‘Long Island Medium’ Theresa Caputo too busy changing lives to entertain doubters

You might think Theresa Caputo is a fraud, but she really doesn’t care.

The “Long Island Medium” has no time for your doubting. She’s too busy changing lives.

“At the end of the day, people can say whatever they want about me,” she said during a recent phone interview. “I know what I do helps people. It changes peoples lives. I consider it an honor and a privilege to do that, and if someone wants to talk and and be negative, it’s not going to stop me.”

Caputo, the 49-year-old New Yorker whose big hair, big personality and claims that she sees dead people have made her a television star on TLC’s reality series “Long Item Medium,” will bring her live show to Wichita’s Hartman Arena on Wednesday.

And she won’t spend much time onstage, she said.

“I’m not on that stage,” she said. “I’m down in the audience, whether on the floor or all the way up in last row of section 105. I will be in front of you delivering your message from the spirits.”

Caputo, who lives in Hicksville, N.Y., with her husband, Larry, and has two grown children, said she can’t remember when she first noticed her ability to communicate with “people on the other side.” It’s been there since childhood.

She assumed everyone could see and hear the spirits she did, she said.

“I didn’t know that what I had was something very unique,” she said. “I just thought it was normal.”

As she got older and started to share her experiences with friends, though, she realized her they weren’t all that commonplace. She struggled, felt like she might be crazy, even went to therapy. But nothing seemed to help.

When she was about 28, she decided to embrace her abilities as a gift, she said. A friend encouraged her to use them to help other people.

On her TLC show, Caputo frequently provides “readings” for people who have lost loved ones. She reveals details about their lives and deaths that she senses, then shares messages from the dearly departed. Many tears flow.

The stage show is similar, she said. She wanders through the audience and passes on messages from the beyond.

“It’s so interactive,” she said. “I want everyone to feel like they’re part of this amazing experience. The No. 1 comment people make on social media after a live experience is, ‘I personally didn’t get read, but what I witnessed was absolutely life changing.’”

Caputo has her doubters, though.

Dozens of articles have been written calling Caputo a fraud and insisting that she doesn’t have abilities as much as handlers who interview people before the readings to gather usable information. Some say Caputo searches the Internet for information on audience members and reads body language to make good guesses. They say she takes advantage of grieving people.

Caputo invites doubters to come see her in action.

“There are things the spirits talk about that there’s no way I would know,” she said. “You can’t Google that. You can’t read that off of body language.”

This story was originally published October 7, 2015 at 9:47 PM with the headline "‘Long Island Medium’ Theresa Caputo too busy changing lives to entertain doubters."