Michael Brown is the Founder of spiritdaily.com, an amazing Catholic News Website.
As a secular journalist, Michael was known for exposing the Love Canal toxic waste crisis in his hometown of Niagara Falls, New York. He was nominated for three Pulitzer prizes. In 1984, Michael was named one of People Magazine’s “people of the first decade”.
His work has appeared in numerous publications like the Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times Magazine, Reader’s Digest, Science Digest, New York Saturday Review, Rolling Stone, and much more.
Since 1991 he has written almost exclusively about spiritual topics, including Christian best-selling books such as “The Final Hour”, “The Other Side”, and “Josyp Terelya: Witness To Apparitions and Persecution in the USSR: An Autobiography“.
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Francisco: Michael, what did you experience with Hurricane Ian in Florida where you live?
Michael: We’re halfway between St. Augustine and Daytona, and got just tropical winds and very little damage. The rain, we needed (nine inches). But before it hit, as always — trust me — I prayed over every large tree on our property! We chose where we are after I’d conducted interviews at the National Hurricane Center for a book quite a few years back. Anywhere can be hit, including our town, but I was aware of the “hotspots” in Florida, so we avoided certain areas. A number of officials told me that homes should never have been allowed on barrier islands. Nature should be left the way God created it. But money — mammon — talks. As a result, there will be much destruction in the future.
Michael: We’re halfway between St. Augustine and Daytona, and got just tropical winds and very little damage. The rain, we needed (nine inches). But before it hit, as always — trust me — I prayed over every large tree on our property! We chose where we are after I’d conducted interviews at the National Hurricane Center for a book quite a few years back. Anywhere can be hit, including our town, but I was aware of the “hotspots” in Florida, so we avoided certain areas. A number of officials told me that homes should never have been allowed on barrier islands. Nature should be left the way God created it. But money — mammon — talks. As a result, there will be much destruction in the future.
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Francisco: Discuss your spiritual awareness and when did it happen?
Michael: I was born and raised in a practicing Catholic family. My father Harold had been an altar boy, and he and my mother Rose attended Sunday Mass without fail. I strayed as a teenager and then throughout my twenties, until my early thirties, when I was writing a book about the Mafia. During the course of that research, I interviewed everyone from FBI agents and confidential county detectives to burglars and hitmen. I stayed for weeks at a “hideout” for one gangster who was in the witness-protection program.
Anyway, I was exposed to much darkness, and toward the end of the project, I had a vivid three-part dream of several angels, with their hands over me, as if cleansing and healing me in my apartment (East 90th Street in Manhattan at the time). In the dream they were dispelling the face of a demon or the devil — classic narrow face and goatee — sketched yet alive on the door.
Urgently I needed relief and was shocked to learn there was a church literally a two-minute walk from my apartment — down the elevator, past the concierge, and onto 90th, where it was in the middle of the block. I’d passed it a million times on the way to bars and restaurants and wherever, and never really had noticed it, that I could recall! Even big buildings blend into each other in Manhattan. I immediately started to attend daily Mass (I’d hear the bells and head for the liturgy). The church is Our Lady of Good Counsel.
My grandmother, with whom I was very close (when I was a kid she took me to daily Mass during Lent; she was a Third-Order Franciscan), always sent cards and letters signed, “May Our Lady of Good Counsel be with you” or to that effect. It was 1983, I believe.
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Francisco: You have visited more than 30 alleged apparition sites in the world. Why so many apparition sites?
Michael: When you research, you research. And there were so many reports. I ran across some falsity — and some demonic deceptions. You have to be very careful, especially in the U.S. Some things I saw behind the scenes were rather hair-raising. Also, at spots of current or recent claims in western Europe. But I was graced by and astonished at many places, especially Medjugorje, Lourdes, Fatima, and Laus in France, Zarvanystia (Ukraine), and Betania in Venezuela.
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Francisco: What did you experience in Medjugorje?
Michael: I first heard of Medjugorje shortly after my return to the Church in the 1980s, read about it, of all places, in People. Something about it immediately rang true to my journalistic and spiritual instincts. Soon, I also was given literature by a holy priest in Niagara Falls. He told me about the “miracle of the sun,” and when I returned from his rectory, I looked up at the sun and didn’t see a miracle, but instead of sunspots right after, I saw these floating pink hearts! I decided to travel there with a small group from Cleveland in 1990 and when I first arrived, I decided I’d been wrong; that it was a case of collective hysteria. I was mad! I was stuck there for a week! Folks were seeing bizarre things that seemed outlandish. Then, I started seeing phenomena myself, including pink hearts floating through the air during Mass and the miracle of the sun. I also saw a star act in a way no star does, and other phenomena, but the real miracle was the overwhelming feeling of peace, like “I’m at home. This is what home feels like.” It felt halfway between earth and Heaven. The veil is thin there — very. I went back eight more times. I probably will return again. There is nowhere on earth I’ve been that is more wondrous and that so totally converts people to Christ.
