Tragic Details Of Hollywood Medium's Tyler Henry

From John Edward in "Crossing Over" to Theresa Caputo in "Long Island Medium," an era of psychic mediums became a longstanding fixture in Hollywood. Out of all its television coverage, however, none was as popular as Tyler Henry. From child clairvoyant to Hollywood medium, it was clear Tyler Henry was a young talent in his field. Through landing his first major show at only 19 years old, Henry achieved several viral moments with various celebrities, like warning Megan Fox of her relationship problems with Brian Austin Green and helping Jaleel White connect with his former "Family Matters" cast member, Michelle Thomas.

Though the highs of his career were well-documented, the lows of his life were just as prominent. This made his success, in many ways, seem bittersweet, as his achievements never completely overtook the tragedies of his life. It was only to be expected as well, as being able to receive messages from those who've died likely took its toll on Henry's life in more ways than onlookers can imagine. Whether it be personal health issues that remained a strong part of his life since his birth, dark secrets revealed about his family, or merely the responsibility of informing other celebrities of certain circumstances to come, here are all of the tragic details about Hollywood medium, Tyler Henry.

Born on January 13, 1996, Tyler Henry didn't develop his gifts until he was around 10 years old. This discovery eventually led to a self-realized awakening, but given his young age, he didn't quite understand the extent of his psychic intuitions. His first psychic experience eventually opened the doors to future possibilities. At the time, however, it uncovered a family member's death shortly before it took place.

During his 2024 appearance on the "Howie Mandel Does Stuff" podcast, Henry explained that in his first psychic experience, he predicted his grandmother's death. "For me, it actually started when I was 10 years old. I had a premonition of my grandmother's death," he said. "And at the time, I didn't recognize that as an ability." During his appearance on "Dinner's on Me with Jesse Tyler Ferguson" in 2024, Henry recalled his uncomfortable attempt at explaining this intuition to his mother. Shortly after, his premonitions were confirmed as his father was the one to unveil the horrible news. "I was just rambling on like a crazy person all for my mom's phone to ring, and my dad be on the other end, and he actually shared that he had watched my grandmother die in front of him, and that's why he was calling, to give us the news," he explained. "So, it was very chaotic. It all happened so fast, but that was my first introduction into something different."

Through learning about his gifts, Tyler Henry was confused about what this meant for his entire life. While it may have been cool to show his superpower to his childhood friends, his community within the San Joaquin Valley wasn't accepting of his clairvoyance. In a 2016 interview with Your Teen, Henry noted that he felt socially isolated from his peers as a child. "Middle school was particularly difficult because I was coming to an understanding not only of my ability, but the fact that I was different, which I think so many people can relate to ... and for me, that was a whole process where I had to really find an acceptance and, as many people can relate, that can be difficult when people are bullying you or scrutinizing you," he explained.

Henry's experience wouldn't improve in high school, as he had the same issues he had in middle school. He also dealt with adversity from the religious community he grew up in, who all had mixed opinions on his psychic abilities. During Henry's appearance on "Wrong Turns with Jameela Jamil" in 2022, he spoke candidly about how some people deemed his abilities to be a sign of something nefarious, as it went against their Christian beliefs. "I grew up in a very conservative Christian community. So some people thought what I do or did was a gift," he said. "Other people felt like it was the devil."

Since Tyler Henry learned about his ability to communicate with those who died at an early age, he's had a different outlook on death than most kids had growing up. While most could acknowledge it merely as a concept, Henry had firsthand experience not only interpreting death but also accepting it. This, however, didn't mean he didn't face his own fair share of grief. Aside from first coming to terms with his grandmother's death after receiving his first psychic intuition, another premonition came in a devastating turn of events that saw him lose his first love.

During his appearance on "The High Life" with Ricki Lake, Henry spoke about his experience with grief through losing his close friend, Terry, to brain cancer at a young age (via Facebook). "He was my first love. He was somebody that I deeply admired. He was my best friend, and he had dealt with childhood brain cancer, and in our mid-teens, I had a very strong impression one day that his cancer was going to come back, and that he would not live to see full adulthood," Henry explained. "And he passed away years later." Despite his ever-looming reality, Henry admitted to not properly dealing with his death, given his psychic intuitions. "It's still hard to talk about, but I knew and I cut him out of my life because I couldn't cope with what I knew to be true," he stated.

