We are thrilled to share this interview with you, thanks to Ezio and Michelle and Allen and Unwin. This interview was conducted by Joelene Pynnonen and Belinda Hamilton for MDPWeb.
1. Ezio, you have said in the past that you’ve been spiritually sensitive from an early age, but only began tapping into your abilities in your early thirties. What was that experience like?
At that stage, I was entrenched in the corporate world, working for an international bank in Sydney’s CBD. But I always felt like there was something missing in my life. I joined a spiritual meditation group and within a few sessions starting hearing and seeing some really odd tribal images which I later learned was an introduction to my spirit guide Red Eagle. It was very moving and profound but also quite frightening because although the door to the spirit world opened easily, learning to get it all under control was much more challenging. It’s like someone took a laser and blasted my heart open so that every emotion, every sensitivity was heightened.
Red Eagle told me that spirits communicate through the vast range of human emotions from the lowest low to the highest high and that if I was to serve spirit (which was why I was on earth in the first place) then I would need to tap into those emotions within myself to do my work justice.
I often joke that I had two choices in those days. Seek out a psychiatrist or become a medium.
Once that connection was established though, he started teaching me things about spirit, life and spiritual communication. We wrote pages and pages of notes through a process that some people call automatic writing. From time to time, Red Eagle also brought me other spirit teachers to round out my education. Some of them are well known authors and mediums of the past. To this day everything he taught me has held up to be true and I have used it to teach others to develop their own abilities. He was then…and still is…my greatest spiritual teacher.
The most difficult aspect of suddenly becoming mediumistic is that everyone you know thinks that you have lost your mind. I lost a lot of friends and family because of it.
2. Michelle, could you tell us about how your ability started out, and some of your experiences with growing up or living with it? 
A lot of my early experiences came through dreams and astral travel – for example dreaming of a place I had never seen before and then visiting and recognising it. When I visited Venice for the first time I knew I had been there before. I recognised buildings and landmarks and psychically “saw” myself living there – like a movie playing in my head. The moment I walked into the building where I stayed and which was now an hotel I knew it had been a convent – I could see and feel the nuns there in the energy of the place. I did some research and found out that it had indeed been a convent a very long time ago.
I also experienced visitation dreams where those who have crossed over contact me. These dreams are very vivid and feel as if they are completely real. Mostly they involve a family member or loved one but for me they included people I had not actually met during this life. Retrospectively I realise they were guides and spirit helpers though as a child I didn’t automatically know that! The funny thing is we are often asked this question but truthfully when you are a child you don’t question the experiences you have – you just accept them as normal. A bit like your eye colour. It’s just part of who you are and therefore probably not even terribly memorable!
3. With shows like Long Island Medium, Medium, Ghost Whisperer and, obviously, The One on TV, do you think public opinion of people with psychic sensitivities has become more open minded?
Certainly the public are more aware although not necessarily more open minded. Believers will believe and there are non believers who will never be swayed no matter what they see or hear. That might be due to fear of the unknown. Having said that, we do see more and more people as the years go by. But we also see more and more psychics working who have not sufficiently mastered their abilities to be out there working for the public so there is a bit of a down side because all those shows suggest that anyone can just go out there and work. A lot of these types end up on psychic phone lines! The best psychics and mediums have trained for a considerable number of years and know that the core of our work is about service.
4. How does your ability manifest? When spirits are contacting you how do they convey what they’re trying to get across and do 
they contact both of you in the same way?
We go through a process of “opening up” before working and also do a “closing down” afterwards. Basically this means elevating our consciousness and physical sensitivity to a higher level so we can perceive the subtle vibrations of the spirit world. We achieve this state through meditation and concentration. We are also quite strict about delivering messages or reading only when we are switched on to work – we don’t go around giving people messages uninvited or indiscriminately because that dilutes our abilities. Spiritual energy is infinite and abundant but our human ability to harness and work with it is not so we are very strict with that aspect.
Each spirit communicates differently – as they are people too! We will see, hear and feel things and that is how we receive information to pass on during a reading. This is the way both of us communicate with the spirit world. Quite often, we will get a flash of an image in our minds eye and hear a name in our thoughts. Sometimes, the spirit people write words across our line of sight to instantly describe what happened to a spirit we are bringing through for a client. For example, we might see the word “reckless” or “suicide” or “accident”. Spirits don’t communicate like people in the physical world. They communicate by impressing thoughts, images, words and emotions into the medium who then conveys it all as a coherent message. Some spirits are better at it than others.
