TRANSCRIPT Oh No, Ross and Carrie! Ep. 401: Ross and Carrie See Medium Thomas John: Kind of Like a Tragedy Edition

[00:00:00]

Music: “Oh No, Ross and Carrie! Theme Song” by Brian Keith Dalton. A jaunty, upbeat instrumental.

Carrie Poppy: Hello! Welcome to Oh No, Ross and Carrie!, the show where we don’t just report on fringe science, spirituality, claims of the paranormal. No way! We take part ourselves.

Ross Blocher: Yup. When they make the claims, we show up, so you don’t have to. I’m Ross Blocher.

Carrie Poppy: And I’m Carrie Poppy. And we showed up this time to meet Thomas John. The psychic medium.

Ross Blocher: The psychic. The seatbelt psychic medium.

Carrie Poppy: Oh, he drives around people in his car? Is that right?

Ross Blocher: Yeah, he had a TV show to that effect. Yeah, we’ve talked about him before, but we haven’t seen him before.

Carrie Poppy: Yeah, I didn’t ever pull up that show, I don’t think.

Ross Blocher: It was one season. He had eight episodes of The Seatbelt Psychic. And then he had another show called the Thomas John Experience, also one season with eight episodes.

Carrie Poppy: Having seen him in person, it’s hard to imagine him carrying a show.

Ross Blocher: It’s probably why there was one season. Eight episodes.

Carrie Poppy: Yeah, I guess that’s right. There were so many opportunities for pizzazz that this man turned down. He just, to me, kind of lacks showmanship.

Ross Blocher: That’s correct. And we saw him at ye olde Conscious Life Expo.

Carrie Poppy: Conscious Life Expo!

Ross Blocher: Yeah. We will be at the 2024 Conscious Life Expo.

Carrie Poppy: Yes. Don’t walk up to me and say, “Are you Carrie?” Por favor.

Ross Blocher: It’ll be too late. By the time you hear this, you will have missed your chance to see Carrie.

Carrie Poppy: Oh, is that right? Okay.

Ross Blocher: Leave Carrie alone. That’s what Carrie’s saying.

Carrie Poppy: (Laughing.) I’m busy! I’m busy. Conscious Life Expo, for people who don’t even know what that is—here in Los Angeles, where we’re recording, there is a meeting every year at this big hotel downtown where psychics and clairvoyants and channelers and fringe doctors—

Ross Blocher: Crystal healers, red pill anarchy enthusiasts.

Carrie Poppy: People who talk to angels, people who talk to demons, astrologers, tarot card readers.

Ross Blocher: They’re all here.

Carrie Poppy: Past life astrologer, past life—past life blood draws!

(They laugh.)

Ross Blocher: Oh, yeah, that’s right. Yeah. Blood analysis types. Pretty much everything that we are interested in looking into is represented at this one expo. They pull them out of the hinter regions across the world, all to Los Angeles at the LAX Hilton, making it super easy for us to go down and see some old friends and meet some new ones.

Carrie Poppy: So, we try to see these people one at a time and give them our full attention. And this guy we saw almost a year ago now—no! A full year ago now.

Ross Blocher: Yeah! We covered a lot of Conscious Life Expo kind of in dribs and drabs over this past year, but there’s still a lot of stuff we never told you about a lot of people. We saw a lot of really interesting moments. And so, we’re hoping maybe at this year’s Conscious Life Expo, we’ll revisit some of the people that we didn’t report on last year and give you kind of a comparison. This year we won’t be seeing Thomas John again, but he was there, and we were very excited at the opportunity to see this psychic that we’d heard a lot about who does feel kind of like an up and comer in the—what do you call it? The psychic world? The medium world?

Carrie Poppy: Yeah. Medium media.

Ross Blocher: Because he’s had a couple—very good! Yes. You know, he had a couple TV shows. He had a Vegas gig at Caesars Palace that he started in January 2020. Want to guess how that went? (Chuckles.) Yeah.

Carrie Poppy: Roughly.

Ross Blocher: It was suspended March 16th, 2020.

Carrie Poppy: Then he had to handle a bunch of jokes for a very long time about how good his psychic powers were or weren’t.

Ross Blocher: Guess you didn’t plan for this! Of course.

I don’t feel too much pity for him. (Chuckles.) But yeah, sure. I bet that got old. So, when we’ve talked about him before on the podcast, it was with Susan Gerbic and Mark Edward, who were leading this effort—this sting called Operation Pizza Roll. And both of them and some of their operatives have attended many Thomas John readings, and they’ve caught him doing hot reading, which we’ve talked about on the show. Which is where you look people up, and then you use that info in your reading, passing it off as something you are hearing from the spirits—from the dearly departed loved ones.

Carrie Poppy: And usually then you have to sort of buy a ticket in advance or something like that, so that the psychic gets your name in advance. Did people have the opportunity here? I don’t remember.

Ross Blocher: No, and the reason I know that is because, afterward, I talked with Susan Gerbic. Who, if you don’t remember from our interview, she’s often referred to as the Wikipediatrician. She runs this group called Guerrilla Skeptics on Wikipedia that do a yeoman’s job of keeping an eye on Wikipedia on people who make extraordinary claims and just keeping Wikipedia entries factual in that regard. It’s an amazing effort. I had contacted her beforehand. Just to say, “Hey, I’m going to go see Thomas John. Any things that you would say to look out for or things I should ask him if I get a chance to?”

[00:05:00]

She wanted me to ask him—and it’s funny, you ended up doing something very similar, which we’ll get to. But she wanted me to ask him like, “Hey, I looked you up, and I saw this Operation Pizza Roll thing. What is that?” Just to see how he would react to such a query. But then afterwards, getting back to the original reason for this rabbit trail I’m leading you on, she let me know that one of her Wikipedia folks was there in the room with us at the Thomas John reading at Conscious Life Expo.

Yeah. And so, I got to talk to him on the phone. And he wishes to remain anonymous, but I’ll use the pronouns he/him. Anyways, he had come as someone who has been in the alternative field for a long time. He himself used to be very involved and he’s good friends with a lot of the organizers of Conscious Life Expo. And he got to talk to them to ask was there any way for Thomas John to have access in advance to bought-tickets for his workshop? And he was assured that no. And I think what we’re about to describe to you is fully consistent with Thomas John not having the ability to look people up in advance.

Carrie Poppy: Yes, it is. It definitely is. And I gotta say, not that impressive at cold reading—which is the alternative.

Ross Blocher: Yes, I fully agree with that assessment. And I think he has like one interesting card that he plays that I kind of noticed this time to make it feel like he’s doing better than he is as a cold reader.

Carrie Poppy: Okay, I think I know what that that is. Uh-huh. I think I know what that is. Yes, I think I know what that is, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think I know what that is. Yeah. Yeah.

(Ross laughs.)

Do you know what I think? Do you know what I think it is? Is this making sense to you?

Ross Blocher: Well, I think that you think you know what it is, and I think you do actually know what it is. Mm-hm.

Carrie Poppy: Okay, okay. Interesting. Getting a sense of that. I was getting a sense of that already now. Yeah.

Ross Blocher: (Laughs.) Very good. So, another thing I learned from this gentleman who was in the audience with us, who had been part of some of these previous stings and caught Thomas John hot reading—he had brought equipment to perform a scan, kind of like what James Randy famously did with Peter Popoff, to see if he could catch him using a device, maybe getting info fed to him live.

Carrie Poppy: Old school.

Ross Blocher: And he said that after he started hearing Thomas John do his readings, he decided, “Oh, I don’t even need to look for that.”

(Carrie laughs.)

And Susan said, “See if you can find any like earpieces, or is Thomas John wearing a hearing aid or anything like that?” Uh, but no, quickly it was apparent. If he’s using that, he’s misusing that. Because these readings should be a lot better.

Carrie Poppy: Yeah, exactly. His readings are not impressive.

Ross Blocher: Not to say he’s—well, we’ve already said he’s not good at cold reading. Cold reading isn’t easy. Not everyone can do it. And he’s, I would say, decent at it. But we’ve seen better.

Carrie Poppy: Eh, yeah, okay.

(They chuckle.)

I mean, I’m not claiming to be good at it myself here or something, but I’ve seen way better.

Ross Blocher: Okay. I don’t want to dismiss that these people who are able to make it as far as having a TV show and a Vegas show—you know, they have a skill. I may not like it ethically, but it is a skill.

Carrie Poppy: I just often think the skill is confidence. The skill is like, “No, seriously! I mean it!” And then that just makes enough people go, “He seems sincere! He seems sincere.”

Ross Blocher: Yeah. It’s an unfortunate tactic that seems to work quite well. People who just believe whatever’s coming out of their faces. Well, there we go. We’ve already prejudged him, but let’s have you be the judge as well. We’re going to tell you about our event with Thomas John. So, he was advertised here in the booklet for the Conscious Life Expo. This was a keynote workshop. So, that means it was a paid event. You had to either have an all-access pass or pay 40 bucks in advance, I think it was.

Carrie Poppy: I think that’s right. And I think I did.

Ross Blocher: And he was in the big room. But there weren’t that many people. It was 50 people, something like that. I wrote down an exact number somewhere. So, definitely that room can hold a lot more people, and we’ve seen it hold a lot more people. But the talk was called “Messages From the Other Side”. And the description was, “During this special workshop, Thomas John will deliver messages from Spirit, from Loved Ones,”—I’m emphasizing those words because they’re capitalized—“to as many people as he can. Whether you or someone else receive a message,”—(chuckles) That’s telling—“it is amazing to witness this event. Messages will be directed to people to provide validation, inspiration, support, and guidance.”

Carrie Poppy: “Thomas John is one of the most prestigious psychic mediums in the world, with a documented history of extraordinary and authentic psychic mediumship readings. At age 4, Thomas first discovered his divine abilities of clairaudience—hearing—and clairsentience—sensations. His family was astonished when young Thomas communicated with the spirit of his deceased grandfather and revealed the precise whereabouts of a lost family watch. Thomas has had two television shows, Seatbelt Psychic on Lifetime

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and The Thomas John Experience on CBS All Access, and continues to be in demand by high profile figures and A list celebrities. Additionally, Thomas authored the novel Never Argue with a Dead Person.”

(They chuckle.)

Ross Blocher: An admittedly good title.

Carrie Poppy: Yeah. Okay, that’s fun.

Ross Blocher: Yeah, I’m in. And I wanted the opportunity to see him in person. I should also mention that my informant, who had also been at the event, said that he followed Thomas John around for half an hour before he found him and just tried to stay in eyesight of Thomas John and said that Thomas John was just on his phone. Alright.

Carrie Poppy: Okay. Well, good. I’m glad he still told us his null result.

Ross Blocher: So, you got here before I did. You got to see the intro. I was running late from home, ’cause I think I was putting out this podcast, but—

(Carrie thanks him.)

Yeah. How did it get started?

Carrie Poppy: Well, he was introduced by none other than Alan Steinfeld! Our man! Alan!

