My Life As a Medium (4 page)

It was at times like these that I realized the importance of mediumship. It is a talent that goes beyond anything that can be given by other professionals, and is a vital link between two worlds. With it comes a responsibility that can make or break you. ‘Is that what is happening to me?’ I asked myself. ‘Am I being tested to find out whether I can survive the onslaught?’ In the past 18 months I had certainly experienced phenomena that were absolutely incredible.

At times I found the whole process quite unbelievable. I had never had any inclination to involve myself with the paranormal in any way; my life had been too full of other interests and I knew nothing of spiritualism. The idea of visiting a spiritualist church would have been entirely alien to me.

However, I was taken to several spiritualist churches by a friend who thought that it would ease my path and provide some of the answers to my innumerable questions. But I soon closed that particular door, realizing that I had to find out the truth about this very extraordinary profession, for myself. I decided to follow a solitary path, mainly because I did not want to be brainwashed by the thoughts of others. If this was to be my future, and it was certainly
beginning to look as though it was, then I had to break down all the barriers and come face to face, not only with myself, but with the power behind the phenomena.

One particular episode taxed my imagination. A small boy, who had been receiving healing from me, told his mother that he had seen me sitting on his bed during the night. ‘She was wearing a long blue gown, and smiled at me,’ he said, and though his mother questioned him for some time, intimating that he could have been dreaming, he was adamant. ‘I know I wasn’t dreaming because she woke me up when she sat on the bed.’ When his mother told me the story I was nonplussed. As far as I knew I had been safely tucked up in my own bed.

A similar story was given to me by another patient. Her husband was in a London hospital suffering from emphysema, and she had asked me to give him absent healing. When she visited him the following day he told her that a blonde woman wearing a long blue gown had visited him during the night. She asked him for a description; when he gave it, she said, ‘Oh, that’s Betty,’ and explained that she had asked me to give absent healing. She could not contain her excitement when she recounted the story to me. ‘How do you do it?’ she asked. I could only tell her that I hadn’t the faintest idea.

These nocturnal ‘visits’ were to become a regular occurrence, and were a complete mystery to me until a familiar voice – who I was by now calling my guru – told me that the mind leaves the body in sleep and
can move around freely and show itself as a spirit form, exactly the same method as when someone dies and then appears as a spirit.

‘But how can these people see me when they’re awake?’ I asked.

‘Because their mind is still partly out of the body. We can only be seen with the mind,’ he answered. ‘Mind energy consists of the same elements as our dimension.’ It was a relief to know that somewhere, somehow, I was not harbouring a strange wardrobe and wandering about at night. Obviously my mind had a mind of its own!

One evening, feeling particularly drained after a full day’s healing, I sat down in my favourite armchair and drifted off into a light sleep. I awoke with a start when I felt the pressure of hands on my shoulders, but although I looked around there was no one there. I stood up and searched every room in the house, but I was definitely alone. I returned to my armchair, sat down and closed my eyes, and immediately felt the pressure on my shoulders again. I must admit it felt a bit creepy, and this time I simply could not move. I thought I recognized the feel of the hands but could not quite place it. Quite suddenly I was relieved of the pressure and found that I could stand. I walked around the room, feeling a bit odd, when something to my right caught my attention, I turned, and standing before me was my mother. I was so moved that I could not utter a sound. She smiled and disappeared. Trying to recall the vision later I could not remember whether she had been solid or transparent. I decided
later that I had probably seen her as both as I had moved from one dimension to another.

There were times when I felt that the spirits had completely taken over my home. I would occasionally catch a fleeting glimpse of a spirit form if I turned suddenly, and it was this experience that taught me that the spirit world is not ‘out there’ somewhere. It is all around us. It is the energy counterpart of this planet and when we die our minds, free once more, spin through an energy vortex and, quite simply, go home.

In my first book,
Mind to Mind,
I told of the spirits that I could see walking through my bedroom as a child. Now I was being shown, once more, that this seemingly solid world of ours is but a shadow to the spirit world. This is why entities are able to disappear through doors and walls, and walk through wardrobes.

