What the dead have to say to the living: Lessons from a psychic reading

With shoulder-length blond hair, black dress and black knee-high boots, Jennifer Rose cuts a preacherly silhouette — less Bible-thumping, more New Age — standing on a small stage in the retirement community of Laguna Woods Village.

“There’s a lot of spirit here already,” she says. Her audience grows quiet. “So I hope you’re starting to feel that too. As the atmosphere changes, it gets a little buzzy.”

When Rose speaks of spirit, she is not talking about something metaphoric or symbolic; there’s nothing gauzy in this invocation. When Rose speaks of spirit, she is speaking of the dead, though she would never use that word. Dead is lifeless and gone, but spirit, which she courts, is animated, full of love and loved. The room holds onto her words with reverence.

“Connecting with your loved ones is a passion of mine,” she says. “I get to make friends every time I do it — over there and over here.”

A few late arrivals find the last remaining seats in the clubhouse. Nearly 80 in total, they have come here on a gray Saturday morning for a reading, as has been practiced in America going back to at least 1849 when the Fox sisters, Kate and Maggie, packed a hall in Rochester, New York, for a public demonstration of spiritualism.

Rose, a self-described spiritual evidential psychic medium and spiritual healer, is considered by many in the room as one of the best, and they should know. They are the members of the Life After Life Club, one of the many social clubs in the Orange County community once known as Leisure World, whose majority of residents are in their mid-70s.

For almost 20 years, they have gathered to learn about the healing power of UFOs, trance channeling, the power of animal communication and near-death experiences. Their sessions are recorded, and their YouTube channel has almost 30,000 subscribers with more than 3.5 million visitors.

This day they have assembled to hear what the dead have to say to the living, and a little later Rose will attempt to communicate with the dead.

Her lecture is called “Lessons from the Spirit World,” and for those who are of an age when grief, loss and their own mortality are near and prevalent, the lessons are welcome. Among these men and women, all seniors, lies the hope, if not the belief, that there is something beyond this world.

Skeptics will cast a jaundiced eye on what is about to take place, dismiss Rose’s lessons as hooey. Spiritualism has long drawn critics. Houdini delighted in exposing some psychics as frauds, and in 2002, federal regulators targeted 900 lines that charged for readings over the phone. Decades after she and her sister had become sensations, Maggie Fox admitted it had all been a hoax — only to recant the confession later.

But some still believe — or hope — and remain willing to consider the allure of seances, Ouija boards, communications beyond the grave.

“What happens when we pass over?” Rose asks. “As a medium, I bring a lot of people together in reuniting, and I deliver a lot of apologies too.”

Audience members ask questions about the afterlife and connecting with deceased loved ones, including pets.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

Whether the dead actually speak to the living may not be the point. What matters more is the burden the living carry, the grief, the hurt, the guilt and regret — all that we’ve done, all that we hadn’t done.

For those willing to receive the message, Rose’s presence and words are balm, and the dead apparently are happy to oblige. They are, it seems, sorry for the hurt, pain or neglect they might have caused, and they hope they’ll be forgiven.

“They have no problem at all taking responsibility for what they have done in this lifetime. It is much harder for us to do that,” Rose continues.

Flanked by two bamboo plants, standing behind a lectern, she speaks without notes or props. Her claim on this knowledge is helped by the faith that her audience has experienced enough love and loss for a message of hope to take hold. Her voice and charm draw the audience close.

One woman, who doesn’t want to give her name, confides that she’d like to hear from her brother, who recently died. They were close, she says, until his last year when he “lost his mind to cirrhosis” and they fell apart. She’d like to believe they could patch things up.

Another woman, also wishing anonymity, describes herself as a believer, and says she has been “studying death since she was 27.” She’d like to stay and talk afterwards, but needs to get home to her husband who is ill and may be in his final days.

Rose delivers her lessons, which are filled with such positivity — you continue on, the soul is infinite, everyone is forgiven, you are perfect the way you are — that only a die-hard cynic would take them apart.

“Our time here, while it may feel long, it’s just like that. It’s a split second,” Rose says, “and what we take with us when we pass over to that place is love and our memories.”

One woman raises her hand with a story and a question. Her husband, she said, passed almost five years ago, and the first year she felt him constantly.

“The TV came on. The lights came on. We’d start talking, and the clock would go crazy. But then after a year and a half, I woke up and I almost felt him pull from me, and he was gone. Do they move on after so long?”

Rose alights upon the question. “That’s a gift that you got all that,” she says. “I love all that stuff,” the knocks and taps, the banging on walls, the sudden changes of temperature in a room. She doesn’t believe in negative spirits. All she’s experienced is “pure, unconditional, extreme love.”

She attributes his sudden departure to the questioner’s healing and need for new experiences. “But that doesn’t mean he can’t return,” she says.

Across the room another question comes up. “If we are in a stage of prolonged grief, will that affect the person who’s passed on — in their own development, their soul development?”

“That’s a good question,” Rose says. “Thank you.”

