On the Record: Kelvin Cruickshank

Psychic medium, TV celebrity and dad-of-two Kelvin Cruickshank says anyone can channel spirit and he's happy to show readers how.
Growing up in Huntly, Kelvin Cruickshank would look out his bedroom window and see Maori warriors.
The tiny tot - petrified - would then hide.
"I'm a little white boy, a little Pakeha fulla," he says, a smile plays around his lips. "It used to scare the living daylights out of me.
"My grandfather passed when I was 8 and when he passed, he stood with them and explained to me what they were trying to share and that's how I learnt to do what I do."
The 40-year-old was a chef before turning his hand to fulltime medium work and now travels the country from his home in Kerikeri.
Tauranga residents are very in tune
He was in Tauranga this week, after taking a year's leave from psychic work to write his third book Finding the Path, awaken your connection to spirit, and to raise his youngest daughter, Jade, who is now 20 months. He also has a 16-year-old son, Javan.
Currently he is away travelling one week and home the next, doing workshops and Soul Food shows, which include communicating with the dead in a live audience.
And whichever after-death philosophy you adhere to, there's no denying there are people who believe we can communicate with the deceased.
According to Cruickshank, Tauranga residents are very in tune with "spirit".
"New Zealand is really open now that we've had Sensing Murder," he says of the TV2 show he starred in.
"Sensing Murder changed everyone's way of thinking. There's heaps of people that are becoming more aware and are actually not afraid to say what they think. In the old days, they were all too scared."
The goal was to help
His celebrity prowess is as strong as ever, despite filming of Sensing Murder stopping 18 months ago. He says he would love to see a follow-up series happen but there are no plans on the table that he knows of.
"I never knew it would go to over 40 countries in the world, I had no idea. It was blown well out of my dreams but the goal was to help those families.
"All the cases have been special and all touched me in their own way ... It's exquisitely horrific stuff."
Sensing Murder pulled in about 200,000 viewers an episode over five series and twice won best reality series at the Qantas Media Awards.
It featured Cruickshank, Sue Nicholson and Deb Webber visiting the scenes of violent deaths and describing visions they claimed to be experiencing.
He and his TV team of psychic sleuths have not been without their sceptics since the show aired.
Others, such as criminologist Nigel Latta, put the show into the "can't explain" category.
"If a person chooses to believe in a certain faith than that's fine," says Cruickshank, who says when he was 7, his own aunt was murdered.
"Whereas when they start to criticise, I think 'well that's okay, at least they're trying to understand it'. Generally it doesn't effect me at all."
I imagine he gets approached a lot by the public?
"Yep, you get used to it, eh. You always be polite and say hi. I think there's a time and a place for everything."
Normal and be spooky
What's the number one question people ask?
"Gosh, I could be in a supermarket and nine times out of 10 people will say 'can you see my mum?"'
Cruickshank says it's hard to "switch in" in certain environments, however.
"I need to be in an environment inside of myself, devoting myself to the spirit people and you need to set an environment where it's a lot safer with no distraction."
So he can't do it during this interview?
"No, because what will happen is that person over there will have people with them," he says, gesturing to people standing in Mid City Mall. "And I'll get really tired and that'll be that."
So he can tune in and tune out?
"Yeah, exactly. Be normal and be spooky at the same time," he says with a laugh.
But Cruickshank says if an afterlife message is urgent, the spirit life will "just snap me in".
"So there's an earthly experience, which means I've got to have a normal life like you and everybody else, and when I devote time to spirit, it's all on."
The dead friends

But when spirits don't turn up, Cruickshank says he feels lonely.
"If I'm out in the boat I've got my Granddad talking to me, or if I'm racing motorbikes I've got some friends sitting on the back of my shoulder type of thing and I know that sounds weird, but I have those people looking after me. But when I need to stop and rest, they step away from me, which is like being totally alone for me because I've grown up with them."
Cruickshank's analogy for readers is that it's like you or me coming home and everyone we know being away on holiday.
"It's just my friends are dead, that's the only difference," he quips.
He considers the dead friends?
"God, yeah. People don't realise that when you spend a lifetime with someone and they pass away we're conditioned to think they'll go to heaven, which is true, and that's that, or when they're dead, they're dead. People on the other side that are loving are trying to get through but we're conditioned to think it's all bad and horrible but it's not."
The deceased are apparently allowed to make visits from heaven or "home" as he calls it.
"You might be at work all day, sit in car and think 'I miss Nan'. It's usually because she's there and coming through from the other side. It's as much a thought process as a feeling process."
If this has happened to you, Cruickshank's advice is: "acknowledge them out loud."
"You may have had this experience yourself, where someone has moved past you in the corner of your eye and that's usually the spirit connecting with us, stepping in to our world from theirs and most people say 'Oh that was really spooky' but that's their head telling them that and if they listen to their heart and think about who it could have been ..."
Communicating with someone
At his shows he says he has no idea what's going to happen.
Audience members must have expectations of communicating with someone?
"Sure, and that's unfortunate, because that expectation clouds the connection, so it's almost as if when we say people demand it to happen, it never does. I try and explain that as best as I can to people to try and get them to chill out and 'bang' the connection with their dad, or their brother, or their daughter will come through. It sort of breaks a barrier."
What is it Cruickshank sees?
He says, occasionally a physical form.
"But that's not always the case as it's very difficult for them to do that, so they communicate through your mind as well and give you pictures in your head, they talk to you, which is kinda weird.
"You're basically talking to yourself but you learn to separate yourself and them ... I don't know if you've seen my work on TV but the accuracy is there and it can be quite overwhelming even for me because I have no idea what I'm talking about until I see results from a person in the audience and what they say back to us."
The language of the spirit

Cruickshanks says people in spirit will come through clearly if they are open and honest. "Some people come through reserved, although I can see them or catch their presence, they might step away from me or drop their head down and when a person in spirit [does that] it's shame," he claims.
"They feel guilt, so therefore, it's usually a suicide connection and that's how the language of the spirit works."
If you think it all sounds pretty out there, or quite frankly, a load of rubbish, Cruickshank, whose mother is a reverend, says you can do what he does.
"I think we're all born with it," he says.
"I think we just need to discipline ourselves to be aware of how we feel and what's going on around us."
A normal Kiwi bloke with a gift

Does Cruickshank ever worry his gift might be lost one day?
"If it does then so be it. Then I've done my job. I think when you've got a gift you're got to share it and I just couldn't hold back anymore. Some people accepted it and some didn't. I lost some friends for it in the beginning."
Tauranga woman Ange Beatson has been mates with Cruickshank since 2001. She says while her friend's career choice is a "little out there" he's just a "normal Kiwi bloke with a gift".
She understands some people may struggle with it.
"If you can't understand or make logic of it, if it's unexplainable, which it is, it's really hard to explain to people and yeah, it can seem airy-fairy."
She says Cruickshank no longer does private readings as he got to a point where he had 500 people on a waiting list willing to pay a lot of money.
"When you look at the job that he does, he's one of very few people with his talent. He's on a higher realm than the everyday psychic you can go and do a reading with for 50 bucks.
"His job is not to convince people. His job is to connect people, if they want to be connected."