Sudbury medium Jay Lane knows there are many people who are skeptical about what she does for a living.
And she's OK with that. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, she said. It just so happens she has a different opinion, and apparently so do a lot of other people.
That acceptance — that not everyone will believe in her abilities, and that's fine with her — is a lesson she learned from her mother, a natural psychic herself who used tea leaves to perform her readings.
“My mom was a natural psychic, she had been since she was very young,” Lane said. “But she used tea leaves to do her readings, so people didn't think she was such a nutbag. It was no picnic growing up with that in the 1960s, but it made me who I am today, and I don't care what people think. I have to live my own life, and that's one lesson I learned from my mom.”
Lane understands why people can be skeptical of her ability. After all, she really doesn't know how she does it, either.
“I have all the senses — I can hear them, I can see them, I can smell things, sometimes I can event taste things,” she said. “It's just there. Some are quite the character, and some are very specific about what happened when they died, who found them, who was there, where they sat afterwards, who was eating what.”
The first time Lane saw a ghost was in 1969, she said. She was nine years old. She was a the Dominion grocery store in Hanmer with her parents, and they were paying for groceries.
“There was a woman standing in front of us, and all of a sudden this thing appeared in front of me,” she said. “It had no legs, it was just from the waste up, and it was a gold colour. He was solid, but at the same time, I could see through him, and I could hear his thoughts. I can't explain it, but for some reason, I knew that it was a ghost. I had a near-death experience, and I knew that I had been like that before.”
When she was three years old, Lane fell off an embankment at her uncle's camp into a lake. Her cousin ran to get her dad, and by the time they found her, “I was limp and lifeless,” she said. It was seven or eight minutes before she was revived.
“I remember falling into the lake and struggling and having pain,” she said. “I remember the sunshine and being really warm. I remember I had a dream about my grandpa. When I woke up, I was in a hospital, it was dark, and I started screaming. I had fractured ribs, an infection in my lung and problems with my ears. When I got home, things were really different for me. I started seeing lights and orbs, but nothing really significant until I was nine.”
When she first saw that ghost at the grocery store, she started crying.
“My mom asked me right away what was wrong. I just said, 'Jerry wants her to eat,' and that 'he loves her, he loves her.' I was overwhelmed with emotion, and all I wanted to do was hug that lady. I told her she was going to be OK, and that she had to eat. She was looking at me like I was on crack, and her eyes were big. She just dropped everything and left.
“My mom ran after her, and my dad grabbed me by the ear, and when we got home, I got such a spanking. My dad told me there were three reasons why I got a lickin' that day – one, you don't talk to stranger without mom or dad's permission. Two, people were going to think I was crazy and that they were going to lock my up. Three, people don't believe in that stuff.”
Lane has countless stories she's willing to share. She does so on her website, mediumjaylane.com.
For instance, she said Sudbury is a very haunted city. In particular, there's a lot of activity on Elm Street. One of her favourite venues in Sudbury to perform is the United Steelworkers Hall on Brady Street.
“The Steelworkers Hall is so haunted,” she said. “It used to be a grocery store, and there's an old man who worked in the meat department, at least that's what I get from him, who passed away who is still visiting that building quite often. “
Lane has another show coming up at the United Steelworkers Hall on Oct. 7. An Evening of Spirit with Medium Jay Lane takes place from 7-9 p.m. It's her last big show in Sudbury for quite some time, as she focuses on the task ahead.
Lane will join the ranks of world renowned psychic mediums James Van Praagh and Lisa Williams as the new addition to the U.S.-based Inspiration Nation Productions’ talent roster.
Company President and Founder Kelley Kreinbrink, represents New York Times Best Selling Authors and International Psychic-Mediums.
It's taken seven years for Lane to get to this point. She left the comfort of a government job to pursue her new path.
“I decided to follow my heart,” she said. “That's another lesson I learned from my mother. After she passed away, I decided I wanted to do this full time. I learned you're born with nothing, and you leave with nothing, and that's really all you need to be happy. I wasn't happy with my job, and although I was happy with the girls I worked with, it wasn't me.”
After a year of focusing all of her energy on her readings, things really started to take off. In fact, she found herself booked solid for two and a half years. Her schedule was so busy, she said she closed her booking calendar just so she could catch up with her current bookings.
And, it didn't take long for her to start reading for celebrities, after a friend from the U.S. asked her to read for some friends. Turns out, after she met them online via Skype, she realized they were famous.
“From there, it was like a tumble weed, and it just started rolling,” she said. “I've read for people like Penny Ford of Snap!, Lorelei McBroom from Pink Floyd and Scott Patrick, host of Hollywood One on One. She's also has several radio shows to her credit.
In addition to working on her tour, Lane is currently working on a new book and is developing her own oracle cards with dream expert Lauri Loewenberg.
If that's not enough, she's also negotiating a pilot for a television series. She has very few details to share, but said it would be very different than anything out there right now.
“We are still developing the story line, and it's all still up in the air, but there's a lot of interest,” she said. “I would have to go to California to shoot it, and I'm just working on my visa to be able to work in the U.S.”
For her fans, don't worry, she isn't going away permanently.
“It's going extremely well, but Sudbury is my home. I've renewed my mortgage, so I don't plan on leaving. I just plan on travelling a lot more. It's a dream come true for me, and it's exciting to be able to put Sudbury on the map in terms of mediumship.”