Ross Blocher: How does he do it? How is he everywhere?

Carrie Poppy: You’ve heard of him before on Oh No, Ross and Carrie!—this is a fellow with long, flowing, blondish-whitish hair who just gets around Conscious life Expo doing his own little podcasts and videos and introducing person after person but doesn’t give his own talk. He’s the host of this space.

Ross Blocher: Yeah, he does have at least one book and he’s given—I know he has given talks, but—

Carrie Poppy: Oh, he has? Okay.

Ross Blocher: He has, but he’s just friends with everybody. He’s been involved in this so long. He’s interviewed everybody. We should try to get him on the show.

Carrie Poppy: He feels like the blogger or the reporter of this space.

Ross Blocher: Yeah, and as such, he’s just a fixture. Everybody knows him and everybody seems to like him.

Carrie Poppy: Everyone knows him. He’s got a very warm delivery. Always has something specific to say at all his intros.

Ross Blocher: Which is nice.

Carrie Poppy: Which is—yeah. He always feels informed.

Ross Blocher: And he has a very like weathered face, very gaunt, almost skeletal—just that you very much see the prominent like ridges of his face. And then he’s got this kind of long, wispy, white, flowing hair— a little bit like a Dr. Emmett Brown from Back to the Future. That’s sort of a space that he occupies in my mind, kind of a similar type of person.

Carrie Poppy: So, he introduces Thomas John. And he says that “Thomas John is one of the experts here who can really see into the dimensions and to the other side and make that connection even more solid. And that’s so important about Thomas John’s work. It’s that he’s a really clear medium, and you can really tune into your loved ones, so that you know they’re around you. You know, maybe you can sense that, but you’re not quite sure right now. But he’s one of these amazing people who have this vision, and he’s going to be able to tell you that they’re really here. And when you feel it, it’s just magical. So, let’s give him a really big hand!”

(Ross cheers.)

Yeah, oh, okay!

Ross Blocher: Alan Steinfeld is, even through your telling, getting me in the mood.

Carrie Poppy: Yeah, yeah, I’m about to witness something. Okay! So, Thomas John comes up.

Ross Blocher: We should describe him. So, Thomas John—he looks pretty tall.

Carrie Poppy: Yeah, he strikes me as tall. I feel—not that I stood next to him, but I feel like he’s got to be around six feet or more.

Ross Blocher: I’d say so. Large fellow, and he’s starting to gray. Like you said, just in terms of him not putting a lot of effort into presentation or showmanship, I feel like that was the case here. Like, he had this kind of bright reddish-orange and black and white checker shirt. But he had matching sneakers?

Carrie Poppy: Oh, yeah, yeah. He’s just got kind of an everyman kind of look.

Ross Blocher: It was just, you know, “Oh, I’m gonna go for a walk around the neighborhood. Let me put something on. Oh, hey, I happen to have shoes that go with this shirt. That’s great.”

Carrie Poppy: (Laughs.) Looks nice and everything, but yeah. He doesn’t seem like a medium. He seems sort of out of place in that way.

Ross Blocher: Yeah, which is interesting, because I feel like we’ve said that about a lot of media. That they find some way to be like, “Oh, I’m not your usual medium! I’m not wearing the headband and the hoop earrings.”

Carrie Poppy: Not your grandpa’s root beer.

Ross Blocher: You know, “I’ve got long fingernails, and I talk to you at the supermarket, and I look like your aunt Kathy!” I feel like every psychic has some little way of being like, “I’m not like—”

Carrie Poppy: “I have a Long Island accent.”

Ross Blocher: Exactly. So, I guess this is his way of saying, “Eh, I’m just kind of like your everyday schlub, and I happen to be a psychic!” I got to say, he reminds me a lot of George Santos, the disgraced former congressperson. They’ve got a lot in common.

Carrie Poppy: Okay. Here we go.

Ross Blocher: Very similar builds. Very similar voices. Both openly gay men who have been drag performers in the past. No positive correlation between being a drag performer and being a public bamboozler, just want to make that clear.

Carrie Poppy: Notation noted.

Ross Blocher: (Chuckling.) Okay. But also both have committed fraud. In Thomas John’s case—

[00:15:00]

He was putting out Craigslist ads for houses and then accepting down payments, like rental deposits, and then just making off with money.

(Carrie “woah”s.)

Yeah. He pleaded guilty to this in 2009. Yeah, and then anybody who already knows of George Santos knows of the many things that he is under fraud investigation for, perpetual liar. Both of them use names that they were not born with—you know, slightly modified stage name for Thomas John. And actually, I don’t know if we’re even sure with George Santos, but most people knew him as a totally different name—Anthony Devolder. And then he ran for Congress, and people would be like, “Wait, that’s my roommate, Anthony, who stole my scarf? Oh, he’s wearing the scarf in front of the Capitol? What’s going on?” Anyways.

Carrie Poppy: (Laughs.) The scarf detail is very good. Hadn’t heard that.

Ross Blocher: I don’t know. Just in my mind, they feel like almost the same person. Strange little niche they found in life.

Carrie Poppy: Yeah, so Thomas John gets up there, and he has a—I’ll say at least he has a sort of disarming presence. Because he doesn’t have much showmanship, he has a little bit of a guileless sort of delivery for a medium.

Ross Blocher: Oh, yeah. Yeah, he doesn’t sound super confident.

Carrie Poppy: Yeah, and none of his lines are that practiced. So, he’s just saying things like, “So, who here has worked with a medium? Good, so some people have done this before. Okay, great. So, we’re gonna do a method with like sort of messages with sort of different people. He doesn’t have jargon. He doesn’t have like bam, bam, bam. There’s nothing to wow me in the language.

Ross Blocher: Yeah, yeah. This is also a very long setup that he does.

Carrie Poppy: Oh my god, this guy. (Makes a strangled sound.)

Ross Blocher: And I came in while he was still just like establishing the rules of the road. And it kind of made me reflect on how all of our psychics have to do this. And I think it says something to—be it the Long Island medium, Teresa Caputo, any of these folks—whatever they’re doing is not what people come in expecting, if they haven’t seen them before, for how communication with the other side is supposed to go. And so, they have to like do all of the setting of expectations and preparing you not to be disappointed.

Carrie Poppy: Oh, right, right, right. Like, if the doctor came in the room and started explaining germ theory to you before they could give you treatment, you’d be like, “Maybe something weird is up.”

Ross Blocher: Yeah. Like, people have what they expect from seeing movies. Where in a movie, you can write a script and make these excellent, amazing connections happen—or even on a TV show where you can do editing. But in a live performance, you have to start telling people, “Okay, so I’m going to talk to like a group of you, but one of you is going to connect. And kind of the reason I have to do that is because I get these hazy visions. And you know, I may say something that doesn’t feel right, but you might find out later that it is right.”

Carrie Poppy: “It may creep you out that that lady over there is so happy about the hit for her brother John, but you have a brother named John, and it also matches exactly. And actually, that feels like it tells you more than it should.”

Ross Blocher: So, I feel for all of our psychics. We’ve seen them run through that. But yeah, he had a particularly long spiel.

Carrie Poppy: Yes. He talks in a very recursive way. He repeats himself a lot. He seems to think he’s on his way to a new thought, not quite get there, and loop back to the last one, and kind of restate it in new words, and do that a couple times before moving on.

Ross Blocher: Yeah. And part of that may be stalling for time while he comes up with something new to say. But I think part of it is going to be to increase the illusion of effectiveness. We’ll definitely run into that.

Carrie Poppy: So, he introduces himself as a medium, an intuitive, a clairvoyant, a psychic.

Ross Blocher: Alright. Lots of terms there, but we’ve run into this before. Not every psychic is a medium. I guess every medium is a psychic.

Carrie Poppy: He says so! He says, “Every medium is by definition a psychic.” And yeah, it feels like a square/rectangle thing. Subcategory.

Ross Blocher: Yeah, exactly. Right, right. The psychic is the broader terminology, and medium is very specific, talking to the dead loved ones.

Carrie Poppy: Yes, exactly. So, he says that there are lots of reasons that people come through. And by come through, he means start talking to me. He used to think that the reason that people came through was because of the person sitting in front of him, that connection between those two people. But now he knows that’s wrong. It’s actually driven by the people on the other side.

Ross Blocher: Convenient. Because he’s the only one who sees them in the room.

(Carrie agrees.)

Good to know they’re in charge.

Carrie Poppy: (Laughs.) Right. So, if the person who you can see is disappointed, take heart. The person that you can’t see is thrilled.

Ross Blocher: Mm-hm. And he uses the term spirit world, and he says that’s kind of his term of art. Spirit world. I mean, other people use it, but that’s how he likes to refer to it.

Carrie Poppy: He says that there have been hundreds and thousands of kinds of  documented things—

[00:20:00]

Ross Blocher: Documented?!

Carrie Poppy: —where people get spontaneous communication from loved ones.

Ross Blocher: Yeeeah. So, he’s talking about how you see the butterfly outside the bus. And you’re like, “Oh, I—”

Carrie Poppy: (Snickering.) The butterfly outside the bus.

Ross Blocher: I mean, it’s—the signs are that trivial.

Carrie Poppy: Yeah, yeah, it’s exactly right. It’s exactly right.

Ross Blocher: It’s that’s small of a thing where you’re like, “Oh, you know, my sister, Mirabelle—she loved butterflies, and there’s a butterfly. Wow. That’s her trying to contact me.”

Carrie Poppy: (Warmly.) “And she was hit by a bus.”

Ross Blocher: (Laughs.) And he’ll briefly acknowledge, “Oh, sure. Yes, there are coincidences in the world.” But then that’s the last mention of them. Everything else is going to be fraught with significance.

Carrie Poppy: Right. I also just love “hundreds and thousands of kinds of documented things”. Just nothing could be less specific.

Ross Blocher: Yeah. Oh yeah. Let’s see this documentation. He told a story there too, that I felt was so telling, about this woman that he had been reading. And she had lost her son, and she was about to go on a trip to someplace that they had shared before. And he let us know that—at some point, he said during the reading, “You know, why am I seeing like a big, bright, yellow smiley face?”

Carrie Poppy: Oh yes. I remember this story.

Ross Blocher: So, she said, “Oh, that’s—I don’t know. That doesn’t really ring any bells.” But then she had wanted to know that her son was going to be with her on this trip. But she said that when she went to sit down on the airplane, someone sat next to her, and the woman was wearing a bright yellow smiley face shirt.

Carrie Poppy: Can you believe this, people?

Ross Blocher: And I thought Thomas John is the one who introduced that idea! Like, that was the beginning of this. And then the culmination was the happy coincidence of this person sitting next to her.

Carrie Poppy: Oh, totally. No, it’s exactly like putting the owl idea in people’s head at the UFO conference. And then when you see owls later that day, you’re amazed by it. But as you pointed out, owls are a major part of our culture, and happy faces are a major part of our culture.

