Before you can say it: Psychic medium John Holland knew I was going to call him. Even the exact time.

I'd scheduled the interview with the rising paranormal star and author of such books as the recent "Power of the Soul — Inside Wisdom for an Outside World" before his Wednesday show at Benaroya Hall. Why? About 21 percent of Americans believe people can communicate with the dead, according to a recent Gallup Poll. In other words, every fifth person you meet thought "The Sixth Sense" was a documentary.

The affable and fast-talking Holland, 46, declined to give me a reading from his New Hampshire living room. So I asked him a few questions that maybe he couldn't see coming.

Q: You've likened what you do to a radio — and not a new iPod Touch, which is much cooler.

A: [Laughs.] Well, when people from the other side communicate with me, they're using thought energy, just like you can't see radio waves coming into the radio. So I will get that thought and my intuitive senses will bring it through images, words and feelings.

Last night I was with a group of eight, and I just kept hearing "Aggie" and "Agnes." One of the women in the room, her mother's name was definitely Agnes. Not a common name. It's not like "Who's Mary?" "Who's John?" I am just a radio, and the better the antenna — me — the better the reception.

Q: You say you were born with some ability but a traumatic experience amplified it. I think a lot of "X-Men" started out that way.

A: Well, it was raining in Los Angeles. Scary, I know. And on that particular night I hit a guard rail. The car spun around, and the car was basically totaled. But what happened, Mark, was, I had this ability as a kid and pushed it away, because when your family starts calling you names, your dad, in society if you're a little different you're often ostracized. And the accident awoke the abilities that I pushed away.

Q: John Holland vs. John Edward: Who brings me to uncontrollable sobs faster?

A: Mmmm ... mmmm. I think that we're pretty much equal. He has a different kind of style than I do. If you don't understand a piece of evidence, he'll stick to it until it's validated. I mean there's no airy, foo-foo stuff with us. We're kind of in your face with what we do.

Q: Have you received any messages from John McCain?

A: And John McCain is who? Your dad?

Q: Oh wait, hang on, he's still alive. He's the presidential candidate.

A: Oh, yeah, of course.

Q: And apparently Larry King is alive, too. Let's move on. I still want to talk about dead celebrities, though. You picked up on Wayland Flowers — who had the Madame puppet?

A: Yes, because I sat with her manag — with his manager. You see, Mark, what happens is, lots of times MTV or VH1 will call me, they'll say "Look, it's Elvis' birthday, it's John Lennon's birthday, we want to get a group of people together and have you channel John Lennon." It doesn't work that way. If I was to sit with John Lennon's son or Yoko, then there's the connection. I don't just dial 1-800 Dial Your Daddy.

Q: Do you think the "Medium" TV show gets much right?

A: I love the show. I love how they make it through her dreams, because the American public will accept that. But it's not as clear. When she sees a spirit on the TV. it's not that clear. Maybe for some mediums but not for me. "The Ghost Whisperer," that is so over-the-top, with walking zombies and people showing themselves burned.

Q: I don't think people watch "The Ghost Whisperer" for the ghosts, OK?

A: Yeah, no kidding.

Q: The messages you give people always seem to amount to the same thing: "I'm OK now," "I know you loved me," "Don't feel guilty" ... just basic reassurances from lost loved ones.

A: People always say to me "What's the message, John?" Sometimes it's they're with them during an emotional time or during a divorce or during relationship stuff — you know, with evidence. Or it's basically to come through to say, "I'm fine. Please move on, stop crying." Basically they come through to say, "I'm still here, I'm still alive."

Q: But anybody who's spent more than a few minutes watching what you or Edwards do must know they're going to get the same message, right?

A: Well, it is. Basically the end message is, "I love you, I'm fine." I just did an audience of 400, Mark, and a boy came through who drowned, and a mom understood that her son did drown. But then I started talking about drugs in the family, and heroin, and she broke down, the whole audience broke down — you know, I'm from an alcoholic background, and there's drugs there. Not me, but in the family. So I related to this woman. And her son came through basically to say, "I'm helping you through this, Ma," and it was his sister who was a heroin addict, and she didn't know what to do.

Another time, a father came through in San Francisco and talked to the sister about how the brother, who's leeching off the family, she just really needs to let him hit rock bottom to get help. So there is other stuff that comes through.

Q: You say kids grow up and continue to age on the other side. Do they lose their hair and get fat and jowly?

A: Put it this way: I've never died and come back to see what it's like. I can only go by what I'm being told. On one string of thought they say they grow up on the other side. I get confused because yet there's no bodies. All I know is this: Say, Mark, someone lost their child at 7. Ten years later I may be with their mother and I say "I have a teenage girl here. She looks like about 17-18 or feels that." She says, "Well, I did lose a daughter and she would be about 17 now." Other times, Mark, the child will come through exactly at 7. It seems like the spirit, the soul knows how to come through so that person recognizes them. So do they grow up on the Other Side? I'm not sure. Or are they projecting the age to me?

Q: And you tell people that, say, their dead kids are playing ball the way they did when they were alive. If there's baseball in the afterlife, does that mean Cubs fans are infinitely screwed?

A: [Laughs.] I'm a Red Sox fan myself.

Q: I guess I just don't know how that makes sense.

