'Ghost' Story

Author/producer James Van Praagh proudly adds a new dimension to out-there TV
June 26, 2008 - Michael Elkin, Arts & Entertainment Editor

"Ghost Whisperer" is a shout out to spectral neighbors, those pushy spatial sputniks soaring through an outer limit that adds another dimension to those lives haunted by history.

James Van Praagh is practical about it all. They're just making themselves known, he says with a shrug in his voice.

Easy for him to say: He not only sees dead people; he talks to them, cajoles them, bargains with them, asks their advice and introduces them to millions of somewhat frightened fans each week as "Ghost Whisperer," the well-done CBS spookathon that this medium mediates as co-executive producer, proves miasmal gold in the ratings.

Or is that miasmal ghoul? Author/producer Van Praagh proudly adds a new dimension to out-there TV, but his scope isn't limited to just channeling dramas. His Ghosts Among Us is the ultimate ghost story. It is as spirited a stand as one can take advocating the existence of the non-living who enliven our lives.

In this, yet another of his best-selling books after Talking to Heaven and Reaching for Heaven ... well, heaven can wait, but eager fans have put it on the top of their must-have list. Van Praagh pricks misconceptions and missed opportunities to tune into the tome's "truth about the other side."

Whose side are you on? Van Praagh pre-empts the snickers and snide remarks with haunting and harrowing stories to deflate and flatten the haughty.

Though raised Catholic, a religion he now eschews, and once an altar boy, that doesn't alter the self-image of a man whose menschen of Judaism and commitment to communicating as a Jew stems from a Jewish family tree with Rose buds as well as rosaries -- "as well as the fact that 55 relatives of mine died in Auschwitz."

Indeed, his ghosts of Auschwitz past permeate Van Praagh's perceptions to this day, as do his boyhood days in New York and Queens, making him "relate," he says, "more to the tradition of Judaism than anything."

Jennifer Love Hewitt and David Conrad find unexpected visitors in TV's "Ghost Whisperer."

Indeed, he senses the synagogue as a home base, the bimah a bastion of belief. And the Star of David? "Did you know," he asks, "that the sixth point of the star is supposed to stand for intuition, looking into the soul?"

"The Jewish religion has more a sense of awareness than so many others."

A sixth sense? Other than that movie -- for which the TV producer/author conjures up compliments, "as it did a wonderful job of building awareness; it replicated my life" -- Van Praagh pries open Torah to raise his points. "Mysticism has always been part of Judaism; it's in the Hebrew tradition. It's always been part of me."

Tall tales -- or tallit tales? Van Praagh prays with, not preys on, others. Indeed, some of his best friends are ... rabbis? "I've done readings for rabbis," interpreting their dreams, he says of his dream-team clientele.

Co-executive producer James Van Praagh

Holy ghosts: Isn't such a notion anathema to Judaism? "Religion is man-made. There are many paths to the light."

Certainly he is light-years beyond belief that what he discovered in himself as a small child -- an incredible insight and other-worldly connection -- was no tweaked "Twilight Zone."

Ghosts 'R Us -- or them: It is all real, he asserts, and for those who argue otherwise, they can all go to hallowed spaces of their own. To those who want to bust the ghost-buster: "Why should I give a damn," he says, gainsaying the naysayers.

Grave moments: "Leaving your body at death," he writes, "is as natural as being born. It's like moving, only without all the bother of packing."

Pack it in? Van Praagh is very much still on his unsentimental and spiritual journey. Besides the best sellers, he has made innumerable appearances on Larry King's cable talk show, as well as communed with Oprah and many other TV hosts, and served as guest ghost -- host! -- of "Entertainment Tonight" and "The Insider." He also was producer of the telemovie "The Dead Will Tell."

Tellingly it is "Ghost Whisperer," starring Jennifer Love Hewitt as an antiques dealer with an antediluvian clientele, which has proved to provide possibly his highest profile yet. Dead air? Far from it; it is one of TV's biggest hits. (The series, however, is not based on his life, but that of Mary Ann Wintkowski.)

If Van Praagh's sitting pretty ... who's sitting with him right now? "There are always ghosts around me," he says.

Now you see them, now you don't: On "Ghost Whisperer," it is Melinda's (Love Hewitt) special talent to see them. And viewers see them as intruders in some cases, invasive and nettlesome spirits that inveigh against the living with frightening forecasts of gloom and doom.

