Allison DuBois is a fan of cemeteries. She's used to things that go bump in the night. And she can see dead people, too.

But the 33-year-old Gilbert-turned-Phoenix resident and psychic/medium, who is the inspiration behind NBC's first-year hit drama “Medium,” doesn't stick out like you might expect during lunch at Steamers Genuine Seafood with her 36-year-old husband, Joe.

There’s no crystal ball present. And she doesn’t refer to herself as Madam Allison.

In fact, she looks like your average Jane. However, DuBois is anything but average.

“Medium,” in which Patricia Arquette portrays an Arizona housewife who uses her sixth sense to help solve crimes, is a ratings success. And DuBois recently published her first book, “Don’t Kiss Them Good-bye.”

The producers “used it as a chronological guide for writing episodes,” the bubbly DuBois says.

Before television came calling, DuBois — who assists police departments and works as a jury consultant, all free of charge — was a research medium at the University of Arizona, where she underwent tests for four years.

She was contacted by Paramount in 2001 to join a casting call for “Oracles,” a reality-TV pilot that went nowhere.

“They wanted to track people in my genre and they were narrowing 120 people to five, and the five oracles would be kind of an audience-type show where you read people,” DuBois explains. “I really didn't want to do that. But I wanted to meet other people like me, so I went, and I ended up testing and becoming one of the five oracles.”

It was there that she met “Frasier’s” Kelsey Grammer, a producer for “Oracles” who would later become a
producer of “Medium.”

“I was contacted a year and a half later, and Kelsey's assistant said, ‘They're interested in doing a series based on your life,' she says. “‘Would you be interested in doing that?' I was like, ‘Sure!'’’

DuBois says she knew the show would be a success.
“I thought it would resonate with people, the human aspect of it and the relationship between Allison and Joe and the family and that everybody has some adversaries in their life and this just happens to be one of mine that I have to figure out and turn it into a positive,” she says. “I'm not a martyr. I'm not trying to win over the world and convince everyone. I don't care.”

DuBois, who says most of the episodes are based on something that happened in her life, is a big fan of her portrayer.

“She hits it right on,’’ she says of Arquette. “When they were going to make the show they said, ‘How do you see it being?’ And I said, ‘Sarcastic. Dark humor.'

‘‘You got to have a sense of humor with what I do, and I do. I'm very dry and I'm very sarcastic, but I really like people, too.’’

Dealing with skeptics

DuBois says she's learned to control her gift, for the most part.

“I have pretty decent boundaries up,’’ she says. “I'm very distracted right now with everything going on. I'm in my own world. I'm not being bothered at all. I haven't gone back to doing private readings...

‘‘When I was doing the private readings, it would be a little harder because they would be in my house a couple days before I did the reading telling me that their parents were coming or how the kid died so I would write it down. When the parents would sit down, I would be like, ‘I'm so glad you're here. Your son's been here for two days!’’

Naturally, DuBois has her skeptics.

“I was questioning it, so I can understand them questioning it,’’ she says. ‘‘And I was doing it and I was still puzzled by it. So I went to the (University of Arizona) lab to see what it was that I was doing and to hopefully prove I was just a tired mother of three that needed to go back to school. It just didn't turn out that way.’’

Whatever you do, don't ask DuBois to give you next week's winning Lotto numbers. She can't.

“I kind of want to give (the numbers) to them just so they waste a dollar buying the ticket and just for wasting my time,”she says, “Mediums laugh about that question. People will ask you unimportant things. ‘Where's my cell phone?' I don't care. Get a new one.

“Now if it's important — like I had a friend lose medication that was life or death for him — so I told him where it was and he was in another country. He was like, ‘Great.'

‘‘It comes in handy, but it has to be something that carries an importance to it or I probably couldn't even get it because I don't care. And if I can't get past that, I can't give you the information. I have to care.’’