Ross Blocher: (Laughs.) Yeah. And it wasn’t like he correctly identified something that was important to her and her son, and then she saw it. He—

Carrie Poppy: In fact, part of the story was like initially she wasn’t impressed by this.

Ross Blocher: Yeah, he planted it, and then it paid off. (Laughs.) Okay.

Carrie Poppy: In fact, you know what, listeners? (Whispering.) Today, you are going to see a smiley face. You’re going to see it out there in the world, and you’re going to be amazed, and then you’re going to come back, and you’re going to tell me about it.

Ross Blocher: And also, someone will do a kindness to you, and then you will see they are wearing green.

Carrie Poppy: Yesss.

(Ross laughs.)

And then you’ll slip and hit your head, and then you’ll have a hallucination about heaven, and then you’ll start a new religion.

Ross Blocher: That could happen too. But if any of those come back to us as someone saying, “You know what? You said that, and then someone was wearing green who did me a kindness—” That’s great! Then we can share that and brag about that, and we’ll ignore all the other people who never wrote us.

Carrie Poppy: Exactly! We will be so powerfuuuul! And ignoraaant!

Ross Blocher: That’s right. It only matters if it redounds to our benefit. So, anyway, that particular story is like, you know, looking around like, “Are you impressed by this?! Are you impressed? You shouldn’t be impressed by this!”

Carrie Poppy: Yep. So, yes. As you mentioned, he acknowledges that coincidence exists, but he says that sometimes you get a feeeeling with the coincidence, and that’s where it’s different—when you get that intuitive knowing, that resonance.

Oh, also, with that story you just told—I love this line. As he was describing that, he said, “And so, her son had passed, kind of like a tragedy.”

(They laugh.)

Ross Blocher: Oh, oh no. Ooh. Kind of like a tragedy.

Carrie Poppy: I love that. Kind of like, you know, one of those.

Ross Blocher: How could it not be exactly a tragedy?

Carrie Poppy: Most of the time the answer is that your loved ones are trying to reach out to you, but vibrationally you just may not be receptive to it. So, it’s kind of your fault, of course, if you don’t hear them.

Ross Blocher: Yeah. “We’re so wrapped up in this reality. And I know you’re all at a higher level.” ‘Cause he’s at the Conscious Life Expo where, you know, this is what we do.

Carrie Poppy: I need to compliment you a little.

Ross Blocher: Yeah. So, he said, “Even so, we miss a lot of this. You have to be in the right—vibrationally, in a place where you can be receptive.”

Carrie Poppy: So, he says, “If you set an intention that you want to hear from a loved one, you should include signs in that. So, it may not be that you hear a direct message from me tonight, but you may get a sign in some other way.”

Ross Blocher: “And then I still get credit for it. Thank you.”

Carrie Poppy: Exactly. Okay, so then the readings begin. So, one thing he tells us is that one message can be for many people. And we’ve heard this before. It seems so, I don’t know, too obvious to me?

[00:25:00]

But the claim is that the medium will get a message like, “I’m getting a man whose name begins with a J and who was in the military.” And if there are actually two people in this room who know guys named J who died in the military, instead of being skeptical of that, you should say to yourself, “No, I know what happened. It’s that there were two people on the other side, killed in the military, first name’s J, who were hanging out together, who knocked on the door of Thomas John’s spirit house and said, ‘Can I come in?’ at the same time. And that’s how these two people felt like they were both being called.”

Ross Blocher: But definitely don’t think about it in terms of why I would say something that would apply to two people in one area of a single room with—oh! 56 people. That was my count.

Oh, and 12 men, including myself.

Carrie Poppy: Heeey! Congrats, fellas!

Ross Blocher: Thank you. Yeah. We’re talking 80% women in the audience. And another thing that he did warn us of in his preamble is that “if I come to you, be ready to go. Like, have your issue ready. Don’t be frozen.”

Carrie Poppy: Yes. “Please just speak up. Don’t just suddenly be like, ah, I don’t know, I don’t know!”

Ross Blocher: You can get a sense in these preambles kind of what their bugaboos are, what really annoys them. He doesn’t like getting to someone and them going, “Oh! Uh, uh, uh—” You know, fair.

Carrie Poppy: Yeah. So, he says that we may resonate with one or two messages, even if it’s clear that it’s not our loved one coming through. We may just realize like, oh, even though I don’t know that lady, her grandfather has something to say to her that really applies to me too.

Ross Blocher: Mm-hm. (Chuckles.) Yeah. And I’ve definitely heard that from John Edward and I’m pretty sure from many of our other psychics. Like, if you feel disappointed that you came all the way here, traveled across state lines, whatever, paid a lot of money to see a psychic medium and you didn’t get read, you can feel like the message was also for you. Because that’s just how the fabric of the universe works.

Carrie Poppy: Right. Right. The alternative being that it’s a Barnum statement, which means that it just applies to many of us.

Ross Blocher: Yep. By nature. I counted 17 minutes of setup.

(Carrie “wow”s.)

Just like communicating these rules to us. When he’s ready to get going, he has us do a bunch of deep breaths together. (Breaths deeply.) Good exercise in general.

(Carrie agrees.)

So, then he wanted us to picture ourselves in a pleasant place as we were doing this breathing exercise, just to get peaceful. I imagined a beautiful level from the VR game Walkabout Mini Golf.

Carrie Poppy: Really? You can remember that? Wow. I have no idea what I pictured.

Ross Blocher: In my notes at the time I said that, so that’s how I know. And then he also wanted us to picture people that we might want to connect with. And so, I thought of some friends of mine who have passed away, and I had them ready.

Carrie Poppy: I see that I wrote down he was not saying his meditation in a terribly soft voice.

(Ross laughs and agrees.)

Yeah. Yeah, I remember relistening to this and being like this is not meditation voice. This is not even your indoor voice.

Ross Blocher: Yeah. Some people just can’t do that.

Carrie Poppy: Yeah. They just keep talking at the normal volume. And then they’re like, “Well! Picture going to the lake!”

(Ross giggles.)

Clip:

Thomas John: And this could be a place that I’m feeling. It could be a place that’s a real place. It could be a place that’s an imagined place. But go ahead and get yourself into a nice, peaceful mindset of really hearing from your loved ones and really visualizing the connection with them, okay?

Carrie Poppy: So, eventually he brings us back. That was a fairly short meditation to get us in the mood. And then he began doing readings.

Ross Blocher: He started with a just swath of the audience on the other side of the room. So, we weren’t sitting together, but you and I were both on the right side of the room. Or to his left, as he’s standing up on the stage. So, he kind of motioned over to his right and said, “Okay, so I sense a woman coming through.” He spent a lot of time just painting a picture of these little like bits of detail that were coming out and kind of gently waving his hand back and forth to this portion of the room—which could include like, you know, maybe 20 people. So, okay. “It was maybe a mother or a mother figure who’s passed.”

Carrie Poppy: Maybe a stepmother, maybe a mother-in-law, maybe it’s just a woman you had a closeness or a bond with, or maybe like a nurse—he’s seeing a nurse hat! Or—

Ross Blocher: Doesn’t have to be a literal nurse, though! Maybe you’re a nurse!

Carrie Poppy: Yeah, it could be literal, or it could be that YOU were a caretaker to her! In fact, it’s more likely the latter. Did you live together? If not, then maybe you went to her house a lot?!

Ross Blocher: Maybe you visited her a lot?! Yup.

Carrie Poppy: By the time, finally, he gets someone—

Ross Blocher: Yeah. “Did this resonate with any of you?” And he’s probably just looking at everybody’s faces as he’s doing this. Like, am I getting anything? Oh, I’ll make this a little more broooad! Oh, are you—? You’re interested?

Carrie Poppy: No one has a mother?! Not one person? I didn’t have Aunt readings prepared!

[00:30:00]

Ross Blocher: Nobody’s responding. So, he said, “There was a dog?” And he didn’t give any details on the dog. “Okay, yeah. No, I’m getting—this is a mother.” And so, then there was one woman who raised her hand. And he said, “Oh, I knew I was going—”

Carrie Poppy: “I knew it would be you!”

Ross Blocher: “I saw you in the line in the hall earlier. I knew I was gonna reach—”

Carrie Poppy: “The second I saw you, I knew it!”

Ross Blocher: (Jokingly.) He must be psychic.

Carrie Poppy: This is like the guy who walks up to every woman in the bar and is like, “The second I saw you, it was love at first sight.”

Ross Blocher: So, someone brought her a microphone. And so, the woman said, “Yes. My mom had a dog.”

Carrie Poppy: (Laughs.) Thrilling. Incredible hit. My mother had a dog.

Ross Blocher: And so, Thomas John said, “What is the connection to New York?”

(They laugh.)

Carrie Poppy: Nailing it. So, she’s like, “Well, I’ve traveled to New York.” Incredible! Your mother had a dog and you’ve been to New York!? Well, I’m on fire!

Ross Blocher: Amazing. He said, “I’m sensing like a rift in the family. Does that make sense?”

Carrie Poppy: And then when she doesn’t answer immediately, he’s like, “Does it make sense even a little bit?”

She says, “A little bit.”

He’s like, “Do you have siblings?”

Ross Blocher: Oh, this—okay. Yeah. This is really interesting.

Carrie Poppy: Yeah. I noticed how this played out too. He says, “Do you have siblings?”

She says, “I do.”

Ross Blocher: Good for her for answering vaguely. ‘Cause then he says, “I’m seeing—your mom keeps showing me three. Do you have three siblings?”

Carrie Poppy: “Or are you one of three?” Now, this is very clever of him. So, when he said, “Do you have siblings”, that puts her in the position of analyzing—because I, as someone with only one sibling, I sometimes will automatically correct, right?

Do you have any siblings? “Well, I have a sibling.” Right? But she kind of withholds that corrective impulse, which is good here.

Ross Blocher: Good for her. But yeah, look what we’re doing with the possible numbers. So, he says, “Do you have three siblings or are you one of three?” So, that’s either three or four siblings in the family that he’s just allowed for.

And she said, “I have one brother.”

And so, what does he do with that? He says, “Hm. Was there a miscarriage?”

Carrie Poppy: Yep, and she says yes.

Ross Blocher: “Okay, that must be what I’m getting, because she’s still feeling the additional sibling—”

Carrie Poppy: But you know that internally he’s thinking like, “Goddamn it, lady, I said, do you have siblings, and you said yes! And I tracked it faithfully, and you dropped the ball on me!”

Ross Blocher: And she agreed to the miscarriage thing, but even if she hadn’t, he could have said, “Oh, well, maybe she never told you about that.” Or something.

Carrie Poppy: Right, right. There’s another on the way!

Ross Blocher: But he was ready for this family to have one person. Then he asked the sibling question. Two people, three people, four people. I think he could have worked five okay. (Laughs.)

Carrie Poppy: Yes. And if you say, “Do you have any siblings?” and the person goes, “Oooh yeah!” Then you know, okay, now we’re in lots of sibling territory. You can get so much from just the reply.

Ross Blocher: There was a clever little use of the turns of phrases and the very limited options of how many siblings one could have.

