Questions to Ask a Psychic Medium About Loved Ones Who Have Passed Away and What They Want to Say to Me About My Life and What They Want Me to Know About Their Death
Questions for a reading where what you need to ask about is the death itself: the last hours, whether they suffered, whether they were alone, and who might be blamed. Includes the records and the people who can answer factual questions that a reading cannot.
The questions
Open any question for the note
I want to ask about how they died. Will you tell me if that is not something you speak to?
Why ask it
Some practitioners decline this territory, and saying so plainly is a mark of care rather than a limitation. Asking first means you are not putting the hardest question of your life to someone who will improvise an answer.
Do you get anything about the circumstances, or only about the person?
Why ask it
The distinction is important. Impressions of a person are the ordinary material of a reading, while a statement about how a death happened is a factual claim, and factual claims can be checked against records but not against a session.
If I do not ask again, will you leave the subject of how they died alone?
Why ask it
Worth saying out loud if you have decided you want the person rather than the death. It puts the timing of the hardest part in your hands instead of the practitioner's, and you can always change your mind later in the hour.
What do you do if someone becomes very distressed during a session?
Why ask it
The answer tells you how much experience they have with this. Look for something practical: pausing, stopping, a glass of water, a way home, a suggestion of who to call. Anyone who has not thought about it should not be handling a death like yours.
Did they know what was happening?
Why ask it
One of the two questions almost every family brings. Whatever you are told here, the people who can actually speak to awareness at the end are the clinicians who were present, and many hospitals will meet a family to go through the final hours.
Were they frightened?
Why ask it
Expect to be told no, because that is both the kind answer and the one that costs nothing to give. Whether it is true is not something a reading can establish, so hold it as comfort rather than as a finding.
Did they suffer?
Why ask it
The other question everyone brings. It matters enough that it deserves a real answer, and the real answer lives in the medical notes, the palliative team's records, and where relevant the post-mortem report, all of which families can usually ask to see.
Were they alone, and did that matter to them?
Why ask it
This is often the sharpest guilt a family carries, especially where someone stepped out for ten minutes. Reassurance in a reading cannot be verified, and the nurse or carer who was present is the one person who actually knows.
Is there anything about the last few hours?
Why ask it
Left open like this, the reply is either specific or it is not, and you will know which immediately. Be prepared for details that do not match what you were told at the time, and take any conflict to the clinical team rather than resolving it alone.
Do they know we were trying to get there?
Why ask it
For families who arrived too late, or who could not be there at all, this is usually the whole reason for the appointment. Decide beforehand what you will do if the answer is not the one you need, because you cannot un-hear it.
Is there anything about the decision we had to make?
Why ask it
Withdrawing treatment, agreeing to a resuscitation order, choosing a hospice, calling an ambulance late. Families carry these for decades. No reading can tell you whether a clinical decision was right, and the treating team or a bereavement service can go through it properly.
Is there anything they would say to the person who found them?
Why ask it
Whoever found them is often carrying the worst of it, sometimes silently and sometimes for years. If that person is not you, think carefully about whether they want anything passed on before you offer it.
Is there anything about something we did not know at the time?
Why ask it
Families often do learn things afterwards, from records, a phone, or another relative. Anything that arrives here as new information should be taken to the source that could confirm it rather than kept as a private certainty.
Is there anyone they blame?
Why ask it
The most dangerous question on this page. Blame attributed to the person who died lands on the living, cannot be withdrawn, and cannot be established in this setting. If blame is offered unprompted, that is reason enough to end the session.
If they took their own life, is there anything about why?
Why ask it
Answers here tend to be either general and kind or actively harmful, and neither amounts to an explanation. Services specifically for suicide bereavement exist, and they are used to sitting with a question that has no clean answer.
Do they mind that we are still asking how they died?
Why ask it
Many families feel they should have stopped needing to know by now. There is no timetable for this, and the more useful thing to notice is whether the practitioner suggests you should let it go or that you should keep coming back.
Is there anything they would want us to know about the funeral or what we did afterwards?
Why ask it
You know what happened at the funeral and the practitioner does not, which makes this one of the few checkable questions available here. Notice whether an actual detail is described or whether you are told it was what they wanted.
Is there anything about this that you are unsure of?
Why ask it
An hour about someone's death is precisely where a practitioner should be willing to say they do not know. If everything arrives complete and confident, the confidence itself is worth treating as information about them.
Do you know of any bereavement services for this kind of death?
Why ask it
Sudden death, suicide, the death of a child, and deaths under investigation each have specialised support, often free. Someone who works around bereavement regularly should be able to name at least one, and it says something if they cannot.
What do I want to be true, and what will I do if I am told the opposite?
Why ask it
For yourself, before you go in. These are the questions you cannot un-ask, and an unwelcome answer from a stranger has a way of attaching itself permanently to your memory of the death.
Asking about a death
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Where facts about a death actually come from
- The clinicians who were there. Many hospitals and hospices will arrange a meeting for the family to go through the final days, weeks or months afterwards, and you can ask for it directly.
- The medical records. Next of kin can usually request them, and they contain the timings, the medication given, and what was observed.
- The post-mortem or autopsy report, and the coroner, medical examiner, or equivalent authority where you live, if the death was reported to them.
- For a death under investigation, the police officer assigned to the family, who is normally the person permitted to say what is known.
- Ambulance and emergency service records, which cover the part of the timeline that families most often never hear about.
Questions you cannot un-ask
Whether they suffered, whether they were frightened, whether they were alone, whether they blamed anyone: these are the questions people carry into a reading and the answers stay. Before you ask, decide what you will do if the answer is the one you were afraid of, and consider whether you would be able to set it aside knowing that a reading cannot establish any of it. It is entirely reasonable to attend a session, ask only about the person, and take the factual questions to the clinical team or the records instead. Nothing is lost by leaving a question outside the room and asking it somewhere it can be answered.
If the death was sudden, violent, or by suicide
- Be careful about detail. Descriptions of a death that were not part of what you already knew can become intrusive images that are hard to get rid of.
- If there is an active investigation or an inquest, nothing said in a reading has any standing in it, and repeating it to officials or relatives can complicate matters.
- Specialised support exists for suicide bereavement, for sudden death, and for the death of a child, usually at no cost and often run by people who have been through it.
- If you were the one who found them, that is its own injury and there is specific help for it. It is worth telling a doctor.
- Consider taking someone with you to the session, and having somewhere to go afterwards rather than driving home alone.
Guilt about not being there
A great many people are not in the room at the moment someone dies, including families who kept watch for weeks and stepped out once. Nurses and hospice staff will tell you how ordinary this is, and they are worth asking. A reassurance in a reading may help for a while, and it is not a substitute for hearing it from someone who was actually present, or from a bereavement counselor who can let you say the whole thing out loud more than once. If you are being told, or telling yourself, that you failed them, that belief deserves better attention than an hour with a stranger can give it.
Reasons to end a session
- Blame directed at you or at a named relative for the death.
- A claim that the person is trapped or unsettled because of how they died, followed by an offer to resolve it for a fee.
- Graphic detail you did not ask for.
- Statements about your own health presented as a message from them.
- Being told the death could have been prevented, in a setting that can establish nothing about it.
- Any suggestion that you must keep booking in order to keep them at peace.