Frankie the Mobster

Yard sales are something Marti and I have always liked.  We were at one in particular where I spotted a black fedora hat.  I have never owned one.  I tried it on and it was a perfect fit.  It was just a couple of bucks so I bought it.

Later that week, we headed to Reno, Nevada, for work where we had a number of clients booked.  It was cold up there, so I took my newly acquired hat and my big gray overcoat.
When we arrived in Reno, it had been snowing and was very cold.  While we were walking through the hotel lobby, I told Marti I felt like a gangster, with the hat and big coat.  I walked along with her, joking around, saying in a deep hoarse voice, which sounded like it belonged in New York or New Jersey; "Yeah, I'm Frankie, anybody gets in the way, I'll break their arms or their legs."  Marti laughed and while we were there I pretended to be Frankie quite often.  It got to the point where I remember saying to her, "You know, I think this is a real guy, a real mobster.  But, I don't know how I can prove it!"
Near the end of our stay, we did a group session at a friend's house.  We knew the husband of one of the couples attending a little bit, but had not met his wife.  During the course of the evening, some of the wife's people on the other side came by to say hello.  It was getting late and we were just about to wrap up the session.  At that moment, I felt the mobster, whom I thought might be a figment of my imagination, wanting to say something to the couple.  I looked around for the hat to put on, but it was in the car.  Speaking in the east coast accent, I said; "By the way, Frankie wants to say goodbye!"
The husband, James just looked at me, very surprised, and said, "I know a Frankie, who talked just like that!"
"Really?" I asked.  "Is he a mobster?"
"Oh, yeah!" he said.
"Like, a real heavy duty mobster?" I asked.  "A 'break your arms or legs type' of mobster maybe even more?"
"Oh, yeah!!" he repeated, emphatically.
"Wow!" I said.  "This guys been following me around all week."
Frankie said goodnight again and the group session ended.
James told me later that he had known Frankie for years through his work at Harrah's Hotel Casino.
After that little enlightening encounter, we were walking along the corridor in the hotel to our room.  I felt the mobster around me yet again, so I asked him, "Where are you?  Are you in a good place?  What's going on with you?"
He replied, "Well....I'm a.. kinda reformed mobster."
"You're a reformed mobster?" I asked.  "So, what are you doing hanging around me?"
"Well, I bin sent here to protect ya, while you're up here," he said.
"You're my bodyguard?" I asked.
"I guess ya can look at it that way," he said.
I just laughed and thought to myself; I suppose, if someone needs protection, you can't do much better than to send an ex-mobster!

Some years later I was sitting in a tea room in Victorville, California.  The place was fairly empty, so Marti and I were relaxing, while sipping our favorite teas.  I started talking with the only other person in the room, a lady, and for some reason the connection with Frankie in Reno came up.   After telling her about him, she told me that she knew him in prison and that she was his warden.  She also informed me that he was known as 'Little Frankie' and he called her Mom.
Who would have thought that this small Hispanic lady, in this middle of nowhere town, would have known this very mobster?

Betty Hill. A famous UFO Abductee.

Our meeting with Betty Hill came about when we were filming an impromptu session with two television producers and a lady who identified herself as "Betty" showed up, along with another man in spirit, who was a well known producer. (I'm not sure but his name might have been Victor). It turned out he had made a documentary film on Betty Hill about her abduction experience with her husband, Barny.

This was an unexpected and pleasant surprise for the producers we were doing the session with, since they knew the producer in spirit quite well.  The session was very interesting, for them and for me, as I had long ago read all about Betty and Barny Hill.  As our meeting came to an end, we looked at Marti's pictures.  Betty had posed for Marti!  She had captured an excellent likeness of her.  But, as we would discover, this was not the end of the connection with Betty.

Time goes by.......

We were invited to be a part of the Ghost Hunters event at Mount Washington, but first we decided to go to Salem, Massachusetts and visit Patrick Burns' event called Ghostfest the day before.  We just wanted to hook up with a few friends for a while, and then drive up to Mount Washington the following day.

