Few mediums have ever reached an audience of millions. Lisa Williams is one of them: the Briton was given her own series by TV legend Merv Griffin, went on to fill halls on several continents – and, at the height of it all, left Los Angeles to live in a village that has belonged to the Spiritualists since the nineteenth century. Today she gives readings only via Zoom and trains mediums at her own school.
The granddaughter of Frances Glazebrook
Lisa Williams was born on 19 June 1973 in Birmingham – into a family in which mediumship already had a name: her grandmother Frances Glazebrook was a well-known British psychic, and she predicted that her granddaughter would one day follow in her footsteps. Lisa did not believe her. She dates her own first memory of the other world to the age of four: at the dinner table, the spirit of her great-uncle warned her against the peas on her plate – he himself had choked to death on peas years earlier. That is how she tells it; a childhood memory like that naturally cannot be verified, but it marks the beginning of the story Williams later wrote down in her first book.
As a young woman she first gave readings among friends, then professionally. The turning point came when her work caught the attention of celebrities – and with them a man who knew how to turn talent into television.
Merv Griffin and the cameras
Merv Griffin, creator of "Jeopardy!" and "Wheel of Fortune", brought Williams to Los Angeles and signed her. The result was "Lisa Williams: Life Among the Dead" – two seasons on Lifetime (from 2006), followed by "Lisa Williams: Voices From the Other Side" (2008) and later "Lisa Williams Live". She appeared with Oprah Winfrey, on Anderson Cooper 360 and Jimmy Kimmel Live; by her own account she has spoken to more than seven million people worldwide. In interviews from that period she also describes requests from police and relatives in missing-person cases – a field whose possibilities and limits we examine in our article on mediums in police work.
Alongside the television work came her books: "Life Among the Dead" tells her own story, "The Survival of the Soul" asks what outlasts death, joined by "Was That A Sign From Heaven?" and, most recently, the inspirational volume "Divine Wisdom", as well as several oracle card decks.
The teacher
In 2013 Williams founded her own school, the Lisa Williams International School of Spiritual Development (LWISSD, today the "Psychic Medium Training Academy"). By her own account she has taught thousands of students there and trained 44 "Master Teachers" who carry her curriculum around the world. What stands out is how she justifies that role – not as a business model but as a question of quality. "We've got someone's life in our hands," she told Vice. "We can screw someone up if we don't know what we're doing." She openly advocates certification and regulation of her profession – a debate long under way in Britain, which we trace in our article on British mediumship certifications.
Lily Dale
After eight and a half years in Los Angeles, Williams drew the conclusion from a life between studios and tours: she left the city and settled in Lily Dale, the historic Spiritualist village in New York State – "the home of spiritualism", as she called it. The move was a statement: away from entertainment, towards family, writing and teaching. Anyone who sits with her today does so via Zoom – every session is recorded and sent afterwards, and it always begins with the same question: "Do you want to know everything?"
Basel and the German-speaking stage
Williams is no stranger to the German-speaking world either: at the Basler Psi-Verein, the biggest stage for mediumship between Hamburg and Zurich, she is on the speaker list alongside names such as Gordon Smith and James Van Praagh. Her profile in our directory lists the current formats and prices. Her career shows, like few others, what television can give to mediumship and take from it: reach and fame on the one hand – and, on the other, the need to decide again and again what the gift is actually for.
Sources: The About page and books overview of lisawilliams.com; the interview "Celebrity Psychic Lisa Williams…" at Vice; the LAist interview (2009); the speaker biography at the Omega Institute; the press release for the Victory of Light Expo (Frances Glazebrook, birth details); and the speaker list on bpv.ch. Audience and training figures are self-reported.
For more, see our curated knowledge collection – it gathers further articles on mediumship, TV mediums and training paths.