When you are a practical, reasonable human being — like I try to be most of the time — there are certain things and people that come into your life that you can’t explain.
Linda Shields, The Jersey Shore Medium, is that phenomenon for me.
While I love everything creepy and spooky, mysterious and kooky — my second-favorite holiday is Halloween, which my awesome wife obsesses over — I don’t believe in ghosts.
I also don’t believe in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny … you get the point.
But I do believe in Linda Shields.
Let me explain.
Who is Linda Shields, the Jersey Shore Medium?
First and foremost, Linda is a dear friend of mine. She’s a caring, loving person who I would call upon if I needed something, and she would come to help me immediately. She’s that kind of person.
But here’s who she says she is: “A wife, a mom, a grandma here to be as much help to others in their understanding that life does not end, that the people we love do not just ‘leave,’ and that connections are there for us all the time.”
Linda, who returns to Resorts Casino Hotel’s Screening Room at 9 p.m. Friday, Oct. 30, just in time for Halloween, says she has been using her psychic senses since the age of 8 and that her grandmother helped her understand and use these senses.
“Even though I have led a life like so many others of being an everyday person — being a florist, working at the Stone Pony in Asbury Park, later becoming a wife, a mom, a bookkeeper, and even buying, renovating and reselling houses with my husband — I never let go of the knowledge of what I can do on a spiritual level. When I was asked to help family and friends, I would do what I could to give them messages to give them clarity and guidance from those who were not with them anymore,” she says on her website.
“I am able to use the psychic senses of hearing (clairaudience), tasting/smelling (clairsentience), and physical feeling of being an empath during a reading. How this works for me is I hear the words from loved ones and then pass on those words to others. I smell or taste something that only the person I’m reading can connect with someone who has passed. I feel the pain of how they may have died, or what they were feeling right before they pass over, or the pain of someone whom they have left behind and whom they may now have concern for and want to help.”
Linda says that she is a translator and that she connects with “Spirit” to help her understand what is being said.
“Spirit will often let us know what is going on in our lives, how they are trying to help, and what may be coming so we can be aware of possible changes that may be coming in our lives,” she wrote.
Is she the real deal?
Now, if you had asked me before I met Linda if any of that were true, I would have ignorantly said it was complete nonsense.
Of course, Linda — nor anyone else, for that matter — couldn’t talk to a dead person on the other side. I mean, that’s the stuff of Bruce Willis and Steven Spielberg movies, not reality.
Then, about a dozen or so years ago, Linda came into the radio station where I do my talk show and pulled a name out of thin air: Naomi.
My grandmother, who had been dead for decades. I grew up and lived with Naomi — Nana, as I called her — but I never referenced her by name anywhere, nor did I talk about her by name on the air or write about her anywhere.
So, there was no way Linda could have known that Naomi was connected to me. But she said it: “Naomi!”
It’s not like she said Karen or Amy or Nancy or some common name.
“Naomi!”
But I dismissed it as coincidence because I’m a skeptic.
Then I saw her perform and talk to others, and she did it over and over and over again.
At a recent show in Resorts’ Screening Room, where she returns Friday evening, she pointed out of nowhere to a woman sitting toward the rear of the room with her player development representative and said something like, “I am getting a strong connection … and you lost two children!”
The woman, who was there celebrating a birthday, immediately burst into tears and admitted that she had indeed lost two children in an accident.
How do I know this woman wasn’t a plant or that the encounter wasn’t prearranged? Because I was with Linda for the two hours leading up to the event, and the woman’s player development representative was completely shocked and knew they weren’t familiar with each other in any way.
Once again, that’s a bold statement, and Linda really swung for the fences on that one. But she was right. And she is right a lot.
So, while others may call it a parlor trick or make whatever claims they want, I’m a believer. And you have to see her for yourself to really understand.
The pressure
When I watch Linda, I think to myself: “Damn, that’s a lot of pressure to have to accurately come up with names, numbers and stories for an audience of 200 people you’ve never met before, because everyone in the room wants Linda to say something that’s going to tap into something very specific.”
“And the funny thing about spirits is they don’t always give me specifics,” Shields said recently in an interview on my radio show. “So, if I’m giving somebody a reading and I’ve told them like seven or eight things that they know who the person is, and I’ll ask on the other side, ‘What’s your name?’ Sometimes they know who I am. Sometimes I don’t even get a name or initial.”