We met a lady at Ghostfest who had written a book about paranormal happenings, including the story about Betty and Barny Hill.  I shared with her our connection with Betty and she told us that the place where the abduction occurrence had happened with Betty was not too far away, it was in fact on the way to Mount Washington.

Marti and I left Salem the next morning, and we agreed to visit the abduction site after the convention at Mount Washington.  When the event was over, we headed home driving down to the airport via the location the lady had told us about.  After a few wrong turns, we finally arrived at the gas station she had referenced on the corner.  We pulled up and went inside.

The owners of the gas station, a husband and wife, happened to be there and we talked for a bit getting to know them.  It turned out they were from England, so I did a bit of catching up.  We then told them why we were there and they explained that they, in fact, knew all about Betty.  The husband pointed out the spot across the street where the purported abduction happened many years ago.  "Now, go look in the restroom," he said.  We did and every wall is covered in things to do with Betty! Articles mostly, but other things too.

Before we left we told them we would send a copy of Marti's sketch of Betty to put up in the rest room.  We said goodbye and left the gas station for the airport, eventually arriving at home.  We got busy, and before we could get a copy of Betty to the owner of the gas station, we received an email from them:

Hi there from sunny NH,
What was the background to drawing the picture? I will write a short narrative and put it up.  How about this for coincidence, I know you are into those.  This week a woman who we had never seen before pulled off the highway for gas and went to the restroom.  She stayed in there for ages, came out all flustered.
Betty Hill was her foster mum!!!!!
What a shock for her.  To be sat on the loo (that's toilet, for all you yanks) and look up at Betty.
Regards,
David and Vickie

Charles Peirce

Our friend, Carol sent us the lady that wrote the letter below.  Carol knows to say nothing to us about who we are to do a session with.  When the lady came into the back room where we conducted private sessions at the Mystic Sisters Bookstore and sat down with us, this is what happened:

As soon as we began the session, a very gay man appeared to me and immediately said, "Tom here!"  He continued by saying that he did some sort of acting and dressed up as women.  The love I felt from him as he continued to speak to her was incredible.  She immediately knew who was speaking to her.  It was her dear friend, Charles Pierce.  The name Tom was his nickname, shared only between the two of them.  She told us later the story.  She had once said to Charles, that if his mother had named him Tom, which is a very manly name, he might never become a famous gay female impersonator.  After that, he always referred to himself as Tom with her.

I was very comfortable with his loving energy, so I allowed him to have more freedom than usual to express himself through me to her. It was tremendous fun and I remember him talking about his weight and how much he liked cake.  He laughed, saying,  "It's the cake that killed me, honey! It's the cake that killed me!!"  He was so expressive that we all had to laugh. "Its true," the lady said, "it was the cake that killed him!"  She spoke of the times when she would try and help him get into the dresses which became harder as he gained weight."  Marti, I and the lady laughed throughout the session as he joked around, and made me do all kinds of crazy, zany things.

What a joy it was for me to meet Charles Peirce, and I was slightly sad when the session ended and we parted ways.  The love that I feel when beautiful souls connect cannot be fully expressed.  I include this letter as it holds many lessons and things to ponder upon.

Also included in the letter is reference to the portrait Marti drew in the session. The drawing and matching photo is included herein.