Carrie Poppy: Yep. So, he says, “I see a woman with your mom. Someone doing lots of baking, cooking, the person might have had diabetes and heart issues, maybe both.” And I guess she wasn’t really replying to that.

Ross Blocher: Yeah, he was starting to fail even more with her, because he was also asking about that separation thing. Like, “Oh, were you separated?”

And Anna was her name. She’s like, “Oh no, not really.”

And he said, “But maybe with the brother?”

“Yeah. Yeah. That’s true for the brother.”

“Yeah. Okay. ‘Cause I was sensing the separation.”

Carrie Poppy: And then he starts asking if there’s anyone else in this room that knows Anna’s mom.

Ross Blocher: Oh! Big swing and a miss. Yeah. Like, is there someone—maybe he was hoping she had a friend with her or someone who knew the family member. “Is there someone else here who knew her?” And Anna’s like no.

Carrie Poppy: He’s like, “Oh, weird. I—well, I, feel like there’s someone she’s trying to address. Well then, who’s that woman with heart disease or diabetes issues? Is it grandma? Your mom’s mom? Who’s that?”

And so she’s like, “Oh, yeah, my mom’s mom. Sure.”

Ross Blocher: Yeah, I think she offered the grandma, and then he took ownership of that.

Carrie Poppy: Okay, gotcha. So, the grandma had taken care of Anna at some point in time. So, he says, “Oh, yes, yes. And your mom is a strong entity in the spirit around you a lot.”

Ross Blocher: And then he was done with the mothers, because he said, “Do you connect to the name Joseph?”

Carrie Poppy: And she—I think this is very polite of her. She says, “Yeah, my father was José.”

Ross Blocher: Joseph, José. Alright. Okay. That’s a mulligan.

Carrie Poppy: Yeah, it’s the Spanish version. But polite.

Ross Blocher: (Chuckling.) And then Thomas John asked her, “Oh, was he funny? I’m sensing he was like the life of the party.”

And she’s like, “Oh yeah, absolutely.”

Like, what are you going to say? Like, no, actually really boring, old guy.

Carrie Poppy: No, yeah, yeah, you’d hate him.

[00:35:00]

And then asks if her parents were split up and she says yes.

Ross Blocher: And then he opened it up. He said, “Somebody here’s got rosary beads I keep seeing.” It was like almost a distraction from whatever sentence he was saying.

Carrie Poppy: Yeah, what did this woman actually get from her dad or grandfather at all?! Nothing! Like, not even the high that we sometimes get.

(They laugh.)

Ross Blocher: Right! I was noting this right as he I think must’ve caught himself. ‘Cause at some point during this reading, I think he did sort of come to the realization like, oh shoot, I haven’t actually been delivering any messages from these people.

(Carrie snorts a laugh.)

It’s all just been about verifying that I have a connection to them.

(Carrie confirms.)

But yeah, this poor lady got nothing like that. And the rosary beads—okay. You find out that her father’s name is José? So, not a bad guess that she might have been raised Catholic, might have rosary beads, or someone in here will have rosary beads. No one says anything to that, though. So, he just moves on like you do.

Carrie Poppy: So, the next reading was with a woman named Sarah.

Ross Blocher: He asks her, “Did your mom die?”

(Carrie laughs.)

And she says, “… No.”

Carrie Poppy: Ha! “Okay. Then maybe someone who was motherly?”

“Yeah, my grandma.”

(Flatly.) Wooow.

Ross Blocher: Then he also threw out that like, “Maybe it’s like the row in front of you I’m getting.” So, he’s just like casting all these reasons to not take it too seriously if he didn’t make a strong connection right away. Or maybe the energy is slightly in a different location.

Carrie Poppy: About the grandma, he’s like, “So, she was sickly toward the end, but her passing was sudden, right?”

And she’s like, “Yeah, yes and no.” Which—Drew’s grandma just passed away, and so this is so fresh in my mind that like every death feels both sudden and, you know, like it takes a long time. Well, not every death, but every death in old age, basically, feels both sudden and drawn out.

Ross Blocher: You were putting that into words recently about that situation. I thought that was a good observation, that like you get so inured to the expectation that it’s going to happen—like, you kind of set yourself up for, “Oh, this might be the last time we see her. This might be the last time we see her.”

Carrie Poppy: Yeah. Oh, well, this might be the last Christmas. Oh! Nope!

Ross Blocher: Oh, we’ve had six last Christmases. Okay. Oh wait, she died! Oh, what do I—?! What!? I wasn’t ready for that! I was so busy being ready for that, I wasn’t ready for that!”

Carrie Poppy: Yeah, you get so used to them being here.

Ross Blocher: He still gets a yes or no.

Carrie Poppy: Sickly toward the end, but the passing was sudden. And she’s like, “Yeah, yes and no.”

Ross Blocher: He explored a few different things, whether she got to say goodbye to her or not, but nothing too strong. And then he said, “Do you have a ring of hers?” And she said yes to that, which is a strong hit!

Carrie Poppy: Yeah, it’s a good one.

Ross Blocher: He didn’t follow up on that at all! Which is almost like malfeasance. That’s your one good hit so far! Play with it!

Carrie Poppy: Yeah, totally! Yeah. And it’s exciting. Haunted objects? Come on.

Ross Blocher: He also said that “You know, people don’t always come through the way that they were when they died. So, I’m getting that she’s much younger the way I’m seeing her—maybe like 50 or 60.” And I’m thinking, oh, okay. Well, it’s not like 20 or something.

Carrie Poppy: (Chuckles.) Right. It’s funny how it’s always, you know, younger and more stereotypically attractive. Yeah. It just seems like heaven is just full of like everyone being 26 or whatever.

Ross Blocher: At the peak of their lives, right. Unless of course they died before they reached that. In which case, yeah. If they died as a toddler, are they just a toddler in heaven?

Carrie Poppy: They’re just toddling? That must be so frustrating.

Ross Blocher: Or do they get advanced to 26 or whatever the ideal age is? Yeah, all of these things I don’t think you’re supposed to think about too hard.

Carrie Poppy: Well, we’ll continue thinking about them for 13 years.

Ross Blocher: That’s our job.

Carrie Poppy: (Giggles.) So, then he asks, “Who smoked a lot? Is your grandma connected to someone who smoked a lot?” And she recalls that I believe her grandpa did smoke a lot, but Thomas John is like, “Oh, and I bet he kept it a little bit from your grandma!”

And she’s like, “Oh, maybe, but she knew about that.” And everybody has a good chuckle about what feels like insight.

Ross Blocher: We got a laugh line, and we’ve justified me bringing up smoking for no particular reason.

(Carrie laughs.)

“Did she have well-manicured nails?”

Carrie Poppy: “No.”

Ross Blocher: “Hm. Okay, well, that’s strange, because I’m getting a feeling from a long time ago.” So, he’s trying to introduce that, “Well, maybe when she was younger, she painted her nails.” And I gotta say, this is another pretty good hit.

Carrie Poppy: Yeah, this is wild.

Ross Blocher: That she remembers, “Oh, you know what? My grandma did once work at a nail polish factory.”

Carrie Poppy: (In sync with Ross.) Nail polish factory?!

Ross Blocher: Okay! I’m calling that a good hit.

Carrie Poppy: Wow! Wow. I mean, yes. It would be much better if he had said, “I’m seeing nail polish,” instead of, “Does she have well-manicured nails?!”

Ross Blocher: And here’s a good example of Thomas John doing the thing that I feel like is kind of maybe not uniquely his shtick, but like that he works quite a bit. Because she said that. It was a great hit. The audience was impressed with this. And then he said, “I’m sensing this was before you were born?” After she’d already said during World War II.

(Carrie snorts with laughter.)

[00:40:00]

So, yeah. And so, the audience was impressed with this, but I was thinking, okay, you just double dipped on that. Alright. Good for you.

Carrie Poppy: He is good at that, at just picking something that you just told him like a sentence ago, so the working memory is still building a little narrative about how this went down, and he interrupts that narrative and says like, “No, actually, you just got that information from me!”

He said fuck. Around here, everyone loves that.

Ross Blocher: Oh yeah, it’s so saucy!

Carrie Poppy: Boy, he says fuck on stage, and some people just lose their shit about it! I can’t believe it!

Ross Blocher: Oh, it’s so great. He’s broken the chains of formality. He said the F word. He’s one of us.

Carrie Poppy: He’s broken the chains of formality! He’s just like us!

Ross Blocher: He’s not funny, but he did get a few little laugh lines here and there. And I think it’s that form of humor where it’s like, “Oh, I just said something unexpected and a little bawdy or a little rude. And now we can all titter for a moment.”

Carrie Poppy: And like I said, he is disarming. I find him disarming anyway.

(Ross mumbles in surprise.)

(Laughing.) Yes, well, anyways. So, if you’re listening.

Ross Blocher: Whew, is it hot in here?

(Carrie laughs.)

So, he did pretty well with Sarah—that was her name—out of all these people. But afterwards, she was quite ecstatic from this exchange. And so she tells him, “You know, I was about to walk out earlier.”

And he’s like, “I’m sorry, out of where, honey?”

And she said, “This room!”

Carrie Poppy: “You. Were. So. Bad. At. This.”

Ross Blocher: “I paid $40. This was boring. It took you 17 minutes to set this up. I was gonna get outta here.” But clearly he changed her mind. And she said, “Thank you so, so, so, so much!”

Carrie Poppy: That’s wild. I wonder if she just like felt the increasing pressure of interpreting it in a positive way, or if she actually was impressed by this. Well, anyway.

Ross Blocher: Yeah. By the way, we’re about to move to another reading, and I’ll just note that all of the people that he chose for the readings were women. And you know, we already established 80% women in the audience, but I just thought it was interesting. Alright.

Promo:

Music: Surreal, drone-y synth.

Doug Duguay: My name’s Doug Duguay, and I’m here to talk about my podcast in the middle of the one you’re listening to. It’s called Valley Heat, and it’s about my neighborhood, the Burbank Rancho Equestrian District. The center of the world when it comes to foosball, frisbee golf, and high-speed freeway roller-skating. And there’s been a Jaguar parked outside on my curb for 10 months. I have no idea who owns it. I have a feeling it’s related to the drug drop that was happening in my garbage can a little over a year ago. And if this has been a boring commercial, imagine 45 minutes of it. Okay, Valley Heat. It’s on every month on MaximumFun.org or wherever you get podcasts. Check it out, but honestly, skip it.

Music: Buzzy sci-fi music.

Narrator: (Voice echoing.) These are the chronicles of the Rancho Equestrian District in Burbank, California. These are the events taking place in my house and around my—

(Audio fades out.)

Carrie Poppy: So, new reading. Somebody’s soulmate is coming in. He’s getting a male energy.

(Ross “ooh”s.)

He doesn’t want to say husband, but maybe boyfriend, fiancé. Feels like it’s romantic. It’s someone who passed quickly.

