I Kissed a Ghost (and I Liked It)

by Concetta Bertoldi

  Of course everyone is on the computer now, and that gives the spirits a lot more ways to connect than in past generations. Again, I have no idea how this works, other than I know they are able to manipulate energy, which means anything to do with electricity. Do they need to know your password to hack your Facebook account? I doubt it.

  A gentleman came to see me after his wife died. He told me that he felt his wife was sending him small messages through his computer. Apparently he was very knowledgeable about computers and could think of no “rational” explanation for what he was experiencing. It was nothing big, just certain icons would show up that were meaningful to him, or certain pop-ups that reminded him of her. He said that there was simply no explanation he could think of for why these signs would be happening. One was an ad for a movie that they had really liked. It wasn’t even a current film, and it happened more than once. Another time, he was going to visit his daughter, who was in college in Florida, and again something popped up that had to do with the very town in Florida he was going to. He was something of an expert, and he explained that he was sure it didn’t have to do with cookies that had noticed preferences of his, but rather, these things seemed to come very spontaneously if he was doing something or thinking about something related to him or his wife, or their family. He was totally convinced that his wife was talking to him through his computer. And I’m pretty sure he was right.

  Our cameras are picking up some pretty interesting things, too. I have a client whose daughter was very sick. As the girl lay in her hospital bed, my client and her husband took photos of her and were astonished to see orbs of light flying all around her in the pictures. They decided to take a video and, even more amazingly, the orbs appeared to fly by her face as the sleeping child began to smile. They seemed to be caressing her face and body. When she was awake, the girl told her family that a nice lady had come to see her, and she described a great-grandmother (whom she’d never met) to a T. She said the lady told her everything was going to be all right. Sure enough, the little girl recovered. Her parents believe that the orbs were somehow the great-grandmother in spirit form, and I agree.

  This is far from the only time I’ve heard a story like this. In a previous reading I’d done for a woman, she told me that her daughter was having trouble conceiving. I’d told her that she would ultimately be successful. Well, it took her five years and trying a number of things, but she was finally successful with in-vitro fertilization. So in this new reading, I said to her that the spirits on the other side were showing signs that they know the new baby, and that the baby knows them. At that, she pulled out her iPhone and showed me pictures she had taken of the baby in her crib, with these orbs floating all around her.

  Social media has brought us closer in many ways. We post our children’s milestones, our accomplishments, and our vacation photos, or sometimes sadder things, like news of a beloved pet’s passing. I see some people getting braver, too, about what they share of their life experiences. It gives me hope that we are getting to a place of greater understanding. The other day I saw on Twitter: “The baby keeps looking just over my shoulder and smiling, so that means we have ghosts, right?” You bet it does! And more importantly, they are ghosts you know and love!

  Everyone is watching and filming, so smile big!

  A lady came into my office and told me that she’d been visiting her daughter. While they visited, they kept an eye on her granddaughter, sleeping on the couch in the living room. They were watching her through a nanny cam, and one of them noticed that the girl looked like she was falling off the couch, but was somehow hanging on. She was in a really strange suspended position, and they couldn’t figure out how she didn’t fall on her head. They went into the living room and, seeing that the little girl was awake, asked her, “You’re almost on the floor—what are you doing?”

  She told them, “Don’t worry, she’s holding me.”

  “Who?” they asked.

  “The lady with the red fingernails.”

  I honestly don’t recall who she said this woman was, maybe a neighbor or the other grandmother. I recall she was someone who had loved holding the little girl when she was just a baby but had crossed some time before. Without today’s technology, they never would have witnessed that, and the little girl may never have thought to mention this encounter with “the lady with the red fingernails.”

  Another client shared a story about her son who was three years old, maybe a bit younger. One day my client’s mother was visiting, and the two of them were in the kitchen, chatting. Her son was in his room, and she had the nanny cam on to keep an eye on him, but they weren’t really paying close attention. At one point, her mother glanced over at the monitor and saw the child laughing and talking, waving his arms around. The two of them walked down the hall to his bedroom to see what had gotten him so excited. When they opened the door to the room, the boy turned around, pointed toward what appeared to be an empty wall in front of him, and said, “Pop!” The child had never known his grandfather, and he was the first grandchild, so he had never been taught the name “Pop-Pop.” He then said, “Pop Don,” which, taking into account that he hadn’t yet mastered the letter J, they both realized must be “Poppa John,” his grandfather’s name. Although they were themselves convinced, they wanted my professional opinion as to whether the boy was actually talking with his deceased grandfather he had never met (at least not here on earth). Of course I agreed. I’m very certain that the two souls knew each other before the boy came back here. The grandfather may even have played a role in directing this soul to his current family. At a later date, my client was visiting her sister-in-law with her young son. The baby spied a photo of the grandfather, pointed to it, and said very clearly, “Pop Don.” Everyone was speechless.

  In addition to these, I’ve heard other stories of nanny cams and baby monitors letting parents in on a side of their young children’s lives that used to be more inaccessible.

