gmhTODAY 28 gmhTODAY Oct-Dec 2019 | Page 64

Michelle Paulson: Spiritual Medium Written By Jordan Rosenfeld T he first time Gilroy spiritual medium Michelle Paulson remembers seeing a spirit, she was two years old. A man repeatedly turned up in her bed- room. “He was very tall, always wore a pressed suit, with white hair and very stoic,” Paulson said. At first he was shy and simply hung back in the room. Eventually he revealed that he was there to protect her. “As an adult that’s a comforting thought, but as a child I thought, what’s wrong, what does he have to protect me from?” Paulson said. She ran to her mother who turned on all the lights and reassured Michelle that there was no man there. This perplexed young Michelle, who could still see him. 64 “That was the first time I realized I could see things others couldn’t,” she said. Years later, through photographs shown to her by her grandmother, she learned the man was her great grandfather. Like any child, she wanted to fit in and appear normal, so she didn’t share her experience with others. “I grew up [believing] if you heard voices there was something wrong with you.” She tried hard to suppress the spirits that she said continued to visit her, “but there wasn’t a place I went that I didn’t see them.” By the time she was a teenager, she said the spirits began to ask for her help and to tell their stories. Unsure GILROY • MORGAN HILL • SAN MARTIN FALL/HOLIDAY 2019 how to help, she continued to push these communications aside. Matthew’s Story It was years later, when Paulson was studying child development in graduate school, that something profound happened to change her mind. She was befriended by a woman named Katrina who, over time, shared about very close friends whose young son, Matthew, was diagnosed with leukemia. Paulson wanted to tell Katrina about her ability to sense and communicate with spirits but she still wasn’t confident in her ability. She wound up communicating the information by email. Then, one day, while folding laundry, gmhtoday.com