Who Really Is Theresa Caputo? Meet The Woman Behind Long Island Medium

If you've ever seen an episode of the hit TLC show "Long Island Medium," then you're well aware of Theresa Caputo. She's the big-haired, nail-clicking psychic who claims to be able to speak with "Spirit," a sort of paranormal energy that she says gives her messages from the beyond. The show is highly entertaining, featuring numerous readings by the brash medium, whose personality is as big as her hair ... and that's not to even mention the thickest Long Island accent you've ever heard.

The truth about Theresa Caputo, however, is far more complex than the show admits. Between "Long Island Medium" and her Lifetime series "Theresa Caputo: Raising Spirits," she's been on television for a long time, but it seems that there are plenty of questions about whether her abilities are real or are all a hoax. She's found herself in trouble numerous times over, fighting criticism from skeptics and former clients alike; does she cheat, or is she really channeling something science cannot yet explain? Read on to learn more about who Theresa Caputo really is.

Theresa Caputo claims that she receives messages from Spirit — not "the spirits." That's her name for whatever force she claims to be channeling, which isn't exactly a ghostly apparition in the way some mediums claim to speak with the dead. "Spirit mostly speaks to me through a sixth sense — a kind of feeling and knowing," she explains on her website. "When I get information, it feels like very strong intuition, or recall. Spirit also uses a vocabulary of signs and symbols that they show me during a reading." She claims to have decoded those symbols over time, piecing together her readings through the feelings she gets from the beyond.

According to Caputo, it's always been that way. "I didn't realize I was different," she insisted to the Daily Mail. "I've been seeing and sensing spirits since I was 4, so for me it was normal to see someone standing at the foot of my bed at night or talking to me and there was no one else in the room." Ah, so Spirit does sometimes take the shape of an actual person who has passed ... curious!

Before Theresa Caputo could use her apparent gift to help other people, she needed to learn to control what she was feeling. "I could barely leave my house because of my anxiety. I would walk into a building and just feel everything in there. I'd be walking through a store and feel like someone was choking me, and I didn't understand what it was," she explained to 068 Magazine. "The second I removed myself from those situations is when I felt better."

A spiritual healer helped her redirect her gift. On an episode of "Long Island Medium," she confessed, "I went for five years, back and forth from the spiritual classes and for going for the healings, 'cause it took me a long time to accept what it was."

Everything came together after a national tragedy. In the same 068 Magazine interview, she said the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, changed everything. "I had a spiritual experience, where I was told that this was my soul's journey; that I had the gift to be able to give peace to people and be able to move on after the loss of a loved one," she claimed, noting that national tragedies make people more open to spirituality. "In that moment, I put my gift in God's hands, and said, 'If this is my soul's purpose, you open every door for me and I will walk through with my gift.'"

As you may be able to tell from Theresa Caputo's 068 Magazine interview, in which she's quoted as saying, "I put my gift in God's hands," she considers herself to be a very religious woman. Typically, the Catholic Church doesn't like to acknowledge the existence of Spirit, who can speak to people after death, so Caputo has had to figure out her own place in a religion that doesn't necessarily trust what she does with her life.

"I'm a practicing Catholic, and even if [the church] doesn't agree with what I do, it takes my money every week!" she joked to Sarasota Magazine. After all, Caputo said, plenty of people pick and choose which parts of their religions they actually follow.

Along those lines, Caputo isn't sure whether she believes in heaven and hell as typically understood by Christianity. "A soul has never said to me, 'It's so hot down here!' But I've had a soul where I felt their energy, but couldn't hear it because it was locked up," she said. Instead of choosing to believe that person was being tormented for eternity, Caputo instead reasoned, "That means their spirit needed to grow."

Like many television-based mediums who came before her, Theresa Caputo also puts on a live stage show in which she says she reads messages from Spirit for members of her audience. However, perhaps because of her experience in television, she also makes sure everything is fun to watch on camera, just in case you don't get to hear from the dearly departed relative you were hoping to speak with. "I let Spirit guide me around the audience, and I will literally just stop and start channeling someone's loved one," she explained to 068 Magazine. "We have cameras that will follow me around, so no matter where you would be seated, you can watch and feel every part of the experience."

Caputo told Sarasota Magazine that she thinks her live shows can be beneficial to everyone who pays the admission fee, not just the smaller percentage of attendees who get messages from Spirit. "To watch someone heal in front of you, in real time, also helps other people heal," she insisted. "It still amazes me to watch someone receive the messages."

