NBC promotes communication with the dead

Matt Lauer of NBC's Today Show recently took a long flight to Rio, where he'll be covering the Olympics this month. But before that, back in New York, he took a very different sort of journey. This trip was with Tyler Henry, the psychic medium and star of the E! show "Hollywood Medium."

"I got home and I cried," he told Savannah Guthrie and the other anchors about his reading with the 20-year-old medium.

Henry's been wowing audiences and celebrities alike with his purported psychic abilities on his TV show. This fall, he has a new book coming out called "Between Two Worlds."

But his time with Matt was, in his own words, "one of my favorite readings yet," he said later.

Matt initially expressed nerves and a bit of doubt. "I don't understand the process, to be perfectly honest with you," he said as he took a seat across from Henry.

"The way that this works is that you'll watch me scribble," Henry explained. "And I just do this. And this is kinda my way of forgetting my surroundings and kind of distracting myself and focusing on a central point so that I can kind of pick up on subtle impressions that come through."

Henry began by asking for a pocket knife Matt had with him that once belonged to the anchor's maternal grandfather.

Soon, a man began "insisting to connect," someone who felt like a father figure, Henry said.

As it turns out, Matt's own father passed away in 1997 and chose to spend the last few weeks of his life at home under hospice care.

"He showed me the symbol of a phone being held to one's ear when they're in an unconscious state and being told, like, it's OK to be able to pass," Henry said.

His description seemed to match what Matt's family went through with his dad.

"When they show that symbol — that, to me, always acknowledges they ultimately told the family, 'It's OK.' Like, 'You don't have to hold on.'"

"I don't know if you're aware of this. But he's acknowledging an individual be out on a boat, and I feel like I'm sitting alone and I'm fishing and I'm thinking, 'Dad.' And he's having me acknowledge this feeling of like I'm there with you. I'm there with you."

"You know," Matt interrupted incredulously. "My dad shared two passions with me. He shared golf and fishing."

"And I do go out, fish a lot alone on a boat."

Before the session ended, Matt made sure Henry communicated one thing to his father.

"Tell him I'm happy," he said. "Because of him."

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