An Angel Set Me Free: And other incredible true stories of the afterlife

Some people report smelling a scent similar to one worn by their relative, such as the lavender eau de parfum of a favourite granny, or a flower that your mother was especially fond of. A lady called Jane told me the following story about the way her father let her know he was still around:

I had just split up with my husband and moved into a place of my own, so it was a very difficult time. One Sunday afternoon I was tidying up when all of a sudden I smelled a familiar smell of cigar smoke. It was exactly the same as the cigar my father used to smoke after lunch on a Sunday—but he had been dead for three years.

I sat down and sniffed, and the smell just got stronger and stronger. Suddenly I knew that Dad was there with me, in the room. I cried a little bit, and then I started talking to him, telling him what was happening in my life. I knew instinctively that I didn’t need to talk out loud—I could tell him things in my head. It was a huge comfort to feel his presence and it really lifted my spirits.

As the smell began to fade, I said ‘Dad, please keep coming back. Come as often as you can.’

From then on, I started to smell his cigar smoke every Sunday afternoon, around the same time, and I would sit down and have a chat with him in my head. It helped me a lot in that difficult period, and one day I mentioned it to a girlfriend of mine.

‘Why don’t I come over to your flat and see if I can smell it?’ she asked, and I agreed.

The following Sunday she came, along with another friend. One of them said straight away, ‘Oh my goodness, I can certainly smell it.’

The other looked doubtful. ‘I think I can,’ she said, screwing up her nose. Then, all of a sudden, she cried out. ‘Oh my! I think he just blew a cloud of cigar smoke in my face!’

I knew that he was giving me absolute proof that he was there with me. I never smelled cigar smoke on any other day of the week, but every Sunday afternoon it was there. I asked him questions about anything I wanted to discuss and I could hear his answers in my head and in my heart.

I think it is very touching that her father chose to make his presence known in a period of Jane’s life when she really needed support. He helped her to get through difficult times and start to enjoy life again.

An Angel Set Me Free

We expect our parents to die before us. It’s the logical way of things, and it feels wrong, as if the universe has been turned upside down, if one of your children dies before you. Many clients have first come to me when they are struggling to understand why this can happen, and why it should have happened to them, and I am able to give them comfort by explaining what I know and contacting their lost child for them.

After such a shocking event as a child’s death, it’s human nature to look for someone or something to blame: a drunk driver, an over-tired doctor, faulty electrics, or whatever. But imagine what it is like if a child of yours takes their own life? Who do you have to blame? In Stella’s case, she blamed herself.

Josh was twenty-three years old when he committed suicide by jumping off a tall building. I knew he was upset about breaking up with his girlfriend but I had absolutely no idea how distressed he was. Why didn’t he come to me? Why didn’t I know? As a mother, surely I should have realised instinctively that he needed help? I tortured myself with thoughts of what his last moments must have been like, and as the weeks and months passed I sank into a depression so deep that I didn’t think I would ever recover. It was like being in a dark, enclosed prison cell. I couldn’t bring myself to get up in the mornings and I don’t think I would have carried on living myself if it hadn’t been for my other son, Callum. I couldn’t put him through another loss.

One day I was sitting on the edge of my bed in my pyjamas trying to will myself to get up. I hadn’t had a shower or washed my hair for about two weeks. My clothes were all dirty. The room was dusty. Everything was falling apart. Suddenly I heard a voice.

‘It’s about time you got yourself a life.’

It sounded like Josh’s voice but when I looked around the room I couldn’t see anyone. ‘Who said that? Is that you, Josh?’

‘’Course it’s me, Mum.’

My heart leapt. ‘Are you OK? Where are you?’ There was no answer to my question but somehow I felt he was still there. I got up and made a cup of tea then I decided to have a shower. As I stood under the hot water, soaping my hair, I heard music playing. I stuck my head out and realised it was Josh’s music, and it was coming from his room.

I got out of the shower, dried myself and wandered through, and somehow his CD player had been switched on and was playing one of his favourite CDs. But there was no one else in the house apart from me. I didn’t feel scared, though. I knew it was Josh, and it made me smile.

Down in the kitchen, over lunch, I kept trying to talk to him again. ‘I hope you’re all right,’ I said. ‘Are you all right?’

I was just pouring a cup of coffee when I heard him say, ‘I’m all right, Mum. You’re the one who’s not. I’m sorry I didn’t say goodbye but I’m happy with the life I’ve got now. It’s time you started living again. Don’t waste the life you’ve got.’

The words were so clear that it was as if he was sitting across the kitchen table from me. Instantly I felt as though I’d been released from a prison of pain. The heaviness that had been weighing me down and preventing me from doing anything lifted. My head cleared. The room seemed brighter. I felt physically lighter.

That afternoon I did several loads of laundry and some housework. I phoned my older son and asked him round for dinner then I went to the local shops to buy some delicious food and cooked it. I felt like myself again.