As a child, Tyler Henry spent most of his life coming to terms with his psychic ability. Given the adversity he faced during that time, it surely wasn't an easy task for him to fulfill. However, that was also coupled with his knowingness toward his sexuality, which he came to terms with from a very young age. While giving a reading to Brad Goreski — who also identifies as a gay man — on "Hollywood Medium with Tyler Henry" in 2023, the two shared their coming-out stories, in which Henry noted that he had to do so multiple times. This was partly due to his mother not believing in him being gay. "It's interesting. My mom was a lot more supportive of the medium thing," he explained. "When people asked, 'Tyler, when did you come out?' I always say, 'I came out about 20 times,' because I'd be like, 'Mom, I'm gay!' And she's like, 'No, you're not.'"

Despite the light-hearted comments surrounding this realization, Henry suggested that this was an ongoing issue whenever it came to his sexuality. Although his mom eventually accepted his sexual orientation, he later described his coming out on "The Number with Darren Kennedy" in 2024 as a secret that kept getting slammed back into the closet. "It was a lot of, you know, having to repeat, like 'I swear I'm gay. I really don't want to have to prove it to you," he quipped.

As someone who was born three months premature, Tyler Henry has had his fair share of health issues. This inevitably caused Henry to have a near-death experience shortly after his 18th birthday. During his appearance on "The Doctors" in 2016, Henry explained how an ongoing headache led to him having an emergency brain operation. From initially telling his mom that he thinks his "brain is swelling," Henry was later hospitalized, where doctors confirmed what was going on. "Shortly thereafter, I was hospitalized with hydrocephalus due to an arachnoid brain cyst that had basically caused the pressure in my brain to really increase, and the cerebral spinal fluid wasn't able to go through," he explained. "So, I was put into emergency brain surgery, which I thankfully recovered from really quickly."

According to a 2023 Instagram post reminiscing about his recovery, Henry stated that this was a "mass" he was "born with." What was assumed to be a solved issue later became a lifelong ailment that Henry never fully recovered from. In May 2025, he took to Instagram to share that he had yet another brain surgery, only this time for a colloid tumor that was close to the center of his brain. "This isn't my first rodeo with this, and I have so much to be thankful for. I'll see y'all very soon with lots of thought-provoking subjects and, of course, readings," he wrote. "Thank you all so much for your support."

Given Tyler Henry's premonitions regarding those he was close to, it was only expected that he would undergo a similar process once he began giving readings to celebrities on his various shows. One of the untold truths about Tyler Henry's TV shows is his overarching responsibility to relay specific messages. One of which saw him warn Ricki Lake on his Netflix series, "Live From the Other Side with Tyler Henry," that she would lose close possessions to a natural disaster in 2024. By January 11, 2025, Lake took to Instagram to share that her house had burned down, and that Henry informed her of this ahead of time. The talk-show host was one of many celebrities who lost their homes in the LA wildfires. "The great Tyler Henry called it!" she wrote. "Less than three months ago, on October 15th, 2024, Ross and I were on Tyler's show, and guys, he saw the fire."

The most polarizing of his predictions came years prior, however, when he warned Alan Thicke — who was initially a skeptic — to have his heart checked months before he died of a heart attack in 2016. During his 2024 appearance on "Dinner's On Me with Jesse Tyler Ferguson," Henry spoke about the aftermath of the unfortunate occurrence, stating that he even received messages from the late "Growing Pains" actor years after his demise. "He has came through. Yes, I've heard, 'Tyler!'" he said, referring to his spiritual interactions with Thicke. "I'm like, 'Oh! Alan! What did I do?'"

