Joseph Tittel’s sudden rise to fame is driving flocks of people eager for a glimpse of the unknown to the Bucks County psychic and medium.

By Scott Edwards

“If we equated the progression of your knowledge of your gift and your ability to use it over your lifetime to this point to piecing together a puzzle,” I ask, “how much of that picture would be filled in?”

“I don’t know. A lot, I guess,” Joseph Tittel replies. “That’s a trick question, isn’t it?”

Tittel is a psychic and a medium. Both require feeding off of energy, but they differ in that a medium communicates with the dead, which means the information that comes forth is typically tied to the past. A psychic, on the other hand, forecasts the future. Tittel, however, is more than just a psychic and a medium. Thanks to a handful of recent TV appearances, he’s also a household name, or, at least, he’s well on his way to becoming one.

On America’s Psychic Challenge, which aired on Lifetime last year, Tittel provided vivid details of a murder scene without any prior knowledge of the crime. He also appeared on the Travel channel’s Mysterious Journeys, for which he spent a night inside the Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia with other paranormal experts communicating with the dead. On the local front, the Levittown-based Tittel hosts a weekly one-hour radio show on WBCB 1490 AM called Messages from the Other Side, which is also, by the way, the name of his autobiography. He’s been featured a handful of times in the Bucks County Courier Times, as well as the Philadelphia Inquirer and on NBC10.

The attention has come rather abruptly, but Tittel has been practicing, for lack of a better term, for well over a decade and has been experiencing medium- and psychic-related moments from early childhood. He talks, though, like he’s been preparing for fame to find him all of his life. Whether Tittel is holding court during his Tuesday afternoon show or conducting a one-on-one interview, he speaks with a commanding voice that syncs with his imposing height. The anecdotes come easily, and his answers are concise.

But Tittel is also protected. A handful of anecdotes surfaced on more than one occasion, as though the mention of certain points automatically triggered their telling. He also does not like to veer too far off course to consider the wider scope of his abilities, like why him?

I wondered whether this was the result of working in a field that so naturally attracts naysayers or if it was a conscious move made in response to the recent onslaught of media attention. Regardless, it left me pondering the man more than the gift, which surprised me. But even more curiously, the tighter I tried to crop Tittel’s image, the more of an enigma he became. The guy is a walking paradox.

Raised in a staunch Catholic household, Tittel today describes himself as a “recovering Catholic.” He does not attend church and he’s quick to separate the spiritual aspect of his work from any religious undercurrents. But, he also considers his gift God-given, and he starts and finishes every day with prayer and meditation. “I believe in the afterlife, obviously, or else I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing,” he says. “I believe in a higher power, but I don’t believe that you need to go to church to get that.”

Then there is the matter of what is meant to be and what is not. For Tittel, there is no escaping his gift. He’s tried, and it always has a way of pulling him back in line. He accepts now – and is quite content with the fact – that being a medium and a psychic is his fate. But he also believes that fate is open to interpretation, that just because he sees something occurring in someone’s future does not mean that it is destined to happen. If anything, he’d like to consider his role as being more proactive, helping to steer people away from potential pitfalls. “I think part of the reason they are mentioned is so that you can be open to see that this is going to happen in your life and be open to change things,” Tittel says.

His watershed moment was hearing from his mother at a show by the psychic John Edward that he attended with his sister – a month or so after his mother died suddenly. That exchange convinced him that he did in fact have a gift. Yet, even though it was his mother’s voice that brought it to light, his gift, he says, does not work for him. “I can’t help myself,” he says. “But I can help everybody else.”

Even the physical realities of Tittel’s world seem at odds with each other. At 38, he looks, thanks to a full head of golden blonde hair, more like he’s in his early to mid-twenties, an observation he acknowledges almost as defensively as he greets any attempt to question his gift. Most people, it seems, expect someone with his abilities to look a little more the part – old, weathered, even a little gypsy-like. His look was fine for me. Instead, it was his office that seemed to distort the psychic stereotype. Even after a couple of visits, I just couldn’t seem to get myself to swallow the fact that we were talking about a larger-than-life ability in a small, nondescript space that shared a building with a car repair garage, all of it lost somewhere in the maze of Levittown.

The path

A seven-year-old Tittel was on vacation with his family in Wildwood, NJ, when, halfway up a towering waterslide, he was struck by a vision of that slide collapsing. A few days later, back home in Levittown, news that that same slide fell to the ground spread across the TV.

