By Chuck Darrow
When the film’s young protagonist played by Haley Joel Osment uttered the iconic line “I see dead people” in M. Night Shyamalan’s classic 1996 supernatural thriller, “The Sixth Sense,” it was likely viewed by most people as nothing more than the product of the writer-director’s imagination. But for “psychic medium” Matt Fraser, who appears Dec. 8 at Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Atlantic City, that was definitely not the stuff of fiction: When he was a boy, he really did see and hear the deceased—or, as he described them, “shadows of energy.”
“I remember being just 3, 4, 5 years old and I remember seeing spirits in my room. I never knew that I had a gift,” said the 32-year-old Providence, R.I. native. “I just thought that the house was haunted.”
Not surprisingly, Fraser was shaken by the apparitions that regularly visited him.
“Oh my God, I was so scared,” he admitted. “I remember being in the bedroom at night and screaming for my mom to come and help me because the more I tried to make the voices stop, the more that I tried to pull the covers over my head and the more that I tried to escape them, the louder and stronger they became.”
Not that the experience was random or unfamiliar to him: Fraser’s grandmother was a medium who passed her ability to communicate with the dead to his mother. But that didn’t necessarily make it easy for Fraser to accept. To the contrary, he fought his calling for many years despite his mother’s insistence that he embrace his rare gift.
“It actually took a long time,” he offered. “I pushed this ability aside for quite some time and I really worked hard at just being normal, because growing up, I tried to talk about these experiences with friends of mine at school and different children that I’d come in contact with, and I’d end up freaking them out.
“So I decided to run away from it. And I tried my hardest for a long time to just be normal. But my whole life, I always had this connection to people. I just felt people on a different level.”
Fraser finally came to grips with his situation in his late teens after visiting a medium. At that point, he was working as an EMT and assumed health care would be his life’s work.
“She said to me, ‘You need to do this too,’” he recalled. “You think you’re helping people on a physical level? These messages still need to come to you. You need to help people on the emotional level, not just the physical level.’
“And I said, ‘You know what? I shouldn’t be running from this. I saw how many people she helped, and I felt like I could do the same thing.”
From that point, he’s never looked back. For more than a decade he’s had a stellar career as a headline attraction and as a counselor for individuals seeking to contact dead loved ones. And his 2020 E! TV reality series, Meet the Frasers, can be seen on a variety of streaming services. But that doesn’t mean it’s all been fame and fortune. According to Fraser, he’s paid a price for what he’s accomplished; after all, the very nature of what he does means he deals with the rawest of emotions felt by people he doesn’t even know.
“It’s really tough,” he acknowledged. “When I first started doing this, I would sit down and cry with the people that I was reading for. I mean, I used to get so emotional that it would be hard to deliver messages [from “the other side”] and stay focused because I’d feel their pain.
“But I’ve learned to put my own emotions aside and be there for these people. I mean, I have a job to do, and that is delivering the messages. And what I’ve learned after all of these years is that I can’t help them if I’m in a fragile state myself, and that I gotta pull back my emotions, I gotta be available to them.”
For tickets, go to www.ticketmaster.com.
Ocean hits jackpot with Chicago tribute
Prior commitments unfortunately kept me from attending one of the two “Chicago & Friends” extravaganzas at Ocean Casino-Resort a couple weeks back. However, I did get a sneak peak at the unedited footage (recorded by some 30 cameras) of the first night’s show that will ultimately be edited (along with the second night’s concert) and distributed via broadcast, online streaming theatrical release and home video (details below).
In a word, WOW!
The group—which currently features original members Robert Lamm (keyboards, vocals), Lee Loughnane (trumpet, flugelhorn) and James Pankow (trombone)–hit Ovation Hall to celebrate the 55th anniversary of the release of its debut album, “Chicago Transit Authority.” They brought along a troupe of guest artists who turned what could have been just another recital into a very special affair.
The material ranged from pretty much all of the band’s biggest hits to pieces mined deep in the catalog. There were also three extras included: “Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!” and “The Christmas Song,” both of which are included on the new compilation CD, “Chicago Greatest Christmas Hits,” and a cool rendition of the title track of The Beatles’ “Magical Mystery Tour.”
There are way too many highlights to list here, but among them: “Feeling Stronger Every Day,” which is given a brilliant reinvention through Judith Hill’s soulful reading and a wonderful arrangement that starts out at a deliberate pace and explodes into an atomic-powered rave-up (Hill also killed it with her beautiful reading of the early ballad, “Color My World”), the wonderful five-part harmonies of VoicePlay on “Happy Man” “If You Leave Me Now,” and “Wishing You Were Here” and the finale that featured six-string titans Steve Vai and Christone “Kingfish” Ingram shredding on “25 Or 6-To-4.”
The eye-popping giant video board at the back of the stage adds immensely to the visual experience (as the guys in Chicago will never be confused with Mick Jagger or Alice Cooper), providing both a dizzying array of geometric and other designs and clips to drive home the lyrics of such songs as “Dialog Parts 1 and 2” and “Color My World.”
Bottom line: Here’s hoping Ocean and producer Barry Summers team up again for more such salutes to superstar acts!
As for when the public can avail itself of the proceedings, the two Christmas tunes will be available at 3 and 8 p.m. (EST) Dec. 16 at live.fantracks.com., with a theatrical run scheduled for February, a PBS broadcast set for March and streaming on Apple TV and Amazon Prime beginning in April. In addition, May will see the release of the DVD/Blu-Ray, CD and limited-edition vinyl box set.
Chuck Darrow has spent more than 40 years writing about Atlantic City casinos.
