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WILKES-BARRE — When most of us try to talk to the dead, the dead don’t answer. For Theresa Caputo, calls to the afterlife don’t even count against her monthly minutes.
“Theresa Caputo Live! The Experience” will return to the F.M. Kirby Center for the Performing Arts at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 5 for live readings with audience members. The otherworldly operator won’t have time to connect every attendee with his or her loved ones, but Caputo said she’ll move in whatever direction the spirits pull her.
“They will guide me throughout the area, so whether you’re in the front row or back or all the way up in the rafters, if your loved ones are speaking to you they will place me in front of you,” Caputo said.
Two large screens on the Kirby stage will keep everyone’s eyes on Caputo as she makes her way around the venue. To Caputo, seeing is believing, not necessarily in her abilities but in the comforting concept of a place beyond.
“I want them to believe in themselves, to believe in an afterlife, to believe and to know the things they’re sensing and feeling that reminds them of their loved ones that have died is real,” Caputo said. “They’re not crazy, it’s not their imagination, it’s not wishful thinking. That it truly is them and it’s real and just to embrace it and to know that they’re little hellos from heaven.”
On her last tour, Caputo and the entire crowd experienced a particularly loud hello from heaven. After stopping to speak to a young girl about her deceased grandmother, Caputo noticed that a heavy rain began falling on the venue’s roof during an otherwise clear evening. The girl looked at Caputo and told her that a similarly heavy rain occurred on the night of her grandmother’s passing.
“We were all like, ‘are you kidding me, where did this rain come from,’” Caputo said. “After about 30 seconds or a minute, I looked up and I was like, ‘Grandma, you got to stop with the rain, it’s so distracting!’ As God as my witness the rain stopped. There was such a gasp and all I said was, ‘I do not have the power to make it stop raining.’”
Whether the rain was a coincidence or came as a message from beyond will depend on predilection. Skeptic or believer debate aside, Caputo is able to help the living find closure with those who can’t speak for themselves anymore. She said it took her a long time to embrace her gift — not only because she’s a practicing Catholic, but because she never understood why someone would want to go to a medium. Now she said she sees it as changing someone’s life.
“I didn’t understand that and this leads to why it’s important for me to continue my journey,” Caputo said. “I learned unfortunately, no matter how someone died, we are left with burdens and guilt and these do not give us the ability to heal.”