How did you discover your psychic talent?

How did you discover your psychic talent?

James Van Praagh (Medium, Author) gives expert video advice on: What were the first signs of your psychic abilities?; How did you discover your psychic talent?; What's it like to communicate with the dead? and more...

At first I found it very interesting. I was always very sceptical about this whole world, really because I was ignorant about it and I went to a medium. A friend of mine dragged me to see a medium. I didn't know what a medium was. And I asked her, "What is a medium and what does he do?" And she said, "He is someone who talks to the dead." And I said, "I really don't believe in that sort of thing. I think it is all "hocus pocus" and it's all a show business sort of thing." She said, "Let's just go for the heck of it." "Sure, we will go for the heck of it." I went in there and the man said to me, "You are a medium yourself." I said, "What is a medium." "A sensitive, someone who is a channel, of the higher dimensions of the spirit world with a physical connection. I said, "OK." He said, "The spirit people want to use you as a channel and in two years time, they are going to." I thought this man was crazy. I thought he was a nut. And I had just moved to Los Angeles from New York. Unfortunately, sometimes people from New York think they are flaky Californians. I though this is perfect. People think that's a cliché. But he did bring through messages and details about family members that were pretty incredible, very accurate, incredible details. There is no way he could have known these things. So it started peaking my interest. And I read as many books as I could on the subject matter of life after death and the paranormal. And I remember in every single book I read, there was a common theme. And the theme, the discussion was about, if you want to find out what your soul's purpose is in this lifetime, if you want to live your highest potential in life, if you want to get everything in your life you always wanted, there are ways of doing that and that is through meditation. After meditation, you can visualize things. You can see it happening. I started meditating. I would meditate not in a formal way. I just started breathing exercises. I heard about breathing and the breath and I visualized a flower - very informal. I did that every single day for like ten minutes. And very informally and probably about two or three weeks after I started that, I started seeing spirits again as I did as a boy. I started seeing lights around people auras, their auras, and colours around them, very weird, very strange, very odd. And I remember it was very much like the experience as a child, these colours. I remember, "Oh, yeah, as a kid I used to see these things.” So at that time I was working at a studio. I was doing contracts at Paramount Studios. And there was a co-worker I had who was working next to me and we used to talk about the paranormal. I told her about this medium. It was just fascination. She used to get astrology magazines and we would talk about astrology. And one day she came to work and I saw this lady behind her and I knew it was her grandmother. I just knew it. And this grandmother was looking at me and she sends me thoughts telepathically about a yellow house with white shudders in the state of Idaho and needlepoint. I'm like, OK, so this is weird. I said to this girl, her name was Jo. I said "Jo, I have something really, really weird to tell you. There is a lady behind you. She is talking about the state of Idaho, a yellow house with white shudders and needlepoint. Do you understand what she is trying to say? And Jo started crying and she said, "James, it's amazing. That's my grandmother and she lived in the state of Idaho and a yellow house, white shudders and she taught me how to do needlepoint. That was the last thing she taught me when I used to visit her in summers. And she also made a pact with me that when she passes over and goes to heaven, if there was anyway she could come back and tell me she loves me, she will. So I was really blown away by that. It freaked me out, frightened me a little bit because it was new. I ran out of the studio, ran back to my apartment. I just ran, kept on running and I called up that medium I went to see. I remember on the phone, "You are not going to believe what happened." He said, "James, don't you remember the prediction that was made to you from the spirit world." "Yeah," "James, that was two years ago." That was about 25 years ago. I have been a channel, a worker, a communicator for the spirit world ever since.