Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Jeffrey Wands is an internationally acclaimed psychic medium, radio host, and author.  He has hosted his own radio show in New York for many years.  Currently, his show, "Psychic Sundays," can be heard on WALK 97.5 FM.  He is a welcomed, regular guest on radio programs across the country and has also made many television appearances, including Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, Maury, Today and A&E's Mediums: We See Dead People to name just a few.  Jeffrey's psychic practice in Port Washington, New York, has thousands of clients worldwide who willingly wait for up to a year for an appointment.  Please visit JeffreyWands.com.

  Scott Baker is a former NYPD police officer and boxer. He is now a successful boxing coach and has his own fat-burning fitness video at www.hiitathome.com. He also teaches and performs improv comedy all around the East Coast, and he still lives in New York. Baker's book A Warmer Shade of Blue won a Quill and Badge Award from the International Union of Police Associations for excellence in police writing.

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The Psychic in You

Pocket

The first time I saw Jeffrey Wands in action was in December of 2001 when I went down to a television studio in Manhattan to attend a taping on The Maury Show. I was there as a possible collaborator with Wands on a book about his psychic powers.

I was skeptical. While I believe in an afterlife -- I don't think it's logical not to believe -- I nonetheless doubted that anyone could talk to the dead or see into the future with absolute certainty. But I was there to see what he could do and how he worked.

What follows is a mostly verbatim account of what happened.

Wands came out on the stage to a nice burst of applause and a couple of shouts from the 150 or so people in the audience. A trim, thirtyish, handsome man all dressed in black -- shoes, suit, turtleneck. Wands looked nervous. I gathered this from the way he sat on a curved bench next to Maury: His body was still, his eyes a little too watchful.

I also looked closely at Maury -- a tall, thin man with a shock of gray hair, also dressed in black -- and tried to detect what he might be thinking, or doubting. Maury Povich had been around the talk show business a long time, and if anyone could spot something that wasn't kosher I figured he could. But I couldn't determine anything. Maury was smooth, melodiously articulate -- and unreadable.

Based on what Jeffrey Wands was about to endure, nervousness seemed to me an appropriate state. The Maury Show producers had devised an acid test for him. And much more than his credibility was riding on how he performed.

As Maury explained:

"We have some grief-stricken guests waiting backstage who are desperate for Jeffrey to communicate with their deceased loved ones. Jeffrey has never met any of these guests and has no knowledge of their stories. Before we meet these guests we're going to escort Jeffrey backstage out of hearing range, then we're going to talk with our guests, and after they share their heartbreaking stories we're going to bring Jeffrey back out. Hopefully he'll be able to use his abilities to connect with their loved ones who have passed on."

Maury then led Jeffrey off the stage, after which he brought out the first guest, a pretty blonde woman with cornrow hair, wearing black slacks and a sweater and who, I guessed, was in her early twenties. Simultaneously, a large TV monitor on a back wall showed a photo of a goateed, smiling young black man.

"This is Angela," Maury said, "and if she looks sad it's because she is. Just three months ago, Alfie, the man you see in the photo, the love of her life and the father of her children, was murdered in cold blood outside her house. This is what happened."

Then, a dramatization, a blend of photos and video clips acted out by professional actors portrayed what had happened with Angela narrating.

"I was asleep in my bed," Angela said tearfully, "and I heard shots and I was scared. I saw that the clock said 2:40 and before it turned to 2:41 my doorbell rang three times. I got up and went downstairs and opened the door." She started to cry harder. "Alfie was lying there face down with blood coming out of his head. I didn't think he was dead...I couldn't bear to think of him as dead. But he was, and the hardest thing in the world is watching my children cry for him...."

"So what do you want to ask Jeffrey?" Maury said. "How he died...why he died...? "

"How, who, why...everything," Angela said.

"Okay," Maury said, "but before we bring Jeffrey out there's one other person who wants to know something about Alfie and that's his sister, Charlynn, who's in the studio audience."

Maury went into the audience and led a young black woman to the stage where she sat down next to Angela. Immediately, Charlynn, a heavyset person with large, expressive eyes reached over and grasped Angela's hand.

"And what do you want to know?" Maury asked.

"Why...how..."

Abruptly, she stopped and those expressive eyes got hard.

"I want to know," she said, "who killed my brother."

"Okay," Maury said, "let's bring Jeffrey out."

From time to time as Maury went through these preliminaries, a camera would show Jeffrey alone in a room backstage, sitting on the edge of a couch, his face somber, occasionally rubbing his hands together. I was worried for him. He was definitely nervous.

The camera followed him coming out of the room and down a hall with a floor strewn with cable, and then out onto the stage to be greeted by solid applause and a few shouts. Now, for him to help these women and to succeed, I knew he had to do one thing: talk to the dead.

Maury introduced him to the women and he sat down next to them.

"Is there anything," Maury said to Jeffrey, "you need to ask?"

"No," he said speaking rapidly as, I was to discover, he almost always does, "let me just hear what I'm hearing."

"I have one, two, three figures standing here," he said. "I have an older male and younger male who is about thirty coming through and I have a grandmother standing behind Charlynn."

He paused, looked down at a pad, a pen poised over it.

"Now what's confusing me," he said, "about their coming through is that they're holding this young man back, so this is an unnatural passing. I get a feeling of...confusion."

He turned to Charlynn.

"And this is your brother?"

"Yes," she said.

"This was in the house?"

"No," Angela said.

"But right outside in front of the steps," Jeffrey said.

My mind flashed back to the dramatization, which had shown Alfie lying face down next to the front steps. And Angela had said that was where she found him.

Both women nodded. Yes.

"Now he's looking toward two people...he's showing me two people...like he's connected to them. Does this make sense?"

The women looked at him, saying nothing.

"Two people," Maury interjected, "who did what?"

Jeffrey did not respond to Maury, as if he didn't hear him, perhaps because he was too inwardly focused.

"This has to be unnatural," Jeffrey said, "because of the way he's bringing them across...I'm getting an explosive feeling...hit in the chest."

"What you're saying," Charlynn said, "he has seen two people?"

"Yes," Jeffrey said and appeared to be struggling to see the two figures more clearly. "He's looking at two people, and they're connected to it...and I see him looking directly at this one person. This is somebody he would have been around in the three-day period before."

Before, I thought, the murder. I had a sense that whatever Jeffrey saw coming in to him came in a receiver that was imperfect. Sounds and images seemed to ebb and flow, come in and out of focus.

"Now the red car is whose?"

"That's my car," Angela said.

Just like that he knows the color of the car. I was stunned, and I thought I heard someone in the audience gasp.

"Was he near the car?"

"He parked behind me," Angela said.

"Okay, because he's showing me the car."

Then:

"This is a neighborhood feeling I'm getting. I see him looking directly at the person who..."

Shot him I said to myself.

"Was he in the car, because he's showing me the car."

No answer.

"I'm getting a high feeling," Jeffrey said, "I got to believe that there was an addiction issue with him...or someone else."

Again, neither of the women responded. In fact, I realized that other than paying close attention to what Jeffrey was saying and occasionally becoming tearful, neither woman was very vocal. I wondered why.

"This" he said, "happened three,...