Ruslan Salei’s family uses Russian TV psychic to contact his spirit

Every once in a while, we come across shows featuring psychics and mediums when we flip through the gazillion channels on our cable lineups. We don’t, however, expect to see anything related to hockey on such shows.

But oddly and eerily enough, the Russian version of the "Psychic Challenge" TV show, based on the now-cancelled "America’s Psychic Challenge", will feature a family very familiar to the hockey world.

The Oct. 13 episode involves the family of Ruslan Salei, the former Anaheim Ducks and Detroit Red Wings defenseman who was on the doomed flight from Yaroslavl to Minsk two years ago with the rest of the KHL Lokomotiv team. They attempt to contact Salei in the hereafter.

According to Salei’s mother Tamara, who spoke with Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, Salei’s niece wrote a letter to the TV show.

“'Who’ and ‘why’ was not really important to us. We wanted, if at all possible, to talk to Ruslan’s soul, to find out how he is,” Tamara Salei told the newspaper. “And one of the mediums got in touch with Ruslan’s ghost. He was right behind our backs. Son asked us to wish his niece a Happy Birthday that she has last summer…

“We were surprised: How could the medium find out about that? Then our son’s ghost sighed and said with sorrow ‘I would really want to light up a cigar right now!’ At that point we couldn’t even breathe: Ruslan actually really loved good cigars!

“The medium also said that Ruslan had a chance to survive, not everything was predetermined. And I remembered that before that game son didn’t want to fly to Minsk, but planned to drive his car alone. He then changed his mind and decided not to separate from the team. Back then Vadim, my second son, tried to convince him ‘Don’t fly. If you don’t want to drive, that’s OK, I am ready to come get you from Minsk…”

Quite chilling.

When the news of Salei family’s participation first came out, some Russian fans questioned the decision, some calling it unethical. To that, Salei’s mother said, “What’s unethical in it? It’s our right to find out why my son died. What’s so bad about it? It’s not like we are asking for a further investigation.”

According to the report, the mediums also connected with one of the pilots who died in the crash. The pilot allegedly said that nothing could depend on them, and that the tragedy happened because of technical problems.

Crew errors were cited as the reason of the crash by investigators.