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- NEW YORK - Suzane
Northrop, a New York medium, is sitting in a laboratory at the University
of Arizona in Tempe. A white screen separates her from a middle-aged woman
named Patricia Price. They are both wearing what look like red bathing
caps, which are hooked up to wires that measure the women's vital signs.
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- Northrop talks quickly, moving back and forth in her
chair. "Your papa, your papa, your father?" She snaps her fingers.
"Your father wore hats. He's got a hat on. He's actually quite a cute
man." Price, whom she can't see on the other side of the screen, smiles.
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- "And your father smoked." Northrop snaps again.
"I don't know if that's what he passed from, but he shows me the center
of his chest."
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- Price's eyes well up; her father died of lung cancer.
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- The scene, part of an HBO documentary called Life Afterlife,
is part of an experiment in which scientists measure the activity of the
brains and hearts of mediums and "sitters," as their clients
are called, during sessions.
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- But the experiment doesn't answer the question: Can the
living really speak with the dead?
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- A slew of current box office smash movies - The Sixth
Sense, Stir of Echoes and the upcoming Bringing Out the Dead - suggests
that not only are we all fascinated by the topic, but that at least some
of us can communicate with those who have passed on. Indeed, last year,
50 million Americans claimed to have had some kind of communication with
the dead.
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- Upper West Sider Northrop, 51, has been made her living
"contacting" dead people, or DPs, as she calls them, for more
than 20 years.
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- She says she still vividly recalls one of the first spirits
to visit her. It happened when she was about 7, in her bedroom in the tiny
town of Horseheads in upstate New York.
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- "He looked a little bit like Charlie Chan, and in
my hometown people didn't look like that " you know, the little mustache.
And he said he was going to hang out with me and keep a eye on me. I was
very excited about this.
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- "I ran down and told my father about the man in
my room, and he of course grabbed his shotgun - he was a farmer "
and he runs up the stairs, and there's no man in the room. So, at this
point they thought I had a vivid imagination."
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- Things were pretty quiet in the spirit world until about
five years later, when Northrop's grandmother " who had been a zaftig
170 pounds while healthy " died after a long illness at just 80 pounds.
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- "She came to me one night, the night she physically
died. She was big and fat again, and I was so happy to see my grandmother
well again."
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- She told the girl: "I'm gonna give you my ruby with
the diamond in it, my favorite house, and I want you to keep up with your
piano lessons," Northrop says. "I had no concept she was physically
dead."
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- It wasn't until Suzane went to the funeral parlor and
saw the 80-pound body in her grandmother's dress that she knew something
wasn't quite right.
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- "That was not my grandmother. At that moment, she
came and stood next to me. I must have started talking to her, because
my mother comes running up the aisle, like, 'Your father's going to have
a heart attack! What are you doing?' and sent me out to the car. ... After
that I sort of got the sense to keep my mouth shut."
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- She kept her visions to herself for years and went on
to get a degree in music. But after college, when friends got wind of her
gift, they'd ask her to do sessions. She eventually started charging for
them, and her career as a medium was born.
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- Now, she says, "My waiting list probably extends
for the rest of this life." Indeed, the phone rings incessantly during
our interview in her cozy Manhattan living room/office, with clients "
ranging from curious skeptics to grieving true believers desperate for
contact dead loved ones " seeking appointments.
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- (Aside from a few lit candles " it's sunny out "
the room seems strangely normal, with Matisse and Ansel Adams posters up
on the exposed-brick walls.)
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- Whatever their motivation, clients are willing to shell
out $350 for an hour, and many more pay up to $50 to attend one of the
seminars Northrop gives all over the country.
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- So, what actually happens when, as she claims, she talks
to the dead? "I'm hearing sounds in my head. That's why I'll get names
or sounds of names," she says
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- Usually, the DPs just want to reassure the living they're
happy and that they love them, Northrop says. (The Sixth Sense was pretty
accurate, she adds, "but (the dead) would never want to scare us like
that.")
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- She can often can tell what a DP died of by getting a
physical sensation herself, she says: "A lot of time with strokes,
I'll feel the head."
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- But Dr. Michael Shermer, publisher of the California-based
Skeptic Magazine, isn't buying any of it.
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- "I think self-deception is a factor for a lot of
(mediums)," Shermer tells The Post. "They hear, 'Hey, you're
right!' and they start thinking, 'Hey, I'm pretty good at this.' They have
selective memory; they remember the hits and forget the misses.
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- "The people they're doing the reading for are doing
the same thing, and then run home and tell their friends, 'He told me about
my brother Bob!' But they don't tell about how they went through Charlie,
Mark and John before they got to Bob."
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- How does Shermer explain the medium's "talent?"
"It just takes practice," he says. "It's not that hard,
if you know what to look for. I've gotten so that I can do it pretty well
by watching them do it.
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- "I did a reading on a Chicago radio show. (The host)
introduced me as Remrehs Leahcim, the Indian guru. That's my name backwards.
The first woman who called gave her birthday " she was born in 1954
" and said wanted to know about her current relationship. Most people
at that age were married at least once. So I said, she was divorced and
was in a relationship with a man, but she was more committed than he was
" that's usually the way it is, right? " and that she was unhappy.
... I was just spot-on. She couldn't believe it."
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