"Oh, that's Hollywood," laughs the producer, who produces instances of case histories where ghouls are for good while the entertainment industry feels damn the torpor, full spirits ahead.

Self-Examination
No one questions the success of the show -- now in reruns; winning easy renewal for fall -- but Van Praagh did question himself at one time why his was the name on the tips of the tongues questioning, "Who ya gonna call?"

"I asked, 'Why me?' "

And the answer, Van Praagh reveals, came in waves. "I was on a cruise" as a celebrity guest doing lectures along with Brian L. Weiss, M.D., a prominent psychotherapist and chairman emeritus of psychiatry at the Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami, as well as author of such tomes as Same Soul, Many Bodies, "with whom I became friends after we met on 'The Maury Povich Show.' It was the first cruise we did together."

No cabin fever, but ... fever dream? "I asked myself silently, 'Why am I a spiritual medium?' And, suddenly, I saw myself -- my face and body -- and I was a general in wars from the past," leading people through the hells of historic battles.

He realized at that moment, reveals Van Praagh, "that I came to this life to heal people to make up for the role I had played in my other lives."

It's a living -- but so much more, he asserts: "I really love doing it," he says of his spectra-vision. "There's an energy I bring to teaching."

What life has taught is that close encounters with the thermal kind -- and they do generate heat as well as heated debates -- are no illusion if elusive for others.

In Ghosts Among Us, Van Praagh rolls out the memory of when he took the role of Mr. Dussel in a high school production of "The Diary of Anne Frank."

It was quite a rite of passage, he writes of the recollection's return visit years later while he was visiting the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam in 1994:

"I'd had a very strong identity with this house since I was a boy. I have long suspected that this identity stemmed from a memory of a past life because I have always been fascinated by World War II.

"As I stood in front of the Frank House, I began to feel a very eerie sensation. I looked at the canal in front and thought, 'This canal, this bridge, even the trees, are all exactly the way they were 50 years ago.' Suddenly, in my mind's eye, I was back in time. I saw German soldiers on motorbikes driving over the canals. I heard the shrill sounds of soldiers screaming in German for people to get out of their houses and move on, and lots of gunshots in the distance."

And then he was jarred back to the present, by a "Next please!" demanded by the museum's ticket taker. But Van Praagh's peregrinations inside the house came to a halt when "I felt an overwhelming sense of being trapped. I couldn't breathe. The tour guide helped me to a seat in the doorway," where, as he waited, Van Praagh admired a glass-enclosed case of a Frank family photo album. "As I studied the photos, a man suddenly walked by. He was tall, with light brown hair, and he wore brown pants with suspenders and a white sleeveless undershirt. A towel over his bare shoulder suggested that he was on his way to or from the bathroom."

A misguided tourist? A maintenance man on a bathroom break? As he gathered his strength and descended to the museum section of the house, Van Praagh pictured a startling detail in a nearby photo, in which, "standing next to Otto Frank ... was the man I saw upstairs."

Mr. Dussel.

Shiver me timbers? Or shiver me shock? Nothing really surprises the producer all that much anymore. And he can even have a fun focus when looking at funerals. "Everyone goes to their own funeral," he says of the uninvited, but not uninitiated, guests.

Death takes a holiday ... not. "I am not a psychic, but I have seen people's deaths."

And what does he prescribe for those whose final curtain is about to ring down? Surely, he doesn't parade with a sign that says "The End Is Near."

No, "but I do ask them, 'Have you been to the doctor lately?' "

Lately, he's had a different set of problems to contend with: The "Ghost Whisperer" set went up in flames in that roar of a fire which recently devastated Universal Studios on the West Coast.

"I wouldn't be surprised if ghosts were behind it."

Wait a minute: Casper as pyromaniac? "The ghosts tell me that they love the show, but they can be mischievous," he says.

And if rumors are true that next season the series really steers into the supernatural, if not supernal, as the whole town is possessed by evil spirits ... well, this surely couldn't have been a way for ghosts to burn off their frustration at such a turn of the screw.

"Well," whispers the producer with a supernatural suggestion that is sterling Rod Serling, yet perfectly Van Praagh, "it was the only set burned on that lot."