  I’ve heard about new home technology—not only vacuum cleaners that whoosh across the carpet by themselves, but also refrigerators that notice what you are running low on and order it for you. I can hardly wait to see the fun the dead will have with that! Can you imagine? Pretty soon you’ll have to inspect your grocery list to see if your deceased Uncle Sammy is ordering his favorite foods, just to let you know he’s still hanging out in your kitchen.

  Conclusion

  At least ten years ago, a very nice gentleman, “Roy,” came to one of my shows after learning about me through one of my books. His mother had passed away, and he was feeling completely bereft. He was in an “I’ll try anything” place with his grief. I no longer remember what messages I was able to bring him from his mom, but whatever she told me, it brought him a lot of comfort.

  Roy never forgot his experience, and he stayed in touch with me ever after. He told me he’d been a skeptic the first time he came to a show and had a reading, but he left converted. From then on, it was like I had a publicist in Pennsylvania; he was constantly telling everyone how much peace he’d found and insisting that they come to see me. I know this because there have been many guests at my shows over the years who have made a point of saying, “Roy sent me.”

  Roy was not just a publicist for me. He was an angel on earth. He would send me birthday cards and occasionally letters, always beginning with, “My Dear, Beautiful, Beloved Concetta,” and ending with, “I hope I still make you smile.” I never had the impression that he had a lot of money, but from time to time he would send me little gifts. Once he sent me a small jewelry box that was made in Israel because he’d heard me mention how connected I feel to the Jewish people. Once he sent me flowers. Usually when he called the office, he would end up talking with my assistant Elena, and they became close friends as well. When Elena called to let him know the flowers had been received and that he’d be hearing from me soon, he confided in her that he had never sent anyone flowers before.

 
What else can I say about Roy? He didn’t drive, so he would only come to my shows when a friend could bring him. He wasn’t very tall, he was gay, he never married, and he was very funny. Roy was an absolute dear, a pure soul, without a mean bone in his body. In short, both Elena and I loved him fiercely.

  Roy passed away very recently. He’d been in hospice after battling throat cancer a second time. He felt defeated and didn’t want to try any more. I had spoken with Roy by phone, and he told me that he wanted to be with his mom. He also asked me if I thought he might meet my brother Harold on the other side. Before we found out that Roy had crossed, Elena and I planned to visit him in hospice. He’d been such a good friend to us both, and we wanted to say goodbye in person. I can be very impulsive, but Elena wisely suggested that this should not be a surprise visit, that we should call to let Roy know we were coming. We set a day when we could clear our calendar, but when Elena called she was told by the staff that Roy had passed away the week before (see, psychics don’t know everything). Oh my God, we were so upset, even though we both knew that Roy had wanted to go and was certainly at home and at peace.

  We were meeting a few girlfriends at a local restaurant that evening, and, all the way there, we kept reminiscing about Roy. Then Elena turned to me and said, “Concetta, on my life, you will never get it out of me, but last time I was talking with Roy he gave me a word. He told me that if you ever said this word I should know that it was him saying ‘I love you’ to both of us.”

  Wow. Of course that made me totally crazy. My first impulse was to say, “What was the word?” This went nowhere, as Elena immediately reminded me that she’d been sworn to secrecy and would never tell. But as we pulled up to the restaurant, I got a sudden jolt.

  “Elena!” I said. “Roy’s here.”

  “He is?” she asked.

  “Yes! And he’s trying to tell me the word.”

  “O-kaay,” she said. “What is he saying?”

  I said, “He’s trying to show me…it’s got something to do with food.”

  “Yeeah?” said Elena.

  “Yeah. I’m not saying it’s ice cream, but it’s something you can eat with ice cream.”

  Elena says, “Ye-e-ess.”

  I said, “But it’s also something you could have for breakfast.”

  Elena says, “Ye-e-ess.”

  I said, “It’s either waffle or crepe!”

  Elena goes, “Oh my God! The word was waffle! Roy told me his favorite thing in the world was Belgian waffles!”

  I think the two of us were not sure whether to laugh out loud or cry. Anyway, nailed it! I could not wait to go in and brag to our girlfriends waiting for us in the restaurant.

  There’s a little more to the waffle story. The day Elena and I had planned to visit Roy, of course, we now had nowhere else to go. So Elena said, “Look, we never have a free day, but we cleared the calendar today. You’ve never seen my new house, so why don’t I pick you up? I’ll show you my house, we’ll have lunch and just spend a relaxing day together.”

  Elena lives in an area that has a lot of really cute restaurants, so when she said she’d cook, I told her I didn’t want to put her to any trouble, but she insisted. She likes to cook, and she’d already bought everything, saying, “I can make either chicken or pasta, whichever you prefer.” I told her I felt in need of comfort food, so pasta it was. Elena went to her cupboard and pulled down a box the size of a large shoebox, filled with probably hundreds of recipes. She told me, “I’ve made this lots of times, but if I don’t follow the recipe closely I always screw up the sauce.” When she opened the lid of the box, lying right on top was a recipe for…Belgian waffles. Both our mouths were hanging open. Under that recipe was a photo of Elena’s husband and son—a photo she always keeps on top so it’s the first thing she sees when she opens the box. She said to me, “I can’t even remember the last time I made Belgian waffles!”

