How to Get a Reading With Theresa Caputo
I Went to See Long Isle Medium Theresa Caputo On Friday Night
A review of the strange, sad show at the Borgata in Atlantic City.
Does she know I'm standing behind her, I wonder?
"Can I talk about the babe that died at birth?"
Of all of the shows that have taken place inside the Borgata's Event Middle over the final decade-plus, I'1000 pretty sure no performer has ever uttered those words. Merely terminal Friday'southward performance was not your average prove, by whatever measure. No, this was Theresa Caputo Live: The Experience.
With tickets priced from $65 to $125, more than 2,000 people turned out to see the woman known as the Long Isle Medium, whose TV show on TLC finished its ninth season before this year.
In case you lot haven't seen the TLC show, the premise is simple: Caputo purportedly connects people with lost loved ones. Of form, that's TV, where you can brand anything happen, or, perhaps more accurately, where you can make anything seem to happen.
This was live and in-person.
I wound up at Caputo's Borgata prove on a lark. I've never seen her on Television set. I'grand not the kind of person who goes to psychics or mediums. I had absolutely naught involvement in hearing from any dead people.
But that'due south exactly why the woman sitting adjacent to me was at the Borgata, why she paid top dollar for a single ticket shut to the phase, why she drove from her home in South Philadelphia to be at the show.
The 70-something widow, who didn't want me to use her proper name, had recently lost her married man of more than 40 years to cancer.
"When he died, it'south like he took all of my bodily organs with me," she told me just before the show started, both of our eyes welling up. "I don't know what to recall about her. I'thou basically an atheist. But if she brings him through for me, I guess I will have to question my beliefs."
The only shot I got inside the theater before the telephone police intervened.
Our conversation was interrupted past an oversized security baby-sit, who told me to turn my phone off and put it away or he'd eject me from the theater immediately. They were very vigilant about this point. According to a recorded announcement that played in the theater, the cell telephone restriction was in place then that the phone signals did not interfere with the wireless microphones being used during the consequence. But I'one thousand non buying it. More on that afterwards.
After everyone was asked to stand for the National Anthem — again, I've never seen that at the Borgata before — Caputo appeared from behind a screen wearing a sparkly, sleeveless multi-colored striped dress and a giant emerald ring.
She thanked the veterans in the audience, asking them to stand up and be recognized, she encouraged folks to sign upwardly for her $19.99 fan social club (not considering she wants their money, she explained, just because she wanted them to have access to pre-sales and such so every bit not to accept to pay scalper prices), and she did a stand-up routine, of sorts.
To wit:
"My favorite part of this is when I look at a woman and say, 'Did you lot lose your hubby?' and she replies, 'Um, actually information technology was another woman's married man I lost.'"
and…
"I curse a lot, and I'g Cosmic. People say, 'She'due south going to hell because she curses like a sailor.' That's right, I like to curse. I'thou from Long Island. I'g pretty sure I'chiliad going to hell for talking to dead people — not for cursing."
The crowd laughs. Caputo is genuinely funny, a bit self-deprecating, and charming in a way where y'all'd want to have her at your next dinner party.
Merely the laughter shifts quickly to tears. And lots of them.
She walks out into the audience, trailed by 2 high-definition cameras that feed the activity onto three screens, switching back and forth to whichever camera has the most effective angle. Meanwhile, staffers run around as she works the room, getting wireless mics into the hands of her subjects-of-the-moment.
As she strolls through the room, she says by and large vague things that she's getting from the beyond — an older man who has passed, a boyfriend who died violently, someone who committed suicide, the number seven, etc. — and waits for someone to nod their head or raise their hand affirming the connection. In other words, she doesn't walk upward to a particular person, look at them and say, "Your father died 3 weeks ago of cancer."
Sometimes she gets ii or three unrelated people continuing up regarding a item advice. She feels them out, asking questions, looking at objects in their easily (photos, a necklace, a stuffed fauna) and then focuses on i or the other depending on the responses, depending on what she's getting from them. The other people don't sit downward, and she'll bounciness back to them if they offset nodding when the person she'south currently on is shaking her head.
And when she just tin can't get a yes, she doesn't let that stop her.
"Did he write you a note soon before he died saying I'k sorry?" she asks ane adult female.
There's silence. Caputo asks over again. More silence. And then a simple "no." A head shake.
Caputo is quick to recover:
"The next fourth dimension you're in a card store and y'all see a card that says, 'I'm sorry,' know that this is from him to you."
That's how it all goes. Vague things plow more specific based on torso language or verbal clues. Mistakes are deflected. It all happens so quickly, so information technology's hard to keep rails, to keep score.
It's what's known as cold reading in magic circles, as opposed to hot reading, in which the magician or medium has secretly obtained information nearly their target in advance. (Run into: Peter Popoff.)
If Caputo really had any special powers — or if she were employing hot reading techniques — her data would be a lot more than specific and articulate, and she wouldn't be wrong and so oftentimes. And if they permitted people to take video of the operation with their phones, allowing the show to be dissected in great item after the fact, it really wouldn't impress anyone.
Aside from this whole common cold reading routine, Caputo attempts to deed as a therapist or grief counselor for the suffering.
She engages a family whose son died violently two weeks ago and says he's telling her that in that location's nothing they could have washed, that they shouldn't feel guilty, that they should motion on with their lives and that he's in a better place. The female parent can't command her tears, and much of the audience cries right along with her.
Caputo tells a tearful young widow that her husband says she looks pretty.
She says there'due south someone near her — she can't quite locate the correct person in the back department of the room — whose son died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. It wasn't, she insists. It was an accident.
She tells an older man that his dead wife wants him to starting time dating and that she really wishes he'd finally learn how to brand the bed.
She consoles a beyond-distraught woman who tells Caputo that her mom jumped in front end of a train because her fellow told her to exercise then.
Caputo speaks with a young male child — he was so cute, possibly half dozen or vii — whose daddy had passed. Not a dry eye in the firm.
At that place'south and then much raw grief in the room, so many unanswered questions, and Caputo does her best during the 2 hour-plus show to "help" those in need.
But she never quite got effectually to the South Philly adult female seated to my left, who pulled out a photograph of her and her husband from a cruise some years agone.
"Wasn't he handsome?" she asks me.
"No, he's not handsome," I tell her. "He's very handsome."
She smiles.
I enquire her if she wants her coin back. She shakes her head no.
"She did manage to aid some people," she says, before a pause. "I guess."
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Source: https://www.phillymag.com/news/2017/07/24/theresa-caputo-review-long-island-medium/
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