A few years ago, on the anniversary of my best friend Dona Heywood’s death — for whom I was still deeply grieving — a colleague approached me with an odd request.
“I don’t know whether you believe in this stuff or not, but a woman who is a friend of the family, a medium, says she needs to see you today.”
Always open to everything, that medium, Kim Russo, came to The Post and “read” for me.
“Dona says she’s still drinking Sauvignon Blanc,” Kim said, “and wants to thank you — but she’s laughing — for smuggling her ashes into Italy. She’s also saying she almost got stuck at JFK.”
After I got up off the floor I told Kim that yes, I had smuggled Dona’s ashes into Italy and yes, the container was almost confiscated out of my suitcase by security. I had put the ashes into a big baby-powder container and when I opened my suitcase in Italy there was a big note from airline security telling me they’d gone through my bag!
Tonight, Russo gets her own show, “The Haunting Of…” on BIO, in which she goes to places with famous people to explain to them the feelings of horror and longing they have felt in certain places.
Among the celebs Russo spends time with are Regis Philbin, Chazz Palmintieri and Beverley Mitchell of “7th Heaven.”
Because I’ve seen Kim’s extraordinary ability, I was reluctant to review the series. What if it was bad — or worse, not too bad? But I’m happy to report that it’s literally a helluva show, beginning tonight with Mitchell, who had filmed a movie at Penn Hurst, a horrible shuttered insane asylum, where she had terrifying experiences.
Not only does Russo find buildings that housed children who were tied to their cribs for months on end, but in another room she experiences the spirits of mentally ill young girls who’d been raped and been subjected to abortions, or had delivered babies in this place of horrors. You’ll see that Russo has a special kindness about her — one that even the most malevolent spirits can accept.
Tomorrow night, another kind of haunting takes place on Chiller with “The American Scream,” a documentary about three men in Fairhaven, Mass., who have devoted their lives to creating haunted houses for neighborhood kids on Halloween.
Cameras follow them from the day after the previous year’s Halloween to the final hectic moments when their haunted houses open for one night of spooky business.
Good ghoulish fun all around.