  Did it stop there? No. Elena’s son came home from college, and she told him the whole story. He said, “That’s crazy. I eat at the cafeteria all the time. Our breakfasts are always the same—eggs, pancakes, bacon, ham, toast, fruit…and that’s pretty much it. Last week I went in and there was a sign at the front that said, ‘Special Today: Belgian Waffles.’ ”

  That’s gotta be the end, right? Nope. The following Sunday, I went out with the girls to a little diner we’ve been to many times. We had our meals and a nice chat, and then the waitress comes to ask if anyone wants dessert. Before any of us can order, she says, “Just to let you know, we have a special today: Belgian waffles.”

  Yes, Roy, you are still making me smile.

  I found myself thinking a lot about Roy, as we all do when someone we care about passes. I remembered him asking me if I thought he would get to meet Harold once he was in heaven. I imagine one day I may be talking with Harold and he’ll tell me that he’s got a new friend there who just loves Belgian waffles. I’ll keep you posted on that. But this made me think about Harold, and how alike in some ways he and Roy are. Both have a great sense of humor—Harold was one of the funniest guys I’ve ever known—but more importantly, both of them were incredibly kind when they were on this side of the veil.

  Another time, Elena called me when I was driving to say that I’d received a call from a woman named Christine who said she knew my brother. She had, by happenstance, been reading my book Do Dead People Watch You Shower?, in which I talk about Harold, and she realized that the person I was writing about was someone she had lived with some decades ago. Elena gave me her number, and I called her right away. The story she told me blew me away, and yet it was unsurprising. It was the 1970s, and she had come through a hard divorce with no one to help her get back on her feet, and she had nowhere to live. The two were introduced by a mutual friend, and Harold told her that he had a two-bedroom apartment and that she was welcome to stay with him. He hardly knew her, but he helped her through a really difficult time. She told me a number of really beautiful things he had done while they lived together, and I was in tears as I drove, listening on my Bluetooth. Hanging up, after our conversation, I spoke to God, saying, “Please bless my beautiful brother Harold.” I said a long prayer, actually, and as I was finishing it, I heard Harold himself say that a surprise was coming my way. When I arrived home and walked in my door, the phone was ringing. It was my agent letting me know that we had an offer for my new book—the book you are now reading. This was a very nice surprise, and one that I feel Harold had a hand in, since he has been involved in my public career right from the get-go.

  Here’s one more story about Harold. There was a blizzard in New York during the 1970s—I can’t recall the exact year. Harold was a smoker and decided to brave the cold to walk to a bodega for cigarettes. He wore only a short black leather jacket over his usual get-up of T-shirt and jeans. On his way to the store, he was mugged by some young thugs. He offered his money, but they demanded his jacket too. Then they beat him unconscious. The snow kept coming down until he was completely covered by it. He was discovered the next day with a broken arm and other injuries. When I first saw him, I was going nuts about these scum who had attacked him. He told me that, when he woke up in the hospital, there was a crucifix hanging on the wall. He found himself staring at it, contemplating it. He thought, “Yes, He forgave those who hurt Him. So I will forgive these men.” My mouth was just hanging open. But he really meant it.

  In the short time he was here, my brother gave me many lessons that are taking me an entire lifetime to absorb. Generosity. Forgiveness. Simple kindness. These are the things that I hear also, constantly, from the other side. There, we know perfect peace, but peace on earth is our true goal, to become closer to God and to make earth more like heaven. This is our reality show, and we’re writing it as we go along. We have free will here. We need to think on our feet and can make the experience a comedy or a tragedy, depending on how we choose to act.

  We face
enormous challenges here on the physical plane, but the spirits of those we’ve loved and who love us are Always In Reach and will try to help. You can ask these folks for anything. If you just reach out to them sincerely, they will comfort you, they will see the goodness in you, and they will put their arms around you. Don’t be afraid. Tell them what you want, your desires. Remember that God said, “Whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you.” God wants each of us to have our heart’s desire, so long as no one else is harmed. God is good, and all of us, whether in flesh or in spirit, are pieces of God.

  I love you all.

  Concetta

  A Little Extra Sauce

  Being Italian, I never turn down a serving of good pasta if I can help it, and so much the better if there’s extra! There were a few fun stories I wanted to fit in here, but they didn’t seem to go in any particular place. Then I realized they did have a common thread…

  At one of my big shows, I called on a woman in the audience who was sitting with her two daughters. The woman’s mother had died somewhat recently, and they were hoping to hear from her. The woman had a great sense of humor. As her mother was saying all these things that were getting big smiles from the three of them, she confirmed, “That would be my mother. She was always trying to make us laugh!” Her mother also said that the woman had taken a lot of things home from her house and she was happy that she’d taken things that her mother had loved and now she would have them to love. She mentioned a number of little tiny things, including a little tchotchke in her kitchen—a little pink figurine of a girl holding a baby. Her mother had always told her that it reminded her of when her daughter was born. The woman confirmed that she recognized the items her mother had described.