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Francisco: How can you tell if an apparition is authentic or not?
Michael: There are many markers. Is the seer self-promotional? Are the messages too lengthy — more like a person’s own meditations and viewpoints? Is there money involved? Is there pride? Is there a dark sense of cultishness? Is there exaggeration? Have there been false predictions? What are the fruits — true conversion or a superficial lift? When your spirit feels unsettled, watch out. Your intuition is built to detect certain things if you truly and objectively allow it to.
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Francisco: What led you to found spiritdaily.com?
Michael: Early in 2000, while writing a major book for a secular publisher, I received a fax from a friend in northern California, telling me to check out a “message” from Mary to the seer Marjana Soldo. In it, Mary was asking — earnestly — for prayers. It startled me. The Blessed Mother asking for prayers! I stopped working (I was interviewing scientists around the world on potential future natural events), and started saying a Rosary.
Around the second decade, I heard a “voice” in my head say, “Will you take on another mission?” I instinctively said “yes,” then thought: oh, oh. What will this mean? And within a week, out of the blue, the publisher, giving no reason, cancelled the book I was working on. It was the biggest advance I’d ever been given. My wife was disappointed, as were my two New York agents, but I felt peace about it. I felt it was in God’s Plan. I decided not to even question it.
My wife thought she’d have to go find a job, despite our young kids, whom she wanted to be with, and I told her, hey, there’s this internet thing. It’s becoming big and we could start a website, a website with spiritual news. That was the beginning of Spirit Daily, which — and this was not planned — began its first day of operation on May 13, 2000, the anniversary of Fatima. The very first headline we carried remains the largest we’ve ever had — news that the Vatican was going to release the Third Secret. I believe Spirit Daily was the “mission.” My wife Lisa is as much a part of Spirit Daily as I am. She edits everything, comes up with article ideas, and runs the bookstore and retreats. An incredible job she has done.
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Francisco: How do you determine what you are going to feature each day?
Michael: I pray first thing in the morning and go to Mass at seven a.m., and I get ideas during prayers (I urge fifteen decades of the Rosary every day) and also just looking at what’s in the news, both spiritual/religious news and secular sources. I also look at many books and often get ideas for stories from them, or feature the books themselves in articles. Many headlines have come from emails sent by viewers of the site. Many.
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Francisco: How many people do you have sorting through all the articles from around the world?
Michael: Two. It’s done in the morning mainly, but throughout the day, the news is monitored, and then around 5 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. there is a fuller scan. If we get wind of a breaking story, we put it right on, 24/7.
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Francisco: Talk about your family life.
Michael: My wife and I were married in 1993. It was the first marriage for both of us, though I was 41 and my wife 33. She lived in the Albany area, and there we settled and had three children, before moving to Florida. One daughter works in social media for a large hospital group in Orlando, our son works in Manhattan in public relations, and we still have a daughter in college! (Florida State).
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Francisco: How many books have you written?
Michael: Last time I counted, thirty. Sometimes (age?), I’m hard-pressed to remember all the titles. Actually, I “nearly can’t remember” at times because a title may slip my mind, but a few moments later I can resurrect it in my cerebral circuitry!
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Francisco: Why have you so many books about the afterlife?
Michael: I don’t believe there’s anything more important than where we go when we die, and the accounts of those who have glimpsed the “other side” are fascinating and inspirational (for the most part) — and very, very informative. They emphasize the critical importance of forgiveness and how we treat others and love. Such experiences have been formally recorded since Pope Gregory the Great logged them around the fifth or sixth century. Amazing accounts — and so many, I could continue to write books about them. So very uplifting, informing the spirit.
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Francisco: What keeps you going?
Michael: My love for God, my family, my missions. And of course, a need to maintain ourselves. I have no plans to retire, but you never know what God has in mind.
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Francisco: What do you make of the sign of the times?
Michael: It’s clear that events are “graduating” — that there is a gradual increase in intensity, whether natural events such as weather gyrations, floods, storms, or quakes, and so forth, or man-made events, such as war, as we see in Ukraine. Ironically, my first Catholic book was with a Ukrainian mystic who’d spent twenty years in the Soviet gulag. Anyway, I think we’re headed for what Father Michael Scanlan once described to me as a “high-point event.”
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Francisco: You were a close friend of the amazing Maria Esperanza. What was she like?
Michael: Maria was among the very most amazing people I’ve ever met. I first spoke to her in Caracas (Venezuela), where I went to research the apparition site to which she was attached. I’ll never forget that first meeting: it was in the waiting room of a hospital because one of her daughters was having a baby! She came in, so graciously meeting with me, and immediately told me things she could not have known. Soon after, I interviewed her at her home, with her husband Geo — another saint — and her children and their spouses! Incredible family. Incredible feeling. I remember when I returned to my hotel, I was composing songs in my head and singing. And I’m not musically inclined! That’s how she made this rather hardened old reporter feel: like I was walking on air. Amazing. By the way, she was born on the feast day of Saint Cecelia — patron of musicians.
