Trey Ganem talks to the dead, and he makes their coffins.
Now the owner of SoulShine Industries, a company that makes customized coffins in Edna, Texas, is donating his efforts to the victims of the school shooting in Uvalde.
Ganem, 50, told The Post Saturday he is covering the costs of the coffins, which retail for about $3,400 each. He said he met with the families of 19 of the victims — 18 children and one teacher — and he has designed coffins featuring dinosaurs, butterflies, softball and scenes from TikTok videos.
In all, 21 people were killed Tuesday when an 18-year-old gunman marched into Robb Elementary School, barricaded himself in a classroom and began killing.
“I was called by a few people who needed caskets urgently, and the whole thing really tore me up so I decided to help,” said Ganem, who is the star of A&E reality show “Trey the Texas Medium.”
He spoke to The Post while he was loading eight of the coffins into a truck for the nearly four-hour drive to Uvalde. By Tuesday, all of the coffins should be in town, in time for the funerals.
He said he met with families of the victims on Wednesday and Thursday, and began designing the coffins Friday. He has been working around the clock to complete the designs that he paints on the caskets, which are manufactured at the Cherokee Casket Company in Georgia.
“We started working on the caskets on Friday, and we have eight of them painted,” he said. “We are still talking to the families as we speak, and they are at the funeral homes walking through and looking at examples. And then we are here in Edna, jotting down the information to get exactly what they want.”
Ganem is making the customized coffins for all of the children except for one, but would not elaborate further. He is also creating the coffin for Eva Mireles, one of the fourth-grade teachers gunned down in her classroom.
He says he regularly communicates with the deceased while he’s working on caskets, including victims of Tuesday’s shooting, but wouldn’t elaborate.
“It helps me create the caskets,” he said.
Ganem is no stranger to mass shootings. He worked on coffins for the 26 people killed in the Sutherlands Spring Church shooting in 2017, and designed a coffin for Fort Hood soldier Vanessa Guillen, who was killed in 2020. For Guillen’s coffin, he used images of the Mexican and American flags as well as one of the Virgin Mary, he said. He also customized a coffin for Texas rapper 50 Pak, who died in 2017.
Ganem incorporates his designs into computer-generated images and creates “a huge sticker” to wrap around the coffins. His son Billy, 27, helps with the wraps.
The latest from the Texas school shooting
He has been clairvoyant since the age of 5, Ganem said, and has worked as a medium for several years.
“It’s been a beautiful thing for me to hear all of their stories,” he said. “I feel like I have become a part of their family.”