Dear Michael and Marti,

We all have moments in life when we feel a bit silly; I just had a big one.  The short time we spent together that day at the Mystic Sisters was quite remarkable for me.  I would go so far as to say it was life altering in a very good way.  .........  I was going through a bunch of Mom's papers and pictures the other day, when the photo which I have attached to the email literally jumped from the pile I was moving into my lap.  I had never seen it before and right away I made the connection to the sketch Marti did that day in our session.  The sketch has always been a bit frustrating.  I felt a strange and close familiarity, yet I could not make the connection.  The sketch and the photo are Alice Louise E---, my mentor and best friend who died in 2001.  However the photo had to be taken sometime in the 1950's.  I did not meet Louise until we moved to California in 1975 and she really looked much different.  However, it is clearly obvious in the features and in retrospect; I am mystified as to how I could not have known who the sketch was.  Jeepers!
Louise was actually one of those there with us that day.  I don't know if you will remember, four foot eleven, red nails and Michael did her famous jig to perfection, hands on hips twist and shout, one foot in the air - she was playing cards and the only thing she fibs about is being over five feet tall.  What an absolutely remarkable being.  I miss her so very much.  I met her in 1975 when she was 65 and she was a prominent part of my life until she died at 91.  Her death was the first in what was to be a fairly long string of events which have not turned out the way I perceived they should (Ha! there's a funny one) and to which I am still somewhat struggling to accept and assimilate.  I cannot believe that I could not identify the sketch immediately, I am sorry.  I really do not have any more of an explanation.  I have no doubt regarding your authenticity and I have never had any.  For me, the possibility of questions was eliminated in the first few minutes of our meeting.  There is just no other way for you to have access to that information.  No one else ever knew.
However in all honesty, Carol had a bit of difficulty getting me into the room in the first place.  I have had some very bad previous experiences.  It is a very long history, but the compacted version is: I was up on the short leash of a very unscrupulous and rather well known and very expensive psychic in the Los Angeles area.  I was sent to her by my first ever psychologist when I think I was a bit too much for the psychologist to deal with comfortably.  The dreams, visions and voices that had become problematic to me and which I was not able to shut down any longer were best dealt with she said by being open and honest about them, recording them and yadda yadda.  The results were a bit hard to explain and my psychologist suggested that I really needed someone else, a "Spiritual Counselor," she said.
She had checked with her more "forward thinking colleagues" and had come up with someone who she thought would be "just the right match."
She gave me a referral; I went because I didn't really have any idea of anywhere else to take this stuff which I clearly wasn't dealing with very well.  She "tested" me for several hours during our first meeting and from that point on; we spent a great deal of time together for the next six months.  I thought she was my "spiritual teacher" finally being revealed by the Universe and I somehow walked around my concerns and all the red flags by clinging to the belief that anyone who understood what I was talking about and could walk in that world must certainly be of the light.
 
She does not have anything to do with the light!

When I actually realized that she was using me and/or "my gifts" to defraud and harm others, I severed the relationship completely, which is a story all its own.  Anyway, I instituted the safeguard that I would have nothing to do with anyone whom I perceived to have "the gift" or with anyone who claimed to have "any gift" if that gift was ever associated with the exchange of money.  I do not believe that to be always a true indicator, but I had no other plan for how to account for my clear inabilities in discernment when it comes to personnel matters.  It is rather ironic and almost comical, for someone who is  a "sensitive" and otherwise painfully perceptive and intuitive.  Strange at least, if I know someone they become to me the someone they could be and I sometimes miss the "who they are" part.  It can be quite problematic, but the truth is, there is a part of me that refuses to give up.  I was rather wobbly already at that point and I was going through a very nasty end of the relationship that I believed would be the one I was always in.  I had several safe places where I could go to be OK when I had to get away.  Mystic Sisters was one of them.  Without ever saying a word related to my specific situation, they did not even know the specifics, the safe haven created by Carol, Tina and Rick became a mainstay in my survival kit.
Also I have located the video of "Thomas" to me alone, aka Charles Pierce, the one and only so perfectly "impersonated" (Ha that one still makes me giggle like a school girl, but I have no idea what to rightly call what happened).  Expression, translation, inhabitation?

That has to be one of the funniest things I have ever or will ever witness, Michael becoming the perfect impersonation of the perfect female impersonator.  I do not know if you remember details of that event, Michael, because I'm not totally sure which of you was in occupation of your body during those moments?  I swear the vocabulary, gestures and even the intonation of the voice was perfect.  Not to mention, how in the world would you have known that I knew Charles Peirce and/or that I called him Thomas, at his suggestion?  Not to mention the other informational points, which I cannot think of a way would be otherwise explainable.  It is another of those unquestionable confirmation moments, just like the dust mop moment.  Anyway, Marti, I bet you remember.  You simply have to see the videotape.  The Michael moments were the off-screen Thomas, but you can't miss the movements and well, you just have to see it.  ........... Oh, and in looking for your information to send you this letter, I came across Michael's notes. "Rob/Bob?? Is on there and I recall not being able to come up with a connection.  Duh! Of course, it is Bob Bearce, Charles'/Thomas' lifelong friend who died shortly before him, in 2001 I guess.  The years are blurry, but the connection is so clear that again, I cannot believe I missed it.  I think I was on total overwhelm about two minutes into our time.

