Interviewed by Loyd Auerbach (LA)
Psychic Medium Nick Bell
I’ve known Psychic Medium Nick Bell for many years. Though he’s never been involved in any investigations of the paranormal, he’s certainly been deep into being psychic himself. While it’s likely you’ve never heard of him, he has had many high profile clients in politics, entertainment, and industry, in the US and internationally with his psychic abilities and his desire to help heal both people and pets. He’s been known to them as the “Manhattan Psychic Medium.”
As you’ll see in the interview, Nick is a great example of someone whose talents run across the divide of psychic reader and spirit medium, and whose heart is focused on helping people, whatever issues may be present in their lives.
Loyd Auerbach: Nick Bell, first of all, you've been doing psychic work for how long?
NB: Since I was 7 years old.
LA: Professionally, when did you start working with your first clients?
NB: Probably when I was, like, 18.
LA: Can you describe how you got started? Was this just something that happened to you? You just started having psychic experiences?
NB: I used to get a lot of images. I worked a lot with images when I was young. I used to get different things, and a lot of them were accurate, and I used to see things that are happening, and then a few days later, a week later, something like that did happen in the environment, or amongst friends, you know, things like that. But I count my first real psychic experience being when my Aunt Pauline passed away.: I was 7 years old. My mother didn't want to take me to the wake because my aunt was very close to me, and my father says, no, we have to take him. We were going to the funeral parlor, where she was laid out. We were going up the elevator on the second floor, and I saw my aunt in the elevator, wearing this maroon suit. It was the old-fashioned kind, with a white ruffle, with white pearls. She had a ring with a blue stone.
I said something and my father says, “Son, you have to keep quiet, she's passed away, you're not seeing her.” And then, when we went up to see the viewing of the body, she was wearing exactly what I saw. That suit, the exact suit, the pearls, the white, old-fashioned, shirt and the ring on her pinky.
LA: How did your parents react to that?
NB: They were just stunned. They just looked and didn't say anything. They just looked at me and nothing ever was mentioned again.
LA: You've had other experiences before you started doing readings for people. You’ve told me you started out picking up information about the future, precognition, and picking up all sorts of other information. I know you also do mediumship. When did that first start?
NB: That started, actually, with my aunt. That's what started it.
LA: You feel that when you saw your aunt, she was trying to communicate to you?
NB: Yeah, she was, exactly. And I saw her many times after that in my dreams. I saw many people in my dreams in spirit work.
LA: As you know, of course, I've written a book on psychic dreams, so I just have to ask you about this. We have dreams with people, living and dead, all the time. How did you know that the person was really a spirit in your dream versus just something from your mind?
NB: I really didn't know in the beginning, I didn't know if it was really spirit or if it was my mind. But after a while, while I was seeing them and receiving messages, it all started coming together. When delivering the messages during readings, I was telling people things I couldn't have known. It was evidence.
This was all later on when I started developing, learning from different mediums, from friends, from readings, stuff like that. I was able to realize that's where it was coming from, from spirits.
And one of my old teachers used to teach me that you should never second guess. Ever. Because that's the worst… if you're second-guessing, it's not real. Whatever you see, you have to say out loud. I learned, whatever comes to me first, I say it, regardless of what it is, because then it's real. If I hesitate, it's not.
And then, a lot of times, it’s both psychic information and messages from mediumship. A lot of mediums are both psychics and mediums.
LA: It’s been my experience working with mediums that some can do both a mediumship reading and a psychic reading of living people and events, but generally it’s one or the other when reading people.
NB: For me, sometimes it's psychic, and sometimes it's mediumship. Sometimes I might get a symbol. Maybe they're giving it to me, or maybe I'm getting it elsewhere from the universe, and so forth. My readings generally go back and forth.
LA: In the same session?
NB: In the same session. Sometimes it's very tricky. Sometimes it's all psychic, and sometimes it's all mediumship, and sometimes it's both.
LA: Can you can tell the difference? Do the two modes feel different for you?
NB: They do feel different. When I'm psychic, it's just, like, information. When I feel meaning, I feel a presence, that someone else is there. I feel something going on, like, my body feels like, you know, sometimes I get a little tense, I shake, for whatever reason. It varies, it varies.