A: Like I said, Mark, I only go by what I'm hearing from them. Usually it's a download of information. Every once in a while I'll shoot the thought back up, "What are you doing now?" Say a teenage boy passes at 18, they will tell me that they're now working with children in some type of capacity. There's been grandmothers just sitting on their porch and working in the garden. So I know there has to be some type of existence over there, Mark, that's similar to ours. I heard, "I'm back in school." So you see, it's weird. I'm skeptical, too, Mark. I guess we'll know when we go over there.

Q: Houdini spent a lot of his time with [exposing] mediums. And that fake Jamaican woman on the TV commercials couldn't have helped your profession. How does anyone know you aren't exploiting the grieving and the gullible?

A: By watching me work, Mark. If they come to see, all right? And that gets me upset, when people like, you have all the skeptics saying that I am just doing this to — I didn't want this work, Mark, OK? It kept happening to me, and it took me nine years before I said, "All right, I'll do this."

When I saw a parent getting help with specific evidence that was coming through that they couldn't get help from anywhere else, and they walked out a little less bereaved in that they had their first good night's sleep in years, then I feel that I've done my job. But I get upset when people say that this is fake or that I am using the bereaved, because that means that they don't know me as a person, as if I could really go up there an do this to people.

Q: Then you're in a position to help people. How can people spot a "cold read" or tell a fraud from someone legit?

A: Well, it should be really specific. People have to watch for the general stuff, Mark, OK? I've seen some mediums on the platform demonstrating, and they'll come to someone and say, "I have your grandmother here, she's a lovely woman." And I swear to God, they're always little women with round faces and a bun. And I'm like, I'd rather get — like last night I did a group, and I got this woman who was so educated, I kept straightening up my back, and she was so serious, this woman.

I can joke with those on the other side if they have a joking personality. But if they can bring through the personality of someone, Mark, or nicknames, or mannerisms, then I feel they're real. They need to stay away from the general stuff, Mark, "I have your grandmother here, she loves you." Well, no [expletive]! More evidence. Because I trained in England, Mark, and they are really big, big, big into evidence.

Q: You tell people that loved ones who passed on are with them and watching over them. Does this mean I have to live like I'm in the "Big Brother" house?

A: No, it's not 24 hours and seven days a week. It takes a lot of work for them to lower their vibe, Mark, to come into this existence or this dimension, because they're vibrating much higher than us. That's why you don't see them. I know it sounds like a simple explanation but it's true. And a lot of women say, "Does my father see everything that I do?" No. I think there's a privacy act. I really do. I think they have better things to do than seeing who you're sleeping with.

Q: Not the pay-per-view, thank God. People come to you wanting closure, and yet in real life is there such a thing?

A: Usually there is closure. Sometimes it can open more questions, and I don't like people who go from medium to medium to medium who become junkies. And I tell them, "You're turning into a cloud person." And they take the workshops and the books.

Q: A philosophical question: What do you say about thinkers like Heidegger who said that accepting that we have a finite existence where death is the end actually frees us up to live more meaningful lives — and to make 'em count here and now?

A: I agree with that, Mark, to a point, OK. So what is he saying? He's saying that there is no afterlife? Is that what he's saying?

You know what, Mark, what I say, too is that there is no death, OK? And I think that bereavement is something that you should go through — OK? — when you lose someone, not hang onto. But I tell people too that today is the most important thing, and the now. Because if people say, "Well, if there's an afterlife then why don't I just take myself there? It's got to be better than this." And I say to them the same thing John Edward said, and actually it's his quote: "The afterlife is not an invitation."

But I tell people, "You should live." Those on the other side, they constantly come through and tell people here, "You've got a lot of work to do. Enjoy your life. I'll see you in a while." And I also tell people, if you've got a loved one right now, or a mother or father or sibling that you're arguing with? Sort it out now because anything can happen in the blink of an eye. Too many people come to my lectures, and they waited too long because they didn't talk to their sister for two years.

Q: It must be hard for anyone to date a psychic if regular know-it-alls are already annoying. What's that been like for you?

A: Well, you know what? I was in a relationship for 11 years, and it's funny, Mark, the more you get to know me — especially my family — the less I can read for them. I can't read for my mother, whose mother passed — my grandmother — because I know so much about my family, my mind will come in and say "Is this me? Or do I know this? Or is it a memory?"

It's hard when you get to me, because I start knowing everything about you, and it gets shut off. So when I am in a relationship I may have a feeling, like I know what they got me for Christmas, but it's rare. It's rare. This is really a gift for others, not myself.

Q: I've got to know about the 72 virgins thing. Are they there, and are martyrs really that into deflowering on the other side?

A: I don't know what that is, the 72 virgins.

Q: The radical Islamic martyrs. The suicide bombers. They're told that they'll have 72 virgins when they go to the other side.

A: Oh really! Oh really!

Q: You haven't heard this?

A: No! No. Hardly, I think. I think what happens, Mark, is, when you go over to the other side, I believe that what you've done to people, whether good or bad, you experience. So you are your own judge and jury. So I think that if more people realized that if they were going to feel the same pain that they caused others they would think twice about doing things here on this earth.

Mark Rahner: 206-464-8259 or mrahner@seattletimes.com