It’s a tough gig, but she loves every minute of it.
“I have been talking to Spirit for 60 years,” she said. “I’ve always been in contact, or they’ve been in contact with me. I used to do tarot cards, which I don’t do anymore. That’s my first love. I’ve always loved doing tarot cards, but I found as I was progressing with the tarot cards that I was getting information from people, and they were actually giving me other information. So that worked into doing the medium stuff.”
So, how does it work?
“Spirit contacts me to talk to a specific person, ask them questions,” she explains. “Do you know who this is? Do you know what this letter means? Do you know what this number means? And then they start giving me messages that the person may need to hear or could be forewarned about something, too.”
Luckily, she can control it.
“I have a way to turn it on and then I have a way of shutting it off,” she said. “Spirit is very kind to me. They let me have my normal life. My grandmother taught me how to shut it off and turn it on. So, when I was 8 and things were really weird, I would hear people talk to me in school, and then I’d have night terrors and people would be standing in the room. I finally got to a point where I said, ‘I got to tell somebody.’ And she was a psychic. She actually read playing cards for people. So, when I told her what was going on, she was like, ‘Oh no, you know, they’re very respectful and you just shut it off.’ And I said, ‘Well, how am I going to do this, Grandma?’ And she said, ‘You watch a lot of TV, and at 12 o’clock the television goes off and it goes to snow — that’s a reference for us old people.’ She said, ‘Turn the TV on to snow and let them talk to you, and then turn the TV off when you’re done in your head.’ And that’s what I used to do. Now I just ring a bell and they come, they let me into that metaphorical room, and I talk to whoever needs me to deliver a message to. And then when I clap, everybody claps at the end, and I’m done.”
There can be bad nights when she’s not connecting as strongly as she does on other nights, but she feels very comfortable in the Screening Room, a historic room inside one of the oldest buildings in Atlantic City.
“There’s a lot of Spirit in there,” she said. “There’s a lot of spirit, but they’re cool. They’re helping me. When I got up on stage the first time, I just felt very, very comfortable. And there’s places that I walk into and I’m like, ‘Oh gosh, this is not good.’ You know, I don’t feel comfortable. I’m antsy. I’m getting annoyed or I’m getting frustrated or I’m getting anxious. I like it quiet because it’s like you go underwater with your friend and you talk, like you did when you were kids. That’s what it sounds like.”
What to expect
When Linda Shields, The Jersey Shore Medium, returns to Resorts Friday night for her Halloween Eve show, she will tap into Spirit, connect with various members of the audience and relay messages.
Getting back to the woman who lost two children, I asked Linda if she’s ever concerned about saying something that will upset people.
“Spirit has always told me from the very beginning that if I’m going to say something, make sure I say it with conviction,” she said. “Because what I’m hearing is absolute truth. That’s why I always say, ‘Don’t shoot the messenger.’ When I say something to someone, it’s because I honestly believe I’m being told … that this is what I need to do.”
And does Halloween make a difference? Are there more spirits this time of year?
“It’s us calling them in more,” Shields said. “It’s our energy that brings them through clearer and closer, because we are creating that mystical, spiritual energy, because it’s Halloween, right? And don’t forget, it was a pagan holiday at one time, and that’s when they would bring in the harvest, and they would celebrate the harvest and the dark nights coming, and that’s how it started. So, yeah! It’s our energy bringing things closer, because it’s our energy. We’re never alone. Spirit is always here with us.”
Consider me a believer.
Linda Shields, The Jersey Shore Medium, will perform at 9 p.m. Friday, Oct. 30, in Resorts Casino Hotel’s Screening Room. Limited tickets are available at Ticketmaster.com, Resorts’ box office and ResortsAC.com. Visit TheJerseyShoreMedium.com.
Scott Cronick is an award-winning journalist who has written about entertainment, food, news and more in South Jersey for nearly three decades. He hosts a daily radio show – “Off The Press with Scott Cronick” – 4 to 6 p.m. weekdays on Newstalk WOND 1400-AM, 92.3-FM, and WONDRadio.com. He can be reached at scronick@comcast.net.