This conviction was confirmed one night when I saw the spirit form of a deceased friend quite literally walk through the wardrobe in my bedroom, sit on the bed and then it disappeared. A minute later he came up through the floor and stood laughing at the foot of the bed. I could sense him saying, ‘Well, what do you think about that!’

I found it quite extraordinary that I was accepting these visitations so easily – a far cry from my childhood when I habitually walked backwards, bumping into everything, because the church had convinced me that the devil was following me and waiting to pounce if I misbehaved. At least that is how my young
mind interpreted it. And I hated the idea of a guardian angel. It sounded so GOOD! The entities that shared my life now were normal; there was no goody-goody stuff with this lot, they were just ordinary beings going about their lives, albeit in another world. I was finally beginning to like the ‘feel’ of this new experience, and loved the warm embrace of the energy that surrounded me, especially when I was healing.

All my life I had felt that there was something wonderful waiting to happen. When I fell in love I used to think, ‘This is it.’ But after a while I would realize that it was not ‘the happening’ yet, that it was still to come. I used to lie awake at night sometimes, wondering what it was going to be. I would frequently stare at the night sky, seeking the answer amongst the stars and beyond, but nothing could have prepared me for what was happening to me now; this, surely, must be the supreme ‘happening’.

But as in everything, there has to be another side of the coin and that for me was my continued apathy toward the idea of giving ‘sittings’. When I did give in I made sure that the room was bright and cheerful. There were no dark rooms with red lights for me – that would have totally depressed me. Although my clients were always moved and overjoyed by the outcome, I was unable to rid myself of the restlessness that I felt throughout the whole sitting. I had so much energy!

I often thought how stupid I would feel if no one wished to communicate and we had to sit in complete silence. But the challenge was to come in an entirely
different way, and although I have recounted this story before I think it is still worth recalling, if only to help would-be mediums.

Within a few minutes of giving one particular sitting, I was given a picture of a pink elephant, and for a moment I wondered whether my client was an alcoholic. The picture appeared in my mind three times.

‘I’m sorry I haven’t said anything yet,’ I told her, ‘but quite honestly all I’m getting is a picture of a pink elephant.’

She was delighted. ‘I cannot thank you enough,’ she replied, ‘that is all I wanted to hear.’ She explained: ‘When my husband died he told me that if there was an afterlife he would show me a pink elephant. I’ve already been to several mediums, and was beginning to think that there was no life after death.’ She looked a little shamefaced, and went on, ‘I have to tell you that I deliberately thought of something else so that you couldn’t pick it up telepathically.’ Then she asked me why the other mediums had not picked it up.

‘There could be many reasons,’ I replied. ‘Perhaps your husband wasn’t around to pass the message on. Or, if they
did
get the message they might have felt a bit stupid.’ I smiled. ‘I must admit, I thought you were going to laugh at me.’

‘I’m so glad you told me,’ she said. ‘You’ve made me very happy.’

When she had gone, I wondered how many mediums had left out a vital piece of information
whilst passing on survival evidence, simply to protect their own reputations. I was beginning to realize how much courage and intelligence one had to have to become a good medium. Receiving the messages was only a small part of the whole. Throughout the first two years, a pattern evolved both in healing and mediumship. A new experience would result in a spate of similar occurrences.

Whilst I was giving healing to a young woman, her brother came through and showed me a book with a thistle pressed in it. She understood this because he had promised that this would be his way of showing her that life did exist after death. She was understandably shaken, because she had not expected the information to be given to her during a healing session. She had visited several mediums previously, to no avail, and as her brother had been dead for four years she had completely forgotten his original promise.

On one occasion when I was giving a friend counselling, the beautiful scent of a rose filled the air. She recognized it immediately as a rose her father had loved when he was alive.

‘He promised to send me a rose if he survived,’ she told me, ‘but the perfume is even better.’ Just as she was about to leave she found a rose lying next to her handbag. It was the same variety that her father had grown and loved.