Ross Blocher: Yeah, he called it a fast passing, and I pictured someone at Disneyland.

Carrie Poppy: I did that exact thing as I was reading this note.

Ross Blocher: Even though it’s Lightning Lanes now.

Carrie Poppy: Oh, right, okay.

“Did someone lose their soulmate? I keep seeing the outdoors. The outdoors’ coming through.”

Ross Blocher: He’s painting this picture. He’s just throwing out a bunch of little word pictures just to see what will land with somebody. Who raises their hand?

Carrie Poppy: But he’s making it very clear that it’s romantic.

Ross Blocher: Yes. (Chuckles.) And he’s been gesturing to this part of the audience. And then he says, “But I’m not getting a feeling of where in the room this is,” which I thought was super clever. It was a way for him to broaden the scope of this. “Oh, you know what? Maybe I’m getting this from the left where I wasn’t looking at all just a moment ago!”

Carrie Poppy: Right, right, right. That explains the silence over here.

So, finally, a woman in the area he’s been hovering says, “Well, I lost my brother.” And he’s committed to it being a romantic figure. So, that brings up new questions.

(Ross chuckles.)

And so, she says I lost my brother, and he’s like, “No, no, sorry. Not a brother. Not a brother!”

Ross Blocher: (Laughs.) Maybe there’s more to this connection between them. There could be… They could be Targaryens.

Carrie Poppy: Right, right, right! He’s making assumptions. I don’t know what that is, but—

Ross Blocher: From Game of Thrones. They are a notably incestuous family.

Carrie Poppy: Oh, okay, okay, yeah. Incestuous. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, he’s making assumptions here that like it couldn’t be. So, but she says, “His name is Jared.”

Ross Blocher: He says he’s seeing the letter J, and so the woman with the brother says, “Yes, yes, it’s Jared!”

And he’s like, “Okay, uh, I—no…”

Carrie Poppy: I really would prefer it wasn’t your brother.

Ross Blocher: Yeah. Unless this is a romantic brother, can we move somewhere else?

(They chuckle.)

And she’s like, “Oh, but he was my shadow.” And she really wanted to be read by Thomas John—her brother.

Carrie Poppy: Pleeeease tell me how my brother’s my boyfriend.

Ross Blocher: And he said that this was longer than 10 years, like the relationship.

And again, she’s like, “Oh, okay, well that’s definitely him!”

(Chuckling.) And he’s like, “No, hold on lady. Like, I’m still trying to like find this romantic partner.”

[00:45:00]

And she said, “Well, an older brother is a protector!” Maybe that’ll help you, Thomas John, to turn this from a romantic relationship into a protection/brotherly relationship?

Carrie Poppy: Yes, protector is kind of like a soulmate!

Ross Blocher: He found a way to get away from her, but don’t worry. She’ll get him back later.

Carrie Poppy: Yep. Then he started just realizing he had something for a particular person. It was this woman named Kaylin.

Ross Blocher: Very far away from the woman with the brother.

Carrie Poppy: Oh, was she? Okay.

Ross Blocher: Yeah. He was like, “Oh, sorry, honey. I’m going to have to go over to this side of the room over here.”

Carrie Poppy: (Laughs.) Definitely being called over on the other side.

Ross Blocher: And just started a whole new reading.

Carrie Poppy: Yeah. So, “Something for you. I’m getting a woman?”

And she’s like, “My mother.” Great. Great.

Ross Blocher: (Chuckles.) Alright. Ready to go. “I’m sensing that she had breathing issues.”

And the woman says, “Oh yeah, she had tumors in her lungs.”

Carrie Poppy: Okay! Good hit. Sad story.

Ross Blocher: Then he does that thing he does, and he says, “Yeah, ‘cause I’m getting breathing issues.”

Carrie Poppy: “Yes, exactly. That’s exactly what I was thinking, yes.”

Ross Blocher: “You just gave me info. And then here’s the thought that I swear I was thinking before you said that!”

Carrie Poppy: Yeah. Breathing issues is a decent guess but still like one of the most common things you could guess for an older person.

So, he asked, “Did she get misdiagnosed?”

And she says, “Well, it was delayed.” That’s so telling at Conscious Life Expo, though. Of cooourse your mother’s treatment was delayed. Like, she’s your mother! She’s in this extended social circle where she’s probably not being encouraged to get the right kind of care.

Ross Blocher: She could’ve—so, then Thomas John does what Thomas John does and says, “Okay, because I got something about it being misdiagnosed or delayed.” Like, you said misdiagnosed, she said delayed, and then you said you got something about it being misdiagnosed or delayed. We’ve confused the timeline of causality here.

Carrie Poppy: Also, that still wouldn’t add at all to this woman’s understanding. Tell her something she doesn’t know!

Ross Blocher: Yeah. I was just talking with a coworker about this the other day, that when you talk to a psychic, it’s all going to end up being things that you already knew and just confirming those.

(Carrie agrees.)

Yeah. And then on the outside chance it’s some piece of new information, either it’s likely to be generic. You should consider that option, that it might apply to multiple people. Or it’s going to be wrong, or maybe a lucky guess. At least, you should consider those options.

Carrie Poppy: And most of all, forgettable. You’re going to forget most of it. And unless you keep a spreadsheet, like me and Ross—like psychos—you’re not going to retain it anyway. So, you’re just going to be so impressed forever, but have no idea what happened.

Ross Blocher: And then I know you’re going to feel like a spoil sport, but when you hear the stories like in his bio about him discovering like a lost watch or whatever it was, you might want to see if you can find someone else who was there at that moment and see how they tell the story. Because oftentimes the way it’s presented to you isn’t how it went down.

Carrie Poppy: Anyway, stand up at the Conscious Life Expo and say all this as a monologue during the Q&A.

Ross Blocher: In under 17 minutes.

Carrie Poppy: Okay, so Thomas John asks Kaylin, “Was there ever a time when your mom was very poor?” And she says yes.

Ross Blocher: “Okay. ‘Cause I’m getting a feeling like she’d be down to her last dollar.”

Y-yeah. We’ve just rephrased being poor.

Carrie Poppy: More or less. (Laughs.) Yeah. “Well, I didn’t see her bank account at the time, but somewhere around her last dollar. Yes.”

Ross Blocher: She confirms that too. And then he says, “Ah, I don’t know. Does that make sense to you?” Yes. Okay, yeah, you just got the confirmation! And then he says, “Was it that way when you were a kid?” Obviously! Yes!

Carrie Poppy: Well, I guess it could be before. When I read that—my mom was poor when she was a kid and not when I was a kid.

Ross Blocher: But boy, it just like—it made me really attentive to this tactic when he just kept drilling down on this one revelation. ‘Cause then he said, “I just feel like there was always a lack of money. Does that make sense?”

Carrie Poppy: (Overlapping.) “Lack of money! Does that make sense to you?”

Ross Blocher: You’ve just rephrased it again! What are you doing?! And she keeps saying yes. And if you’re just absorbing this conversation in terms of the repeated “yes, yes, yes, yes”, you can go away later and be like, “Wow! That was so many hits!” When it was one. It was one hit that got six yeses. And he still kept going!

Like, “Oh, and so that’s always been imprinted on you.” Yes. “And you’ve always wanted to be different in that regard.” Yeah!?

Carrie Poppy: Also, with class guesses, you get so many visual cues. You know, he could be looking at her purse, he could be looking at her makeup, he could be guessing a whole bunch of things just by like how much money does it look like she spends?

Ross Blocher: Maybe she’s wearing Guess.

(Carrie chuckles and agrees.)

And that tells you a lot. Yeah. And of course, her body language is—she may be saying yes, she may just be nodding. She may be looking excitedly. All of these are clues.

Carrie Poppy: Okay. So, then he starts getting the letter M with someone connected to her mom, and she says her name was Marilyn. Okay, good.

Ross Blocher: Yeah, the mother’s name is Marilyn. And he says, “Okay, so that’s still your mother.”

[00:50:00]

He was saying like it’s somebody connected to your mom. And if she could have thought of a friend or relative whose name started with M, that would have been a hit. But the fact that the mom’s name is Marilyn? “Okay. Oh, that’s still your mom I’m getting.”

Carrie Poppy: “Okay, so that’s still your mom. Just wanted to make sure. Great.”

Ross Blocher: We still haven’t communicated a message from this mother.

Carrie Poppy: Right. So, then he asks if the parents were hiding money from each other. She says not that I know of.

This seems like an opportunity to tell her information. But no, not really. He says, “Was there a lot of paperwork?”

And she’s like, “Yeah, I was the executor.”

“So, you had to do a lot of paperwork?”

“Yeah. Yep. Yep.”

Ross Blocher: Yes. Asked and answered.

Carrie Poppy: So, then he asks whether she appears in her dreams regularly. She says yes.

Ross Blocher: That’s a clever one. I feel like I need to add that to the old repertoire.

Carrie Poppy: Oh yeah, Ella visits my dreams sometimes. And Toomy. Yeah.

Ross Blocher: Yep. I remember my dad telling me a story about seeing his dad in a dream after my grandpa passed. And yeah, it was very sweet, but I thought, “That’s what we do.” I didn’t say that though, ‘cause you don’t want to be the spoilsport. Unless you make a podcast.

Carrie Poppy: (Chuckles.) So, anyway, the mom is glad that Kaylin is finally happy! The closest thing we’ve gotten to a message.

Ross Blocher: To an actual—yeah. So, okay. Good for you, Thomas John. Yeah. I think maybe around this time is when he realized, oh, shoot. I better actually be sealing the deal on this. Like, actually communicating some information from the other side.

Carrie Poppy: It’s got to be around the hour mark.

(Ross “wow”s.)

Yeah. He says, “You’re focusing on your own happiness now. Does that make sense?” She says yes. He’s like, “Not in a selfish way! But you know, I need to take care of myself.” She’s like yes!

Goodness.

Ross Blocher: “Oh, who is that that’s sitting next to you?”

“That’s my son.”

“She watches over him a lot.”

(Chuckles.)

Carrie Poppy: Oh, yeah. “She’s just really happy you’re in a better place. If that makes sense. Does that make sense?” Yes! Alright. So, then we get back to this confusion with the brother/soulmate. But first he’s got to come to the other side over here. “Somebody’s sister or maybe sister-in-law or close female friend or—”

Ross Blocher: Yeah, it’s a very sisterly energy.

Carrie Poppy: Sisterly energy.

Ross Blocher: Please, somebody give me something!

Carrie Poppy: Someone fun, someone outgoing—

Ross Blocher: Give me an eye twitch. Give me something.

Carrie Poppy: He keeps mentioning hair, something about hair. And like nobody’s biting at this!

Ross Blocher: Nobody has a sisterly anything in their lives, for all these women.

Carrie Poppy: Much less one with hair!

Ross Blocher: Yeah, long hair. No thank you!

Carrie Poppy: So, then he asks the person with the microphone, “Can you go to this lady in the second row? Not related to the sister energy. Just something coming up for you.”

