Afterlife hotline. Inside the life of a Kiwi psychic medium.

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With a two-year waiting list, Rangiora-based Jacqueline Mitchell is one of New Zealand’s most in-demand psychic mediums. She talks to deputy editor Tamara Pitelen about life with dead people.

I have a ghost in my house. This didn’t come as a big shock, to be honest. Weird things have been happening since we bought the property in 2022. Loud noises in the dead of night, doors and windows opening that we knew we’d shut, hearing voices calling our names from empty rooms, and my husband says he has seen a male figure out the corner of his eye. So, when Christchurch psychic medium Jacqueline Mitchell told me I had a ‘spirit resident’, during the interview for this story, I was more ‘ah yes’ than ‘agghh, what?!’

Our house was constructed by a builder in the 1970s for his own family. He died there, and we bought it from his widow when she moved into a retirement home. That original builder is very fond of the property and would like to hang out there still, if it’s okay with us.

“He’s a real salt-of-the-earth kind of guy, and he’s really content to be there, if you’re not bothered by him. He likes the renovations you’re doing. Mostly, he likes to potter in the garden and outside in his workshop. He’s telling me he hopes you don’t mind him being there.” I tell her to assure him that we don’t mind at all.

Based out of Rangiora, Jacqueline is one of New Zealand’s most in-demand mediums, in other words, someone who talks to dead people.
In 15 years of working full-time, she’s never advertised, yet she recently had to stop accepting new clients because her waiting list is two years long.

Calling herself “the telephone between those on the earth plane and their loved ones in the spiritual realm,” Jacqueline appears to be a hotline. Before I’ve even managed to turn my voice recorder on, she’s reading the colours in my aura, passing on messages from both my grandmothers, and describing my husband, his personality and his work worries. She also describes my mother to a tee and tells me to pass on a message to her from my grandmother.

It’s an extraordinary experience. Within minutes of meeting her for the first time, this total stranger is telling me details of my life and describing my loved ones to me with stunning accuracy. For Jacqueline, though, this is just another day in the office.

Born into spirit

Jacqueline has been seeing, hearing and sensing spirits for as long as she can remember. As a little girl of three, she recalls being comforted at night by a pair of disembodied blue arms.

“My mum was really busy with two sets of twins under three, so I didn’t always feel supported,” she says. “When I was upset, these beautiful blue arms that ended at the elbows would come at night and cuddle me. It was really lovely. I always felt calm.”

Hailing from a line of Romany gypsies, Jacqueline’s family is steeped in psychic ability. “When you put a whole lot of psychic people together, you get a lot of psychic activity. We’re like moths to a flame,” she says.

Her grandmother’s home was famously “active,” the cupboards swinging open overnight and cutlery drawers pulled out by unseen hands. “She had a one-legged spirit man who hopped up and down the hallway quite a lot,” Jacqueline adds matter-of-factly. “She just accepted it. That was our normal.”

Still, Jacqueline didn’t start working as a medium until her forties, even though her father had taken her to the local spiritual church many years earlier and she had sat in a weekly psychic development circle. For years, though, she led an “ordinary” life, working as an accountant and raising her children. It was personal tragedy – the sudden death of her beloved father – that pushed her into a deeper spiritual practice.

“When my dad died in a plane crash over Foveaux Strait in 1998, there were no goodbyes,” she says. “He was my best mate. I was only 30. I went to a medium because I desperately needed to know he was okay. The messages she gave me were muddled, and while I sat there, balling my eyes out, she said ‘okay, times up.’ I remember leaving that reading utterly distraught and thinking, ‘If I ever do this work, I’m going to do it differently. If I can help people reconnect with their loved ones and give them tools to manage their grief, give them closure, then that’s what I’ll do.’”

After her father’s death, he visited her in a dream and told her that one day, she would be asked to work here on Earth for the spirit realm. That call eventually came, and Jacqueline committed to working full-time as a medium.

Helping the living, listening to the dead

Jacqueline’s clients come to her for all sorts of reasons. “Some people want to talk to their dad and find out why he was so mean to them when he was alive. Others had a fabulous relationship with their mum and just miss her. Or they’ve lost a brother in an accident. There’s a million reasons people come.”

One of her most touching current cases involves a man whose wife is living with advanced dementia. “He comes to me every six months to talk to her,” Jacqueline says. “She’s already three-quarters transitioned out of her body. Through me, she tells him what kind of chocolate biscuits she wants, and which staff members are annoying her. It’s gorgeous. It gives him comfort, even as he’s grieving the loss of her.”

Jacqueline also works with families who’ve lost loved ones to suicide, which is a deeply personal calling since her own nephew died by suicide at 19. “Reconnecting him with his family has been healing,” she says. “I’ve got a soft spot for helping people through that kind of loss.”

Clearing houses, clearing energy

For a period, Jacqueline specialised in house clearings, which is removing disruptive or negative energy from homes. “Houses are sponges,” she explains. “We live in them and ooze all our emotions into them.”

Sometimes the issue is simply a “resident spirit” who doesn’t bother anyone. Other times, especially where there’s been mental illness or trauma, the energy attracts “opportunistic darkness”– knocking, banging, flashing lights. “The worst I’ve seen here in New Zealand isn’t anything like it’s shown in the movie The Conjuring,” she laughs, “but there are still some pretty intense situations.”

The West Coast, she says, has particularly heavy energy, often tied to the land itself. “I did one case where a man had died on the property, and it was being subdivided. The people in the existing house were having objects thrown around. In those cases, you listen to the spirit, set boundaries, and if necessary, pass them over. Sometimes you bring in a Māori blessing as well. It’s about resetting the energy.”

New Zealand’s haunted spaces

According to Jacqueline, New Zealand is a deeply spiritual place. “We have land keepers, ancestral Māori guardians, watching over us. Before the earthquakes, people saw them in certain areas, creating activity as a warning that people would need to move.”

As for Christchurch’s most haunted spots? She cites Riccarton House, the Sign of the Kiwi, the Arts Centre (“it’s amazing at night, look in the windows”), and Moorhouse Ave, where the old train station used to be. “The older the property, the more energy it holds,” she says.

“Years ago, they used to run haunted tours at the The Arts Centre Te Matatiki Toi Ora. I went on one where this lovely little man in spirit followed me around the whole time. He kept saying to me ‘isn’t this interesting?’ He was from about 1910, I think, and he was just enjoying the tour.”

While Jacqueline’s appointment book is closed as she works on shortening her two-year waiting list, she does give group readings at the Papanui Spiritual Centre, giving short messages to as many people in the audience as possible.

As for my resident spirit, the builder who once lived in our house, we quite like having him around.