As a medium, Tyler Henry faced a plethora of adversity throughout his career. Given the overall mystery about his practice, fans — like Alan Thicke and the infamous Boy George — grew to be skeptical of Henry's legitimacy as a psychic. This became largely evident through a Reddit post made shortly after Tyler Henry released "Life After Death with Tyler Henry" giving more insight into his life as a Hollywood medium. While criticizing Netflix for giving him his own series, the user went on to describe Henry as someone who "goes around exploiting people's grief" and suggested that he is milking the aesthetic of a psychic to make money. The same was said about his "Live From the Other Side" series, where Henry offered real-time readings on stage in front of a live audience. Skeptical Inquirer blasted the series for its fabricated reactions and its malpractice of "hot readings."

Skepticism always played a part in Henry's career, which makes it all the more bittersweet to see that it hasn't changed much over the years. Nonetheless, Henry admitted to "Larry King Now" in 2018 that he quickly accepted this aspect of his career. "A big thing for me when I got into this when I was 19 years old, I knew I was going to face a lot of criticism, and a lot of people who had predetermined ideas of what a medium was," he said. "And for me, my goal has really been to kind of redefine that."

Given Tyler Henry's experience with those who've departed, on occasion, he's reflected on life itself. As someone who's dealt with their fair share of health issues in the past, it's understandable for Henry to be more cognizant of his lifestyle than most would. This was especially true while living through the pandemic in 2020, which had its own surprising effects on our health. For Henry, this was a year in which he had another health scare that required immediate surgery.

During his 2022 interview with Out In Jersey, Henry fielded questions about his book "Here & Hereafter: How Wisdom from the Departed Can Transform Your Life Now." Through this, Henry unveiled that the conception of the book was formed while he was recovering from a collapsed lung. "Actually, a month before the pandemic, my lung collapsed," he said. "I nearly died, I had to undergo emergency surgery, and I was in the hospital for three weeks." Though something beautiful came out of the unfortunate circumstance, Henry hinted at what potentially caused this to happen. "We really suspect I had Covid-19 in late 2019. We all became ill in my home. I was sick in a way I have never been sick before. ... When they opened me up, they discovered my lungs were like Swiss cheese, I had air leaks, and it was very difficult to re-inflate my lung," he explained. "This is not my first close call with death."

With an extensive amount of work that goes into maintaining a life within the public eye, it's safe to assume that Tyler Henry's stardom has its fair share of negative effects on his personal life. Alongside juggling the ever-growing criticism of skeptics, whether it be through reviews of his television pursuits or personal digs at his moral compass, Henry has carried the weight of being a celebrity medium with poise. This isn't to say, however, that he doesn't have his fair share of struggles, as ahead of the release of his docuseries, "Life After Death with Tyler Henry," Henry gave fans some insight into how taxing being a medium is when you're trying to lead a relatively normal life.

Given his ability to receive messages from those who departed, Henry's halfway existence within the spiritual plane has essentially aged him in real time. In 2022, Henry told Tudum that he had no real way of stopping these spiritual interactions completely; he could only turn them up or tune them out. As a result, Henry has to find ways to realistically cope with the various spiritual inclinations he has each day. "I have to create some degree of compartmentalization, so I don't take all those feelings and emotions as my own," he said. "It's a balancing act."

The release of "Life After Death with Tyler Henry" saw Hollywood's favorite medium unveil aspects of his life that he hadn't before. Alongside his routine readings, anecdotes of his family's history were unveiled, all thanks to an at-home DNA test. Through this, his mother, Theresa Koelewyn, confirmed a horrific secret about who she presumed to be her mother and Henry's grandmother, Stella Guidry Nestle.

At a young age, Henry's mother was stolen by Nestle without her knowing. Growing up, Nestle was said to be abusive, and by the time Koelewyn was 12, Nestle was convicted to two life terms in prison for torturing and murdering two people. In a joint interview with Today in 2022, Koelewyn admitted her confusion unpacking these secrets of her guardian growing up, but expressed gratitude that they learned Henry wasn't related to Nestle in any way. "It made me happy that Tyler doesn't have a grandmother who's a murderer," she said. As for her biological family, Henry told Jesse Tyler Ferguson on "Dinner's on Me" that Koelewyn didn't build a relationship with them until she was in her 50s. His biological grandmother passed away in 2001, which meant he never got to have a relationship with her either. When asked whether he was able to communicate with her in the spiritual planes, Henry responded, "I never felt her come through or much of anything."