At 14, he told his aunt and uncle that he saw them building a new home. A few months later, their home was hit by lightning. There was a lot that occurred in between that was glossed over because Tittel simply didn’t understand. When he was a child, Tittel says, he assumed that everyone had such intuition. “I was quick to pass them off,” he says. “You don’t know when you’re that little.” The seeds, though, whether consciously or not, were planted.

When an aunt hosted a psychic party at her home, Tittel, then 16, begged his parents to let him go. He received a reading there that encouraged him to start wondering whether there was more to his experiences than he initially thought. He began studying up on the spiritual world and casually reading friends.

At 19, after graduating from Harry S. Truman High School, he opened a new age store with his sister in Levittown. In time, they moved it to New Hope and Tittel began conducting his first professional readings there. Just as he was beginning to gain his footing, Tittel left the store after a dispute over its ownership with his sister. Because the business seemed like such a perfect fit, he questioned his purpose when it went awry.

For the next couple of years, Tittel put as much distance between himself and the spiritual world as he could manage. Living in the remote Sergeantsville, NJ, he tended bar at night in New Hope. But some loyal clients still managed to track him down. Refusing to read them at first, he finally succumbed to a begging woman one day. It turned out to be one of the most descriptive, emotionally intense readings he has ever done. 

Shortly after, Tittel bought tickets to see Edward at a hotel in Philadelphia, convinced that his outspoken mother would seize the opportunity to send a message through the psychic to him. When Tittel picked up on her himself, which he credits as being his first direct message from the other side, his world came into focus. “After my mother passed is when I started to see things really strong,” he says. 

The process

Tittel says that he possesses an energy that attracts those on the other side. As a result, he doesn’t go looking for people. They find him, just as his mother did – and countless others do during the course of a day. He sees people constantly, whether lounging at his Levittown home or eating dinner at Olive Garden. Just as Tittel learned to decipher cryptic messages, he also had to teach himself how to ignore the constant noise.

Separating himself from those he’s reading and their oftentimes heavy messages is another lesson he’s still trying to fully grasp. “There have been psychics that I have known over the years who would make themselves sick because they would take in everybody’s emotions,” Tittel says. “It sounds cold, but sometimes I have to do that for myself, to keep it together for myself, so it doesn’t mentally, physically drain me.”

The waiting list for a private reading with Tittel, which ranges from $100 for 20 minutes to $275 for an hour, stood at a year in September. And, a notice was posted on his Web site, www.josephtittel.com, that he would not begin adding to it again until February. With that kind of a demand, it’s easy to imagine Tittel’s office as a sort of factory, with a constantly-humming conveyor belt moving clients from the waiting room to the reading area and, finally, to the exit. But Tittel says he’s good for only a couple of hours of reading a day because they are so taxing. “It’s kind of like staying up all night, cramming for an exam in college,” he says. “That’s how I would compare it. Like, I’m just completely gone.”

Performing the readings is an ever-evolving process. The messages, he says, come to him at times in the form of symbols, some of which apparently reoccur regularly and he can interpret quickly. Others are a mystery. In one case, he kept seeing bees. The deceased husband of the elderly woman he was reading, it turned out, was a beekeeper.

My impression of a reading, after sitting in on one of his radio shows, was that it is chaotic for both Tittel and the person he’s reading. Bits of disjointed information tumbled out of Tittel’s mouth, some of it immediately sticking, some of it not, leaving both parties, either way, reaching to make sense. Tittel says the connection is better in person. “With a typical reading, it all flows very well,” he says. “There’s nobody in here but me and them, so it’s just our energy. All of the people around me at the radio station, all of us have at least one spirit with us.”

Are you a believer?

Paul Baroli is the easygoing program director for WBCB and the host of the Levittown-based radio station’s afternoon rush hour show, Coffee with Kahuna, during which Tittel’s program airs Tuesdays, from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m.

Just past the introductions, I ask, “Are you a believer?” Five minutes ago I didn’t know who this guy was, but now I find myself curiously anticipating his answer, not because I’m hoping it will help me forge my own perspective but because therein lies the fun of the paranormal world. Even Tittel admits that many who come to him for readings are not entirely convinced that he’s capable of pulling off something other than an Oscar-worthy act. “A lot of them are here for the experience, to see if it’s true, more than to communicate with that specific person,” Tittel says. Which is why he divides the world beyond the diehard believers into cynics and skeptics. Cynics, he says, are never going to believe. Skeptics, in contrast, are at least open-minded and, thus, capable of being convinced, which he enjoys doing.

