Home »  Browse News Briefs »  John Edward, the happy medium, comes home to LI

Ten years ago, I pitched a story to my editor about a cop's kid from Glen Cove who was fast becoming a Long Island legend. A jeans-and-T-shirt-wearing "medium" who said he could talk to dead people, John Edward had a list of clients willing to wait a year to have a reading in his Huntington home.

He sounds, I said, like a story.

But just before I sat down with Edward for our first formal interview, I got a phone call at the office. It was Edward, fresh from the StairMaster. Three entities kept "coming through" while he was at the gym, he said. And they were not taking no for an answer.

Then, rapid fire, came my late grandparents, if you want to believe it was them. Edward gave me their names, clear as day. He knew plenty of things that you couldn't check on the database at Ellis Island: The still in my maternal grandfather's basement. The great-uncle buried in the family plot, and what he died of. The fact that I had my grandmother's rosary beads - even if I didn't know I did, until, at Edward's insistence, I went home and looked.

Reporters are believers

My objectivity on life support, I passed the story on to a colleague, Bill Falk, now editor of the American edition of The Week magazine. After tireless reporting, countless interviews and a test involving a Texas murderer and his death-row attorney, Falk arrived at much the same conclusion I had:

If Edward was faking it, he'd be damned if he knew how.

That was then, this is now, and a lot has changed. Six books, two television shows (currently, "John Edward Cross Country" on the WE cable network) and millions of dollars later, Edward, 38, is nothing short of an empire. He has a three-year waiting list for private readings, down from seven because he's no longer taking new names. (One person who will never get a session, he vows, is the owner of johnedward.com, who "held it hostage for a reading" and forced him to revert to a dot-net Web address.)

Instead of the metaphysical tete-a-tetes that were his stock in trade when I first met him more than a decade ago, Edward now focuses on group readings. He's just come back from a tour of Australia, where he drew stadium crowds of more than 12,000. (Periodically, he gets confused with Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards: "Edwards with an "S" ... 'senator,'" he jokes. "Edward with a 'D' ... 'dead.'")

Wednesday night finds Edward much closer to home as he kicks off a five-day, seven-show engagement at the North Fork Theatre at Westbury.

"I love the hometown crowd," says Edward, noting that this is the fifth consecutive year he has done holiday-time appearances at the theater in the round, under the glaring overhead lights that he jokingly calls "the mothership."

Feeling the pull

"I go by pull," he says of how he selects the audience members who will get a reading. The pushier the spirit - as my Italian ancestors attest - the better your chances.

Sitting in his Suffolk County office with the glass-block windows and nondescript front, sipping a bottle of Fiji water, Edward is exactly the man I met 10 years ago, except a whole lot more famous. He still favors jeans and T-shirts (today, a red one with the Indiana University logo). He still has his two Bichons, though they are now ancient. And he still is a Long Islander, although as a concession to stalkers and death threats, he moved to a more private residence.

His wife, Sandra, still runs a nearby dance studio - fans who recognize him when he drops by "are very respectful" about not infringing on his privacy. Except maybe for the guy who shouted out, "Hey, it's 'Crossing Over' John," he recalls. "What's that - like, Johnny 'Bag of Donuts'?"

That inaugural Newsday story prepared him for the media frenzy to come. Before the story ran, Edward says his "spirit guides" showed him copies of the as yet-undistributed paper under a puppy. "What they were saying," he says, "was that this story is great and all, but know that tomorrow puppies are going to be trained on it."

Given his fame and relative fortune, I'm surprised that Edward has decided to remain in staid suburbia.

"I mean, why don't you just pack it all up and move to ... Barbados?" I ask.

Visibly surprised, Edward asks how I came up with that Caribbean nation.

"I don't know - it's the first thing that popped into my head," I say.

Eerie, says Edward, considering that Barbados, which he visited in 1988, is his favorite place on Earth.

"You're not the only one who can do that psychic stuff," I joke.

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