For months I’d been trapped inside my own grief. It took my son coming back as an angel to set me free.

Stella came to see me and was able to communicate with Josh again, but it was that first time that made all the difference. She knew he was fine, and that was the main thing that helped her to move on.

Seeing Our Loved Ones Again

Actually seeing the guardian angels who come to bring advice or warnings is much less common than hearing them or sensing their presence. It uses a lot of energy for a spirit to take on human form and it’s not usually necessary. Since my mother died, I’ve only seen her a couple of times.

On one occasion my daughter Tanya was very ill after suffering a huge allergic reaction to ibuprofen. Her heart actually failed, she was rushed in to hospital and I was told it was touch and go whether she would make it through the night. As I paced up and down in the patients’ lounge, blaming myself, as parents do, wondering whether I could have done anything differently, suddenly I saw my mother’s face in a little oval cameo. Her hair was very dark, as it was when she was younger, and she was wearing blue, her favourite colour, and I knew she had come to let me know things would be all right. Sure enough, Tanya survived the night and didn’t suffer any ill effects from her experience, although she has to wear a warning bracelet at all times now.

A lady called June told me about her own experience of seeing her husband, who had died the year before.

Life was very, very tough for me. I had four young children, very little money, and my husband had just dropped dead from a heart attack at the age of only forty, without any life insurance. I was crawling through the days under a blanket of depression, just existing rather than living. And then one day I walked into the sitting room and there was my husband, sitting in his usual chair, with his legs crossed, smiling at me.

I think my knees gave way beneath me I was so shocked, and I sank down onto the sofa. I stared at him open-mouthed for a while. He obviously wasn’t solid flesh and bone like a living human being, but he was clear enough, with a kind of glow about him.

‘Richard?’ I asked tentatively, tears coming to my eyes.

‘It’s time you got your act together,’ he said, looking straight at me.

‘What do you mean?’

‘You need to start living again. I will do everything I can to help you.’

And then he disappeared, leaving me absolutely stunned. I had no doubt it was him, but I thought I would never be able to tell anyone or they’d lock me up in the loony bin or try to put me on happy pills. I kept thinking about what he had said, and wondering how he would be able to help me. My problems were very real and of this world.

A few weeks later, I had some bills to pay and no idea how I was going to pay them. I walked into the sitting room and suddenly heard my husband’s voice saying, ‘Green folder, top shelf.’ I went straight up to the bedroom, looked in the green folder on the top shelf and found a building society book for an account I hadn’t known about with easily enough money to cover the bills in it. That was a fantastic gift.

From then on, I kept hearing Richard’s voice at the oddest times, often cracking little jokes. He’d always been able to make me laugh, and now he was making me laugh again after his death. He’s a very witty man.

A friend of his, John, used to visit every week to see if I needed help with any odd jobs. He was a lovely person and we enjoyed talking about Richard together and reminding each other of things he had said and done. One day, four years after Richard had died, I heard his voice in my head saying, ‘You should marry John.’

‘I can’t!’ I cried out loud. ‘I miss you too much.’

‘It’s time to move on,’ he said.

Next time John came round, I looked at him with different eyes and realised that I could be attracted to him if I just let myself. I also got the feeling that he might possibly be attracted to me. To cut a long story short, a year later we were married, as Richard had suggested. He doesn’t come to visit me so much any more now, but I know he is always there, looking out for me and for our children.

Black Ice

As I said before, our time of death is pre-ordained, but I believe there are actually two points at which we can die—an earlier and a later one. We each have two ‘buttons to press’: one of these gives us the longest possible time on earth and the other gives us the shortest.

It’s wrong to believe that God ‘takes’ us. He gives us life in the first place and it’s up to us what we do with it. If you are not learning the life lessons you are supposed to learn in this lifetime, you can go early and then you will have to reincarnate next time with the same lessons to learn. But before that your guardian angel may come to warn you and help you get on the right track.

In the following story, Lisa had a lesson to learn—and I’m glad to say that she listened.

I was driving along a narrow country road with my boyfriend one winter afternoon. Suddenly the car hit an invisible patch of black ice and hurtled into an uncontrollable spin. I felt as though I was floating in a bubble, as though time was in slow motion. I couldn’t hear anything and I knew there was nothing I could do because it makes it worse if you brake during a skid. Suddenly I saw my father’s face right in front of me, smiling. It was very clear and detailed, right down to his sparkly blue eyes.

Next there was an almighty crash and everything came to a standstill. I didn’t feel a jolt, though, because it was as if there was a pillow cushioning me. Once we were stationary, I looked down. The windscreen had shattered and I had fragments of glass all over me, sparkling in the sunlight. There was a bit of broken wing mirror in my hair. I looked round at my boyfriend and he was covered in glass as well but seemed fine.

It was difficult getting out of the car because the doors were all bent and twisted, but someone came and helped us, telling us that we had smashed into his van. He seemed very shaken and kept giving us strange looks.