Fans of the Monday night hit NBC television series Medium will love the book by the real life medium that inspired the series. Don’t Kiss Them Good-bye by Allison Dubois (Simon & Schuster, 2004) tells the true story of this beautiful young woman with an exceptional gift.

Born in 1972 in Phoenix, Arizona, Allison Dubois first experienced her “gift” for communication with the dead at age six when her deceased great-grandfather brought her a message for her mother. The book then details the development of this ability and the many fascinating experiences and encounters that followed up to the present. Fans of the television series Medium will be delighted to discover that the show does indeed reflect numerous truths about Allison and her family life.

Dr. Gary E. Schwartz, PhD, professor of psychology, medicine, neurology, psychiatry and surgery and director of the Human Energy Systems Laboratory at the University of Arizona, wrote the Foreword to this book. Schwartz has tested the accuracy and integrity of Allison’s psychic gifts in his laboratory. Dr. Schwartz has worked closely with a number of notable psychic mediums in his studies of the survival of consciousness after death. He wrote about these studies in his books, The Living Energy Universe (Hampton Roads Publishing Co., 1999) and The Afterlife Experiments (Pocket Books, 2002), as well as in over 400 scientific papers. Schwartz confirms that Allison Dubois is “committed to truth.”

Allison establishes a goal for her book in her introduction. She wants readers “to better understand where psychics and mediums come from and what kinds of potential (they) have.” In this she is clearly successful throughout this book. The author avoids all possible “woo-woo” and presents the whole idea and experience of mediumship objectively and in a very down-to-earth style. She warns readers upfront that there are “con artists out there.” Her goal is to help readers understand the “psychic” as something natural and positive. She always refers to it as “the gift.”

She describes her childhood years as quite ordinary in the usual sense, even while her “gifts” manifested at various times, sometimes in ways she didn’t understand. She tried throughout her youth to convince herself that she was normal. She met her husband Joe in college and he has been highly supportive to her. This characteristic shows up in the television series. Viewers will be pleased to know the characterization is accurate. Allison’s husband, Joe, an aerospace engineer, even wrote a chapter in her book about what it is like to “love a medium.” He reports that she is “different” and has “vivid recall” about everything. She never gets lost at the mall or amusement parks and is always able to find him! His words show that while he is often amazed and sometimes perplexed by Allison’s gift, he accepts it and her unconditionally and with good humor.

Allison graduated from Arizona State University with a B.A. in political science and a minor in history. She was studying law when she began to work with the Phoenix District Attorney’s office, as depicted in the television series.

Whereas this book is very fast-paced and easy to read, it is clear that it has a purpose. In each chapter Allison has something to share that she hopes will be helpful to readers. For example, she tells the story of her father’s last two years of life and then his death. She did everything possible to help keep him alive, but he died. From this she learned that “God decides when it’s time for our souls to move forward, when it’s time to leave this life.” So she wrote this chapter, with other examples included, because “so many people out there beat themselves up over the death of a loved one.” As she points out, “Sometimes it’s just not in our hands.”

In a gripping chapter, Allison reports how she was almost snatched by two men when she was eleven. This event, foiled by a voice in her ear that shouted, “Go! Take off!” led her to a life plan “to be a prosecuting attorney... (and to punish) people who hurt children.” Whereas she didn’t actually become the attorney, her life path has placed her in the position where she can be of great assistance to those prosecutors as well as to help find missing children. Today, much as the television series depicts, she works on missing person cases, profiles potential jurors for law enforcement and assists friends and families of murdered people. Her psychic gift lets her “access both the victims’ and the perpetrators’ minds.”

Allison tells us that there are “plenty of competent psychic profilers out there who assist law enforcement every day.” But “law enforcement is also hesitant to acknowledge our role because of the controversy surrounding psychics.” Nevertheless, Allison continues with this work although it is “emotionally draining” as well as “thankless,” because she wants “to make a difference.” She doesn’t want to “squander” her gift.

Part of her purpose for writing this book is to speak to other psychics, to “provide some guidelines.” For example, Allison is appalled by psychics who provide gory details about kidnappings and murders, however accurate, that hurt loved ones, details that aren’t pertinent to the case or to finding the perpetrator. She is also speaking to loved ones of missing persons and law enforcement officials, urging them to be more open to information from “legitimate, certified psychics.”

A delightful chapter, called Kindergarten Mediums describes the psychic gifts of Allison and Joe Dubois’ three daughters. In this chapter Allison gives much heartfelt and practical advice to parents of children who exhibit such gifts. The usual approach of most parents is to deny or disregard the child’s psychic abilities or even to be afraid of them. Allison’s approach is totally different. She encourages the girls to practice their skills with simple, fun games, such as finding lost items. This, she says, is “critical in preventing a child from closing her mind to her gift.” And quite truthfully, Allison reminds readers that “the ability to locate objects is one of the most useful of all psychic tools.”

