He’d get arrested for practicing medicine without a license. The FDA and the police would come and harass him. This was both a blessing and a hindrance, because the culture at the time considered him to be like, the devil or a communist. He worked for the president of Cuba, Walt Disney, Dean Martin. When he moved to Miami in the 1950s, he became this high society interior decorator. He came back to New York and became an interior decorator. At 18, he started building sets for Charlie Chaplin in Hollywood.

Here, in his own words, Philip talks about his youth, growing up with the occult, and the burden of carrying on a father’s legacy.

In his memoir, Walking Through Walls, Philip tells the story of his childhood, his father, and his complicated feelings of being within that world. But it wasn’t until he became an adult that he really, fully understood what his father did for other people and began to communicate with him himself after his passing. Philip grew up knowing that his dad wasn’t like others. He had a first-hand view of his father’s clandestine world, one that would it ever be made public, would have had its participants labeled as a Communists or devil sympathizers. Philip, who is now 66, witnessed his father work to help the desperate and curious and watched as a parade of characters - astrologers, curious families, those with a fascination with the occult - entered his home. By night, however, he came home to his true calling: acting as a medium that could communicate with the dead and help heal the sick through psychic abilities. By day, his father, Lew, worked as an interior decorator for the rich and famous. Philip Smith had, shall we say, an interesting childhood.

Walking Through Walls by Philip Smith