James Van Praagh (1998 [2009, 2012]) Talking to Heaven

James Van Praagh (1998 [2009, 2012]) Talking to Heaven

Living with the Dead (Talking to Heaven) (2002), screenwriter John Pielmeier, Director Stephen Gyllenhaal, starring Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen.

I watched Living with the Dead while scrolling through Prime. It’s based on James Van Praagh’s best-selling memoir. But, of course, instead of a wee baldy fat guy with pretension of being a screenwriter, Ted Danson (Cheers) plays James Van Praagh. Mary Steenburgen plays the would-be love interest, who is also a cynical detective, willing to be wooed.

Bringing up the bodies. They come together to track down a serial killer of children.

It begins conventionally enough.  James Van Praagh’s business is going bankrupt. His mum’s dying. His dad (Jack Palance) wants him to move back into the family home (just for a little while).

Van Praagh thinks back to when he was a kid. In his book, he claims most kids as psychic. Filled with more feelings than facts.

But when he tells his teacher, Mrs Weinlick, ‘John was hit by a car, but he’s okay.’

She ran screaming from the classroom. John was her son. And he was hit by a car. And he was OK.

It was a Catholic school. He remembered being clattered in the ear by a nun so hard his head rang. Nothing unusual in that. His mum wanted him to go to seminary school to train to be a priest. He went and remembered being in the presence of God, but it was within him. Within us all. All matters matter. Etheric matters most of all.  

In his universe karmic laws apply. We have a set time on this planet. We agree to it beforehand to learn the lessons of life. Suicide is morally wrong. As is capital punishment.  But also it doesn’t work. We relive our last days or haunt lower vibration levels until our time is up.    

Van Praagh tells grieving parents that their son didn’t commit suicide as they thought and were told by the police. His friend’s pal killed him over a drug’s deal that went bust. Money owed. He took his watch and hid it in a garage.

In the mini-series, the killer is a police snitch who killed an old man and stole his watch. Steenbergun to humour him, and his elderly client’s wife, goes to the garage and finds the watch and nabs the killer.

A nice wee meet cute.

After that screenwriter John Pielmeier goes for the serial-killer angle. Any basis on reality isn’t any kind of reality I know. But that reality isn’t very broad. She’s pretty enough. And it’s entertaining enough if you switch your brain off. I can’t say I’ve Talked to Heaven, but I have shouted at the telly when Celtic are playing, especially if they’re playing that other lot, whose name should not be said aloud. Billed as a True Story. Hmmmmmmmmmmmm.  Read on.  

Notes.

Marcus Aurelius: Our Inward Power:

Our inward power, when it obeys nature, reacts to events by accommodating itself to what it faces, to what is possible. It needs no specific material. It pursues its own aims as circumstances allow; it turns obstacles into fuel. As a fire overwhelms what would have quenched a lamp, what's thrown on top of the conflagration is absorbed, consumed by it, and makes it still burn higher.