Jo’Anne Smith, the Salt Lake Medium, has hosted 875 spirit connections across Utah and neighboring states over the past 13 years. One recent Thursday evening in Midway, a crowd of 40 arrived at Homestead Resort’s Timpanogos Room to hear Smith commune with the transcended.
Smith’s son, Brandon Bolinder, began the evening with a 30-minute introduction. He said his mother’s only request was that within the next week all attendees call someone and check in on them. Then the black-haired Smith entered wearing her uniform of black patent leather pumps, black leather pants and a black blazer.
“We all have a beautiful gift of spirit,” Smith, 65, told the crowd from the far front corner of the room. “I just believe it’s whether or not we try to embrace that.”
She suddenly held her hands around her head and paused her speech.
“I thought I was going to start over here, but somebody’s making me go over here,” Smith said. She walked across the front of the room and up the aisle until she stood right beside me.
“There’s a gentleman standing behind you,” Smith said to me. “Is there a father figure that has transcended from here?”
As a man approaching 40, I thought a deceased father figure in my life was a safe guess. I also had an idea of who she might mean.
Glen Mace Sr., my mother’s father, was 88 years old. He had been married to my grandmother since 1957, worked at Cummins Engine Company for 32 years and owned a liquor store. I visited their home frequently throughout my youth and most recently on a trip to Indiana last spring.
“My grandfather passed this summer,” I said.
Smith said she could see he had transcended within the past year, because of a criss-cross palm pat he was performing.
“He was really having a difficult time breathing just before he transcended,” Smith said. “I do want to know who ‘Peggy’ is.”
I startled. Of course I know who Peggy is.
“His wife,” I said.
People gasped around me, similarly stunned.
“Is she still here in the physical realm?” Smith asked.
“Yes,” I said.
Smith acknowledged their long marriage and my grandfather’s peace after a full life. She suggested he had taught me to play ball. Like many boys do with their grandfathers, we had shot hoops in the park together. I attended a basketball camp in his hometown.
My grandfather’s spirit wanted to talk about engines. I said he had worked for Cummins.
She said his religion was Lutheran or Baptist. His funeral was in a Baptist church.
She said he wonders why I “go to the mountaintops.” I moved to the Wasatch Back from sea level two years ago, and my grandfather was not able to visit before he transcended.
Smith mentioned my grandfather’s watch that he intended to go to my father. This claim didn’t resonate with me, or my family in later discussions.
Smith then identified a message from my father’s mother, who lived a long life and is doing well in her realm.
“It’s like you took off young and went somewhere to college, and she’s very proud of you and the work that you’re doing. I don’t know if you journal a lot, but she’s telling me for you to keep journaling,” Smith said.
My grandmother, Edna, transcended in Indiana while I was attending college in New York. Bolinder had requested no video or photography to protect the privacy of those present, but I recorded audio as a freelance journalist for The Park Record. I wondered if Edna or Smith meant “journalism,” but I didn’t announce my profession to the room.
Smith’s sense that I have one brother was correct. She mentioned another sibling in the spirit realm, potentially due to a miscarriage. Smith emphasized then, and throughout the evening, that not all of her connections are immediately resonant. My mother never miscarried, but one maternal cousin who transcended soon after his birth would be around my age.
All of this took seven minutes.
Smith turned and began receiving messages for a couple sitting in front of me as my heartbeat settled. She asked if this woman took over her mother’s job after her mother transcended. She did, and attendees murmured at the confirmation. Abruptly, in the middle of their discussion, Smith snapped her gaze back to me.
“I’m supposed to say to you, say, ‘Hi’ to Stephanie,” Smith said. “I have a male figure waiting and saying, ‘I’m OK.’ He had a lot of books, something with reading. I’m just going to say Stephanie is the love of his life.”
My uncle, Stanley, passed in 2020. He was married to his third wife, Stephanie, a novelist.
Both my aunt Stephanie and my grandmother Peggy appear online when searching for obituaries linked to me, and even a wide-eyed believer wouldn’t contest the convenience of a pre–show internet search of a ticket-holder’s name.
But my transcended loved ones’ names were far from the only uncanny particulars that Smith confirmed in the nearly two hours she spoke off the cuff to the audience. Many of them weren’t Googleable. She identified a bench made in a mother’s honor. She saw a father digging for dinosaur bones who had been an archaeologist. Bolinder was on hand to provide tissues and tap his mother when the time came to break her communications and end the night.
I departed with my mind racing, eager to call a few people over the coming week. I talked to my parents, my brother and my grandmother Peggy. My mother seemed the most open to belief. My father and grandmother were skeptical. My brother suggested I ask Smith what I placed in uncle Stanley’s coffin.
Later, when I interviewed Smith, I sought to understand more about her methods of connection.
“It’s not up to me,” Smith said. “I think if you go in to prove that you’re something, that doesn’t work. I just let spirits channel through me. There’s a lot of hard people in audiences, too. They’ll sit with their arms crossed, then some of those people are crying like crazy when they leave, and it’s beautiful.”
I wondered how social customs clearly defining death have influenced my methods of mourning and remembering. When I think of my transcended loved ones, I typically remember our interactions from my point of view. Since Smith channeled these relatives from theirs, I have found myself considering how I appeared in their lives, along with how they appeared in mine. I was grateful for the perspective.
Smith donates portions of her proceeds to support suicide counseling, families dealing with cancer, and drug abuse rehabilitation. She also performs Reiki sessions, private readings and home sagings, coordinates day-trip buses to West Wendover, Nevada, and leads retreats. Further information is available at saltlakemedium.com.