When most of us hear the term “psychic medium,” we think of tarot cards, crystal balls — or maybe the hit TLC show Long Island Medium. Perhaps we imagine Hollywood representations of characters who can see the future or talk to the dead.
Hailey Lowe Fennell is a psychic medium based in Charleston who shares experiences with her clients through her podcast, “House Guest in the Holy City.” She’s been reading clients one-on-one for five years. Nearly one year ago, she launched a podcast to further share her abilities with the Charleston community.
Fennell often invites local creatives, artists and business professionals on the podcast, where she offers them deep spiritual insights and delivers messages from loved ones who have passed.
Clearing up misconceptions
Fennell says one of the motivations behind starting her podcast was to clear up some of the misconceptions about mediumship: She said she wants people to know working with a medium doesn’t have to be a scary or overly “woo-woo” experience. It can be, Fennell said, a healing modality for people dealing with grief, as well as an offering of spiritual guidance for your future undertakings.
“It’s just another tool. It doesn’t have to be so out there, or scary even, because I think when we truly connect to the other side, it’s actually a very calm and peaceful feeling … My hope is that [my clients] feel clear with either how they can connect with their loved ones for themselves, or how they can connect with themselves in order to take that next big, brave, bold step forward in their own lives.”
Something Fennell emphasizes often in the “House Guest” podcast is that connecting with the “other side” is something we all have access to, so long as we listen to and trust our intuitive senses. You always see butterflies when you think of a lost loved one? Trust your intuition on what that sign means to you, Fennell said.
“[Being psychic] is almost like a game of trusting yourself. I feel like this is something that really, truly anybody can do.”
Fennell said, though, her door was “slightly more open than other people’s,” allowing her to see spirits since she was a young child. “I remember seeing spirits and kind of knowing about things maybe that I shouldn’t have. I have this prominent birthmark on the back of my leg, and so I used to joke with kids that were making fun of me for it that it was the mark of a witch. That they should watch out.”
Born and raised in Atlanta, Fennell went to University of Colorado Boulder and had a career as a sculptor before she made the jump into professionally pursuing her spiritual gifts five years ago.
Building bridges
In the start of each podcast, Fennell asks her guest to close their eyes and envision a bridge between their soul and hers. From there, Fennell said she receives messages “from spirit,” as she calls it, in the form of images and memories from her own life experience.
“Closing our eyes and building a bridge, it helps to calm both me and my sitter, and connection happens through being calm,” Fennell said. “If someone’s too amped up, or getting a little too fearful or scared, it’s my job just to help them feel calm and also to help them imagine the possibilities of what is going to come forward in a reading.”
But what does she see after the bridge is built? Fennell said it’s not as clear-cut as those Hollywood representations of “talking to the dead.” It’s much more abstract.
“For me, it’s a feeling of warmness,” Fennell said. “I’m connecting with spirit, but then, it’s my brain, my imagination, that turns it into a visual for me. It’s like I’m allowing spirit to play with my imagination, and usually, they’ll give me visuals that I’m actually familiar with. It’s not that I’m literally seeing their loved one in front of me, or in my imagination, but I’m seeing someone like that person that I’m familiar with. That’s my cue to start talking about them in that sort of way.”
Fennell describes talking to someone on the “other side” as talking to someone who has complete forgiveness for themself and is able to see things as they were, without defensiveness.
“When we pass to the other side, it doesn’t matter so much what our life was like here. We have an incredible amount of compassion for ourselves and for others. We see exactly who and how it is that we affected the people that we left behind. But yet, if you can imagine, there is this complete forgiveness for yourself and for the life that you had. I think we understand the complexities of life on the other side, and why we did the things we did, the good and the bad.”
She said she’s had incredible experiences with the podcast — including moments when someone listened to an episode and recognized a spirit that showed up as a friend or family member. Learn more by checking out haileylowefennell.com and @houseguest_intheholycity on Instagram.
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