Allison DuBois was 17 and hanging out with her friend Barbara in her bedroom, getting ready to head out for the evening, when she heard a voice—out of nowhere—distinctly say, “Move your bed.”
So she did.
Without hesitating, she moved the bed from the south wall to the east wall—though she shares that Barbara thought she was “weird” for doing so.
Then, the friends went out as planned.
Barbara was staying over for the night so when the friends got back, they got ready for bed and then went to sleep.
While they were sleeping, a truck—driven by a drunk woman—came crashing through DuBois’ bedroom wall, coming to rest was where the bed had been before Allison moved it. In fact, the place that she had moved it to was the only place in the room where the two friends would have survived.
This wasn’t the first time DuBois had heard that voice. One time, when she was 11, two men in a car approached her.
“They were trying to get me to come over to their car window,” she says. “And I heard a voice say, ‘Go’ and images of my house were being flashed through my head.”
She got on her bike and pedaled away as fast as she could.
In addition to the voice, there were also the times when she saw something specific, like when she was 6 and her great grandfather died of cancer.
At the funeral, “I thought he was taking a nap,” she says. “Because when you’re 6 years old and you don’t feel well, they put you down for a nap. Everyone was crying, and I didn’t really know what was going on, so my mom brought me home and put me to bed.”
After her mom left the room, DuBois saw her great grandfather standing at the foot of her bed.
“He said, ‘Tell your mom I’m not in pain anymore and I’m still with her.’ I thought he had woken up from his nap. I didn’t know.”
She went and told her mom, who told her to go back to bed. When she went back to her room, her great grandfather wasn’t there anymore.
“I didn’t know what was going on, but I had conveyed his message,” she says.
By the time she met her husband, Joe, at age 20, other things had happened in the intervening years. But, the woman who had a fascination with crimes since she was young and had been drawn to watching shows like 20/20 and 60 Minutes—“I was a strange kid. I just knew I had a fascination with these crimes, and I’d get impressions … of who committed them”—still thought all of this was just because she wanted a career as a prosecutor. Little did she know she was about to change course, embracing her gifts as a medium.
Her First Career Path
By the time she was 28, DuBois—who was not only born and raised in Arizona but is a fifth generation Arizonan and graduated from Arizona State University—was interning in homicide at the District Attorney’s office.
One day, a friend told her about a psychic, and since DuBois had heard about a missing person case on the news, they decided to attend a psychic group to see if she could get any information about the case. DuBois had never attempted to work a case before (and wasn't actually working this one), but felt compelled to try this. Everyone in the circle was practicing pulling impressions off of each other, and needless to say, DuBois’ impressions were so on-target that within three months, people were actually booking readings with her.
DuBois soon learned about a scientist who was studying people with abilities, so she decided to reach out.
“I wanted to be tested because I wanted to prove I wasn’t that good so that I could go back to law school,” she says. “I had a plan.”
The scientist was at the University of Arizona and he put DuBois through numerous tests—and DuBois was successful at each one.
Scientists continued to study her for four years, and during that time, DuBois began using her now-tested medium abilities to help others, switching from pursuing a career as a prosecutor to helping solve cases.
In fact, it was when she was in Texas helping the Texas Rangers on a case with a missing girl that DuBois first heard about an AMBER Alert—an emergency message issued when law enforcement agencies determine that a child has been abducted and is in imminent danger. At the time, the AMBER Alert system was only available in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
Realizing how much lifesaving potential the alert system had, she brought it to the attention of government agencies in Arizona, and was soon sitting on the task force to design it.
“That AMBER Alert is probably the thing I most proud of beyond my children,” she says.
Hollywood Comes Knocking
In 2000, DuBois was contacted by Paramount to join a casting call for a show called Oracles, a reality TV pilot that was to be produced by actor Kelsey Grammer (of Frasier fame).
Although she wasn’t necessarily interested in being on TV, “I went to the casting call to see if there was somebody else like me,” DuBois explains. “I wanted to meet others like me.”
She didn’t meet anyone similar to her, and the show never went anywhere. However, Grammer was impressed by her life and abilities.
Not long after, the then-31-year-old received a call from Grammer saying he was interested in doing a television show based on her life.
“I thought, I haven’t lived long enough to have a show based on my life!”
But DuBois agreed, and NBC’s series Medium was a huge success. She was portrayed by Patricia Arquette, with the show depicting an Arizona housewife who uses her sixth sense to help solve crimes.
New York Times Bestselling Author
DuBois also began writing. Her first book, titled Don’t Kiss Them Good-bye, was released in 2005. It began as a journal, but after her father died at 67 of a massive heart attack—which she had predicted—she decided to release it as a book.
“I was feeling the pain not as a medium, but as a daughter,” she explains. “I wanted to relate to other people who were going through it, and I wanted them to be able to work through their own grief through my words.”
She subsequently continued to write, and her books quickly became New York Times bestsellers. In all, she’s written six books, with the last, Love Can't Tell Time: Why Love Never Dies, released in 2020.
“They struck a chord with people. People didn’t know how to navigate grief or the other side. That’s really why there’s a series of them. The older I was getting, the more I was experiencing, and the more I needed to share.
“I’m just trying to understand enough about death before I die so I can leave these chronicles behind, so somebody else can maybe get there faster than I did and not have to do it the hard way,” she says.
Dead University and The Dead Life
Never one to rest, in 2021 DuBois—who still lives in Scottsdale and who has three daughters with Joe—launched Dead University, her school for the gifted. Since she is unable to mentor everyone who asks individually, this is her way of mentoring as many people as she can.
She created video lessons and a Zoom laboratory, where those with abilities could practice on each other. She also answers questions and monitors them. Currently, Dead University has 70 beginner students. DuBois is also creating a curriculum for an advanced course.
During the Covid-19 lockdown, she also received a call from an executive who asked her if she’d be interested in having her own podcast.
Thus, The Dead Life launched. On the podcast, she aims to learn how other people see death through their lens.
“I know how it looks through mine,” she says. “I want to experience other people’s points of view, even if they don’t believe. That’s ok. I just want to see their point of view.”
Recent guests have included a priest who is also a medium, as well as Stephen Simon, a producer of the movie Somewhere in Time.
Currently, The Dead Life, a weekly podcast, is in the top 1% of podcasts.
The Afterlife
One of the main messages DuBois wants to share is for people to not fear death.
“It’s not scary,” she says. “It’s not some darkness with strange people coming for you.”
She shares that in the afterlife, you revert to the age when you were the happiest. And she says that the dead always say that we’re the dead ones, and that they’re more alive than we are.
“They have a sense of humor on the other side. It’s beautiful. It’s vibrant. It’s the way you want it to be, all the time. … It’s all the greatest moments of our life combined in one experience that never ends.
“And, they wait for us. As we mourn for them and we miss them in our living life, their heaven isn’t complete without us. They wait. The key is to meet in the middle and to still include them in your life, and enjoy the time that you have left, and to not be destroyed by their passing but to reconnect with them and include them in your days.”
For more information on DuBois, her books, Dead University or The Dead Life podcast, visit AllisonDubois.com.