Gee Michael if you still have it in you, you should give your buddies at the shop a sample of your "Thomas". It was so very entertaining.  ;-D Carol is someone very special to me and whom I trust.  Pretty rare stuff in my case and I don't even really know how it happened, just that it did.  While my judgment has at times been called to question, hers has not and she told me a long time ago that she believed that you two were among the 5% of those who claimed to tread in the other world that are, in fact, the real thing.  You have provided a great deal of comfort and support to her through your work.  I am very grateful to you for what you do.  I know in my heart why you do it and am overwhelmed by the significance it can have on people's lives.  I have witnessed Carole's traverse through despair and something close to obliteration and hopelessness in the darkest of moments; back to a balanced, purpose driven and largely joyful and fulfilling life walk.  I have no doubt that she is able to bring hope or joy or compassion to someone's life each day that she continues to show up, just like she did to mine without even knowing it.  I believe that you are part of the reason that is possible.  In my case, I have been given a safe place from which to be comfortable enough to again begin moving forward.  I am still not exactly sure why I remain here and what it is I am supposed to be doing, but at least I am again walking the path, wide awake should any hints get delivered along the way.  Otherwise, it's pretty much one moment at a time, but I'm still walking and you also deserve credit from that account.

Thank you for having the courage to do what you do.

Love and Light

Laura

Kung Fu Grandpa

Marti and I were part of a two day Mind Body Spirit event once just north of San Diego, California. It was a quiet Sunday morning.  We were sitting at our booth a little bored as there were very few people there yet.  A group of teenagers sauntered by our table, with one of the young men straggling along behind.  He didn't look like he even wanted to be there.  He was just standing there looking around when Marti noticed an emblem on his tee shirt.
"Look at that!" she said to me, pointing out his shirt.  "It looks like the one I drew on the portrait that's in our book." 
We did indeed have a portrait in Marti's portfolio of a man who was never identified; we kept the picture in the book because he looked cool.  I got the young man's attention and asked him over to look at the book.  I told him he looked bored and he might find this interesting.  I flipped through the pages to the picture of the man with the emblem on his shirt.
"Look at that," I said.  "He has almost the identical emblem on his shirt as you do!"
He stared at the picture for a moment, and then almost laughingly said, "He looks like my granddad."
"Really?" I asked.
He then looked harder at the portrait and became more serious, and slightly confused, exclaimed, "That is my Granddad!"
I didn't know what to make of this. I asked him again, "Are you serious?  It really looks like him?"
He looked a little weirded out and said he couldn't understand how a picture of his granddad got into our book!
"Where did you get this picture from?" he asked.
I did remember a few things about this drawing.  It had been drawn at the Masonic Temple in Pasadena at a similar event to this one.  The man it was drawn for didn't recognize the picture, so I queried the deceased guy for some information about himself.  He talked about martial arts.  The guy having the session still didn't recognize the picture.
"My granddad lived in Pasadena all his life - that's where we all grew up!  When he died we held a garage sale and we sold over 100 Kung Fu and martial arts movies of his.  They're the only movies he watched.
He also added that he was a fireman in Pasadena
Marti and I told him that's probably what the flames under the emblem on the drawing meant, which was the only difference between the shirt logos.
I told him that if he had not worn that shirt we wouldn't have said anything to him.
He told us he hadn't worn the shirt in over a year and didn't know why he had put it on that day.  It was very tight on him and it looked like he was wearing his little brother's shirt!
"You know," I said, "your grandfather must have made you put it on and come here today so that you would end up looking at his picture."
He admitted to me that he wasn't keen to be there and that he was just stringing along with his friends.  He then promised to send us a photo of his granddad.  But sadly, he never did.

