Joey Madia, New Mystics Reviews

  (Cardiff, CA: Waterside Productions, 2021). ISBN: 978-1-951805-66-1. Let’s begin with a buyer beware, spoiler alert, and disclaimer. First, this isn’t a book written from the onset by a true believer, filled with anecdotes involving inspiring messages from the deceased. If you are looking for that type of book on the afterlife, they are abundant. So abundant, that is what I thought I was reviewing when I picked this one up. Instead, it details the author’s six-year journey from near cynicism to a scientific skepticism where he spent a good deal of time and money, created or adapted protocols, and did all he could to debunk psychic mediumship, all while receiving what seemed to be messages from his recently deceased father. Now, the spoiler alert: At the end of the six-year journey (on p. 286 of 305), the author writes: “[O]nce you have come to see this truth for yourself, and your personal universe expands, it is no longer so important to you that everyone else sees it.” ...

(Foreword, Elizabeth Tucker) (2011) ISBN: 978-1-4560-7551-4 A few weeks ago I published my review of Josette Berardi’s I’m Not Dead, Am I? Although that book came out a year after this one, I chose to read it first because the scope was larger, discussing the paranormal experiences of her family, especially her daughter, in the context of her mother’s severe illness and hospitalization.   The Man at the Foot of the Bed is a much different book, with an appropriately less intimate and passionate voice, which operates on two levels: the first is as a memoir of her daughter Nicole’s experiences, from a toddler to her late teens, as a medium who can communicate with the deceased and who has had encounters with other, darker, entities. The second is as a primer and resource guide for parents and others who have a young person with mediumistic gifts in their life and those interested in obtaining a reading from a medium. Berardi opens with the following: “This book is dedicated t...

 by Josette L. Berardi (Foreword, Elizabeth Tucker) (2012) ISBN: 147769336X When I first heard about the experiences of the Berardi family, through a mutual contact, I was immediately drawn to the core elements of their story because of certain similarities in my own life: Italian Catholics, the Berardis have experienced paranormal events, in their case, through the gift of mediumship that runs through the maternal side of the family and through their many clients for readings and house clearings. As readers of my reviews, blog essays, plays, and fiction are aware, I have had a lifetime of paranormal experiences, some of which have involved visitations from deceased family members, and I believe that, although I am no longer a practicing Catholic, my experiences growing up in the Roman Catholic   Church (complete with Catholic school, CCD, and church on Sundays and Holy Days) have informed my relationship with the paranormal. With all of this in mind I welcomed the oppo...