SWNS
A woman who can talk to the dead discovered her four-year-old son has the same talent - after she spotted him speaking to "no-one". Erica Russo, 36, discovered she has "psychic and intuitive abilities" in 2017 after getting a sense she needed to meditate - during which "spirits began to show up". The mum-of-two then started communicating with people who are no longer living - including her neighbour's dead dad - and used "intuition" to predict future events. Erica reckons everyone has the ability to connect to psychic intuition, but most people never do. She is able to communicate with the dead by entering a "meditative state" to summon spirit guides which can connect her to the spirit world. She may not always be able to converse with them - but can always feel a presence when she has connected to the spirit - and can let her client know they're being watched over and loved. She learned her youngest son Kyle, now nine, had already connected to the spirit world at the age of just four. While this doesn't happen often for Kyle, and he hasn't had many full conversations with spirits, he has no fear when he senses a presence - and Erica feels he is particularly "sensitive" to spiritual presences. Erica, a psychic medium and intuitive life and business mentor, from New Fairfield, Connecticut, US, said: "A few years back I looked out the window of my home office, Kyle was outside talking to someone - I thought he was speaking to my husband at first, but he wasn't. "Then I logged onto Zoom and did a reading with a client, and the spirit that came through was my client's deceased son. "When I spoke to Kyle outside afterwards, he said he had been speaking to a boy who was here to see his mum. "My jaw just dropped - that's when I found out my son was a medium." Erica said, like her son, she had always been "sensitive" growing up, but only started to listen to her "intuition" in her late twenties. When her intuition told her to meditate, she did and said spirits began to show up in her meditation. She said: "The first one was when I spoke to my neighbour's deceased dad, who I had never met. "I shrugged it off for a while because it was so peculiar, but my neighbour confirmed his name." She began taking classes, finding mentors and reading books about spirituality and psychic phenomena. She said: "Hollywood portrays it to be very extravagant and it's not the case, everyone has felt the energy in some form. Everybody is psychic." She began offering readings to help others connect to their own psychic and intuitive abilities. Erica explains mediumship and psychic are two different things - with a medium connecting to someone in the spirit world, while being psychic is intuiting future events. But she feels they go hand in hand - where "a psychic perceives, a medium receives." Erica says on one occasion she sensed the presence of a friend who had passed away. Erica said: "I had to get an emergency tooth extraction and drove 45 minutes to the ER. "I was sat in the waiting room, and I had this 'download' come in that told me my friend was laid to rest close by. "I never went to his funeral, so I never knew, but I Googled his obituary, and his grave was just eight minutes from the hospital. "I went to find him to lay some flowers, but when I got there, I didn't know which grave was his out of about 1,000 there. "I stepped out the car and looked up at the sky and asked him to show me where he was, and I felt someone gently pushing my body towards a specific row of graves, then it stopped. The grave was right there. "When I saw it, I broke down in tears, it was like a miracle unfolding. Spirit is so incredibly intelligent." Erica spends most of her time mentoring people to hone their intuition - whether that's to become a medium themselves, or to help someone work through their limiting beliefs and overcome challenges. She believes it's her "life's purpose" to fulfil this role and mentor others to develop their spiritual awareness through online courses. A year-long mentorship course, with coaching programs, energy sessions unlimited access to Erica's advice costs $30k. Years of research have helped Erica's senses to become strong - and it seems at just a few years old, her son is just like her. While she feels all children are sensitive to spirit energy, some are more sensitive than others, and Kyle is very "highly attuned". She said as well as speaking to someone, Kyle has had nights where he has felt a "negative energy" in his room and been unable to sleep. Erica said he once had a dream that his grandmother had caught covid, and three days later, it happened. She said: "I know he's open to receiving psychic information. "I won't push him if he doesn't want to learn anything more about it, but I think he would be a great psychic medium one day." Kyle said: "I remember someone talking to me but nobody was there, so I just kept responding. It was really weird. "I wasn't really afraid because I didn't really believe in ghosts, I was just weirded out. "Before, I've felt like in my dreams people are talking to me but nobody is there - I hear voices and I talk to them but I'm not afraid."