Marti and I are pretty certain it was his grandfather.  He must have hijacked our session with the guy that sat with us in Pasadena.  This is a rather unusual event and does not happen a lot.  Marti's pictures are usually for the person that sits with us.  I found the phone number of the guy in Pasadena that the picture was drawn for and asked him if he had kept the tape of his session.  He said he hadn't and didn't seem to care about this amazing connection when I told him. He sounded very cynical and perhaps that's why this granddad took over his session, to reach his grandson 2 years later, and over 150 miles away!

Stan the Man

I have a thousand memories like this one.  I came across similar figures to the one shown below in a restaurant one night, they were in the lobby, it turned out they were by the same artist so I got my own, identical hippie, to remember that cool conection with her dad.

A woman sat down with us once holding a figure of a hippie.  I made a comment about it, saying I liked it.  She let me hold him to look at and I sat him on top of my stack of cassette tapes.  I guessed it had some significance, but she said nothing about it and I didn't ask.  Some time into the session, as I was speaking with her father, he starting talking about his condition (I believe he had cancer) and how sick he was in hospital and the pain he was in.  Then he thanked her for the marijuana joints that she gave him to smoke, as it helped ease his pain toward the end.
"That's true!  I gave him joints to smoke.  My dad had never smoked pot in his life," she told me.
If I remember right, it was at that point he made me look at the hippie figure and he said the name Steve.
"That's my dad's name!" she exclaimed.
"But he has an S name, too," I said, motioning to the figure.
"Yes he does," she said.
"That's Stan the Man!" I said.  I think she started crying.
"That's EXACTLY what my my father said!"  She went on to say that her father never liked hippies, so she got the figure as a joke and sat it next to his hospital bed.  She told me that after smoking for a bit he leaned over put the joint in the hippie's fingers, and said, "That's Stan the Man!"

Then, One Day

My thanks to Dawn and especially Tim for this letter, and for not giving up on Marti's picture.
Hello Michael and Marti,
It's me, Dawn - we spoke on the phone last week on how wonderful our experience was meeting with you both, and I gave an update on finding the person from our sketch
My husband insisted he write the testimonial for you, (remember he was a skeptic - but no more!)  I have attached the photo of 'Melinda' at the bottom.  Melinda is the first lady on the left hand side _ her expression is EXACTLY the same in the sketch!
We really enjoyed our session with you and hope to be able to meet - meet up with you again soon.  You guys are fantastic.
Blessed be,
Dawn :)

TESTIMONIAL
When my wife, Dawn, told me that she had made an appointment with Marti and Michael, I thought it would be therapeutic for her and might provide a few chuckles for me.  I was pleasantly surprised when we arrived at their cozy, serene little home in the South Bay, especially because I was picturing a corny old stereotype of a ramshackle gypsy fortune teller's hut.  Michael pegged me for a skeptic right away and I said that maybe he would change my mind.
Now, there are some people out there that I suppose are pretty good guessers.  But when he asked, "Who's Elizabeth?" at the beginning of the session, my interest was definitely piqued.  My mother-in-law had recently passed away and she always called my wife Dawn Elizabeth.  As the session went on, my skepticism was chipped away little by little.  Michael kept asking relevant questions, even though he knew nothing about our lives.
We established that we were, in fact, being visited by Dawn's mom, as well as her dad and brother, all of whom passed away within a few years of each other.  But there was another visitor that neither of us could place.  She said she had died in a car crash and kept showing Michael, San Francisco.  This really meant nothing to us.  And when we looked at the drawing that Marti had made during the session, that didn't make sense either.  It certainly didn't look like anyone we knew.
I left the session convinced that my assumptions  about the universe had been completely wrong, which was actually a nice surprise.  We told our friends and family about the session and how interesting it was but the only disappointment was that the sketch made no sense.  Dawn sent a copy of it to her sister; Tina and she really didn't know who it was either. 
(Here comes the "then one day...." part.)
Then, one day, Tina was going through some old photos that her mom had left behind.  She found one of her mom Louise, with her aunt Pat and an unidentified third girl.  The resemblance to the girl in the sketch was pretty close!  So, without telling her why, she sent the photo to her cousin in New Hampshire and asked her to show it to her mom, Pat.  (By the way Pat was one of the names that came up during our session.)  Pat identified the unknown girl as Melinda and went on to add that she had tragically died in a car crash a long time ago.  She had been driving from San Francisco to the Mojave Desert to visit her sister, Louise!
So our little session with a medium that I thought was going to be just for laughs, turned out to be a life-changing experience.  I am comforted to know that the loved ones we have lost continue to live on, albeit on an entirely different plane.  And now if anyone asks me if I believe in the after-life I'll be sure to answer, "Absolutely!"