Ross Blocher: Yeah, we’re giving up on the sister. Let’s try something new.

Carrie Poppy: There’s still this poor other woman with the brother who really wants to talk.

Ross Blocher: Oh, she’s so eager.

Carrie Poppy: This woman’s name was Susan.

Ross Blocher: Mm-hm. Not Susan Gerbic. That would have been awkward. She was not in the room. But yeah, when he got Susan holding the microphone, he said, “Do you connect to the sister energy?”

Carrie Poppy: “No.”

Ross Blocher: “Okay, I didn’t think so. Did you lose a sister?”

Carrie Poppy: “N-no.”

Ross Blocher: She looked to me to be about in her 60s. So, not a bad guess that she would have lost either a sister or a very close friend who she thought of as a sister. Nope!

Carrie Poppy: Never. I’ve never known a woman who died.

Ross Blocher: “Well, speaking of that, I’m getting a male energy!”

(They laugh.)

Carrie Poppy: So, they decide together that’s her father. Okay!

Ross Blocher: I’m really looking forward to the day when I get my first psychic who senses a gender nonbinary presence in the room. ‘Cause that hasn’t happened yet.

Carrie Poppy: Oh, yeah! Yeah, yeah, yeah! That’ll really be some progress. Yeah! Waiting for that moment.

Ross Blocher: Finally! A nonbinary person died, and they’re coming back.

Carrie Poppy: (Laughs.) Okay, so he was sensing lots of books.

Ross Blocher: Yes, with this male energy, which she identified as her father. So, okay. “What’s all these books I’m getting?”

Carrie Poppy: “Yeah, what’s this thing with books?” And she doesn’t really get that.

She’s like, “I’m into books.” And Thomas John’s impressed by that enough.

“Yes! Yes! You! Exactly. That’s what he’s saying. You like books!”

Ross Blocher: (Laughs.) “Yeah. All I got is he’s babbling on about books! You like books. Amazing! Look what we’ve done here. We’ve broken the law of physics, and we’ve established that you like books.” (Laughs.)

Carrie Poppy: You like books! He says, “And this wasn’t a recent death, right?”

She’s like, “Well, six or seven years now.”

Ross Blocher: He lets that one lie.

Carrie Poppy: Okay. “Do I connect him to a cigar or a pipe?”

“Well, no, that was my grandpa.”

“Okay. Well, was he quieter?

“Yes.”

“Okay!”

Ross Blocher: Yeah. ‘Cause he’d thrown out like, “Oh, was he a quiet man?”

“No, that would be my grandpa.”

So, now he’s gotten two distractions with the grandpa. Sure. Why not? We’ve got—yep.

Carrie Poppy: We’re just bumping back and forth between these two characters and—yeah. We’ve created a composite character for whom all hits are fine. He starts to sense that there’s a move around her, and she’s like, “Well, I move all the time.”

He’s like, “There you go!”

[00:55:00]

Ross Blocher: “And did he help you move?”

“Yes.”

Wow! Now there’s a reason for us to be talking about grandpas and your move!

Carrie Poppy: I can’t believe it. Has anyone ever heard of a father who helped his daughter move? I’ve never even heard of that!

Ross Blocher: Never. It’s never happened before. Nope.

Carrie Poppy: And then he says, “I don’t know if he had a lot of friends, did he?”

“Yes.”

Oh, okay. There you go. You didn’t know, but now you do.

Ross Blocher: Yeah. And he did phrase it as the, “I don’t know if he had a lot of friends.”

Carrie Poppy: ‘Cause he didn’t. He really didn’t know, because they’re strangers.

(They laugh.)

Ross Blocher: Yeah. So, he could have gotten credit for that either way, but yeah. What are we exactly doing here? We’ve just gotten you to tell me that your deceased father did not have a lot of friends.

Carrie Poppy: No, did have a lot of friends.

Ross Blocher: Oh, sorry. Yes, did. Yeah. Popular guy. Okay.

Carrie Poppy: Okay, “Then did anyone have any sinus issues?”

She’s like, “Yeah, my grandmother.”

“So, you remember her going through that in this life?”

“Yes.”

Ross Blocher: Oh, that was one of those ones that really annoyed me. My mother had sinus issues. “So, you remember her going through that in life?” Well, yeah. Otherwise, how could you have just answered the question in the positive?

Carrie Poppy: Right? Unless like that’s in your family heirloom somewhere. “Grandma always had sinus pressure.”

Ross Blocher: If this were in the courts, I would be like, “I ask you to strike that second yes from the record! That was not an earned yes!”

Carrie Poppy: Boy, he really spends a lot of time on this woman!

Ross Blocher: And he even told her, “This is different with you, specifically, out of all the people I’m reading. Because more than just like an individual, I’m getting a lot of people.” Because we’ve already had a sisterly energy that never materialized. We’ve had the father, we’ve had the grandfather.

Carrie Poppy: “You’re kind of willing to say yes to anything.”

Ross Blocher: Yeah, of course, the reason for that is because you’ve got this cloud of people around.

Carrie Poppy: Yes. “So, who had the sewing machine?”

She says, “My mother.”

“Okay. Okay. Did you lose a cat?”

“No.”

“Well, I see a grey cat.” (Laughs.)

Ross Blocher: “See there is one like living under the porch at my house.”

And he says to that, “Okay, gotcha.” (Laughs.)

Carrie Poppy: You know what’s crazy about this?

Ross Blocher: Why are we talking about that cat now? What’s the spiritual significance?

Yeah?

Carrie Poppy: Yeah, or like go with it! Don’t say, “Okay, gotcha.” Be like, “Yes, exactly! That cat’s name is Cricket, and she comes from Jupiter, and she needs you to deliver this message to the groundhogs that they need to get the batteries into the earth so that we save everybody by June.”

Ross Blocher: That’s one—outside of just a solid miss, I think the most I’ll ding a psychic for is not taking advantage of a hit.

(Carrie agrees emphatically.)

He did that a few times, where he’d just be like, “Okay, let’s move along! I’ll keep doing the thing that I do, because my brain is already working forward trying to plan the next interaction. I missed the fact that you actually just validated the one random thing I got right.”

Carrie Poppy: Because all he’s marked as success in his head is a moment of validation for him. So, he just automatically moves on when he hits that moment of validation for him, missing that’s not the moment of validation necessarily for the audience or the sitter.

Ross Blocher: Right. Yeah. The really important thing to establish, I would say for most of the psychics that we see, is just that, “I’m valid. I’m doing something here. You will attend other shows of mine and sign up for my newsletter, please.”

Carrie Poppy: “Please don’t ask for your $40 back.”

Ross Blocher: “Buy my book in the back. I’ll sign it for you afterward.” I feel like that’s the real goal.

Carrie Poppy: But about grey cats. There’s a grey cat who lives in our backyard, and I call her Amy, and I leave food for her, and she’s just so cute. Amy, yeah.

Ross Blocher: Amy, okay! I was recently reading The Lesser Key of Solomon, the Goetia. It’s like that book about all of the different demons that we talked about when we were talking about Travis McHenry’s occult tarot. Anyways. You just reminded me of this, because there are all the traditional names you would expect for these demonic sounding figures, but one of them was named Amy. A-M-Y.

 

Carrie Poppy: Aw, nice! I love that name! I love that name!

Ross Blocher: Yeah. It was one of the 72 demons. Why not?

Carrie Poppy: There you go! Perfect. Okay. Then he got something about her overworking, and she’s like, “Yeah, I work all the time.” (Sighs.) Of course. That’s what everybody says always. No one’s ever like, “Mm, not really. I’m lazy as fuck.”

Ross Blocher: Speaking of laziness, that was how he was like closing the loop of, “I’ve had all these just random things about your dad and your grandpa and smoking and a pipe and a cat. And now they’re all just telling you you work too hard!” That was the big cosmic message.

Carrie Poppy: Right, right! The cat said to the pipe, said to the grandma, said to the mom that you’re working too hard.

Ross Blocher: And if he told me I’m working too hard, I could connect with that. If he told you you’re working too hard, I’m sure you could connect with that. Like, all of us can be like, “Oh yeah, I need to rest more.”

Carrie Poppy: I guess the grey cat in the backyard thinks I need to rest more.

(They laugh.)

Oh my god.

Ross Blocher: But as much as she kept giving him, he seemed to have forgotten that he already started off with her not connecting with the sisterly energy. So, he moves on.

[01:00:00]

So, this time when he opened it up on the sisterly energy, I guess he was looking towards our side of the room. Because this time we had four women all raise their hands, including Carrie Poppy!

Carrie Poppy: Oh, okay. I don’t remember why.

Ross Blocher: But one woman spoke up and said, “That’s me. Her name was Pamela.”

Carrie Poppy: Oh, he knew he was gonna read her when he saw her in line! Can you believe that?

Ross Blocher: Yeah! He was identifying all these people in advance. He knew he was gonna be reading.

Carrie Poppy: So, yeah, she thinks that this was her female cousin, who she was a sister to this cousin in another life.

Ross Blocher: In a former life. Yes. He was okay with that.

Carrie Poppy: And at this sort of convention, you just say, “Okay, that’s given information, I guess.”

Ross Blocher: Yeah, he did make a point in his intro that he only connects with dead loved ones. And “I’m not invalidating that, you know, there are ascended masters or spirit guides.” In fact, I think he was even going to have a spirit guide session the following day, like post-conference, that you could go to.

Carrie Poppy: Yeah, he talks about spirit guides in the Q&A.

Ross Blocher: But that’s not what he was about at this particular reading. And he was saying that there are other categories, like aliens or guardian angels, that he wasn’t going to discount. He’s just saying I don’t work with that particular energy. But he was totally fine with this lady saying that she had a cousin who was her sister in a former life. Also, she mentioned that this cousin/former sister had a wig, which connected to the long hair thing he was saying earlier. There we go.

Carrie Poppy: Right, the hair. Something about hair. Oh, she didn’t have hair. That counts.

Ross Blocher: (Laughs.) She had a wig, long hair. Maybe the long hair was on the wig and not on her. And did she march to the beat of her own drum? Do you understand that?

Carrie Poppy: Yes! Yes!

(Ross laughs.)

No, she was a joiner. She was a sheep! She did anything anyone said to her! She marched to the beat of everyone else’s drum.

These are things no one says.

Ross Blocher: Yeah, lots of Barnum statements ready to go. Just these things that connect with anybody.

Carrie Poppy: Okay, so. When she sees butterflies, that is her cousin dropping in on her. This is basically the big message here. Finally nailing it, Thomas John, picking an animal everybody will see a couple times a year and saying it’s their dead cousin. Perfect.

Ross Blocher: Yep. She’s sending you butterflies. Okay. So, when I die, I get to alter the flight patterns—?! (Laughs.)

Carrie Poppy: You get to pick one insect! When you die, you get to name an insect and send it to all your friends.

Ross Blocher: What’s up with all these June bugs?!

Carrie Poppy: What are you gonna send me if you die first? How will I know it’s you?

