Philadelphia Whispering Angels
By Thom Nickels
Contributing Editor

When clairaudient Carolann Sano appeared at the Astral Plane recently, the people waiting to see her gathered by the restaurant's staircase and noted their place in line with hawkish dedication. That's the way it is when a talented medium gives away sessions for free. It was certainly the method for the two women who jumped ahead of a friend of mine who was due to be "read" after me. The women seemed to appear out of the woodwork; perhaps they'd been lurking behind an Astral column or one of the restaurant's huge wicker chairs. But suddenly there they were, breathless in Philadelphia, seating themselves at Carolann's corner table lit only by two handsome candlesticks that gave it the feeling of Theosophy and Madame Blevatsky.

Proving that her mind is no sieve, Carolann remembered the order of the line and left her corner table in order to find out whose turn it really was. Order, needless to say, was restored.

The mild mayhem that Carolann's sessions caused that night as the restaurant celebrated a slew of "Best of" awards is a testament to humanity's hunger for "information" beyond the pale.

As she later told me in the swanky garden of the Rittenhouse Hotel where we had gone for high tea, "When you offer something for free, everybody wants to try it, even people who say they don't believe."

As a veteran psychic traveler and sampler - I'm remembering sessions and dinners in Valerie Morrison's home in Roxborough, and pizza, beer and good times while hanging out with Jacqueline Bigar -I pride myself on being able to spot a 'paranormal' fake. In the world of the paranormal, fraud is rampant. In many ways, finding a good 'paranormal' is as difficult as finding an honest plumber. The classic storefront gypsy card reader who cons the na•ve into giving them cash to dispel curses is only the tip of the iceberg. And although I've never been to a medium, like most people, I've watched John Edward on television. Edward seems like the real deal although with medium ship one is always inclined to think of those Victorian melodramas where the medium, sans turban and crystal ball, works a set of trick contraptions under a tablecloth.

"Forty-one saints in the Catholic Church were clairaudient. Oh my goodness, it's not that I'm looking to get on the charts. I'm just looking to do what I'm supposed to do," Carolann tells me in the Rittenhouse, after commenting on a particularly moist scone.

She says the messages she gets when reading for a client come from "them," or energies she refers to as angels but they can also be called spirit guides. The guides, she says, are "a more highly evolved intellect than humans, serving God, the universe, but they are not God." 'They' are also not 100% accurate all the time - cannot be - only God is. These energies exist where time does not, therefore, timing can be delayed," her flyer, states.

She channels through automatic writing. A person asks her a question; she hears a response in her right ear. She calls the process "immediate" and says that it is similar to "dictation." When the message she gets is over, the words she's transcribing, or the message for the client, suddenly stops. Right before she records the message she says that her writing arm goes numb and then comes an almost involuntary movement of her arm as she begins to write.

Questions can also be asked "through" dead loved ones. When asked this way, the messages come back in the style or emotive "feel" of the deceased. My mother, who has been dead since 1993, "reminded" me during my sample session with Carolann in the Astral Plane how she used to pull and snap my suspenders when she wanted to make a major point. I'd forgotten all about this childhood memory but Carolann brought it back with a loud snap. Suddenly, I could see my mother snapping my suspenders - yes, how could I have forgotten that she used to do this?

In the Rittenhouse, I asked Carolann three additional questions and watched as she scrawled her replies on a blank sheet of paper. What was wrote was not intelligible - it is sometimes meant to be a scrawl -although the accompanying verbal messages were clear. One of my questions concerned a deceased friend who was killed in 1993; suffice to say that the message delivered to me answered a lingering question regarding the death of this friend. Generally, the messages are stream of consciousness monologues 'They,' the spirit guides or angels or the deceased person, have a tendency to call men of any age "young men," a habit that may have something to do with the fact that "over there" we are all supposed to be thirty years old. (I didn't ask Carolann about this, but thirty-years old seems to be an agreed upon fact among the world's best known paranormals.)

But don't call Carolann psychic. "I tend to think of psychic as people who feel. Psychics tend to put a lot on themselves, 'I can tell you this,' "I can tell you that,' whereas I can say to someone, 'I can tell you nothing. I just deliver a message that is given to me."

She says that the information contained in the messages is garnered to help people make better choices in life. "It is to help you with directions. It isn't to predict so that you don't have to think on your own. If someone says, 'What do I need to know about what's going on in my office, the boss is acting very aloof, am I on the list to be terminated?' then the message will give you background information."

Although our comfy chat in the Rittenhouse had all the accruements of a charmed life, life for Carolann has not been a tea party.

Years ago, a marriage thought to last forever fell apart. Her idea of marriage is that which God joins together no man shall put asunder. Yet suddenly she found herself having to raise two adopted children on her own. "I had issues with God," she told me. "I couldn't understand how this could happen. I asked God, 'How could you allow two children to be adopted into a family that would break up, being an all-knowing God?'"