LA: You mentioned not second-guessing, that you were taught that. That's certainly one of the things that everybody in parapsychology who teaches psychic development says, don't second guess.
NB: At all. Right.
LA: One is also interpreting when you second-guess, usually without all the information or communication for context. The best remote viewers, first have to get all their impressions out, and then they'll think about what they said or wrote down to try to make sense of it.
NB: For a lot of my mediumship, I've been very successful in bringing in spirit. The whole idea is to provide evidence, that they exist after death. To give clients evidence on things that I couldn't have known. Sometimes the information can be shallow, sometimes it can be deeper. Sometimes it could be 2 minutes of information, sometimes it could be 5 minutes, sometimes it could be 10 minutes. Sometimes it's nothing.
LA: How do you set that up with your clients before the reading?
NB: I let them know I work with spirit and work psychically. Sometimes I get clear images, but I usually tell my clients I'm going to be coming up with symbols or clear evidence. If some of it doesn't make sense, we'll try to make sense of it together. I like to use the client to try to make sense of it, and if they can't make sense of it, or I can't make sense of it, I let them take it with them. Maybe something will come to them later down the line, and then they'll say, well, yes, that was right.
For example, when reading for a client, I told her I just saw a red bicycle, crashing in front of her home. Normally, I really don't like to say negative things.
She said she didn't know about a red bike or anything like that. I felt this was true, so I didn’t know why I said it.
She calls me two weeks later, letting me know that she was coming out of the driveway, and she hit this kid's bike. It was a red bike. Fortunately, the kid wasn't hurt, but the bike got damaged. She reimbursed him for a new bike.
LA: Precognitive. You say you don’t like to say negative things. Why is that?
NB: I was taught from other mediums to. Because there's free will. Because it could be disturbing. And it could affect a person psychologically. In that case, it's not a good thing.
LA: Information about something negative could potentially help them avoid it if there’s enough information to do so. But too often, there’s not enough to avoid a bad situation or bad decision. But the worry about an upcoming bad situation could also cause the event, cause them to be overly cautious, whether there’s clear information about it or just partial
NB: Right, exactly. So, no bad news, because things can change with our free will.
LA: Let’s shift to mediumship. When you're connecting with spirit for somebody, do you occasionally get a person they don't want to hear from?
NB: They do, a lot of times. There was this one time I was at a spiritualist church. The resident medium was one who taught me a lot. The first half of the time had the real medium reading. In the second half, everybody gets a chance to try.
When it was my turn, I connected with someone. All of a sudden, my foot started hitting very hard on the floor. “Come here, child” came out of my mouth, and one of the persons that was attending the church ran out. She ran right out.
And then later on, after the service, the on-hands healing at the end of the church service, the gathering, holding hands, we broke up, and went down for coffee.
The lady who ran out came back and saw me. “I'm sorry, I barged out,” she says. “That was my father, he used to beat me up, and he used to hit his foot all the time. And he just passed away 2 weeks ago, and I'm glad he passed away. I hated him.”
And then she says, “but I still forgive him.”
I said that was good. I told her what I was taught, that when people cross, nobody holds grudges. Everybody forgives.
LA: Yes, that's typically what I hear from other mediums I’ve worked with and observed.
NB: Everybody's forgiven, there's no animosity, there's nothing. You're in a new environment. Nothing, nothing is bad in the spirit world, everything is good.
LA: Great story. Beyond that example, when I've watched some of the readings by the Forever Family Foundation mediums and other mediums I’ve worked with, somebody will say “I'd really like to talk to my mother,” and the father will come through, or vice versa. The person says, “I don't want to talk to my father” but that’s who’s coming through.
NB: Right. And it does happen. Sometimes I get an uncle, sometimes I get somebody else's relative.
Recently, I was sitting with a client and a friend of hers, named Alberta. She wasn’t trying to connect with him, but Alberta’s husband came in. He had just passed away. I described him perfectly, she said.
And then, I said I don't know why he keeps saying, “Robert, Robert!”
She actually fell off her stool. And she said, “That's what he called me.”
