In the United States, Kim Russo is known to a mass audience as "The Happy Medium" – through her own television series, bestsellers, and appearances with celebrities. But what makes her especially interesting to us is something other than her TV fame: she belongs to the small group of mediums who have voluntarily submitted to controlled, blinded research testing – and passed.
From Long Island to the TV Studios
Kim Russo is from New York and lives on Long Island. By her own account, she has perceived the deceased since the age of nine. Like many mediums, she initially describes this gift as confusing – only as an adult did she begin to train it deliberately and use it professionally.
She became known through US television. She appeared in the A&E series Paranormal State and Psychic Kids, as well as in the series Celebrity Ghost Stories. Her own show "The Haunting Of…" ran for several seasons on Lifetime and the Lifetime Movie Network: in it, Russo visits places where celebrities claim to have had paranormal experiences. There was also the show Psychic Intervention. This makes her one of the most visible mediums in the US mainstream.
The Books: "The Happy Medium"
In 2016, HarperCollins published her first book "The Happy Medium – Life Lessons from the Other Side". It interweaves episodes from her own life with accounts of her readings and debuted at the top of Amazon's spiritual book category. In 2019 came "Your Soul Purpose – Learn How to Access the Light Within," in which she writes less about afterlife contact and more about inner guidance and intuition.
The Real Core: Tested Mediumship
Having your own television series does not make you an evidential medium – on the contrary, a TV format makes it hard to control what was known in advance. That is precisely why the decisive point for us is not her fame, but her participation in independent mediumship research.
Kim Russo is a certified medium of the Forever Family Foundation (FFF) and also sits on the advisory board of this US non-profit. The FFF certifies mediums through a blinded procedure in which unknown sitters and controlled selection are meant to prevent a medium from drawing on reactions or prior knowledge. Just how high that bar is, we describe in detail in our article on FFF certification – since 2005, only around two dozen mediums have passed it.
In addition, she was a Windbridge Certified Research Medium (WCRM). The Windbridge Institute admitted prospective research mediums through an eight-step screening that included, among other things, psychological tests and two blinded phone readings before anyone was even allowed to take part in studies. How this procedure works and what results Windbridge researcher Julie Beischel has published is covered in our article on Windbridge mediumship research.
Her own biographies emphasise that her test scores were among the highest ever recorded. This phrasing comes from her own circle and is not a ranking published by Windbridge. She has, however, submitted to blinded procedures and has been rated an evidential medium by two independent bodies. That sets her apart from many purely TV personalities.
A Documented Case: the Tom Green Episode
One publicly documented case is the episode of "The Haunting Of…" with Canadian comedian Tom Green, aired on 1 November 2014. In it, Green returned to his hometown of Ottawa – to the venerable, castle-like Canadian Museum of Nature, where, as a young man, something had chased him through the night-time hallways. The experience had never quite let go of him, and for the first time since then he wanted to return to the place and face it.
The building has a fitting reputation: in the fourth-floor west wing in particular, staff report cold spots, flickering lights, and objects that seem to move on their own. Russo walked through the rooms with Green, had him describe his memory, and – by her own account – identified a spirit that still lingers in the place, helping Green make sense of the fright he had experienced back then. The episode is among the best known of the series.
Jesse Metcalfe: the Childhood Home in Connecticut
More personal – and at 9.5 out of 10 the highest-rated episode of the series – is the one with actor Jesse Metcalfe (Desperate Housewives, John Tucker Must Die). He returned to his childhood home in Connecticut, where his family had repeatedly experienced unexplained things more than twenty years earlier – noises and a threatening presence that genuinely frightened him as a child.
Together with Russo he went through the house and its grounds. In the episode, the trail led not to a malevolent "demon," as the young Jesse had felt it to be, but to a person who had died there by drowning and whose anger and despair had lingered in the house. What had felt to a child like a nameless terror was given a story and a face – and that was exactly what freed Metcalfe from his old fear. Where Green's story plays out in a public museum, this one leads straight into a family's history.
Linda Dano: "Abigail" and a Message
The episode with US actress Linda Dano (Another World, One Life to Live) goes a step further. For over two decades, a presence in the historic house that Dano had lovingly preserved with her late husband Frank Attardi had frightened workmen, family and friends – without anyone knowing who or what it was.
In the episode, Russo dissolved the vague unease: she identified the "ghost" as a young girl named Abigail who had remained attached to the house – not a threatening entity, but a child. She also delivered a personal message to Linda from the other side, which Dano later described as life-changing. A decades-long, nameless disturbance became an encounter with a name, a form and a purpose – exactly the kind of nameable detail that matters in evidential mediumship.
Why She Fits HeavenConnect
Kim Russo combines two things that rarely come together: broad public reach and a willingness to submit to controlled research. Anyone interested in the standards behind this will find the relevant background with us on the American and the British certification landscape.