Comfort comes from chat with Colorado medium

It is one thing to go to summer camp, get dumped out of a canoe, and realize you’re not totally comfortable in deep water. But when Troy Griffin went to camp at the age of 12 he realized he had a gift. Without attaching a name to it at the time, he later learned he was a psychic.

He talked to me on the phone for an hour from his office in Denver, Colo. I called with an open mind with maybe a touch of skepticism. I have always believed some people are so intuitive they can see things others can’t, but I wasn’t convinced it’s possible to connect with people who have passed away.

One of the things he does with his gift is help search for missing people. He also helps people move on in life after the death of a loved one by connecting with the departed and relaying information and feelings. Those abilities make him a “medium.”

I asked him how he knew at the age of 12 that he had a gift.

“I remember being in the dining hall where we ate, and I knew the conversations that were going to happen before they happened. At the time I thought it was weird, but it was the norm for me,” he said.

He said he didn’t have “the greatest relationship” with his parents so he really didn’t have anyone to talk to about things he could see. “I didn’t talk about it, but I knew I was different,” he said.

Finally at age 18 he was told he was a psychic by people who also were psychics. As a devout Christian he was nervous about the label. “But I let religion guide me and I want to use the gift God gave me to help other people,” he said.

When someone comes to him for help in finding a missing person and he takes the case, he first prays for guidance. Then he works to find clues and answers that may have been overlooked. “I only want the basic information. I look for things even the families don’t know. I will look at a picture and ask them to tell me about it,” he said. “I will see something, validate it, then pick up more things,” he said.

A case he told me about was a missing teenager, 17-year-old Mark Ysasaga. The young man had been kidnapped and killed. “Most of my cases do not have pleasant outcomes,” Troy said. Even though he connected with Mark only after he died, Troy said: “He was a great kid. I really liked his energy. When I connect with someone who has passed, I connect through their eyes. When I connected with Mark, it was a warm feeling. And his mom really touched me. I still communicate with her once in a while,” he said.

But his work isn’t finished when the person is found and the case is closed. “My job then is to help with closure and to help the family move forward,” he said.

“I won’t work on more than three cases at a time because all those things I see have to be put in the right place. And once a case is over, it’s really over for me. I move on to the next one,” he said.

Griffin says the level of difficulty connecting with someone who has passed varies. “From my experience it makes a difference how a person was in life. If it was suicide, it is hard to connect with those people. There is embarrassment and they don’t know what to say or feel,” he said. “But it just really depends how they were in life, that’s how they’re going to connect.”

Griffin has won numerous awards and is a husband of 25 years and dad to a 23-year-old son.

Unlike many psychics he doesn’t concentrate on the future. He says he doesn’t get into questions such as “is my baby going to be a girl or a boy?” or “what is going to happen in my relationship?”

“That’s not what I do. I want to help people on a deeper level,” he said.

I asked him if it is more difficult to work with a client on the phone rather than in person. He explained he much prefers working with someone in person, but that “your good and true intuits can help people over the phone,” he said.

I hadn’t planned on it, but couldn’t help myself. I asked if he had seen anything having to do with my life as we talked.

The first thing he brought up was my mom. He told me that she had passed. Yes. He said he knew we had a close relationship and that I went to see her often in the assisted living facility. Yes.

I have always been bothered that I wasn’t with my mom when she died. He said, “But when you got there soon after and sat down and touched her, she was still there. Her spirit was still there and she liked what you whispered in her ear.”

I could hardly respond to what he was saying because he described what had happened. “And she didn’t want you there when she passed because she knew it would be too difficult for you,” he said.

Well, that’s when tears came and I admit I felt very relieved.

He said, “I keep seeing crossword puzzles. Who does crosswords?” I told him my husband, and he said he could see that my husband and my mom had a good relationship. That’s true.

He said he saw a cameo. My grandmother had a cameo ring that she gave to Mom at age 16, and Mom gave it to me when I turned 16. She also gave me an antique cameo pin.

Now you say, “Well he could have guessed at all of that.” But there were many things he said that made sense and things there was no way of him knowing.

He also talked about my dad, who died at 90, and my brother who died at age 16.

Troy could tell by my voice, this information was making me tearful. “It usually happens that someone walks in a non-believer and walks out a believer,” he said. He went on to say that even though he’s not a hugger, he gets lots of hugs.

That didn’t surprise me a bit.

This story was originally published July 26, 2016 at 9:42 AM with the headline "Comfort comes from chat with Colorado medium."