In 2012, an "Inside Edition" investigation found that Theresa Caputo's so-called "gift" may not be all it's cracked up to be. Former psychic Mark Edward revealed on that program that Caputo uses several common tricks in her live shows. She'll throw out a random number to the entire crowd, and Edward explained that "the law of large numbers" means that someone in the crowd invariably feels a connection to that number. She also claims "piggybacking," insisting that if someone can't interpret a clue she's given them, it must mean Spirit meant it for someone else. "She's saying that spirits, we're all one, and they all work together," Edward mused. "It's bullcrap."

He also told Skeptical Inquirer that she also may just be pretty good at Google. After all, she gets credit card numbers and names of attendees when she sells tickets on Ticketmaster, meaning information about them is only a web search away thanks to social media. "[O]ur own egocentric fascination with ourselves makes it easy for the techie-smart agent or producer to make seeming miracles happen," he explained. In one episode of the show, he noted that Caputo asked a woman why Spirit was telling her something about baby clothes. "[T]he woman replied, 'Oh, that's weird. I just put up a bunch of pictures of baby clothes on my Facebook page!'" Edward related. "Not weird at all, really."

Many skeptics like Mark Edward have attempted to prove that Theresa Caputo is faking it, but she doesn't seem interested in pushing back against any of their claims. In fact, Caputo told The List that she had something to say to skeptics. "I'm not asking anyone to believe in me. And I don't mean to be rude when I say I don't care ... What they say about me or if they don't believe in me," Caputo said. Instead, she wants skeptics to just trust themselves. "[T]he things that they sense and feel, hear, sense, or smell, to know that that is their departed loved ones," she said. "That soul bond can never, and will never be broken."

After all, Caputo told People, it's the effect of her readings that really matters, even more than whether or not she's truly been able to pass along messages from the dead. "[W]hat I do is so much more than me speaking to dead people," she claimed. "Do you know how many times people have come to a reading and it restored their faith? Families are reunited after a reading."

If you know one thing about Theresa Caputo, it's probably her unforgettable hairdo. She wears her blond locks teased to reach the gods, shaped into a helmet-like bouffant that puts all other bouffants to shame. Sometimes it's even long at the bottom, draping down over her shoulders in a look more reminiscent of a televangelist than a typical Karen cut. 

One thing is clear: Even if you don't believe in her ability to speak to Spirit, you're probably interested in the truth about the "Long Island Medium" star's iconic hairstyle. She claims it's always come naturally to her, just like her so-called gift. "I found a picture from like 30-something years ago. My hair literally looked like a lion's mane," she told The List. "It's curly and I would get my hair permed like that. I've always just loved big hair. It's just me. I've always had long nails and big hair."

Though Theresa Caputo isn't interested in clapping back at people who are skeptical of her ability to speak to the dead, skeptics are certainly interested in letting Caputo know that they don't believe her. The James Randi Educational Foundation is an organization that aims to rationally debunk claims of paranormal or supernatural abilities, and they are no fans of Caputo. In fact, they dislike her so much, they gave her an award.

All the way back in 2012, the group awarded the TLC star with their not-so-prestigious "Pigasus Award for Performance." Acknowledging Caputo's ability to convince people of what she was doing, the group wrote that the show may have some educational value beyond what Caputo probably intends. "'Long Island Medium' is a great show for doing RiffTrax to," the foundation said in a post on its website, "for skeptics to hone their skeptical skills, catch fallacies, and detect cold and hot reading tricks and techniques. Unfortunately, there are plenty of episodes to do this to."

Magician Criss Angel talks to celebrity contestants on "Criss Angel: Magic With the Stars," but there's one celebrity you're not likely to find on his show: Theresa Caputo. Back in 2013, when he was promoting his own show "Criss Angel: BeLIEve," Angel was a frequent critic of the Long Island Medium. In an interview with Newsday, he explained that his show revolved around the fact that a little skepticism is healthy. "[F]or me, I say believe but be cautious," Angel said. "And don't take the LIE!"

In the same interview, Angel said Caputo's work was something he definitely wanted people to be skeptical of. Noting that he too was from Long Island, Angel said it didn't matter; he doesn't believe her and has no qualms about exposing her as a fraud. "The Long Island Medium is just another charlatan. Any time she wants, we'll put her through a series of tests and I'll offer a million-dollar challenge to her," he said.

On X the same day that article dropped, Angel upped the ante. "@theresacaputo take my 2 million dollar challenge or stop exploiting the vulnerable," he wrote. "If your legit ur 2Million richer." As of press time, more than a decade later, she doesn't seem to have taken him up on his offer.

