Making a Living Talking to the Dead: The Berkshire Medium

Pam Ellis speaks with the dead. Growing up in Worcester in the 1970s, she says she knew she had an intuitive gift. But when she talked to her mom about it, she was told not to explore it. “They’re the weird kids. They pick their nose. They eat glue,” Ellis’s mother told her. “The priest won’t like it.”

“I’m not quite willing to say it was taboo back then, but it was certainly not as socially acceptable as it is today,” says Ellis, a clairvoyant known as the Berkshire Medium. She leaned into her spiritual abilities in her early forties while working at a long-term care facility that sent staff to a Reiki training session so they could promote self-healing and help the patients.

At first, Ellis wasn’t interested. “I said, ‘Eh, I’m not going to something like that,’” she recalls. But the company was paying for the training and for the day off, so she decided to go. Plus, the timing was good, as her son was almost grown. “I’m a big believer that everything kind of happens for a reason—the way it’s meant to,” Ellis says.

Ellis recalls the first Reiki training she attended as fine but uneventful. At the second training, which took place during the blood moon in September 2015, Ellis received a higher level of attunement, and she started to experience heightened abilities. “After the second Reiki training, I woke up—I just felt like I was able to communicate with everybody and everything,” she says. “The best way I can describe it, even though I knew I had it before, was that it was like ‘spirit gone wild.’ I’d just really turned up the volume.”

Ellis found some online groups where she could practice and hone her skills, which she did for a year before accepting money for readings. The stars aligned again when a medium in Pittsfield moved out of state, and Ellis was able to take over her office space. Ellis still has her Pittsfield office and recently added a second location in Worcester. For people further afield, she also does virtual readings.

For the Skeptics

Some people are drawn to metaphysics and believe in the transcendent nature of space and time, while others have varying degrees of skepticism. So many details about our lives are available on the internet, and one might have concerns about a medium doing extensive research before the reading to appear knowledgeable.

For the skeptics, Ellis is more than happy to book through a third party so she doesn’t even know the name of the person she’s reading for—her preferred booking method. “I’m what’s called an evidence-based reader. So it isn’t things that can be generalized or looked up on Facebook,” Ellis says. “It’s going to be these little tiny, silly details,” like a ripped shower curtain.

Ellis once told a client that her deceased father was sending a message (from wherever spirits reside) about a ripped shower curtain. “She went, ‘Oh my goodness, I have one right now. Is he watching me?’” Ellis says. “And I confirmed that they can see everything—all the time.”

What Can a Medium Do—and Not Do?

“I can let people know that their loved ones are still around,” Ellis says. Her approach helps people connect with loved ones in the spiritual world, but she does not predict the future. She cautions that if you’re looking for someone who’ll tell you whether to buy a house, take a job, or leave a partner, she’s not the medium for you.

Ellis believes there’s more to life than the “blip” we’re currently living in. “It’s a pretty deep topic that I don’t get into with too many people because most people come to me because they want to know that their mom’s okay, they want to know their dad’s okay, they want to know their daughter didn’t suffer at the end of her life.”

Grief and grieving can leave clients with a lot of questions and few answers, Ellis says, and many people enjoy readings with spiritual mediums as a way to connect with their loved ones who have passed. “They remain with us, and our consciousness really does go on—it doesn’t just absorb into the cosmos,” she says. “I intermingle the scientific and the non-scientific part of it because I don’t think one can exist without the other.”

How to Connect

If you want to see Ellis for a reading, be prepared to wait—the list is about a year and a half long. Ellis doesn’t take money in advance, and money won’t move anyone up the list. She gets pushback from people who don’t want to wait, and they all want to know why. For Ellis, the answer is clear. “I don’t overbook because I don’t want the reading to suffer.”

Ellis believes that if she takes on too many clients, it will compromise the quality of the information coming through. At $170 for a private hour or $210 for two people together, she feels a strong responsibility to bring her clients the most accurate experience possible. “One woman literally looked at me and said, ‘Look, I’ll be dead by the time I get an appointment with you.’ And being the person that I am, I’m thinking in my head, ‘Well, don’t worry—I’ll be talking to you anyway.’”

To schedule a reading with Pam Ellis, email her at pamegal@icloud.com or call (413) 464-4540. In addition to private and small group readings (which, as we know, have a long waitlist), Ellis also organizes group events in spaces like community centers and American Legion halls, where people can witness her communicating with the dead live in front of an audience. Participants are selected at random from details received through her contact with people on the other side. Follow the Berkshire Medium on Facebook, where she posts about upcoming events.