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Francisco: I was standing very close to Maria Esperanza at a prophecy conference in Toronto many years ago and I could smell the scent of roses all around her. What other mystical gifts did she have?
Michael: Yes, in her house that time, I also encountered wafts of what they call the “odor of sanctity,” which kept materializing around Maria. She was like a female Padre Pio — whom she knew when she was living in Italy, wanting to be a nun, before God called her to a vocation of motherhood. She had visions. She had apparitions. She had reportedly bilocated. She reportedly healed (or I should say, Christ has healed through her). She was seen in levitation during Mass, while in deep prayer. I spoke to folks who witnessed it. On Good Fridays, she sometimes had stigmata on the palms of her hands — witnessed by two physicians who watched it actually develop. She is prophetic. She foresaw 9/11. I know that for a fact because she foretold it to Spirit Daily several times months before it happened. The most difficult phenomenon to believe was that on more than a dozen occasions, a rose erupted from her chest, thorns and all. This was witnessed by many credible people, including a TV journalist and a radio host, as well as doctors.
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Francisco: Describe the Sun Miracle in Betania, Venezuela.
Michael: It’s like Medjugorje. But I myself — the first day I was there — saw something I’d never seen before. Rays from the solar orb suddenly streaked through the jungle canopy near a grotto and formed a very discernible figure of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal, complete with rays of lights streaking from her hands toward earth. Astounding. I saw it with my own eyes, never expecting that.
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Francisco: What article you featured in Spirit Daily stood out the most over the years?
Michael: My, there have been more than three thousand. I think the stories about 9/11 and the prophetic component, especially one about a devout Catholic who led the charge aboard that plane that crashed over Pennsylvania (I spoke with his widow, and the details were mesmerizing), stand out. But it’s very difficult to say. Afterlife. Prophecy, Church news. So many headlines in the past 22 years!
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Francisco: You have an online Prophecy Conference on October 29, 2022. Give us the details and how our Catholic Stand readers can take part.
Michael: They can register at this link. Join us! We’ve had terrific feedback. It’s like one big family. Pray for it and for us and we’ll do the same for you!
16 thoughts on “An Exclusive Interview with Michael Brown of Spirit Daily”
Michael Brown gives Creedence to the saying that —–anything you can dream about and believe in is achievable through prayer—-Francisco, you were able to bring this to light with your thoughtful questions to Michael Brown. Thank You!
Irene thank you for your kind and thoughtful comment.
I would like to thank Big Pulpit with listing Interview with Michael Brown on their website.
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Francisco, I really enjoyed reading your article and how Michael began ‘SpiritDaily’.
A very informative read, while I look forward to more of the same from you.
Keep it up Francisco!
Phil, thank you for your kind comment. I will continue to look for interesting topics to write about. My next article will be about the Franciscans as the Custodians of the Holy Land. Keep following all the articles on Catholic Stand.
Francisco… thank you for sharing your interview with Michael …. As always you continue to bring interesting interviews to the Catholic Stand …. I look for to your next interview… God bless continued health
Rocco God bless you and your family. I will continue to do interesting articles and interviews for Catholic Stand.
Very informative article keep up the good work God bless
Joseph thank you for your encouraging comment. God bless you.
Fantastic article, Francisco!! I’m a big fan of Michael Brown and “Spirit Daily.” It’s one of my “go to” websites each day. I’ve also read many of Michael’s books. They’re all very enriching. Regarding his periodical retreats or prophecy webinars, they are a real treat. I encourage everyone to attend. You won’t be disappointed!!
Wonderful comment Bill. I too am a big fan of Michael Brown and Spirit Daily. It’s my go to website everyday. I encourage everyone to take part in his retreats and prophecy webinars. I attended a prophecy conference held by Spirit Daily many years ago in Toronto and it was simply amazing with a jam packed crowd.
Fredina wonderful comments to my article. Michael Brown is a man of great faith who knows how to express himself very well because he has authored 30 books and written many articles. The articles in Spirit Daily totally amaze me every single day.
Very nice article. I’ve heard Michael Brown speak a few times, the first time many years ago in Tulsa, OK. I’ve read many of his books and always learn or ponder something different. I enjoy his conferences, too, and will be watching the next one on the 29th. Blessings!
Thank you Kathy F. for your kind comments. I look at Spirit Daily every single day because I learn new and amazing things about my Catholic faith. I hope that everyone who reads this article takes part in the online Prophecy Conference on October 29, 2022.
An excellent article. Francisco is truly a talented interviewer as evidenced by his thoughtful and insightful questions. Michael’s responses encourage us to be aware and responsive to the manifestations of God’s spirituality around us.