Her advice regarding children with psychic gifts also applies to adults. She explains that she asks her guides to monitor the energy around her children and also she teaches her children how to tell the energy to leave if it’s not welcome. She notes how sensitive people, old and young, can feel discomfort from “absorbing too much energy all at once.” Many readers may be able to relate to this point having felt discomfort in big crowds, such as at football games or in jam-packed malls at holiday times. Nearly everyone, especially more sensitive human beings, need to “establish boundaries” to be comfortable. She discusses this issue with helpful insights for all readers. Importantly, she includes a list of criteria “to determine a child’s abilities.” These criteria apply both to children with psychic gifts as well as those who are just sensitive to their surroundings. This is helpful information for all parents to know.

Another very insightful chapter is called Hormones and Teen Psychics. She notes that “psychic teenagers may find adolescence even more difficult than others do.” She confesses how, not knowing better, she used alcohol in her teens to “temporarily soften the voices from the other side.” As in the previous chapter, Allison has good advice for both parents of teens and teens themselves who manifest some psychic “gifts.” Teens don’t have enough life experience and maturity to know how to handle such gifts or what is expected of them. Allison says, “The very first thing kids need to know is that the responsibility to save the world does not rest on their shoulders.” Teens also “need to ask their guides to not give them more than they can handle.” And parents are told to “ask your own guides to watch over your children.” That is what Allison does.

Allison Dubois, like many recognized legitimate psychic mediums, struggled through her early years because she “had no role models.” One very surprising statement she makes is: “I want to let all people know there are plenty of people in business suits with college degrees who possess psychic and mediumship abilities.” It’s clear that a major objective for Allison Dubois is to lift the reality of psychic mediumship out of the old stereotypes of gypsy fortunetellers in dark rooms down some side street. This book certainly helps do that work. As she says at one point in her book, “I hate the stereotypes associated with (being a psychic) and the image people have of a frizzy-haired, talon-fingered, incense burning weirdo.”

Another chapter, entitled Empathy is an especially useful one for everyone who works in the general areas of social services: education, medicine, law enforcement or social service itself. This would also include volunteers in those areas. Allison notes, “When people with heightened sensitivity stand next to sick people, we feel their illness.” Even people who don’t manifest a “psychic gift” can be sensitive to such things. Allison provides advice, especially for medical personnel or volunteers who work with dying patients. And she urges law enforcement people to “take time for yourself to focus on happy, positive things” in order to balance “all the negative energy” they are around all the time.

In one of the longer chapters in the book, Allison goes into considerable depth in discussing her “gift” and how this has affected her life. Clearly, once again, her purpose is to enlighten the rest of us about people who are psychic. She explains the challenges and blessings that come with the gift. She especially demonstrates her humanness. This is often reflected in the television series in her concern about the accuracy and truth of what she sees or senses. Although in the book she says she “almost never dreams,” the show uses the tool of dreams to reveal what she sees. But Allison is always concerned because she must correctly decipher any vision. She constantly holds herself to a high standard, while at the same time acknowledging that “nobody is 100 percent all of the time.”

The final chapter deals further with Allison’s concern about her ability to be accurate. For verification she went to Dr. Gary Schwartz, director of the Human Energy Systems Laboratory at the University of Arizona in Tucson. Schwartz is “known worldwide for his academic research on life after death. He also wrote the “Foreword” to Allison’s book (see earlier discussion). Allison says she wanted “to get some third party, objective validation from science... a test to gauge my ability.” Dr. Schwartz was almost immediately impressed with Allison’s ability to connect with a recently deceased colleague of Schwartz’s: Susy Smith. He began to set up experiments to use Allison as one of his research mediums. She notes that “being a research medium has made me stronger and has taught me endless life lessons.”

Allison makes only brief mention of one of the Schwartz lab experiments that involved a “blind” reading of the famous author-lecturer, Dr. Deepak Chopra. In this blind reading, done by phone, the sitter (Chopra) and the mediums (Allison Dubois and Laurie Campbell) were all in separate locales. The mediums did not know the identify of the sitter, nor hear the sitter’s voice and the sessions were digitally videotaped. Allison’s report of this reading involves mostly her amazement when she discovered that she had “read” for Dr. Chopra and that her information was later scored at approximately 80 percent accuracy. Readers who would like more detailed information about the process and scoring can get this from a paper available on the website: http://veritas.arizona.edu/chopra.htm.

Don’t Kiss Them Good-bye by Allison Dubois is an informative and entertaining autobiographical work. Easy to read, it is perfect for summertime reading. Allison also has a web page where you can check out her beautiful appearance. (www.alisondubois.com) Some current data on the website notes that she is booked for three years, has a waiting list of 3000 and a backlog of 200 murder cases to work on. Allison Dubois is indeed a very interesting and gifted person.

Gayl Woityra, a retired high school English and Humanities teacher, now resides in Arizona where she continues to pursue her eclectic metaphysical studies in consciousness, the Ageless Wisdom, astrology, flower essences, music, color and alternative medicine.