While Theresa Caputo's career as a medium landed her on the popular TV show Long Island Medium, growing up wasn't easy for the famous psychic.
She claims that her psychic powers - which she claims let her speak to the dead and sense the emotions of other people - manifested from a very young age. Before Caputo or anyone else in her family knew what to do about her powers, talking to the dead made her an anxious and sensitive person.
"I always said that my brain doesn't work like everyone else's," she explained in an interview. "I always said since I was a young child, "˜Mom, I don't feel right. I don't feel like I belong. I feel different.'" But despite hearing voices and communicating with people beyond the grave, Caputo says at first she was skeptical of her own powers.
"I thought everyone saw what I was sensing and feeling," Caputo says, and she reveals she was married to her husband Larry for 10 years before telling him about her gift.
"I wasn't doing anything. I didn't want to leave the house. I would cry all the time," Caputo remembers.
"So when I told him, you know, I can speak to dead people, he saw that I was physically and emotionally getting better. So he's like, 'you know what hon, if you think talking to dead people makes you feel better, you keep going right ahead, because it's making my life a hell of a lot easier.'"
But even after becoming a successful medium and a national celebrity, Caputo still faces lots of skeptics. To prove once and for all if her powers are real, the famous psychic agreed to have her brain scanned while she was "channeling" a spirit.
Caputo wanted to "set the record straight" about her powers and prove definitively that she can talk to the dead.
During the experiment, Caputo had her brain scanned twice: once while she was channeling a spirit, and once while she was doing nothing. Despite what skeptics may have expected, the test did record something strange happening inside Caputo's brain while she used her psychic powers.
"They did find that I do access a part of my brain that we typically don't and that my brain actually goes blank," Caputo explained, "it almost like it flat lines. Like, it's clear as I'm channeling." A doctor who examined Caputo's results says it's clear that something is happening while she's channeling, even if he can't say what's going on exactly.
Caputo even repeated the experiment on The Doctor Oz Show, and the results were almost exactly the same. While Caputo was glad to put the argument over her powers to rest, it's unlikely that this will silence her skeptics. But the Long Island Medium says that doesn't bother her.
"You know, everyone is entitled to their own opinion. But you speak to the people that I channeled their loved ones and it has changed their lives in a positive way," she explains. Despite what critics say, Caputo insists she's just using her powers to help grieving families.
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