Imagine being a 10-year-old kid and waking up in the middle of the night with a sudden feeling that your sick grandmother is going to die (like, now). For Tyler Henry, who turned 20 just days ago (Jan. 13th to be exact), that was his first introduction to his gift. Henry is the subject of E!’s new entertaining series Hollywood Medium With Tyler Henry, premiering Sunday, Jan. 24 at 10pmET/PT. Cameras follow him on some very personal readings with celebrities like Jaime Pressly, Monica Potter, Boy George, WWE Diva Natalya, Margaret Cho and Tom Arnold. Here we question him a bit more on his talents.
I always tell people that Hollywood has a different version of psychic abilities and that entire realm, so for me it wasn’t really like The Sixth Sense. I wasn’t walking around seeing dead people. I would find that I would actually have dreams of people who would come through, and then I would interact with people the following day. We’d find that there were things that would line up in my dreams to what I would tell them about their loved ones. And so I was getting visitations from people on the other side in my dreams, and it just kind of evolved into that, and then now, where I do my readings. I kind of really just get images, and little impressions that I basically have to put together, and interpret, and deliver to my client.
Can you shut it off? I mean, if you’re walking down the street, do you get these visualizations?
Pretty much everywhere I go I’m picking up on something, but I also kind of say that it takes me to really focus on one particular point to really get an idea of where the information fits.
Do you hear things like, “Hey Tyler, this is Grandma June”?
I’m primarily clairvoyant, so clairvoyance is basically the ability to see things, so just images and visual impressions. I’m not so much clairaudient, so I don’t really pick up on voices or hear voices much. I really focus on the message that comes through visually. I definitely don’t have people coming through on a constant basis, telling me who they are and what their name is and whatnot, but I do pick up on the visual impressions, and when I sit with a person, I get an idea of who their loved one is based on the images that I see.
I thought it was amazing that you blindly go to celebrity houses and sometimes you don’t even know who they are once you meet them. Awkward?
It definitely is interesting. It’s very tense, but I love that aspect of it. I love the surprise.
You purposely don’t want to know information about your clients. Can you explain why?
I really believe that it’s important to know as little as possible about clients. … I never want to become biased with preconceived ideas or, you know, really go into it knowing anything. My goal is to go into it completely blank and rely exclusively on my intuition, because my intuition comes through very, very clearly, and so for me, I really have to trust it, and that’s where the accuracy lies.