A friend and I spent the afternoon at a small, local bookstore on Long Island  listening to a bubbly, 40-something year old, well-educated, mother of four talk about her rare gift.

It started when she was a child.  She heard voices.  Unexplainable voices.  She was afraid of the voices but  she didn’t tell a soul until she was a freshman in college.   A ghost, a man, appeared in her dorm room and this, of course, really frightened her.  She was fortunate to find a campus faculty member who believed and understood and helped her explore her ability as she chose.  She came to understand that she is both psychic and a medium.  Over the years, she learned how to both hear and see people from beyond and understand how they communicate, learning much about the “the other side” from her deceased brother.  Today, having honed her skills, she was beginning to share her talents so people could hear from friends and family who had passed away.

The experience was mesmerizing and a bit unnerving as she did short readings for almost all 20 or so gathered.   We asked questions about what it was like to communicate with dead people and she was open and eager to help us understand.  She shared a lot about herself.

The experience was believable and unbelievable at the same time. 

Over coffee and cookies, I told her I had a friend in Westchester County (just north of New York City) who was interested in having her come to her home to do readings for a few friends.

The medium hesitated, looked over at the friendly man, her significant other,  off to her side and sheepishly said, “I don’t drive over bridges, so someone would have to take me.”

Disbelief.

I chuckled and told her me too.

It’s not  often I tell people about my bridge phobia and even rarer that anyone has shared theirs with me.

We both laughed and talked about our “secret” fear.

Within a few minutes another woman who’d overheard us joined in  and said she too couldn’t drive over bridges.

I don’t think the medium knew this about us already.  And one thing’s for sure, by looking at her, I would’ve never figured her for a medium and definitely not a gephyrophobiac.