It’s because of that difference that I came to appreciate over the last couple of months the significance of such a seemingly harmless question. “Are you a believer?” is as direct a portal into someone’s personality and even core beliefs as any invasive, analytical question I’ve ever asked. 

So, back to Baroli: “A believer? I hate to answer that question in black and white,” he says. “But, I tell you, I sit here every week and it’s hard not to.” Admittedly, the question put Baroli in a tough spot. As far as he is concerned, his opinion is a moot point. What matters most to him is that people are listening, which they apparently are in large numbers when Tittel is on the air. During the show that I observed, several phone lines were lit up with a constant backlog of callers from 10 to 15 minutes before the show’s start until its completion. It was a dramatic change from the sleepy pace that preceded the psychic’s arrival.

George Ivcic, the station’s news director, cites his moment of conversion as an occasion when Tittel inadvertently picked up on him during a show. “I usually just sit in the back and record the show and manage the phones, but right in the middle of it, I’m sitting right in the studio,” Ivcic says. Tittel, he says, kept getting the name George and a guitar. He brought them up to the next couple of callers, but they didn’t make sense to them. “So then he turned to me and I’m kind of smiling,” Ivcic says. “He said, ‘Does this have something to do with you?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ My grandfather is named George and he played guitar his whole life.” Tittel then said he was getting a name that sounded like Dan and that it was tied to the guitar. “My oldest cousin, his name is Dan,” Ivcic says, “and he has my grandfather’s guitar.”

The person

An obvious weight rests on the shoulders of Tittel simply because of who he is. As much as he tries to shield himself during readings, he takes a particular pride in being able to relate to his clients. He considers the suicide of a close friend and the unexpected death of his mother, with whom he was very close, as much a part of the learning experience as any of the surreal events.

But that weight extends far beyond the readings. He sees and hears things constantly that none of us do, and with that comes the responsibility of when to say something and when to keep quiet. As much as he seems to embrace his newfound fame, Tittel also appears eager to blend into the crowd when he’s not working. 

He will say something to his family and partner, Bob Breining, who also has worked as his manager for the last three years, if he is delivered a message that he deems relevant, but he will not read them, nor, he says, will he read himself simply out of fear of distorting the facts. “You’re either going to look into what you want to happen or what you’re afraid is going to happen and you’re not going to look at the real picture,” Tittel says, which apparently is why the gift does not work to his advantage.

Tittel says he fell into a depression after his mother’s death because he blamed himself for not seeing it coming. “Being a psychic, sometimes you think, I should have known that,” he says. “We don’t know everything. We’re not wizards.”

His grand ambition is to tour the world, staging large group readings on every continent and donating a portion of the profits to global causes. “If you took $5 from each ticket I sold and gave it to a special cause, by the time you’re done you’re going to have an awful lot of money to help other people,” he says. “That’s why I want to move up the ladder or have an empire, so to speak – so that I can help other people.” He currently stages several benefit shows a year that raise funds for the likes of the Arthritis Foundation, the Healing Consciousness Foundation and a pair of organizations particularly close to his heart, Camps Kindle and Dream Catcher, which cater to children effected by HIV and AIDS.

Breining, who says he was a believer long before he met Tittel, possesses perhaps the most unique insight of anyone into Tittel. “I don’t see Joseph just as a medium. He’s my friend and partner as well. To me, that’s not what I see.”

I ask Breining if he’s at all uncomfortable with the knowledge that he and Tittel are never actually alone. “I don’t know why, I just feel like I’m more protected,” he says. “I’m not out in the world by myself.”

Breining is not alone in finding comfort in such a notion. He shares a story of a woman who called recently for tickets to an upcoming show. She regularly attends the monthly large group readings Tittel performs at hotels around the region. During the call, she confides to Breining, “I don’t want to be read by him. I just want to be in the same room as him because he can talk to my husband. It just makes me feel better that he’s there.”

1. Joseph has changed my life .. He brought so much validation and healing during my one on one reading with him ..He is an angel among us..Thank you for writing this article on him he is truly a blessing
   Pam

   Posted by Pam | December 18, 2008, 3:47 pm