If you've only ever seen Theresa Caputo perform her readings on her television shows, some critics say you're only getting half the story. In 2014, RadarOnline reported that Caputo was the subject of a fraud investigation, though there isn't much publicly available information about how that turned out. The outlet reported on the disappointed comments left by numerous attendees of her tour, many of whom were very disappointed by what they'd witnessed. "I was a Theresa Caputo believer and watched every one of her shows. My young daughter died this summer and I needed to believe in something," one attendee wrote. "After tonight, I am no longer a believer."

RadarOnline also spoke with Pamela Weinstein, who received an awkward reading from Caputo when she appeared on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show." Her son was murdered as a toddler, but Caputo talked like he was older when he died. The resulting confusion wasn't made clear to the show's viewers, who likely interpreted it as yet another correct message from Spirit. "I do not think she was capturing his spirit at all," Weinstein told RadarOnline. "The reading wasn't anything close to what my son would have wanted me to hear. It did not offer closure at all."

While many people who are disappointed in their experience with Theresa Caputo go on to leave reviews online and speak about her failures to the media, some go as far as to confront her during the reading itself. During a 2018 live show in New Jersey, one woman was ejected for expressing her displeasure to Caputo's face.

NJ.com wrote that Caputo was trying to find someone in the audience who could relate to a murder case in which someone had messed with the evidence. "It's up here! Right here!" a woman said, standing up and waving her arms in an attempt to get Caputo's attention. The medium said Spirit had been clear about where the message was meant for, and the woman was unfortunately out of luck. Apparently, the woman flipped Caputo off, angering her. "She just gave me the finger! Get the f*** out! Get her the f*** out!" Caputo shouted. Security came over and the woman was forced to leave. Caputo told the audience, "See, God don't like ugly." Ouch.

Unlike many other shows about mediums, "Long Island Medium" also followed Theresa Caputo's personal life. Fans got to know her husband Larry, a tattooed guy who supported his wife as best he could, even if he didn't necessarily understand how best to help her when she was overcome by Spirit. 

Though they presented a united front on the show, Theresa and Larry divorced in 2018. She announced the news on Facebook, thanking fans who had expressed their concern for her marriage. "We will continue to love and support each other like we always have," she wrote. "Thank you for all for the AMAZING love and support for me and my family." For his part, Larry spoke to TMZ about the separation, telling them, "I'm doing fine. I know she's doing well. I'm happy."

For the record, if you're curious, you can click here if you're wondering whether the Long Island Medium's ex-husband ever believed in her powers.

Theresa Caputo's social media hasn't just chronicled her readings and her marriage to Larry; it has also featured her two children, Larry Jr. and Veronica. Larry Jr. is her son, and he's the older child; in 2023, Theresa attended his wedding in Italy. Posing in a glittering silver dress with her hair even higher than normal, the psychic posted a photo on Instagram from the shores of Lake Como. "And this HAPPENED," she wrote alongside emojis of clinking champagne glasses and a white heart. "We are over the moon excited for Larry and Leah on their wedding." Her son wore white, too, decked out in a sharp suit that went well with his new wife's dress.

The Long Island Medium's daughter grew up to be gorgeous, and Theresa even says that her daughter takes after her. At a live show in Florida, someone in the audience asked whether her kids inherited her abilities. "More so my daughter than my son, for sure," Theresa answered (via The Sun).

Theresa is also a three-time grandmother. Larry Jr. welcomed a son named Nico in 2024, and Victoria had daughters Michelina and Meadow in 2022 and 2025, respectively. In April 2025, she shared a number of photos on Facebook of her newest granddaughter sitting on her lap, looking through a book with her, and yawning adorably. She captioned the photos simply, "Absolute love Grandma life."

Theresa Caputo's time in the spotlight has been met with a significant amount of controversy, with lots of attention paid to whether she's using simple mentalist tricks on her unsuspecting audience or whether she's actually receiving an important communication from ghosts. You might expect that all of the pushback has affected Caputo's career, but instead, the "Long Island Medium" star has still managed to rack up an impressive net worth.

After all, even though there is significant evidence that her show edits around failed readings and that she might be looking up her clients online ahead of time, that hasn't stopped loyal followers from signing up for their own readings in droves. "If you're interested in a reading, please know that I was booked for two years before the show first aired, and in addition to that I had a very extended list," she writes on her website. Caputo cautions fans that getting on her list doesn't guarantee a reading. "[I]t's just impossible to schedule so far out," she claimed. "Thank you for all your patience and understanding."