Family traits

Joe DuBois — who resembles actor Dean Cain — became acquainted with Allison when they met at Gators, an ASU hangout. Joe was working on a doctorate in mathematics while Allison, who graduated from Corona del Sol High School in Tempe in 1990, was working toward degrees in political science and history.

“We kind of met in the usual way that people do at bars.’’ says Joe, who's now an aerospace engineer. “We met in August and we married the (next) October.’’

They have three daughters, ages 5, 7 and 10, who share their mother's gift.

Joe says he didn't know anything about her visions when they wed.

“It was a couple years later, after we had all our children, that the whole scene with the people around the bed and everything came into play,’’ he says.

But Joe says he always knew his wife was special.

“She had an uncanny sensibility about people,’’ he says. “She knew their motives and who was going to stay together and who was going to get divorced. I didn't necessarily put it together right away.’’

Allison says her girls have the gift at different levels.
“The oldest — when she was 2 — she had woken up in her little cottage bed and we were like, 'What's the matter?' And she's like, 'There's a man at the end of the bed.' ’’

“Always at the end of the bed,’’ Joe adds.

“We were like, ‘Oh, what did he look like?' ’’ Allison continues. “And she said he was thin and tall and he said he's a geni-us. She couldn't say genius. I was like, ‘Who's that?' And Joe started laughing and said, ‘My dad.' He said that my dad always called himself ‘the genius' because he was an MIT chemical engineer.’’

Allison says she was concerned about her youngest when she found out she had her gift.

“She's so much more sensitive than her two older sisters,’’ she says. “They're more abrasive and more assertive, like me. She's very delicate and sweet.

“My dad died when she was 3. At the time, I didn't know if she was (psychic). I was hoping she wasn't, because I didn't want her to see the things I see and feel what cancer feels like and feel what being shot in the head feels like. I didn't want her to go through that. And after he died, she started talking to me and she's like, ‘Grandpa says it makes him sad when you cry and you need to stop.'

“I wasn't used to having the tables turned on me. Then over those few months when she was turning 4, I took her to see Disney Princesses on Ice and my mom called on the cell phone and said she got a new car...

‘‘I said, ‘Hey, baby, grandma got a new car she's going to show off.' And she goes, ‘It's silver.' I was like, ‘Please don't let it be silver. Please don't let it be silver.' And sure enough it was a big silver sport utility (vehicle). Now she's doing it much more.’’

Dealing with fame

With the success of “Medium,” DuBois says she's realizing that she opened herself up to everyone.

“At the book signings, I feel so bad because there are people that are dying of cancer that will come up just to shake my hand,’’ she says. “It just unravels me that they even had to wait in line and to not be able to fix them is very painful to me . . . It's really hard to be accessible to all these people that I want to help and don't have enough time in the day to do. That's very frustrating to me.

“Before I was used to being able to schedule people and they might have to wait a year, but they'd get in with me. Now I have 3,000 people on a waiting list and I can't even get to them yet because we're doing a book tour. And the book can reach more people than I can so I have to do this. I have to push the book.’’

DuBois says she tries to keep her children out of the spotlight.

“People magazine wanted to do a picture and I said absolutely not,’’ she says.“Nobody will know who they are except the kids they go to school with. I'm very protective of them.’’

And as for other changes, DuBois, who says she admires research mediums such as Laurie Campbell, Janet Mayer and Sally Owen, says, “We go on trips with Kelsey Grammer instead of our neighbor.’’

“I guess I get put in the danger that now the cases I've worked where I helped the people on death row,’’ she says. “They didn't know who I was in the courtroom before. Now they do. That worries me a little bit.’’

BOOK SIGNING
‘Don't Kiss Them Good-bye’
Who: Allison DuBois
When: 7 to 8:30 p.m. Thursday
Where: Changing Hands Bookstore, 6428 S. McClintock Drive, Tempe
How much: Free
Info: and www.allisondubois.com

TUNE IN
“Medium” airs
9 p.m. Mondays
on KPNX-TV
(Channel 12).