- April 28, 2024
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Interior designer Eden Cross is now publicizing her second skill: talking to animals.
The door glides open, and Saki, a tiny ball of brown and gray with long eyebrows and wild bed head, yaps and bounces on two back feet.
Eden Cross, Palm Coast’s resident animal communicator, picks up her dog and smiles. She introduces her husband, Mark, with whom she owns a 33-year-old interior-design firm, M&E Cross Inc. Then she moves toward the back of her home, down a hallway to their offices. This is where the two conduct business for their day job, she says, as Saki licks her cheek and lip.
Mostly, the couple focus their design in high-end communities, and photos of their work, hanging like trophies over Cross’ desk, prove that they are good at what they do.
But Cross is multitalented.
“I’m a psychic medium,” she says, glancing up from a filing cabinet of past clients. Clients like Huggies.
Huggies was an old cat who let Cross know that she was tired of injections and tubes. By rubbing Huggies’ stomach, Cross says she learned that Huggies had intestinal issues, and tubes were being used to drain fluid from her abdomen.
Following the reading, Huggies’ owners switched to oral medications.
Cross looks at photographs and picks up words, feelings or images — sometimes from the animal’s perspective. All she needs is a photo. No face-to-snout necessary. No mano-a-mongrel required. She sits with the photo at home. Then she tunes in.
What comes next varies but, according to Cross, is always special, and serious.
“When I’m given the responsibility of tuning into animals who don’t have a voice,” she says, “that’s a sacred trust. I need to do my best.”
Cross says she has always been sensitive to emotions, intuition, even medicines. It’s a trait which has likely helped in making her a good designer: She can usually feel from people what they’re looking for before they even tell her. But although she knew from an early age that she was gifted (“I grew up in haunted houses,” she says), she has kept quiet about her “other job” for fear that she’d be alienated.
But Cross is older now, and maybe braver. You get to a certain age, she says, where you start wanting more from life. More satisfaction. More service rendered to others. More honesty.
“I kept it quiet for a long time,” she says solemnly. “I didn’t tell anybody because I was afraid people would think I was crazy. I was afraid no one would like me. I was afraid of being shunned … (But) this is who I am. Why hide it?”
Cross came out of the psychic closet at the end of 2011. Her powers were recently featured on a Jacksonville TV news show and in a magazine. She has printed a brochure and is plugged into social media.
In addition to animal readings (farm animals not excluded), Cross is also a medium for people. She has worked on murder cases and says that she can speak to dead people. But she can’t read futures. That’s the difference between psychics and psychic mediums, she says.
“Humanity has forgotten, we as human beings have forgotten, that we are intuitive,” she says, placing Saki on the ground and slipping her hands into her pockets. She shrugs. “Everyone is born with their, whatever you want to call it. … Everybody has a certain amount of ability to sense things. … This is in our DNA, from the prehistoric time. Since we were cave people.”
Cross is anything but your TV-variety psychic. Her home is handsome and neat, without a crystal ball or Tarot card to be found. Her demeanor is friendly-professional. She’s articulate and acknowledges the eccentricity of her craft.
“I consider myself as someone who tries to help people and help animals,” she says. “I want to help humanity to understand things other than in a material sense. And to understand our connection to each other and to, in my thoughts, God. And that we are all, therefor, responsible to each other in one way or another.”
At the heart of Cross’ trade, it seems, is a reminder that life is a circle with all things connected. But at the end of the day, she admits, you need more than that.
If you’re going to call yourself a medium, you better back it up.
“This is what validates a reading,” she says, jutting forward in her chair, pointing. “And that’s what I don’t like about anything — if it’s phony baloney. I don’t like baloney … I can’t stand lies.”
She points to other so-called “mediums” who might announce to a client that their cat loves them. Okay, she says, maybe that’s true. But there’s no validation there.
She cites cases after case in which animals have told her things she couldn’t otherwise have known — like a family gardener’s name and what he calls the animal, or an owner’s love of Greek olives. Or about Max, the neighbor’s pooch.
“Max is a dog of few words,” she says. “Max does not chat. But Max will tell me if he has a problem” — such as a toothache or an ear infection, later confirmed by a vet.
“And remember,” she adds, “that I’m seeing all this, and feeling all this and hearing all this telepathically, OK? … We have to try to put it into words properly ... and not distort or change or edit it in any way. But it’s hard.”
Conversationally, Cross derails at times, staring off into the shelving and blinds, looking for her train of thought. Then she’ll find it and quickly regroup.
“From the beginning, mostly, I worked with deceased people,” she says. “People would come to me. It’s actually quite lovely when they come to me, dead people. … When I hear music in my head, it’s a spirit. They play music. And everyone plays different music.”
She blinks, says she used to work in the music business, that music has always been something she adores.
She continues, trying to tally how many animals she’s worked with in her lifetime. “Maybe a couple hundred? I haven’t kept count.”
There was one cat she saw in public who tuned in to tell her about his owner. “She cries all the time,” the cat communicated, “and I help her. She’s very, very sad.”
Cross leaned back in her chair and explained that she approached the woman. “I’m an animal communicator, and I know it sounds crazy but your cat was just talking to me,” she told the woman, relaying what the cat had said.
It turns out, she continued, that the woman had recently lost her husband, and she admitted that she had been crying most nights. Cross hoped that knowing the animal was aware enough to understand her grief would help the woman to heal.
“When I started doing interior design, in the back of my mind I considered myself a healer, a nurturer,” Cross says, picking up and cradling Saki. “We want to create environments that (clients) want … but also what they seem to need, what they can’t put into words, that helps calm them and gives them a greater sense of well-being. And I guess that’s what I endeavor to do with anything that I take on. … It’s all a matter of helping my fellow human beings.”
For more, call 931-0924.
TESTIMONIAL
Bridget Harrison is a past customer of Eden Cross. She provided the following testimonial on Cross’ Facebook page:
“I want to talk about Eden and how accurate she really is in her readings. She communicated with my dog, Glamour, and described some warts/cyst that she had on her, but that you can’t see in photos — only if you were in person. Eden and I have never met.
“Second, she described an event that happened just recently, as well, in which an austic boy couldn’t communicate and kicked Glam. Eden told us that incident took place and that it hurt Glam.
“Eden has also talked about how Glam was relaying the song, ‘Taps,’ to her, and I explained to Eden after the reading that my grandfather just died, and we are a military family, and ‘Taps’ is usually played at the funeral. ...
“So if you’re looking for an insight into your animal’s life, Eden really does communicate. Maybe a reading is for you!”
