My Life As a Medium

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.

Every day seemed to bring such wonder to me, and I wanted to share my experiences with the whole world. But, intuitively, I knew that it was too early. Although I was a relative newcomer in this field I had already seen the destructive influences at work and I knew I had to wait until I could prove myself under the most trying circumstances. In fact, I waited twelve years. More of that later.

Occasionally, my life was disrupted by an aggressive individual. One such person was the father of a small boy who suffered agonizing pains in his legs. The mother had brought the boy to me and the pain had receded after only two visits. It was then that the father decided he did not want the boy to receive healing. He would not give a reason but threatened the mother with dire results if she brought him to me. Fortunately for her son she chose to ignore the threats and continued with the healing.

One day, whilst I was healing the boy, the front door bell rang, and continued to ring until I opened the door. A man rushed past me, opening doors until he found the healing room. At this stage I had no idea who he was. When I entered the room I realized he was the boy’s father. He and his wife were having a terrible row and the child was crying. I managed to calm them down and sat talking to them for several minutes. Amidst all this confusion a spirit voice told me to get the mother and child out of the room. I turned to the woman and suggested that she take her son to my kitchen and make us all a cup of tea. She agreed. Left alone with the father, I told him that someone was trying to communicate with him.

He exploded! ‘I don’t want to listen to all this rubbish,’ he said. ‘That’s why I don’t want the boy coming here.’ I continued. ‘It is your grandmother, Mabel.’ On hearing his grandmother’s name he became speechless.

‘She’s telling me that out of all her grandchildren you were the one who used to show her kindness and respect. Is that correct?’ I asked. He nodded and I continued. ‘She is telling me that your aggression stems from the fact that you always longed for a child to share your interest in sport, especially football, and that you are devastated by your son’s disability.’ The man covered his face with his hands and quietly sobbed.

I got up and locked the door. I did not want his wife and son to see him this way. Placing my hand on his shoulder, I said, ‘Mabel is telling me that she had impressed upon your wife to bring your son to me as the medical profession could not help him.’ At that point the messages ended.

I waited for the man to compose himself, then said, ‘Your grandmother has made such an effort to help. What is there to lose? Allow your son to have healing. You never know, Mabel may be able to conjure up a miracle or two.’ He stared at me. ‘But I don’t believe in it.’ ‘Well, let my belief carry us all,’ I suggested.

I left him alone for a few minutes and then returned with his wife and son. We sat in silence for a while and then, much to the mother’s astonishment, the little boy’s father said, ‘Well, son, I think we will both be bringing you next week.’ He had his reward when his son put his arms around his neck and kissed him.

Six months later they were playing football together. The child never looked back, and he and his father had a very special relationship from that day on.

On another occasion a woman arrived for healing. During the treatment I heard a man’s voice saying, ‘Beth, you must get out, you’re in danger.’ I asked my client about her home life as I felt that was where the danger lay. It became obvious during the course of the conversation that I was right, and I decided to pass the message on to her so that we could discuss it. It did not seem to come as a surprise to her at all, in fact, she was very calm. She simply said, ‘I know.’ I asked her why she was not prepared to leave and she told me that her husband was mentally ill and would not seek treatment. He was becoming so aggressive that she was afraid he would commit suicide.

The voice spoke again. ‘Tell her this is Len, and I want her to leave now as she is making it too easy for him.’ I passed the message on to her, and she told me that Len was her late father-in-law. We discussed what he had said and I urged her to leave, if only for a few days. I was extremely worried about the situation, as I could hear the urgency in Len’s voice. Before she left I suggested that she should think very carefully about the information she had been given. Two days later she telephoned to say that her husband had tried to attack her so she had left and was now staying with her sister.

Three months later she came to see me and told me the whole story. Apparently, her husband had suffered a nervous breakdown the previous year but had refused to visit his doctor. He would not allow any of his family and friends to help him and had simply given up. He had lost his job, and had locked himself away in his home refusing to see anyone at all.

When Beth had returned home after visiting me he had insisted on knowing where she had been and when she refused to tell him, he became angry and attacked her. She realized, perhaps for the first time, that she was in danger, and decided to take Len’s advice and get out. The outcome was that with no one to lean on, her husband eventually sought help from his doctor, who recommended counselling.

Beth told me that it was Len’s messages that had been the deciding factor when she had left. She realized for the first time that her strength was encouraging her husband’s weakness. Now his health was restored, they were back together, and were extremely happy.

Beth had decided against telling her husband about the spirit messages. So she was surprised one day when he said, ‘You know, all the time I was ill I felt that my father was with me and was trying to tell me something. I wish I knew what it was.’

‘Well, perhaps one day we’ll visit a medium and you’ll find out,’ Beth replied.

‘You must be joking,’ he said. ‘Ydon’t believe in all that stuff.’ Beth just smiled.

I find it quite extraordinary that thousands of people who believe their late family and friends are often around them also insist that there is no life after death. It is totally illogical. And, many of those who do believe will not visit a medium because they are afraid their loved ones will speak to them.

I was also astonished to find that many clients who received wonderful survival evidence were unable to believe what they had heard and half suggested that I had been checking up on their family. I have never had the time to check my own family trees, let alone hundreds of others!

Everyone I met assumed that I had sat for years in a development group and were astonished when I told them that it had all more or less happened overnight. I am far too impatient to sit around waiting for something to happen, but when it does I take advantage of what I have been given. That is why in these first years I really had a great time. I could not wait for the next instalment, and when it came I was like a child with a new toy. I played with it, challenged it and, needless to say, marvelled at it. As I did with the next experience.