For Mothers’ Day this year, my daughter invited me to go with her and her girlfriend to see the local well known psychic medium, Maureen Hancock, later in May. I had never been to a psychic medium, but my daughter had been a few times and was quite taken with Maureen.  I was skeptical of the powers that mediums profess to have, but it sounded like a fun evening.

My daughter suggested that I read Maureen’s autobiography, The Medium Next Door: Adventures of a Real Life Ghost Whisperer, and I did read most of it before the evening of the performance. Maureen is from Massachusetts and continues to live here. The references to Boston area locales were familiar and interesting. The story of her life is intriguing but often sad from birth on. She certainly has had challenges in her lifetime including a severe childhood illness and a near fatal car accident.

I was glad that I read her autobiography before going to see her in person. It gave me a reference point from which to learn about her life and her psychic abilities. The humor and down to earth manner that she portrays in her book comes out in spades at her performances. Even without the spiritual message, Maureen is a gifted entertainer. She is funny, compassionate and a natural performer.

I was not lucky enough to be singled out to be visited by a deceased relative during my evening with the spirits, but my daughter and her girlfriend were. It is difficult to explain how Maureen knew so many personal things about them. I remain skeptical of the powers that mediums profess to have, but I do want to keep an open mind.

At the end of each chapter of Maureen’s book she adds inspirational directions on how to face and accept life’s trials and tribulations. These do enhance and promote her story as well as add a dimension that is not totally otherworldly.

To learn more about mediums, I decided to read a bit more. Small Mediums at Large: the True Tale of a Family of Psychics, is the autobiography of Terry Iacuzzo, a psychic from a Sicilian-American family born on Halloween into a 1950s working-class neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York. Like Maureen Hancock, Terry professes to have a genetic predisposition to the spiritual world. She also, like Maureen, had a sad and challenging childhood and uses humor to deliver her feelings and experiences. Terry’s book was entertaining but not especially convincing to me that she was authentic. It read more like a novel and seemed to be meant more to entertain than profess and convince readers of her psychic powers.

The third book, World Religions and Beliefs: Mystics and Psychics, by Joanne Mattern tells the lives of six well-known psychics from Medieval times (Hildegard of Bingen) to the twentieth century (Jeanne Dixon).  It is a very comprehensive and historical documentation of mystics and psychics through the ages that has an academic style, but is easy to read. It’s a book I would not have previously sought out, but I enjoyed reading it.

All in all, entering the world of psychics by visiting Maureen and reading the stories was an interesting and unique experience. Maureen’s story of her life was the most convincing, but, as she states in her book, “I’m not here to convince anyone that there is an afterlife, but I do hope through my own faith, experiences and interactions with the living and dead that I’ve planted seeds of hope and possibilities that there is something more out there when we leave this earth.”

As an echo to Maureen’s words,  the introduction to World Religions and Beliefs: Mystics and Psychics, states, “Whether people believe in their abilities or not, studying their lives gives society a glimpse into the unknown and provides a new way of looking at what might lie beyond ordinary sight.”

Norma Logan is the Literacy Volunteer Coordinator at the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood, MA. Look for her article in the October 17, 2019 issue of the Transcript and Bulletin.