Concetta Bertoldi by Jon Cornick
Concetta Bertoldi is a renowned medium with a famous client list—including several Baldwins and the British Royal Family—known for her wacky sense of humor and communication with dead spirits. Her latest book, Do Dead People Walk Their Dogs?: Questions You'd Ask a Medium If You Had the Chance tackles a wide range of queries that you may not have realized you wanted to know. We had the chance to ask a few of our own during a recent interview.
New York Press: So I've never interviewed a medium before…
Concetta Bertoldi: You aren't doing it now because I’m a large [laughs].
Is that your signature joke?
Other people have stolen it, but I am the originator!
What is a medium?
A medium can tell you a psychic prediction, but also identify and communicate the dead person giving that prediction. I receive all of my information from spirits on the other side—the other side of the veil, I mean.
You rarely refer to those folks as "dead" in your book
I almost never say "dead." My mother just left in November and I never say she died, I say she went home. I speak with her all the time, although I do miss her being [physically] around.
What is the experience like? So you hear people talking?
It depends on the situation, but I choose to hear them through thought. Their "voice," if you will, is a thought that runs parallel to my own. It's sort of like being schizophrenic!
Do you ever confuse your own thoughts with another soul's?
Fortunately no, that would be the difference between being truly schizophrenic, and not. An extremely educated psychologist out in Mexico City told me that, years ago.
Is it scary to constantly be in touch with passed-over souls?
I don't ever remember being without them—they're my best teachers, I love them they've been wonderful. The living scare the hell out of me, the dead don't scare me
How do we know if we're gifted like you, or simply empathic?
We all have the ability, sweetie, but most people refer to it as coincidence, gut feeling "I had a strong feeling about that."
I feel that in this day and age the veil is getting a lot thinner between this side and the other side, and we're becoming more aware of it. On TV there's more ghostly encounters, celebrity psychics, psychic children. I saw a commercial where a dead guy was talking about his old Buick, it was amazing.
Have you ever seen the movie Ghost?
A million times! I love the movie, it was very beautifully done…there's a lot of Hollywood in it, but they way they other side being available to us, you have to love that.
And I thought Whoopi Goldberg was a genius in it. I'm a white Whoopi Goldberg! I love her sense of humor and I've got it! We're sisters and she just doesn't know it. I'd love to her meet her some day—I hope she reads this—we might be long-lost sisters, just with different fathers.
How does being a medium help you in everyday life? Like, I'm always losing my glasses…
Oh yeah, they help me with that sort of thing, but that's easy! The hard stuff they help me with? My mother-in-law —the woman does NOT like me, and I've been married 25 years. The souls give me faith and remind me there's something else going on here, and so I try so hard to be a better person.
Do you give your friends free readings, or do stuff over the phone?
I don't do readings at all, over the phone, or otherwise. If I hear something—that's all I'm doing, is listening all the time—I let folks know. I wouldn't, couldn't make anything up. If I don't got it, I don't got it!