The spirit said, “I don't like calling you Roberta, I'd rather call you Robert.”
She said she didn't believe in any of this stuff, but now that she met me, she said she’s a believer. There's no way I could have known.
LA: That’s the kind of evidence that we like to see when we're judging a medium. It's often the little things, not the big things. But you're not in control of who comes through, they – spirits – are in control of who comes through, right?
NB: Exactly, because according to what I know about mediumship, they have jobs to do on the other side. Or sometimes they don't want to come to you because they don't want to make things more hurtful for you. Or maybe they're busy, or maybe it's not the time. There could be a million factors.
LA: That mention of timing just jogged my memory about a question that came up from some of my students in one of my classes. They were asking about how soon after a person died should the living try to contact them?
Let's say that someone has either a parent or a child or a sibling that dies. How soon or how long after that death do you think that people should consider going to a medium? Should there be a waiting period?
NB: Sometimes. I've had clients with loved ones who passed away a few weeks before, or just a few days before the reading.
For this one reading, I saw a bottle of Jack Daniels and this frail gentleman drinking it. And I told the woman that “he’s lifting his glass to you.”
She said, “That's my husband, and he drank Jack Daniels.” The wake and the funeral was the day before she saw me.
I picked up more. I got this faucet that wouldn’t stop. Water was leaking in the bathroom. I didn't know what that meant, but I had to give it to her.
And she started laughing. She said, “When we went to the wake the day before the reading, the bathroom went really berserk with running water.”
LA: It sounds like because she started laughing, she was she was ready for the reading. She was not in deep grief.
NB: Sometimes it can take a while for people to be in grief. Sometimes people forget, and they don't even grieve after they accept it somehow. And then a month later, it comes back to them. It's very difficult. Some people take it better than others. For some people, grief hits them hard.
LA: I do know what you mean.
Let’s move on to another topic. Do you talk to people about how to recognize their abilities and/or develop their abilities?
NB: Yes, I do.
LA: Let’s say that I came to you as a client, got a reading from you, and then said something like, “I think I might be a medium because I keep hearing from spirits.”
NB: I would tell them that's great. I advise them to try it amongst friends and see the reactions you get. Pay attention to their comments.
You might have that gift. Read books about it. There's a million ways you can take this, and you just have to do it. There are no easy ways.
LA: So, it’s more about practice and feedback.
NB: Practice! I might give them a few exercises. One is the old blackboard thing.
See an old blackboard with your mind’s eye. Write a question on that board. Then erase it and see if an answer appears.
And then they could come back and tell me their experiences for my feedback.
LA: Are people more psychic as children?
NB: Yes, you're usually more psychic when you're a young kid. You see more as a youngster than you see as an adult.
I lost it at the age of 10 for a while.
LA: That’s actually all too normal in Western culture.
NB: Around 18, it started coming back slowly. Then I was being taught by different people, I read a lot of books on the subject. But I'm not the kind of medium that likes to say, oh, this is how they have to do it. I'm just a utensil, whatever you want to call it.
LA: You're a medium, and the whole idea of a medium is somebody who's an intermediary between two things.
NB: Exactly. Whatever comes in, comes in. And I told people that I don't know what I'm going to get. I might get people. Sometimes I work with symbols. Sometimes I hear, sometimes I see, sometimes I feel, and whatever I give you is what I can give you.
I can help you and guide you in questions. I get astounding answers, and people are so happy.
I could guide them to what they should do for the loved ones who have died. I might tell them to set up a little memorial of the loved one. Put a picture, light a candle. Tell them you love them, that “I'll always love you, you'll always be in my heart.” Because they will be in your heart, they always live in your heart.
And then at some point, “you might see them in a dream, because they do come in dreams.” That I believe in, because they've come into my dreams so many times.
LA: How do you feel about physical signs? Like somebody has a relative that dies who collected butterflies, and all of a sudden, there's a swarm of butterflies around them.
NB: That's interesting. He's giving a message. I believe that he's coming back. I believe that they do come back.
LA: Do you feel that you’re providing guidance for the clients?
NB: I try to guide them, and I have been very successful in guiding them. And, I have a 99% success with people being happy with the reading, and people come back happy.
