In the middle of the woods, with no one listening, Mike Anthony told his dead father to have the psychic giving his family a reading that night mention his hair if she was for real.
It’s nice brown hair, but thoroughly ordinary, and an inside reference between him and his dad, back to Anthony’s childhood. It was something she would know nothing about.
Then she did.
“We were getting up and she looked at me and said, ‘He wants to talk about your hair.’ I literally gasped when she said it,” Anthony said. “It was an amazing moment. It was profound for me, that moment. Here I am three years later, now producing a documentary about her.”
On Friday, May 29, psychic medium Angelina Diana will give an evening of readings at Monmouth’s Cumston Hall as a fundraiser for the Theater at Monmouth. Anthony, a Connecticut actor who has performed at the theater and recommended the location, will start shooting his documentary there.
Audience members will be asked to sign waivers; they might end up as part of the film if she accurately reads them, too.
“We’re trying to catch that, ‘Oh my god, this is real,’ moment on film,” Anthony said.
Diana, also from Connecticut, said Anthony pitched her the idea for the documentary six months ago.
“It all kind of brewed through what I think is the basis of the work I do, that we’re all connected somehow,” she said. “This opportunity with the theater wouldn’t have occurred if I hadn’t had the opportunity to read his family.”
Anthony, who’s serving as executive producer, has given his documentary the working title, “The Undiscovered Country,” a reference to a line in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” about death.
It will be his first time behind the camera.
“(Cumston Hall) has got lots of stories of being haunted by Harry Cochrane, the architect,” Anthony said. “It’s already got some of that aura going for it so we just thought it would be a neat place to do this kind of thing.”
He’s anticipating a crowd of 100 to 150 that night, then singling out three people for one-on-one readings the next day.
“We’re going to have them film on their own cameras, their own phones, saying something they want a loved one to say,” Anthony said. “Hopefully, if she comes up with it, then we’ll get the footage of what was recorded afterward.”
Anthony’s family had its reading with Diana three years ago. He went into it “open-minded but skeptical.”
“Basically, she convinced me, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that she was somehow actually doing what she claimed she could do,” he said. “In a moment, it makes what you thought was the world seem like a bit of a different place. That’s what we want to do with this film. Also talk about the healing this can bring to people. Mediumship can be used, when it’s done well, as a real therapeutic tool to help people through the grieving process.”
Diana has been studied by scientists at the University of Arizona and the University of Virginia, according to Anthony, people he also hopes to get on camera.
“They’ve all come to this same conclusion that they can’t say what she’s doing but whatever it is, she’s not cheating, cold reading people or faking it,” he said. “She’s somehow getting information that she should not have access to.”
Diana said that during events like the one in Monmouth, she’ll explain how she’s able to pick up on energy and talk about ways that the audience can try it in everyday life.
“We get gut feelings,” she said. “We have the ability in our mind’s eye to have a deja vu. Because we’re so mind-centric and we have to take care of things in the physical world, we basically brush it off.”
As she talks, Diana said, she’ll be drawn to people in the audience by the spirits they’ve brought with them who are asking, for whatever reason, to make themselves known.
“Spirit says, ‘I am with that one person, I belong to them and this is why,'” she said. “The person then has an opportunity to say yes or no if they understand what I’m saying.”
Information can get tweaked in translation. Last fall, she told a woman that her father was coming through and showing her a scene about balancing a checkbook.
The woman’s father was still alive.
“I said, ‘He’s showing me a clergy outfit,’ and she went, ‘Oh my god, the priest of our church just passed and I balanced the books for them,'” Diana said, quoting the woman.
In another audience, she told a man his father was showing off how he use to whittle.
“He said, ‘Well, my dad’s passed, but he never whittled wood,'” Diana said. “And then I demonstrated what whittling looked like to me: I have a stick in my hand, I have a knife, I’m whittling away the wood and then I blow the dust off. He went, ‘Oh, my god, that’s my dad. He was the Connecticut state pool champion; he used to chalk up his pool stick like that.’
“Here it is, in my mind’s eye, it looks like whittling to me,” she said. “Think of it like psychic charades.”
Diana is a former broadcaster with a career in radio. Before starting this work full time 14 years ago, “I wanted to be the next Barbara Walters.”
“I really feel the universe is preparing me for something like what I’m doing now,” she said. “I wasn’t supposed to be Barbara Walters. Maybe I was supposed to be Barbara Walters for the other side.”
Anthony hopes to wrap up his documentary on her at the end of the summer, then hit the festival circuit.
“She’s on board with trying to get evidence,” he said, “so that you’ll know your loved ones haven’t left entirely; they’re still around and still very much involved.”
Weird, Wicked Weird is a monthly feature on the strange, unexplained and intriguing in Maine. Send photos, ideas and messages from beyond to kskelton@sunjournal.com.
Go and do
What: An evening with psychic medium Angelina Diana
Where: Theater at Monmouth’s Cumston Hall
When: 7:30 p.m. Friday, May 29
Fee: $30 per person
FMI: Reach the box office at 933-9999 or www.theateratmonmouth.org
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