The centerpiece of “Crossing Over” is what Edward calls “reading the gallery.” Standing on a circular platform in front of a studio audience, he looks down, concentrates for a second, then begins to describe a communication he receives. Sometimes it’s as mundane as saying it’s from a person named “Tommy or Timmy or something starting with a T.” Sometimes it’s more specific: “A person who died in a vehicle accident or someone with a very bad temper.” Edward keeps talking, throwing out more impressions–“it’s an older person,” “it’s a person who would have just celebrated a birthday or an anniversary”–until someone in the audience recognizes the mini-biography and raises his or her hand.
Once Edward establishes that he’s made the right connection–he calls the process of the dead person finding a living friend or relative “coming through”–he moves in for a one-on-one reading. Edward’s spiel turns into more of a rapid-fire conversation, asking questions, giving more information. He’ll often describe how the person died. He’ll talk about what the dead person was like, or something he or she did. More often than not, Edward’s descriptions are remarkably accurate, even about the most esoteric things. Did this person have a relative who had one leg shorter than the other? Were there twins in the family who died? You’d be surprised how often the answer is yes. And it just gets eerier: Once, the person who “crossed”–Edward never uses the word “died”–wanted to know if his daughter still had the coin. Though she had never shown it or said a word about it, the woman getting the reading was holding the coin in her hand at that very minute. Spooky.
Edward doesn’t get everything right–he’d be picking lottery numbers if he did. But one of the things that makes “Crossing Over” so believable is that he never forces his readings to work. If the dead person identifies himself as someone whose name sounds like “John” and “Joan” or has a “Jo”-sound, Edward won’t just accept someone who offers a dead “Uncle Jack.” One day he did a reading for a woman whose husband had passed away. The husband, Edward said, wanted to know about a pet the family had acquired since the man’s death. The woman looked confused. “Fish?” the woman asked hopefully. Edward responded, “I’m not doing fish.” His quick sense of humor often keeps the show from getting unbearably weird. Turns out the family had bought a dog at around the same time that the husband was dying. Was that it? Yes, Edward said, and that’s not all. He told the woman that the dog was very important. People who have “passed” often communicate through the pets they left behind, and the husband was signaling that he intended to do just that. Who knew? After we die, we all turn into Dr. Dolittle.
OK, so Edward does have his moments of wackiness. But the thing that saves “Crossing Over” from terminal creepiness is Edward himself. He always comes across as a regular Joe who’s just telling it like he sees it. With his moon face, slacks-and-sweater wardrobe and unadulterated Long Island accent, he’s utterly disarming and believable. One of his most endearing traits is how he’ll apologize for some of the things the person who has passed wants him to say. When a dead husband wanted to remind his wife about the surgery they’d once talked about her having, Edward was almost too embarrassed to say that the surgery in question was a boob job (which the woman remembered almost immediately, and started laughing). According to a dead person who was coming through, a woman in the audience was a witch. How do you tell the woman sitting in front of you that even dead people think she’s a witch? Edward hemmed and hawed. Finally, he just came out with it. The woman couldn’t believe it. Turns out she was a Wiccan.
Some critics have argued that Edward doesn’t talk to dead people at all. They says he’s simply an expert at reading the people in the audience, picking up on signs of who they are and what they might want to hear by what they look like, what they’re wearing or with whom they’re sitting. Ask enough questions, and you’ll invariably get some things right, especially if the listener is very eager to make a connection. That may well be true. If you listen carefully, Edward asks plenty of questions–“Do elephants mean anything to you?” “Is there some significance to the first grade?”–that the audience member lets slip by. Anyway, if your dead father came to pay you a visit, would he mess around by giving Edward just his first initial or the month in which he was born? Maybe not.
But the fact is, “Crossing Over” isn’t really about dead people at all. It’s the living folks in the audience that really make the show so riveting. Almost without exception, they are incredibly excited to hear from a dead friend or relative. They cry, they laugh, they tell great stories about the person who has crossed, or about themselves. For a few minutes, they become characters in a TV drama. “Crossing Over” smartly follows up each reading with an interview that invariably includes photographs of the deceased, which makes the whole human drama feel that much more real and personal.
In one recent case, the drama became too real even for Edward. He announced plans to do a “Crossing Over” episode with people who had relatives who died in the Sept. 11 terrorist tragedies. After being criticized for being exploitative, the show’s producers pulled the segment. That’s a shame. Even those who don’t buy what Edward does can’t help but see how genuinely moved the people who talk to him are. Maybe that’s exploiting people’s pain, but the people themselves seem grateful for the experience. Who are we to stop them from having it? Whether you believe in him or not, John Edward makes a fascinating television show that manages to be both entertaining and cathartic. The country could use both those qualities these days.