It’s quite common for both of us to receive a psychic flash simultaneously and more often than not we are on the same page…although it’s really difficult to hide Christmas presents from one another!
5. Can you trust the spirits you’re communicating with or can spirits lie?
Interesting question. Spirits are people too so of course they would have the capacity to lie. With the work we do however we are very careful to maintain high ethical standards and the people who come to see us want to connect with a loved one so there is generally no reason for a spirit to lie. That is one of the major reasons we are strict about reading only when we are working – because if a person has a genuine need for a reading and seeks us out there is a spiritual contract in place which supports the reading.
There may be private things that they will keep obscured during a sitting by just alluding to a person or situation rather than giving us details such as “He says he knows about the argument at work”.
If however you used Ouija boards or other unsafe or unethical spiritual methods you are very likely to attract a ratbag spirit who may well pretend to be someone they are not for their own amusement. There is also one other biggie! There is a spiritual saying that if you let the God in you speak, then the God in another person will answer. We have been teaching others to develop their mediumistic abilities for around twenty years now and have learned the absolute truth of this statement. A good medium is one who recognises that their ego cannot be the driving force behind their work. We try and connect to the spirit world through the gift of love, the bonds of love between our clients and their loved ones on the other side. This is how you keep it real.
6. Is there anything you can tell us about the most memorable case or client you’ve worked with?
The most memorable cases we have worked with are those who have widened our perception and given us a glimpse of the big picture of life and death. These are the spirits whose stories we have included in our latest book Postcards from the Other Side and also in Ezio’s earlier book Living Spirit. The insight we have gained through connecting with these people is wonderful and quite valuable for everyone!
Each of us has worked with clients whose story has shaped or shifted our working focus. For Michelle, it was connecting with Joel whose story is shared in Postcards from the Other Side. For Ezio, it was a five year old spirit boy named Braddon who was murdered and came through for his mum during a reading in his early years. These types of readings move your soul because they drive home the desperate need for comfort and healing that some people struggle through each and every day. In more recent years, the story of T.J shared in Postcards was quite amazing as he was able to describe in detail what it actually feels like to die.
There are funny ones too. Once a young spirit man came through and questioned his sister in the audience about eating fried chicken. Through our medium-ship he told his sister that the chicken wanted to know why she ate it! He was only joking of course. It was just his way of letting her know he was watching over her and that despite the nature of his death, he was very much still the rascal she knew and loved. Apparently she became a vegetarian after that reading.
7. Would you have a physic reading done yourself? What advice would you give to someone who was looking to have a reading 
done?
It is really difficult for us to have a psychic or medium-ship reading because we actually know most of the good psychics in Australia personally so they can’t be objective! The less you know about a person the easier it is to read for them.
For someone else seeking a reading we would say make sure you know what type of reading you want – do you want a connection with loved ones in spirit or a psychic reading to give you some guidance about your own life?
Do you have a genuine need for a reading or is it just for curiosity sake? Because readings always work best when there is a genuine need for them. Make sure the reader is capable of delivering that type of reading (unfortunately these days pretty much everyone call themselves mediums but in reality there are few who can truly do a good job of survival evidence medium-ship i.e. connecting to those in the spirit world).
Word of mouth can be good way to find a reader – don’t think for a moment that just because someone has been on a TV show they are the best!
8. Working separately you only have yourself to consult with the spirits; but while working together has there ever been a time that you have been guided in very different directions?
We don’t actually use the spirits for guidance for ourselves so that has never actually been an issue. As mediums, our role is to reunite those in the spirit world with their loved ones still here. Personally, we just do what we feel is necessary at any given time and if those in the spirit world support it, then it works.
We do have a close working relationship with our spirit guides but we never ask them for things or advice. The relationship between medium and guides is a special one and feels quite sacred but they flatly refuse to live our life for us. We need to live, work and make our own mistakes…and learn how to fix them…ourselves.
Ezio and Michelle Angelis