Ross Blocher: Praying mantis.

Carrie Poppy: Oh, my spirit animal! Okay, okay.

Ross Blocher: Yeah, so then you’ll know it’s from me. Yeah, what are you gonna send me?

Carrie Poppy: Okay. If I die, I’ll send you—oooooh…

Ross Blocher: I’m a little nervous.

Carrie Poppy: Ooh, I don’t know many insects. I’ll send you roly-polies! Yeah.

Ross Blocher: Oh, okay! I haven’t seen a roly-poly in a long time. Okay.

Carrie Poppy: Yeah, right? I collected some when I was little, but I gotta tell you, you can’t just keep them in a box.

Ross Blocher: Boy, those things—oh no, this has a sad ending. They’ve got so many names. Like, everybody calls them something different.

Carrie Poppy: Frank.

Ross Blocher: Well, no like you know, pill bugs and sowbugs. And I feel like there’s—that’s one of those ones that’s like—

Carrie Poppy: Yeah, what are they really called?

Ross Blocher: It’s a regionalism where everybody’s got a different name for this thing.

Carrie Poppy: Yeah. (Calling off-mic.) Babe, what do you call roly-polies?

Drew Spears: (Distantly.) Uh, roly-polies?

Carrie Poppy: Drew calls them roly-polies. He’s from Texas. It’s an Armadillidiidae.

Ross Blocher: Oh, that is a great—that’s a great family name. Yeah, it does look like a little armadillo. It’s got all these little segmented plates.

Carrie Poppy: This is a crazy spelling, y’all. It’s A-R-M-A-D-I-L-L-I-D-I-I-D-A-E.

Ross Blocher: “A family of wood lice and terrestrial crustacean group in the order Isopoda.” See, this is fun!

Carrie Poppy: “Other common names include slaters, potato bugs, butchy boys, and doodle bugs.” Yes, this is what I’m sending you.

Ross Blocher: (Laughs.) Doodle bugs! I’ve heard that one. Butchy boys I haven’t heard before, but okay, that’s pretty good. Thank you.

Carrie Poppy: You’re welcome. What am I getting? June bugs?

Ross Blocher: Praying mantis.

Carrie Poppy: Praying manti. Okay.

Ross Blocher: After I die, I’ll have to play back this episode on the great podcast player in the sky, so I can remember what I’m supposed to send. But then I’ll get right the hell on that.

Carrie Poppy: Yeah, remember what the hell we’re supposed to be sending.

(They chuckle.)

Ross Blocher: There’ll be like five of them in a row outside your window, just praying mantises.

Carrie Poppy: (Laughs.) All praying.

Ross Blocher: Yeah, that’ll be—yeah, what if I get them to spell out an R or something? Okay, I’m gonna go full-bore on this.

Carrie Poppy: Wait, why an R?

Ross Blocher: My name is Ross. I’m Ross.

Carrie Poppy: Ooooh! Yeah, I knew that about you. That’s right, that’s right. (Laughs.) Now I remember.

Ross Blocher: (Laughs.) Yeah, I don’t want this to feel random. I love that we get the ability to control the paths of insects in our afterlives.

Carrie Poppy: Yeah, just one species.

[01:05:00]

Alright. So.

Ross Blocher: Anyways, yeah, when this lady sees butterflies. Yay.

Carrie Poppy: So, then he rolls up his shirt sleeves and knocks over the microphone.

Ross Blocher: Oh yeah, this is a real moment, just fumbling with the microphone. I don’t know; I had fun.

Carrie Poppy: Cute. (Laughs.) Okay, so he goes back to the soulmate brother. He says that the brother had very much soulmate energy. And I see you wrote down, “Carrie gives me a very intense side eye.”

(They giggle.)

Ross Blocher: Yeah, because finally he said, alright, well, I guess we have to do the brother thing, but definitely you were soulmates. So, there we go. That’s hopefully threading the needle between a romantic relationship and you and your brother.

Carrie Poppy: Her name’s Alyssa; her brother was Jared. And she says the reason—this is Alyssa speaking—the reason he said, “I’m so sorry” is because he took his life.

Ross Blocher: That was one of the searching pieces of information earlier on. “I’m sensing this significant other that you lost is saying that he’s so, so, so sorry.”

And she’s like, “Oh, but I know why my brother said that.”

Carrie Poppy: Yes. And Thomas John kept saying that he was getting an image of “the outside” being not any more specific. And now this woman is saying, “And I can confirm, because when he took his own life, that was outside.”

And instead of taking any moment to say anything like I’m sorry—

Ross Blocher: “Oh, I’m so sorry about your bother.”

Carrie Poppy: Or just have a moment of eye contact, he just goes like, “Yes, remember I said outdoors!”

Ross Blocher: He’s so excited that he got something right! Clap!

Carrie Poppy: Hit for me!

Ross Blocher: Yeah, exactly! Ugh. Yuck!

Carrie Poppy: Sooo off key.

Ross Blocher: Yeah, you’re right. I’m coming farther down on his reading abilities. These are some pretty bad gaffes.

Carrie Poppy: So, he says, “Your brother was really intelligent.”

And she’s like, “Yeah, he was a comedian, actually.”

He’s like, “Yes! He saw the world in a different way!” And then he repeats that in different ways. “He was very, very sensitive, though he didn’t always show it, and he was very funny!” It’s like, yeah, she just said he was a comedian. Come on.

Ross Blocher: Yeah, you said he’s a comedian. He better be funny.

“He keeps telling me that he wants you to write a book. Does that make sense to you?”

And she said, “Oh yeah.”

“Well, it’s funny—again, a little bit of humor here—he’s telling me that you need to get off your ass.”

(They offer forced laughter.)

We all have a chuckle at that.

Carrie Poppy: And he wants to help you with that.

Ross Blocher: Of course, because if you don’t do it, it’ll never get done. Like, oh yeah. Great. Very helpful advice.

Carrie Poppy: (Sarcastically.) Incredible advice. Incredible. This reminds me that I pick on Drew for this all the time. One time, maybe six months ago, he said that I was funny. And I said, “Not as funny as you.”

And he said, “Well, I should hope not.”

(They laugh.)

Ross Blocher: Oh! Alright! Gotta be a hierarchy to this. Well, that was pretty funny.

Carrie Poppy: Yeah, it’s funny. Okay. So, then Thomas John started chastising this woman. “Listen, you have to put your own energy forward about this,”—about writing her book—“or there’s not much the spirits can do to help you. What’s holding you back?” So, then she explains what’s holding her back. She’s totally blind.

Ross Blocher: That’s an impediment to writing a book. It can still be done!

Carrie Poppy: So, hm. If you’re supposed to be psychic, and a woman’s sitting in front of you with a cane and glasses—I thought she might be blind, and I don’t claim to be psychic. Isn’t that interesting? I just picked up on the context cues.

Ross Blocher: That’s very interesting. But remember, she needs to get off her ass.

Carrie Poppy: So, she says, “Well, what’s holding me back is I’m totally blind, and I went blind around the time that my brother died. And he had vision problems too.” And then her voice begins to quiver.

And again, he just completely misses the note, and he just cuts in, “Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you and your brother were together another lifetimes, and why am I getting a vision of a kangaroo?”

Ross Blocher: (Laughs.) Yeah, why is he?

Carrie Poppy: And then she struggles to make sense of that. He’s like, “Well, I don’t know, maybe something about Australia. Anyway! You and your brother were spiritually connected.” And she says very much. And he says, “Yeah, I feel that. So.” Then trails off. I feel that. So.

Ross Blocher: (Laughs.) Yeah. He doesn’t know how to get it across the finish line.

Carrie Poppy: Yeah. A man took his own life, reached back across the divide to talk to his sister, and sent a picture of a kangaroo in the outdoors.

(They laugh.)

Ross Blocher: Yeah. I don’t know what to do with that. And write that book. Get off your ass.

Carrie Poppy: (Sighs.) Alright, so then Thomas John unceremoniously moves on to the Q&A.

Ross Blocher: “Yeah. Let’s just do Q&A now!”

Carrie Poppy: Why not? Sure, it’s my favorite part. So, he’s gonna take five questions. Question one. “Does it feel different to you when you connect with spirit, versus channeling with higher level entities?

[01:10:00]

Ross Blocher: Oh, this is the kind of question a psychic just loves, because the answer is just purely in their own heads, so. Let’s extrapolate on this.

Carrie Poppy: He says, “Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. People ask a lot who my spirit guide is, which is funny, because we all have a team of guides, you know. We have ancestors, loved ones, angels, relatives, spirit guides, ascended masters, self, source, other dimensional beings.”

Ross Blocher: Boy, that is funny. That’s hilarious.

Carrie Poppy: (Laughs.) “But you know how there are certain friends you go to for certain things? Well, it’s the same thing here, you know? Different guides give you different things, and I can sense the difference between the kind of energy coming through and who it’s coming from.”

There you go!

Ross Blocher: M’kay. Another woman asks him, “Do you ever have a battle between the spirits who are like trying to get through to you?”

Carrie Poppy: Which makes sense! Yeah. You’d think they’d all be like kind of shouting through the ether.

Ross Blocher: Yeah! And I mean, even from this reading alone, you could tell there were some mixed up energies.

He said, “Oh, if that happens, that’s the way it’s supposed to happen. But there must be a reason for it.” I think that was just the quality of his answer is just like, ah, I just kind of go with the flow of what the spirits are doing. They have a reason for it.

Carrie Poppy: Yep. Okay. Next question was from a guy. He said, “So, when they come through, how clearly can you see them? And what’s behind them? Like, what’s the background on this scene?”

Ross Blocher: I’ve heard this question asked before, and it’s a great question. Because you don’t see a psychic sort of stop and like stare at the wall like, “Oh wow. I’m seeing her over there.”

Carrie Poppy: I have seen that once.

Ross Blocher: Okay. Someone who’s actually acting like, okay, I see something; I’m visualizing; I’m describing to you what I’m seeing, and I’m acting out—

Carrie Poppy: Yeah, uh-huh. Ross’s eyes are like locked on the wall. Yeah, mm-hm.

Ross Blocher: I’m acting out the motion of—okay, yeah, that’s rare. That’s rare.

Carrie Poppy: One time. Yeah. It was in school.

Ross Blocher: So, what does he say?

Carrie Poppy: Okay, so Thomas John replies, “Well, they don’t have to show me what they look like at all. I may just get thoughts or feelings, impressions that I know don’t belong to me. Like, I know I’m not thinking them.”

So, I was like, oh, I’ve heard of this. Yeah. Thought insertion is a common delusion. Yeah. If you have an auditory hallucination and just for whatever reason, your body, your brain doesn’t recognize that as a hallucination—thought insertion.

Ross Blocher: Interesting. Okay. And I feel it could even be more mundane than that, where—as we all know—if we try to meditate, we have these monkey minds that just throw up all kinds of random stuff all the time. And if you just label that input “source” or “guides” or whatever, just whatever random thing pops into your head, you can say like, “Oh, well, I didn’t think of that! It just popped into my consciousness. So, let’s run with that. Why am I getting the color chartreuse? That’s weird! I wasn’t thinking about that earlier today. That’s not from me!”

