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school in which to learn lessons and demonstrate love, when it is your turn to pass out of the body, you will hopefully be aware that there is a much better place to go to and will not need to stay around rattling pots and pans and spying on your neighbor. And in the meantime, if your home seems a little off and you have unending plumbing problems, car problems, or electrical upsets, the kids seem to have unexplained earaches, and the dog is acting restless, you just might have an unwanted visitor walking through and spying on you. Take a good look at yourself in the mirror and ask, Who are you going to call?

James Van Praagh, spiritual medium and

author of Talking to Heaven

PART I

Listening to Spirits

INTRODUCTION

The Ghost Phenomenon

SO . . . IS ANYONE here now?” Jennifer Love Hewitt sat across from me, pouring a cup of tea. We were in her kitchen, and Love (as she prefers to be called) was meeting with me as she prepared to begin the first season of shooting what would become the CBS hit series Ghost Whisperer. I wanted to pinch myself. Me, a fifty-something housewife from Cleveland, was sitting and casually chatting with a well-known actress, sipping tea in her sun-filled kitchen on a summer afternoon. I was there because Love’s character on the show, Melinda Gordon, can see and communicate with earthbound spirits. And so can I.

“There are two spirits here,” I told her.

“What do you do next?” Love asked me. Although we’d known we’d be working together on Ghost Whisperer, this was the first time we had met, and I felt her studying me closely.

“Well, you can ask them questions,” I told her. “When you’re ready for them to leave, I can make the white Light and let them cross over. And then they’ll be gone.”

Like most people I work with, Love had all kinds of questions, both for me and for the spirits sharing her home. And although she couldn’t see or hear her ghostly housemates, I could see them as plainly as I saw her, and they were more than happy to talk with me.

“Tell me who’s here,” she said.

“Well, there’s a woman over there,” I said, gesturing at the doorway. “She says she’s Lon Chaney Jr.’s ex-wife.”

Love looked startled. “Lon Chaney Jr. used to own this house! How did you know that?”

I wasn’t surprised she wanted to know. I’d been asked this kind of question literally hundred of times; it’s as if people suspect I have some previous knowledge of their lives and circumstances. Each time I patiently explain that I’m not a psychic. I can’t read minds or see into the future. I can only tell them what a spirit tells me. And that’s what I told Love.

“Well then, ask her how she likes my singing,” Love said with a grin.

It seemed like a strange question, but when I looked over at the ghost, she was smiling. “She’s having a bit of fun with you,” the ghost told me. “She’s a wonderful singer. She has recordings and everything.”

Love asked a few more questions, we all chatted pleasantly, the spirit admitted she was ready to go into the Light, and I helped her leave.

Then Love asked, “Who else is here?”

I hesitated. All my years of experience told me that this next encounter wasn’t going to be as pleasant as our chat with the former Mrs. Chaney. But in my work I’ve learned not to venture my opinion unless directly asked. “There’s a youngish man here, too,” I said.

The ghost, probably about thirty, with neatly cut light brown hair and an athletic build, lounged insolently in a corner. He stared at me in a way that was far from welcoming.

Again, Love had a lot of questions. But this time, her queries became very specific, very quickly. When people ask me to talk with the ghosts in their homes, it can seem a lot like a game of Twenty Questions: What’s your name? How old are you? Where did you live? How did you die? People are naturally curious, and there’s something about asking questions of someone they can’t see or hear, but who has been sharing their home and watching their routines, sometimes for years, that makes them bolder than they might be if they’d simply met at a cocktail party.

Because