Have you ever wondered what it would be like to visit a psychic medium?

For some people, it’s as normal as seeing a therapist, for others, it’s as wacky as can be.

When I first met Dan and Jen Hoyt, I’d like to think my perception was somewhere in the middle.

But after they identified core memories, private emotions and facts that aren’t public, by the time I left, I was surprisingly more on the ‘converted’ side, than I had ever expected.

And that’s exactly what the married couple aim to do - make spirit communication normal for everyone.

A medium means you are a channel for spirit, in the same way as a newspaper or television is a medium to pass on information.

Tunbridge Wells-based Dan, 50, and Jen, 46, are evidential psychic mediums which means they give identifiable information and evidence which specifically connects you with the person in spirit.

For Dan, known to his 140,000-plus TikTok followers as Misfit Medium, it all began when he was three years old.

He said: “I just thought they were people talking to me, I didn’t know they were spirits.

“I realised quite quickly I had to keep it to myself, I couldn’t talk to people about it because they’d think I was weird.”

Throughout his life Dan says he remembers trying to suppress or ignore it but after several eye-opening encounters, including some with his grandmother who passed in 2009, he was spurred on to train professionally as a medium after 20 years in advertising.

Through his TikTok account, Dan hoped to show people he was just a “normal bloke” who communicates with spirit.

He said: “We have a perception problem, nobody trusts us, people are either sceptical and don’t think we’re real or they believe we’re scammers, or from a religious perspective it’s completely wrong.

“The odds are stacked against us, so my mission is to change the perception – that’s where I came up with the name Misfit Medium, because I don’t fit in with the public perception of what a medium is.

“I want to create a world where it’s normal to go and see a medium, where people don’t feel weird about doing it.

The married couple explained how psychic mediumship works in a similar way to our natural ability to ‘read the room’ such as how you can often sense when a fight is about to break-out or there’s tension in the air.

Indeed, I’m sure many of us can say we’ve had a gut-feeling about something not being right, or a sense of foreboding ahead of a tragic event, which we couldn’t make sense of at the time.

But for others the strong scepticism comes from the fact we are taught from a young age to think logically and critically.

As part of a mission to normalise readings and to put great mediums out there, Dan started teaching - which is how he met Jen, who goes by, The Prodigy.

Orignally from Arizona, she grew up in a “cult-like’ religion, where she was not able to communicate with people outside her church.

As a child she remembers being able to pick up on people’s ailments, but she largely ignored this side of her while she got an accounting degree and worked in corporate banking.

It wasn’t until she went on holiday and saw the Ukraine war on the news that “an explosion” happened inside of her.

Shortly after, she came across one of Dan’s videos on TikTok and heard the term of evidential mediumship for the first time.

She joined Dan’s course to work out what was going on inside of her and it was there that her journey into mediumship began.

The 46-year-old said: “We’re really precise about not just throwing out stuff that can be generalised – that was really important to me, the evidence and facts about it.”

Now, it was time to see it for myself.

In April 2023, I suddenly lost my family friend Sarah Keen at the age of 32.

At the time of her death, I was travelling in Cambodia as part of an eight-month backpacking trip.

Sarah had struggled with mental health problems throughout her life, but the circumstances surrounding her death left many unanswered questions.

I knew that for my reading I hoped to connect with her.

As it began, I sat nervously, overwhelmed by the potential invasiveness of what I had signed up to do.

The only details they asked me to provide at the start was my relationship to the person I wanted to speak to – I said: “Friend.”

It didn’t take long before I was plunged into the reality that perhaps it really was Sarah on the other end of the ‘phone’.

Dan and Jen tell me it is unusual to do readings together, and at first it appeared they had different people stand forward to communicate with me.

But it didn’t take long for me to validate information provided by Dan about Sarah’s height, stature, and age, pinpointing it exactly to 32.

Now, I know what you’re thinking, couldn’t they have looked this up?

My rebuttal is how? I have a private Facebook account, my social media accounts don’t have posts about Sarah’s death, so there is no indication they could have known it was Sarah I wanted to connect with.

After Dan confirmed she had a great sense of humour, Jen said: “But she did have a lot of struggles in terms of mental health.”

They said Sarah was communicating about some irresponsible decisions with alcohol and substances, information I was able to validate.

Jen was then able to go into detail about the specific confusions surrounding her cause of death, and the availability of certain medications she shouldn’t have had access to when she died.

Before the inquest, it was true I had been confused about whether she had intended to take her own life or not.

Dan was also able to accurately identify self-harm as a prominent theme in her life.

Then, Jen went on to reference my position about being very unavailable at the time of her death.

She said: “She’s showing me, it’s not that you are, but that you may be feeling almost selfish as there was a lot more about you avoiding a lot of communication.

“In this time, you were very much driven and she’s saying you didn’t make time for her like you should have.

“But she’s saying even if you had been there for her, you couldn’t have done anything to fix this.”

Given I had been travelling across multiple time zones – it was fair to say I had not been the best at getting back to Sarah and after her death I had felt guilty about how unavailable I’d been.

Then suddenly very randomly, Jen said: “Did you two do a dance video together?”

For me this is when the penny dropped. It was like she had zapped a core memory from my brain, another moment which wasn’t on Facebook, social media, or anywhere searchable online.

To my surprise, I started to cry, because it was overwhelming and unexpected.

Jen said: “She’s showing me a dance video, it’s to Hip Hop.

“I’m even being shown cheerleading outfits or pom poms, saying “we’re going to be famous” - that’s what you felt all the time.”

It was true. When we were younger, we had filmed ourselves dancing to Eminen, a central part of her personality and my memories of her.

In the later years of her life, she’d often send messages about how she was trying to be famous on Snapchat or sending random messages about releasing music to become a star.

A few other important names were also given, Chris, who was Sarah’s late dad, George, my brother, and around 40 minutes in, Jen got my friend’s name.

“To my surprise, I started to cry, because it was overwhelming and unexpected…”

There were no false attempts, and she could have said any female name, but she said: “I have a Sarah that’s coming right through for me.”

But while there were moments it seemed unmistakable that it was her, there were other leads which fell flat, and didn’t make sense.

At one point, Jen said she was being shown I had a near-death experience involving a white van at a crossroads and a cat in the last two months.

I confirmed it didn’t ring true.

Then she said: “That might make sense later, you’ll have to let me know about that.”

So far it’s been several days since the reading, and as for the near-death experience, I’m yet to have that…yet.

But what Dan and Jen did get right about me is that I’d had two big moves in the last three years, once when I’d moved from my parents’ home, and then once again a year later when I went abroad.

Then Jen said: “You’re trying to relocate, again, but you’ve had all these moves?”

This was undeniably accurate, I was in the process of moving again, but nothing searchable online would indicate that.

It’s safe to say, I got much more out of the reading than I had ever imagined.

And, after watching it back with my cynical sisters and mum, all of whom were close with Sarah, they also agreed that certain statements were just a little too specific.

What’s more, some things which didn’t make sense during the reading, came to light after.

That’s apart from the near-death experience – I’m quite happy this continues not to make sense.

Overall, my encounter with Jen and Dan certainly challenged what I thought I knew about psychics and mediums.

Even if I was hell-bent on fighting the urge to believe in mediumship, I can’t deny that my rational brain can’t explain how they were able to validate specific memories and emotions.

Which leaves me with the thought: “How else did they know?”

Dan and Jen are hosting a mediumship development weekend in Tunbridge Wells on November 22.

You can also find them on TikTok.