Carrie Poppy: I don’t have like an inner monologue. Do you?

Ross Blocher: Oh, I definitely do.

Carrie Poppy: Oh, you do. And it’s like sentences?

Ross Blocher: Yeah, sometimes.

Carrie Poppy: Wow, okay. Okay, I can turn that on, but it’s not automatic. And anyway, a few weeks ago, I was standing in our kitchen looking at the backyard, and I just suddenly had this fully formed thought: “(Sighs.) Drew’s going to build a train back there.” That was the whole thought. Just dumped in my head, and it felt so real.

Ross Blocher: Other?

Carrie Poppy: Yeah. It felt so other, because I don’t usually use words like that. But it was so just sudden and like—it really felt like—I told Drew, it was like, “This must be when people say they have a download! This is what it feels like! I was suddenly so certain you’re going to build a model train in the backyard!”

Ross Blocher: It’ll be interesting to see if Drew proves you right or wrong.

Carrie Poppy: Yeah, he seems to not really want to build a model train in the backyard.

Ross Blocher: Okay! Likely that voice was wrong, but I can see how you would easily just label that and say, “Oh wow, okay, that’s someone telling me that—something else other than me.”

Carrie Poppy: Yeah. Carrie in a different timeline.

Ross Blocher: Where what is really true is that you contain multitudes.

Carrie Poppy: Exactlyyy. He also mentioned—Thomas John mentioned—that sometimes he sees people at the foot of his bed, which makes you think of hypnagogic and hypnopompic hallucinations.

Ross Blocher: Right! Good old sleep paralysis.

Carrie Poppy: Mm-hm. But he said he teaches his students not to focus on what the spirits look like. Because they often kind of try to start there. They’ll say, “Oh, I see someone with brown hair, or I see someone in a three-piece suit,” or whatever. And he’s like, “That’s not really the place to start. Start with personality, characteristics, or names.”

Ross Blocher: He was also saying it’s important to focus on the message, which I feel like he didn’t do too well in this particular reading.

Carrie Poppy: He did not, yeah. Yeah, the medium was not the message here. Do you get me?

Ross Blocher: Yep. (Chuckles.) I gotcha.

Carrie Poppy: (Titters.) The next person asked an interesting question. She said, “So, say you lose your mediumship, because you weren’t really working at it. Jow do you get it back?”

Ross Blocher: Asking for a friend.

Carrie Poppy: Yeah, she said it in a way like, “We’ve all been there!”

(Ross laughs.)

[01:15:00]

And he kind of received it as we’ve all been there. He was like, “Yeah, it could be a day. It could be months. You know, not everybody’s supposed to be a professional medium, but everyone has some level of psychic power. So, you know, it’s still there for you. But yeah, you might have to practice again.”

Ross Blocher: Seems consistent with the answers we usually hear on that kind of question. There was another woman who had a question about spiritual activity that she was sensing and was wondering like was it an ancestor or a spirit that somehow got trapped in the house? And she was talking about some of the phenomena. There’s knocking on the door. There’s an old alarm system turning on at 2AM. And she said that the house was built in the ’70s. So.

Quick, solve my ghost problem!

Carrie Poppy: Maybe that’s just a slip of the tongue, but if it keeps turning on at 2AM, that’s not random. You need to turn off the 2AM alarm.

Ross Blocher: (Laughs.) Right. You’re right, the definition of random would be not reliably at the same time.

Carrie Poppy: Yeah. (Chuckles.) But maybe that wasn’t exactly what she meant. But yes, the home was from the ’70s. So, he thought about this for a long time. And boy, he rambled! He defined what a ghost is. He just—really traveling nowhere as he thought about this. But he finally lands on, “I don’t think that’s one of your family members. I do think that it’s someone who used to live in the house.”

And so, she’s like, “Okay, I thought that—you know, we’re on Chumash land.” It’s like, okay, then, yeah.

Ross Blocher: Aah, it’s the old Chumash land. Okay.

Carrie Poppy: Probably someone who lived there before. “And when it’s like that, it’s usually just a paranormal thing.” Oh, okay!

Ross Blocher: Ah, just a paranormal thing! No biggie.

Carrie Poppy: Oh, okay. And then it was over! He asked us all to buy his book and line up for him to sign it.

Ross Blocher: You and I kept raising our hands, and he didn’t pick on either of us. I was going to ask him—I was trying to like work out a phrasing in my mind. And here’s what I wrote down at the time. “What research do you do to make yourself better prepared for your readings? And do you ever follow up afterward? Or is the reading over when it is over?”

‘Cause I thought that might be just sort of a nod to the fact that he prepares for some readings he does.

Carrie Poppy: Yeah, yeah. That there’s pre and post to this production. Yeah.

Ross Blocher: Yeah. He didn’t seem to do any of that today, but certainly he has at other times. And then also I was curious about whether he follows up, because I feel like we go to these conferences and these readings, and people say all these important, meaningful things. But then do they ever try to get the person’s contact info or reach out to them? I mean, he did have a story about a woman writing him back about the smiley face. But I mean, how much does he actually care about the wellbeing of these people and what these messages do for them versus just acknowledging that he has a connection?

So, I asked you what you were going to ask him and—

Carrie Poppy: Oh, what’d I say?

Ross Blocher: “I Googled you and I saw a New Yorker article. What are your thoughts on that?” Because there was a very negative article about him in the New Yorker.

Carrie Poppy: Okay, there you go. Very similar to Susan’s pitch for a question.

Ross Blocher: Exactly. Yeah. Would have been fun if we’d been called upon, but yeah. He was standing in the back of the room. There was a small lineup of people—maybe like eight or so people with his book waiting to get it signed.

Carrie Poppy: He is not back there this year.

Ross Blocher: For whatever reason. But again, the book is—

Carrie Poppy: Never Argue with a Dead Person: True and Unbelievable Stories from the Other Side.

Ross Blocher: That’s a great book title. And that was it for our experience with Thomas John! So, didn’t knock our socks off. It felt like he didn’t prepare for it at all.

Carrie Poppy: Yep. Which is commendable in one sense.

Ross Blocher: Yeah, but you know, when you pay 40 bucks for something—or 600 for an all-access pass. I don’t know; I expect a little bit of preparation.

Carrie Poppy: Yeah, I wonder if he just wasn’t able to get to that list and he normally can, or what happened there?

Ross Blocher: Maybe. Yeah, would he have put in the effort if he could have known who was in the audience? And also, it’s often a practice—I was going to say good practice—to have plants in the audience as well that you can call on for the occasional hit, but I didn’t get any indication he did that either.

(Carrie agrees.)

There were a few good moments. We didn’t mention one reading where like there was an R name and the woman had a son named Rodrigo or something. That was a pretty good hit. So, he had to make maybe three or four good hits over the course of an hour.

Carrie Poppy: Yeeeah, not impressive. Not impressive.

Ross Blocher: Not great. Soooo, yeah, Thomas John.

Carrie Poppy: Thomas John. Well, if you listen to this, Thomas John, we’d love to have you on.

Ross Blocher: You are more than welcome. And, yeah, we’ll ask you those questions we suggested and others.

But yeah, we’ll be telling you more soon about some friends old and new at the expo. Oh, hey! Speaking of extraordinary knowledge, when we had our episode about the Mark the Beast VHS tape that you’d brought out—this was all done by this guy named Jon Shepherd. And we had read up that he had more predictions, and one of them fell on yesterday as we were recording. So, he predicted for February 6th, 2024, that there would be a peace treaty with Israel.

[01:20:00]

(Carrie “woah”s.)

This was mentioned in our episode, “Scan for Satan: Mark of the Beast Edition”.

Carrie Poppy: Okay. And did it happen?! I feel like that would make the news.

Ross Blocher: That was yesterday. I’m doing a search. Yeah. Well, and I mean, I got a little bit of a chill just being reminded of this—thinking, wow, okay, well. Israel’s certainly in the news. There’s a lot going on.

Carrie Poppy: Sure. But?

Ross Blocher: Nope. Certainly not that’s been advertised or mentioned anywhere, so I think failed prediction. But at least right part of the world to need a peace treaty.

Carrie Poppy: Yeah. No, I’m pretty sure that would come up.

Ross Blocher: I think so! Yeah. So, nice try, Jon Shepherd.

(Carrie agrees.)

Alright. Well, that’s it for this episode.

Carrie Poppy: Our theme music is by Brian Keith Dalton.

Ross Blocher: Our administrative manager is Ian Kremer!

Carrie Poppy: You can support this and all our investigations by going to MaximumFun.org/join, J-O-I-N.

Ross Blocher: That’s right. And we’ve got Maximum Fun Drive coming soon! So, all kinds of exciting new content.

Carrie Poppy: (Singing.) “It’s the most wonderful time of the year—”

Ross Blocher: (Joining her.) “—wonderful time of the year!”

So, some more coming on that later. Support us that way. You can also leave us a positive review somewhere. Tell a friend, wear a t-shirt.

Carrie Poppy: Write a negative review, but put it in a sandwich and eat it.

Ross Blocher: Spread the word, and help other people find the podcast.

Carrie Poppy: And remember!

Ross Blocher: From Thomas John.

Clip:

Thomas John: So, yeah. You know, when you have spirit activity like that, you’re right. There can be a couple of things. I mean, number one, it could just be, you know, coincidental weird stuff. But probably not if it’s happening so much. And then you also have spirit people that have not transitioned that are within the physical realm. We call them ghosts, you know. That can be within a home that they may have lived in before. They could really be anywhere, you know, you could have—

Ghosts are one of those things that—so, when we say ghosts, typically we wouldn’t, you know—typically they’re not your own loved ones. You know, they’re ghosts. You know, so they could be a spirit that’s connected to that house, a spirit that’s connected to that area. Sometimes you have random spirits that didn’t cross over. They’ve chosen not to cross over for whatever reason. And they just are like, “Oh, I’m going to go in that house.” You know, there’s not a—they don’t have a—

Most of the time we find with a ghost like that that they… it’s more common that they had something to do with that house. So, maybe they lived there once, or they lived in that area or something. It’s usually uncommon—it can happen, but it’s uncommon that—

You know, it sounds like with that to me—I mean, I’d have to really know more about it, but it doesn’t feel to me as much that it’s your loved ones. That feels more like spirit activity that’s within your house. Like, I would say more—it seems more paranormal. You know, that’s the feeling I’m getting, but I’d have to know more.

Music: “Oh No, Ross and Carrie! Theme Song” by Brian Keith Dalton. A jaunty, upbeat instrumental.

Promo:

Music: Gentle, quiet acoustic guitar.

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John Moe: Sleeping With Celebrities, hosted by me—John Moe—on MaximumFun.org or wherever you get your podcasts. Night, night.

(Music fades out.)

Transition: Cheerful ukulele chord.

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