LA: That's good, that's good.
NB: For the reading, I’ll say, “Can you ask me questions?” And then I'll go into a light trance and try to give answers, whether they come psychically or mediumship.
And they've been pretty accurate, you know? And again, like, I like to work with them. That's a good way of saying, let's work this together. You make them feel part of it. I’ll say, “Maybe I can't explain all. Maybe you can, because maybe I'm misinterpreting. I’m just going to give to give this to you.”
LA: There's a lot of psychic practitioners who just do an information dump. They just kind of give information, they don't interact in that way.
NB: No, I like to interact. I say, “Let's work with each other, let's try another approach, let's do this, let's do that.” And spirit is involved as well. I try to give them the most I can.
I'm also a very big fan of prayer. And I say, whatever your denomination is, you can be Jewish, Catholic, whatever you want. Please pray for that person, always. Because when you pray for that person, it's strong. When another prays for somebody else, it's stronger. So I say, I'm going to pray for you.
LA: Do you have any clients who are atheists? What do you tell them?
NB: Well, if they're an atheist and they say they don't believe, then maybe this is not a place for you to be here. I've never run across an atheist yet in my practice.
But I like to tell people to pray for their loved ones, set up a little shrine. And also, if somebody's in grief, I tell them, pray for them. They find comfort at the time, some healing. Pray, because the prayers are for comfort.
LA: If you did get an atheist, you can still say that. Just let them know that prayer doesn't have to be to God. What you're asking them to do is think, to put emotion and energy towards the memory of the person, and their spirit.
NB: Right, exactly. Just send a good vibe. You could just send a good vibe. I do send good vibes and my clients tell me they feel them.
LA: Are there strong similarities in your readings or are they very different from one another?
NB: Every read is different and might work differently. One thing I learn each and every time is a new experience. We are always learning. We are all students and continue to learn and grow.
LA: When you start receiving information during a reading, how do you relay it to the clients?
NB: You have to just spit out whatever you get. If you get a frog, it could have been your pet as a kid or represent that your mother… it could be anything. It could be a million things. We go from there to see what it might mean.
LA: Let’s switch over to how you explain what you do to new clients. If you got a call from someone asking about getting an appointment, about how do you work and so on, what do you tell that potential new client?
NB: I say I do mediumship. I do psychic work. I cross between one and the other. I try to get information. I try to comfort you. I try to guide you. I let them know I might work with my helpers, my guides.
You can have a session with me, and I'll try to see what the answers are coming through the universe, whatever source or guides. I'll try to assist you in what you need at the time.
I don’t answer questions about investments or health, ever. But somebody might say, why am I not finding a man? I might look into this to see what’s right for the client, rather than look at the negative. Perhaps it’s because it’s not meant to be right now, that there are other things that are in store for you.
Or maybe you’re really here to help others, even though you’re struggling, and not meant to meet somebody at this time. I try not to go too deep in that.
It depends where they are, you know? Yeah. But I like to guide them into a… I kind of…
in many ways, I become an intuitive life coach. Not just a life coach, an intuitive.
LA: I like that title.
NB: I ask for the guidance through the universe to give me something, and if I get it, I'll give it to you. If I don't, you'll go to the next question, because maybe it's not the time for you to know this.
When I finish, I tune in to the whole universe to send that loving energy to the client. I might feel beautiful colors. Whatever I feel, I ask the universe to please send this to this client right now for the highest and the best.
LA: So you close your readings with that kind of energy?
NB: With a nice intention.
LA: That's good. I think intention is the right word.
NB: Yeah, intention. And what I do is, for the rest of my life I pray for that client. I send good energy. At night, I look at the names of past clients and others.
I send good vibes to every client every day. So, every client I have, I have their names. I just tell them I’m going to be sending some universally beautiful energy to them for the highest and the best. I close my session that way.
LA: Have you gotten any feedback from clients about that after the readings?
NB: Yes. People have felt my energy at night. Sometimes I send healing to them at night if they need it. I've had at least 60 to 65% of my clients feel some kind of light touch, a touch of comfort. It’s the right thing to do.
I'll do that every night.
LA: Thanks, Nick.
NB: My pleasure.
