Carmel Baird recalls an early meeting with reality TV producer Lark Productions when her mind suddenly fixed on a different reality than negotiating deal points: the spirits of dead relatives of Louise Clark, the indie producer’s founder and president with whom she was meeting.

“[Clark] had a lot of loved ones who wanted to come in,” Baird, whose claim she can talk to the dead helped her land her own reality TV series, Mom’s a Medium, on Corus Entertainment’s CMT Canada, told Playback Daily.

Rather than take care of business first, Baird, a rural Alberta psychic medium and rancher, felt the need to take ghostly dictation from Clark’s ancestral souls.

“They were telling me, can you get her [Clark] to say this, or to say that,” Baird recalled of the deeper reality in the room trying to break through.

Erin Haskett, executive producer at Lark Productions, insists it is just Baird’s charismatic gift to connect with the dead that convinced the indie producer she might also connect with a TV audience, and in the process reassure the living.

“It’s not a dark show. We keep it light,” Haskett said of the Mom’s a Medium format captured in 10 half-hour episodes.

For example, a typical client reading by Baird that aims to connect the grieving with otherworldly souls takes an hour. That reading will be chronicled on the CMT reality series in a fast-paced three or four minutes, with much of the rest of Mom’s a Medium given over to showing Baird attempting to balance family life with her husband, six children, grandchildren, six horses, 10 chickens, six dogs and her communion with the recently departed.

“She has a great gift that helps people heal,” Haskett explained.

Baird added those appearing on Mom’s a Medium are already broken and in a dark place when they are introduced on the reality TV show.

So it’s not long before they are offered peace and closure as loved ones speak from beyond the grave.

“I give them a message of healing,” Baird explained.

She added Mom’s a Medium is aimed as much at skeptics as believers in the supernatural and otherworldly.

“I love skeptics. They cry the most. They hug you the hardest,” she insists.

Mom’s a Medium bows on CMT on June 20.