How Does a Medium Reading Work? What Actually Happens

Written by Chaya the Medium.

What a medium actually does during a reading, how the impressions arrive, what you send and what comes back. A working medium's plain account, with the limits stated.

The short answer: a medium reading works by the medium turning their attention toward a specific person who has died, with your name, that person's name and your relationship as the link, and writing down or speaking what comes through. It arrives as impressions: feelings, images, a sense of character, sometimes a detail or a phrase. It is not a telephone line to the other side, and no honest medium will describe it as one.

I am Chaya, a fourth generation Romani psychic and medium from Ireland, and I have delivered 41,500 readings since opening my public practice in 2019, many of them for people trying to reach someone they have lost. This is how it works in my practice. Other mediums work differently in the details.

What you send

For a written reading I ask for your full name and date of birth, the full name of the person you hope to hear from, your relationship to them, and your questions. That is all. You do not need to send a photo, a cause of death or a life story. Some people like to, and that is fine, but the reading does not depend on it. If anything, I prefer to know less, so that what comes through is not shaped by what I was told.

What the medium does

I sit with the details you sent and turn my attention toward the person. I do not go into a trance for a standard reading. I ask, inwardly, whether they are there and whether they have anything to say, and then I wait and write down what arrives. Sometimes it comes quickly and sometimes it takes a while. Sometimes very little comes, and I say so.

What arrives is rarely a sentence. It is more often a feeling of a personality, a sense of how they died or how they were in their last months, an image of something they loved, a phrase they used, or a message that is less about words than about a quality: reassurance, apology, pride, a joke. My job is to write all of that down as plainly as I can and to say which parts felt strong and which felt faint.

What comes back to you

You receive a written reading by email within 48 hours. It sets out what came through, in the order it came, with my sense of how clear each part was. Where I received something specific, a name, a place, an object, I say so, and I say when I am not sure what it means, because it is often you who recognises it rather than me. Where I received nothing on a particular question, I say that too rather than filling the gap.

A written reading has one advantage over a live one: you can read it when you are ready, alone, and keep it. Many people tell me that a detail made sense a week later, which is hard to catch in a live session where everything passes once. My guide to a medium reading by email goes through the format, the price and what to send.

Why contact is never guaranteed

I cannot make a particular person come through. Sometimes the person you asked for is clear and present. Sometimes someone else comes instead, a grandparent when you asked for a friend, and I will tell you that rather than pretending. Sometimes almost nothing comes, and the honest reading says so. A medium who guarantees contact, or who always has a message from exactly the person you named, is telling you what you want to hear.

What a medium reading is not

It is not a way to get facts about a will, a cause of death or who was to blame. It is not a prediction of your future or anyone else's death. It is not a substitute for grief support, and it should never leave you more dependent on readings than you were before. If a reading frightens you, tells you a loved one is suffering, or asks for more money to bring them through, walk away. My guide to what to ask a medium covers the questions that open a reading up and the ones that close it down.

How to tell a reading was real

Look for specifics you did not supply: a trait, an object, a phrase, a detail about the death or the last months that you recognise and that was not in anything you sent. Look for the medium saying plainly what was faint or absent. And notice how you feel afterwards. A good reading tends to leave people settled rather than hungry for the next one.