For her such a thought was a radical concept. As an Italian, she's "twice Catholic," not to mention that she was brought up in the pre-Vatican II Church on the Baltimore catechism.

Still, she said she lost it one day when she smashed all her ugly 1960s earth tone color dishes. Her cries were intense as she asked God, while smashing the plates, "How could you do this?"

"Then I realized what I did and I held my breath. I didn't know what I was waiting for - was the floor going to open up, was I going to be struck?"

The realization hit her that with unconditional love one can have their moments and be so angry with a person but when that anger has passed the love hasn't changed one bit. "The love hasn't diminished, and not a single thing has changed," she said.

"In day-to-day earth life, whether it's a friend who has betrayed you, a family member who disappoints you or a partner who leaves or whatever, no matter what you do, no matter how angry you get, you're allowed to be you. God is not going to love you any less because you revert into being you."

Years ago she was National Sales Manager for a major hotel chain based in Arizona. She came to Philadelphia in the late 90s to make sales calls and fell in love with the city. "You could get a lot done in a short amount of time here because of the way the city is laid out," she said. Then there was the culture, the ambience and the diversity of the city. Philadelphia reminded her of New York when she worked as a supervisor in Kennedy Airport for Pan Am, a job that she says helped her understand and appreciate different cultures and beliefs.

She learned the importance of getting the hatboxes of Hadassah Jewish women on the planes to Tel Aviv. Hadassah Jewish women had to have their hatboxes because they contained the wigs their religion required them to wear. The Pan Am job also forced her to use what she calls her "less than perfect Spanish." When the hotel downsized her she had already made plans to rent an apartment in Florida where she thought she was just being transferred. She went to the northern West Palm Beach area anyway and wound up taking frequent trips to Miami to do on-location hotel sales calls. She bought a house but Florida's humidity made her long for the northeast where "the energy is high." "There's an expectation in the northeast. What cuts it down there in that more relaxed tropical environment doesn't cut it up here; people are more savvy here."

She admits that when she started channeling she didn't know how she would work or whom she should address. Then she says she remembered that there are guardian angels or entities around us for protection and then she said she started to ask questions, despite disbelief and laughter among some people she knew, from "the guardian angel of whatever."

"You know," she said, turning towards me so that her shoulder seemed to square one of the cherubs on the Rittenhouse wall behind her, "I didn't know how this interview would go, so I decided to ask the angel of Interviews what to expect."

The angel of interviews? Beneath her notebook was a typewritten script, words from the angel, forecasting the nuances of our talk. Later that same day, she sent me a copy of the forecast via email.

"I feel sad for people who don't think there's anything beyond this life," she said in response to a question I asked about vitriolic attacks by skeptics. "More people are asking about loved ones or friends who have passed on. The word mission is used a lot. They (the deceased) have missions or assignments and that's interesting. I was always moved to ask people who have passed over that had a particular strength in life to help me out here."

That help comes in many forms, including lessons in grief from the deceased who have told her that a good way to wean yourself from sorrow is to devote two days a week and just an hour a day for visiting the room of the departed. "Feel my presence, touch my jewelry, touch my clothes, and you're invited to cry. Set the timer and at the end of the hour go back out to the family and do what you need to do. Do this for two months. Each time you go into the room you won't be feeling as anxious. You're going to feel peaceful knowing you're going to go in there."

Sano, a charismatic Catholic, credits her religion with allowing the manifestation of "this whole spirit kind of stuff." She's been to Medjugorje and says that she has stories about the place. "Really I do," she told me, "but let's save that for another time."

After tea, we took an unofficial tour of the Rittenhouse, going upstairs to the restaurant and bar. Over and over she kept remarking what a wonderful day it had been and how good it was to sit in that wonderful courtyard and talk about things that mattered. I had to agree that it had been a perfect afternoon. We got more than the peace and quiet we wanted for the interview, and certainly the French waitperson was more than differential in letting us sit until the sun had turned an orangey gold. As a testament to this, the taxi I took back to Fishtown picked me up a second time when the driver saw that I was still several blocks from my house. "Let me take you there, free, no problem," he said, while inside I wondered, if only for a second, if someone or something from the other world wasn't lending a hand.

(Carolann Sano, individual, group and corporate sessions: 866-231-7257 (PIN 2597) or www.thewhisperingangels.com)

Sidebar: "In the late 80s, while driving a friend home, I casually mentioned breaking down on the highway with the children in the car. I began saying, 'Boy, does God love me" ... ready to continue about how someone stopped to help, when I was interrupted by a 'picture' in full color out of my left eye. It was a clear, picture of the Crucifixion. The sky was almost turquoise blue, brown soil came to a mound. Christ was nailed, but there was no blood, no crown of thorns. Simultaneously, I heard, 'THIS is how I love you.' I got the message immediately ... I didn't feel guilt, because it wasn't shown for me to feel guilt, just the degree of Love."