EAST?LONGMEADOW – Looking to contact the spirit of your loved one or pet? Look no further than East Longmeadow when Psychic Spirit Medium and Paranormal Investigator Lisa Lanno comes to town for a two-hour group spirit connection group event on Oct. 16

The event is a benefit for the historic 1880s Norcross House at 89 Maple St., which will take place at the property.

Lanno, a resident of South Hadley, told Reminder Publications several years ago she investigated the house for paranormal activity and recorded the voices of what is believed to be the spirits of J. Franklin Norcross and his wife.  

“It’s up to you whether you believe in this or not,” she noted. “People who don’t – I’ll take them with me and say, ‘I’ll change your mind.’ The goal is to try to get somebody to pass over; to cross. And they’re perfectly content in their little house, so we leave them alone.”

The focus of the benefit spirit connection will not be on the Norcross House, Lanno said. This time around she will have a roomful of attendees to connect spirits with.

“Everybody does their job differently, including me,” she explained. “I tend to get, figuratively, my shoulder tapped on the day or two before.”

Lanno said once before a reading, she heard a male spirit whistling. She can’t stand the sound of whistling.

“He said, ‘I’m whistling when I paint the birdhouses,” Lanno said. “I said, ‘Well, stop painting, you’re driving me crazy.”

She explained that she takes notes about her paranormal experiences prior to an event and shares specific details about a spirit with attendees.

“Granted, I’m not always 100 percent right,” Lanno noted. “A true non-fraud is never 100 percent right. Is your doctor always 100 percent right? No. It’s the same with us. I may get a detail off or two.”

Once validations from audience members start to happen regarding a specific spirit, Lanno then passes on a message from the other side, she added.

The evening’s event will also feature a psychic question segment to help random audience members answer personal questions such as “when will my house sell?” and “when am I going to meet the right guy?” Lanno said.

“Everybody will be getting a free raffle ticket for that when they come in and I’ll also be giving off a full reading whether it’s anything they want.”

Lanno began practicing as a medium seven years ago at the age of 54.

“I always knew that I had some sort of abilities, but I didn’t know what it was,” she explained.

“You’re born a medium – I don’t try to teach people to be a medium. I will help people to increase their own abilities as far as intuition. If you have a gut feeling, then you have a psychic ability. Everybody has, but some of us have it at a more higher level,” she continued.

She said for most of her life, before she recognized her psychic and mediumship abilities, that she had a fear of ghosts.

“It was strictly by accident – it was my older daughter’s dear friend [who] committed suicide and I swore she was talking to me,” she explained. “I called my daughter and [I told her that] she kept showing me two pink blouses – one’s low-cut, one’s high-cut – and I felt like in my mind’s eye she got in my face and said, ‘Don’t let them put my hair back.’”

Lanno’s daughter was on her way to the funeral home to help with her friend’s make-up and hair, when she called, Lanno explained.

“In comes [her friend’s] mom with two blouses – they want to put her in the low-cut, but they were afraid the autopsy scars would show,” she said. “And then, when she asked to do her hair the mortician said, ‘There is no hair in the back, we had to do an autopsy cranial. We’re going to pull it back.’ And they ran out and got her extensions. I thought it was a one time thing and it just kept happening.”

Lanno’s husband passed away and with few means of financial support, she turned to mediumship and “the phone started ringing,” she explained.

Before she became a medium, Lanno worked as a children’s author, a secretary, and as a stay-at-home mom.

Messages from the Other Side with Lanno will take place from 7 to 9 p.m. and will include refreshments.

Tickets can be purchased online at www.LisaMLanno.com through the website’s event page or by sending a check to Norcross House, P.O. Box 532, East Longmeadow, MA, 01028.

For more information about the Norcross House visit www.norcrosscenter.org.