Rich Martini My comment on the buzzfeed site:
I’ve been working with Jennifer for three years now. We get together often, and I film her chatting with friends of mine no longer on the planet. (“Backstage Pass to the Flipside; Talking to the Afterlife with Jennifer Shaffer.” I know how spot on she can be, and in our two books (and “Hacking the Afterlife”) I include some of the more amazing times she’s reported “new information” about someone on the flipside that I did not know, could not have known, but later it turns out to be forensically accurate. I also happen to know some of the cases she’s worked on, including with the former head of the LAPD, where she was able to solve missing person cases. She does that work pro bono – helping parents who’ve lost a child and are trying to track them down. I’m also aware of the architecture of the flipside, and why sometimes mediums don’t get the answers accurately (there may be more at stake) or why they misinterpret the image that they see. I was with her last thursday, when a waitress stopped by the table to thank her for doing a reading, and wanted to say “You remember when you told me that I was moving to Colorado?” Jennifer shrugged as she doesn’t remember anything during her sessions (and why I film them) and the waitress said “I told you that I’ve never been, and that I wasn’t going, but my boyfriend just called to say that he accepted a job there, and we’re moving there in a few weeks. So thank you.” Sometimes what she says about someone turns out to be accurate later on. Either way, this kind of “exploration” into the idea that “life goes on” is not for everyone, nor should it be. Not everyone “signs up to learn how the play ends.” We are here for a reason, and some of us need to be fully invested in that reason. However, in the case of Jennifer, I can report that we’ve been at this together for three years now, and the times when she’s been accurate with friends or acquaintances who’ve checked out, but she reports details that only their families or close associates would know, or that we learn “new information” is kind of astounding. For example, when my friend Harry Dean Stanton died, he showed up in our meeting and told me the circumstances of his passing, who was in the room with him at the time, and what he wanted to tell his friends at the memorial service. I told him I’d pass his messages along, and they were spot on – with details only his close associates would know (that I did not know until I went to the memorial service a week later and heard all the confirmations of detail – who was with him when he died, and me telling his friends his private messages to them about their health and journey.) I asked Harry Dean if he had any message he wanted me to pass along, and it was “tell people to believe in the possibility of the afterlife, then they won’t waste their time like I did arguing about it.” (Which he did, often.) Jennifer is the real deal, and I have it on film to prove it.