Kobe

Here are two letters from the same woman about her son and the sessions we had with him from the other side.  Just a note:  Marti finds drawing children more challenging than adults.  Children change so much from day to day and photo to photo.

Dear Michael & Marti,

Here is the picture I promised to show you for the book.  I found the photograph about one month after the reading.  I was looking through my son's photos in general, and have seen this one many times.  It didn't strike me at first that it matched Marti's drawing.  What caught my eye was something in the picture that I never noticed before.  If you look toward the back of the photo on the left side, you see some shoes that kind of glow in the dark.  I never noticed that before in the photo.  Those shoes that are glowing belonged to Kobe's grandpa.  They were very close, as a matter of fact, Kobe was the first and only grandchild to them, (they never thought they would see the day they had a grandchild).  My son, Kobe, absolutely adored  shoes, any kind of shoes, whether they belonged to him or not, he loved shoes!!!
I find it strange yet interesting that the photo, that I have seen many times, didn't click as to knowing that this was the photo that matched the drawing exactly, that is until I saw the glowing shoes.  I think it was Kobe's way of getting my attention.  Look at the photo and drawing and you will notice the same shirt (one of his favorites) and the pose are identical, so is the demeanor.  Even though it does not have his exact likeness, (he is part Asian, part Caucasian) it does reflect his exact spirit.  I can see it in his eyes, and I am convinced it is him.  Thank you for bringing my precious son back to me in the reading.  I love him with all my heart, and it meant so much to me to have this drawing capture him.

Hello again this is Mellinda (Kobe's mom).  My daughter and husband were with me at my last reading with you about 2-3 months ago.  Michael asked me during the reading if I knew a person by the name of Joan.  I told him my next door neighbor was Joan.  Kobe passed away before ever meeting her.  Well, she passed away last week, and as I was driving to the funeral I remembered that part of the reading.  Can he also see into the future as far as who is about to pass away?  I was kind of tripping out over the irony of that situation.
The last thing I wanted to tell you, that is questionable yet amazing....the reading we had with you two readings ago, Kobe mentioned there would be another baby for us this year.  I remember thinking that if I was not pregnant by Feb-March, that Kobe was wrong. 
Well listen to this.....Easter morning I was missing Kobe and crying a lot so I decided to go buy a paper and read it.  While reading the paper I looked at the job classified section ( I was a striking grocery worker ) and I saw an ad to become a foster parent.....( wait it gets better ).  I got onto the web site to look into being a foster parent and I saw links for international adoption and began to check it out.  (Ever since I was young I wanted to adopt a child from a poor country and give them a better life in the U.S.)  That dream was buried and forgotten until about one month before Kobe got ill and passed away.  A friend was telling me about his sister's adoption adventure with her new daughter from China.....I remember thinking, I wish I could do that but.....can't do it now because of already having two children and a mortgage and so forth.  I checked out the website for adoption and looked through hundreds of available children.  But one boy grabbed my heart and hasn't given it back since.  His name is Earisil from the country of Kazakhstan, and we are now in the process of adopting HIM.  If all goes well he will be home for Christmas with his new family.  Other strange facts about this are: when I called to find out about him, he is 1/2 Asian & 1/2 Caucasian, just like my husband and myself.  His birthday is one day before Kobe's and by the time we bring him home he will be close to Kobe's age around the time he passed away.  I just wanted to let you both know that I enjoy your readings/pictures and hold them close to my heart.  I speak of the readings often to many people hoping it will help others as it has helped me
Sincerely,
Melinda