About 80 audience members listen as medium Jennifer Rose addresses the Life After Life club.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

Death does not loosen the ties of our relationships, she says. If anything, they grow stronger, more loving and generous. Those who have died still care for us, she says, and try to provide healing.

“They want us to feel joy,” she says. “But still, grief takes as long as it takes. It is a sacred process.”

As the questions draw to a close, Rose shifts to the main event: time now to see just how buzzy this room is. No one gets up to leave.

“OK,” she says, shaking her head and her shoulders like an athlete being called up by the coach. “I’m just going to get in that power mode here.”

She scans the room.

“I feel drawn to the lady in the green cap in the back here,” she says. “Hello.”

Valerie Young-Williams, 82, nods. She just finished treatment for cancer and wears a green beanie to hide her hair loss.

“Is it OK if I work with you? Are you OK?” Sensitive, empathetic, Rose proceeds carefully, mindful of how intimate these vulnerable moments can become.

Valerie nods tentatively and begins to cry. She is accompanied by her sister, Diane Young, who sits beside her. Valerie had hoped that her husband, David, might show up. They were married for 35 years. He died almost two years ago.

“Part of the reason you’re feeling emotional right now is because there’s spirit here,” says Rose, asking if anyone has a tissue to spare. A woman nearby finds her one.

Diane, 77, had seen Rose before and was impressed by her readings, divining certain aspects of her life that Rose could not have known.

Now Rose is sensing someone, but it’s not David. It’s a father or a father figure drawing near.

“It could be a stepdad or a father-in-law or somebody who is like a father,” Rose says. “I don’t always get that perfect distinction, but I do feel a father figure for you coming in.”

The sisters nod, and soon Rose confirms their father — Kenneth George Young — is with them.

Contact with spirit, as Rose describes it, is like experiencing “a high frequency of love.” She calls the sensation “sitting in power,” and like a mediation, it requires a quiet mind, a calm body, time, dedication and perseverance “so you feel spirit’s love.”

Then she develops the connection, enough to convince the sisters that Kenneth is here.

“And do you understand, either symbolically or literally, a connection to a boat? Because that’s one of the first visuals I’m getting. So, any love of boats or near the water or something like that?”

The women nod. Kenneth, who died in 2006 at the age of 97, loved the ocean very much, they say. “We grew up in front of the ocean.”

Rose works with this. In these moments, she says she sees, feels, hears and is made aware of “things” for which she must be a translator.

“That you were able to pick that up that quickly means we’re connected right now,” she says. “The three of us — you, me and dad — are all connected.”

But Valerie is looking for her husband. Only Rose can’t be sure if he’s there. Kenneth, however, comes across more clearly: his personality — protective (“standing behind you, placing his hands on your shoulders”) — and even his love for board games, played during the summer “when you had all the time in the world.”

Rose describes his briefcase. The sisters recognize it; he carried it to work each day.

“He does feel fairly good with numbers and figures. He’s got that kind of analytical mind.”

He was an engineer, they say.

“He was kind of pull-your-bootstraps-up, kind of keep-moving-forward kind of man, too. Because he feels very purpose driven: I get up, I go to work, I take care of my family, I do this. He’s a very hardworking, ethical man.”

Working in Rose’s favor is the desire for death not to be final and for this moment to be real, so that close enough is close enough. In Valerie and Diane, Rose has found two allies. Adherents of the Baháʼí faith, they believe this world is but a shadow of a spiritual world, which is more brilliant, more dimensional, a place where the soul goes but is never very far away, a place that can’t be described with language.

Then, Rose says, the image shifts.

“I see bottles of medication and things that he had. Do you understand this?”

The sisters are puzzled but find the answer. David, not Kenneth, was ill before he died, they say. He must now be here.

Rose confirms it.

“It feels like they tried to treat him this way, and then they tried to treat him that way,” she says. “And I still feel like there are some questions. Had we done this differently, would we have had more time?”

Valerie nods, and Rose continues.

Visitors listen as Jennifer Rose speaks about death, the afterlife and connections with deceased loved ones.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

“Because I hear him say, ‘Baby, no. It was my time to go. You didn’t do anything wrong. You didn’t make a mistake.’”

Valerie eases into the chair where she sits, the relief so great, as if the guilt and misgivings she felt over David’s final months had just washed away. She thought he would be angry with her for not coping well during that time. She felt unworthy of his love, but now sees it differently.

“There’s still grief that’s being worked out,” says Rose, who now sees Kenneth again. He wants the sisters to stay close. They nod they will.

He’s smiling. In fact, he’s humming. He used to sing in college, they tell her.

“That’s why I’m getting so much music,” Rose says.

Kenneth is showing her, Rose says, what music in the spirit world is like: notes beyond notes, sounds beyond sounds, colors and notes blending together.

“It’s very beautiful, very harmonic convergence of light and sound that have come together, as dad is showing it to me. It’s super cool,” she says.

But then Rose senses it’s time to end their communication.

“Dad’s very polite,” she says. “He wants to make room for a few other communicators to come in. But I leave you with love from dad and from your beautiful husband too. He really is always around you.”

Rose shifts her focus. “Let me see whom I’m drawn to now.”