Long Island Medium Plans to Channel Spirit in Santa Barbara 

The “Long Island Medium,” Theresa Caputo, is coming to the Arlington Theatre on Sunday, January 28, to heal and connect with her audience by channeling the great beyond. 

Believers and skeptics alike are welcome to witness what Caputo calls “first-hand spirit communication.” 

“The Experience isn’t about believing in mediums,” she said. “It’s about seeing something life-changing.”

The star of the new Lifetime series Raising Spirits sat down with the Independent to tell us more about her upcoming live show, as well as how she channels Spirit and uses life stories, humor, and her gift to reassure audiences that their “deceased loved ones are still with them — just in a different way.”

Will this be your first time in Santa Barbara? 

I actually played there several years ago at the same theater. There’s so much beautiful, calming energy in that theater. I’m very excited to come back — It’s probably been at least five years since I’ve been there. 

Tell me more about Theresa Caputo Live! The Experience. What can audiences expect from the evening? Will there be any of those gasp-worthy moments that we get from your TV shows Long Island Medium and Raising Spirits?

Oh, absolutely. I mean, let’s face it, there are thousands of people in the theater. Not everyone is going to get a personal message from me standing right in front of them. 

But that’s why I call it “the Experience.” The souls that speak are the souls that can deliver as many messages at one time. So people say it all the time, after attending one of my live shows, they’ll say, “I had absolutely no idea what to expect when I walked into that theater, but what I witnessed was life-changing.”

Then they’ll even go on to say that they realized so many other people needed to hear from their loved ones more than they did. I have watched perfect strangers start to console each other in the audience! 

But what happens is I come out on the stage, I give a little quick speech on how I read, how I connect with Spirit, and what they can expect over the next two hours. Then, once I start sensing and feeling Spirit, they guide me around the space and I will just randomly stop in front of someone and start delivering messages from their departed loved one. 

I like the way that you refer to “Spirit” as a kind of individual being, or even a co-worker or friend.  Can you explain that relationship? 

Well, you know, I just feel that once our souls leave the physical body, it’s like we become energy within the air, right? So it’s our Spirit. It’s our soul. And it’s something that I want everyone to know, that we still have that bond, that connection with our departed loved ones. Even though they’re not physically here, they’re here, just in a different form.

You’ve said you’ve heard and felt spirits since you were as young as 4 years old. Can you explain how your gift has evolved? 

Well, I feel much more comfortable with the dead. [Laughs.] That’s one thing. 

But, you know, no one has ever asked me that before. They’ll ask me how my gift has changed. But the way that you asked, it was so unique and so different. Because how I communicate just keeps evolving, in a sense. What I mean by that is all my signs and symbols add onto each other; my “library” changes and grows.

That’s how Spirit gets me to say things to someone — they show me things, like little flashes, little movie strips of things. Those things — symbols, signs, or feelings — have a meaning for me. Sometimes I’ll tell someone, “I don’t know if you’ll understand this,”  but I’ll say it, and the person will be able to connect it to their loved one and place it in their healing process. 

And the way that I deliver messages evolves as well because I also have spirits that communicate with their personality. 

Everyone’s personality is different. I think it’s a unique thing, and it opens someone up to be able to say, “I felt like that was my mom,” or “That was my dad,” “That was my brother,” because that’s the way that they were in life. You know, that’s how they would act, that’s how they would talk. 

To me, that’s such a validation, that we’re immediately healed from the moment our soul leaves the physical body. We don’t carry the trauma from our passing, or at least, we aren’t changed by it.

You know, as a child, I was so afraid, because I didn’t understand what was happening to me. And then, growing up, I just kind of blocked it. That’s when I suffered from anxiety. 

Once I learned how to understand and embrace it, and knew what Spirit was wanting me to do or say, is when my life became a lot easier.

In the past, you’ve spoken about feeling your throat close up because of Spirit. Does that kind of thing still evoke any fear in you? 

For the most part, I’m past that. But it does happen from time to time. If a soul wants me to say something more about the way that they died, or if the person is not connecting with it, they’ll just keep making me feel it. 

Usually, it just lasts for like a split second. There are moments where I am having a lot of trouble clearing my throat, I really can’t swallow, and it’s not stopping. But for the most part, it’s just a quick thing of a feeling. And it’s almost like how, you know, you get a little twinge in your stomach — it’s that quick. 

If I feel like I taste blood, it’s just one quick second. It’s like a nudge. If I taste something odd, like almost like a metal or just like something kind of yucky, I know that someone took something that caused or attributed to their departure. 

There are so many different signs, in how they make me feel. They could just labor my breathing, but that could be attributed to so many different things. And now we have COVID. Sometimes the soul will labor my breathing and show me the number 19 or 20. And that’ll be my symbol for COVID. 

Things like that just keep adding on. It was the same thing with 9/11. That’s where I live, in New York City, so many people would come for readings. And there are many different symbols for 9/11. Sometimes they’ll put me in a stairwell, or they’ll stand in front of me in a uniform. And they’ll make me feel like I can’t breathe, or I’ll get, like, a blow to my chest. 

So they don’t just come through and say, “I passed in 9/11.” My life would be much easier if they did do that. But that’s not how it works. 

In your book, You Can’t Make This Stuff Up, you mention that sometimes your shows have themes, where certain causes of death will be more prominent than others. Have you encountered that during your current tour so far? 

Sure. It does happen. Unfortunately, that happens a lot with overdoses. Sometimes it could be people who passed from a brain tumor, or Alzheimer’s. Or a whole group of people that passed from head trauma. It’s insane how many people can connect with that. 

Then other shows are random, you know, who died in a car accident? Who unfortunately died of an overdose; who passed of cancer; who just died of natural causes? Who died of a broken heart? So, no show is ever the same. I think that’s why people keep coming back — for some people, it might be their fifth or sixth show. They’re just different every time.  

---

Tickets for Theresa Caputo Live! The Experience can be purchased through the Arlington Theatre. To learn more, visit arlingtontheatresb.com/event-details/theresa-caputo-live-the-experience.