I had a similar communication whilst healing a man in his fifties. He most definitely did not believe in the afterlife, and I often pulled his leg about it. I was in a quandary. What should I do? I had to pass on
the message although I knew 1 would be giving him ammunition for the future if it did not make any sense to him.

‘There is someone here who wishes to communicate with you,’ I said.

‘You must be joking,’ he replied. ‘You’re having me on.’

I smiled. ‘I promise you I’m not. His name is Peter, and he’s saying that he still owes you a fiver.’

‘Bloody hell! That’s my brother-in-law, and that was the last thing I said to him before he died. It was a joke, because he’d owed me the fiver since his wedding thirty years ago.’

‘He’s telling me that he’s definitely going to return it to you, to prove once and for all that he is still alive. There you are,’ I went on, laughing. ‘And he doesn’t like the way you speak to me about the afterlife!’

Peter then passed on several messages of a private nature, and when he had finished my patient was completely nonplussed and rather put out. ‘I’m going to have to think about this before I tell the family. They’ll think I’ve gone barmy.’ ‘Well, let me know if you get the five pounds,’ I joked. A month later he rang and told me that when he had got into his car that morning a five pound note had been lying on the passenger seat! It could not have been placed there by anyone else as he had the only set of keys. The spirits are very fond of leaving money around for some reason and they seem to favour the five pound note. I have been the recipient of many of these notes,
and have found them in the most unlikely places.

It was now 1974, well into the second year of these incredible happenings, and I was being urged by a number of people to ‘take to the platform’ – the platform being spiritualist churches and the like. I had already been informed by the first medium I had visited that I would not work from the platform and that my work would always be confidential. I could well understand this, as I am a very private person. I had been the grateful recipient of messages from mediums who worked in the churches, so it was not a question of disapproval. It was simply not me.

‘But all good mediums take to the platform,’ my friend informed me.

‘Well, this one won’t be doing so,’ I told her. I also knew that I had a lot to learn and that I needed to do this in the privacy of my own home.

The more I thought about this issue the more important it became when I thought about the very private messages that came through, and the tears and laughter that ensued when I passed them on. There are as many people who wish to keep their lives a private matter between themselves and the communicator as there are those who do not mind sharing their messages with others. I fall into the former group, so I suppose it is inevitable that I have elected to work confidentially.

Many people believe that it is only women who seek help and guidance through mediumships, but this is not so; I had many men ask for my help. They tended to book evening appointments and I frequently
worked until eleven o’clock at night. I believe that they felt at ease with me because very often the outcome of a sitting would be just as much a surprise to me as it was to them. During one of these sessions a man spoke to me.

‘My name is Carl. Would you tell my son that I did not leave my wife destitute as he believes.’

The man sitting opposite me stared in disbelief as I gave him the message. Then he said, ‘I’m afraid my father is wrong. We’ve looked everywhere for the life insurance policy that he always said existed, and there is no sign of it.’

The father spoke again. ‘Do you remember, as a boy, creeping up behind me when I visited the cellar?’ There was a pause as I passed the information on to my client, who answered in the affirmative. ‘Do you remember what I was doing?’ the father asked.

My client looked puzzled and said, ‘No, I don’t know what he was doing.’

It was here that the voice stopped and instead I was given the picture of a cellar. At the side of a workbench someone was taking a brick out of the wall. A hand reached into the space and brought out a box. Then the vision ended. The son was stunned. ‘I had no idea what he was up to when he went down there. The crafty old devil.’

He then told me that he had been extremely worried about his mother’s future. ‘Although she
has her own home,’ he said, ‘she only has a small pension. I’m helping her, but with three children of my own it is very difficult.’ He laughed for the first time. ‘I hope there is something in that bloody box.’

And there was. Speaking to me a week later he told me how he had rushed to his mother’s house and after a hasty greeting had gone down to the cellar. Examining the wall at the side of the bench he had found the loose brick and the box. Inside were three life insurance policies, worth in the region of eighty thousand pounds.

If he had not sought help from a medium, those policies would have remained hidden.