever they are on their grief journey.
Edward explains that grief begins with the understanding that something is ending, not necessarily with death. People can grieve the end of high school, college, jobs, relationships, or friendships. The problem arises when grief is not acknowledged or when it is suppressed rather than expressed.
When someone is terminally ill, families often withhold this information, believing it would be too difficult for the person to hear. However, the soul and consciousness already know they are transitioning. This creates missed opportunities for saying important things and having meaningful conversations before the person passes.
Edward advocates for saying what needs to be said while people are still alive. He encourages asking terminally ill loved ones about future events they won't physically attend, such as weddings, and having those conversations. He describes this as healthy rather than morbid.
He shares a personal practice with his children using the phrase "in case you get abducted by aliens" as a conversation starter for discussing what would be important to communicate if he were no longer present. This approach makes heavy conversations more approachable.
Edward describes reading for a 70-year-old woman whose stepfather came through with the message that his passing was not her fault. She had lived with guilt for 50 years after an argument with him followed by his suicide. This represents an extreme example of how readings can release long-held burdens.
Edward notes that clients often have the strongest emotional reactions when their deceased pets come through during readings, sometimes more intensely than when human family members appear. He explains this occurs because pets provide unconditional love without complications. The reciprocal energy between person and pet represents pure connection.
Edward uses these moments as teaching opportunities, pointing out that the intense reaction demonstrates what connection and communication truly mean. He encourages people to express their feelings to loved ones regularly, even during rushed departures, because no one knows if they will return home.
Information comes through in pieces rather than as complete conversations, requiring symbolic interpretation by the medium. When working with difficult relationship dynamics, the person coming through often seeks to address guilt, disappointment, or anger. Edward is careful to clarify that he is not a therapist and may refer clients to appropriate professionals when deeper emotional work is needed.
Edward has had sessions where after five minutes he recognized that the client needed a different type of practitioner, such as an astrologer, and redirected them accordingly while still providing the time they had scheduled.
John Edward describes a heart pillow given to patients after heart surgery, meant to protect scars when coughing or sneezing. One side says "love" and the other says "grief." Throughout life, people hold the love side close, but when losing someone, it flips to grief. Honoring grief and feelings rather than ignoring them helps return to the love side.
Grief teaches about love, appreciation, and communication. When someone feels they'll never experience joy again, the validation is that they won't feel the exact joy they had before, but they can find joy in different ways. The goal is recognizing it's not just the physical absence, but maintaining the connection.
Edward references Japanese art where broken items are repaired with golden glue, highlighting the cracks rather than hiding them. Grief similarly highlights the cracks in a person. People put themselves back together because they must, but they're never seen the same way again.
Edward shares that his son's middle name honors two boys named Michael who passed, including Michael Kefir, a firefighter who died on 9/11. The mother described herself as having "the me before 9/11 and there's the me after 9/11." This concept applies to any loss—divorce, broken friendships, or death. There's the "you before the event" and the "you after the event." Trying to be the old self doesn't work; navigating life requires recognizing this different version.
Edward describes the morning his mother passed, needing to pick up a tuxedo for a family wedding. Sitting in his car outside her room, his first thought was "Nobody's ever going to care what time I come home again." This created a scary feeling of having no boundaries, no one to tell him "no," representing the "free fall" of grief where there's uncertainty about whether there's a net or someone to catch you.
This free fall can lead to shutting down, drinking, or other coping mechanisms. The recognition that life will never be the same and joy won't return can be terrifying.
Edward challenges the cliché that "time heals all wounds," noting that sometimes things feel harder further from the loss. Seven or eight years after his mother's death, he became so practiced at telling her story that he could explain the details and predict reactions, but stopped feeling the emotion. He recognized this as problematic and set a boundary, refusing to share the story until he could feel it again.
To avoid grief becoming superficial, Edward recommends journaling feelings and writing down experiences. This honors both the person grieving and the deceased. Parents have stories that haven't been told, and interviewing them while they're alive creates deeper connection and preserves their experiences.
When someone appears stuck processing grief, Edward suggests working with a counselor, potentially trying multiple counselors to find the right fit. He also recommends having an astrological chart done to see what the person was spiritually supposed to be learning at the time of the loss, giving meaning and context to the pain—like "diagnosing an energetic thing."
Edward emphasizes living with grief by owning it, saying the person's name, including them in life, and journaling. When people feel they're "too much" by always bringing up their loved one, they should acknowledge this feeling while continuing to honor the connection. For those who have lost a child, saying the child's name honors the parent and makes them feel connected—regardless of whether the child was two days or forty years old.
Edward reassures that nobody passes alone. When people leave the physical world, loved ones and friends who have passed are waiting for them. Deathbed visions and calling out to deceased loved ones are common signs of this. If someone couldn't be present during a loved one's final moments, they shouldn't feel they failed—the person may have waited until that person left because the love was too strong to leave while they were there.
Edward's phrase for his children applies to grief: "I'll never let them go, but I will let them grow." In grief, we let loved ones go physically but grow together until reconnection is possible.
Edward suggests telling stories to people who never knew the deceased, making them three-dimensional figures through descriptions of appearance, personality, and both positive and negative traits. Food traditions, music, and other legacies keep people present in daily life. His grandmother's recipes, like making struffoli at Christmas, represent traditions passed down.
Edward states that deceased loved ones don't care about material possessions—they never communicate concern about cars given away, clothes thrown out, or houses sold. Their value is love, connection, and communication, not articles or things. For those who must sell a home their spouse cherished, he recommends hiring a real estate photographer to create a three-dimensional walkthrough that can be experienced anytime, allowing navigation through grief while honoring the loss.
Edward warns against using readings as a crutch rather than an asset. He sets boundaries with clients, sometimes telling them they can't return for a year or nine months. He once "fired" a client who repeatedly sought validation that someone would leave their spouse. The work should help people internalize feelings rather than externalize them through repeated readings.
Edward's book Chasing Evil represents 30 years of assisting a retired FBI agent on cold cases. The agent initially believed Edward was a fraud after hearing him on radio. He tested Edward with nine items—five related to a case and four control items. Edward correctly separated the control items and provided information that validated his abilities to the skeptical agent.
Edward's father, a New York City police officer, had warned him against working with police. Despite this and Edward's lack of passion for crime-solving, he felt a sense of duty to help. He emphasizes he didn't solve cases—he provided information that the agent used to solve them.
Edward recommends his book The Infinite Quest for those wanting to learn about his work from a foundational level.
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