Читать книгу An Angel By My Side: Amazing True Stories of the Afterlife - Jacky Newcomb - Страница 8

One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvellous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day.

Albert Einstein

Eric first introduced himself when he bounced in on a spirit board one afternoon. Well, actually it was a table full of felt-tip letters, A–Z, and the words ‘yes’and ‘no’ stuck around a table at the home of a local medium, but it was the same principle. My sister Debbie and I had gone along for a reading on the recommendation of a friend. I’d had readings before at psychic fairs but I’d never been very impressed. This time would be different, I knew it.

I’d never met the medium, but I’d had the strangest urge to take her some flowers. I ‘saw’something specific in my mind’s eye, a potted miniature rose. When I got to the shops I went to buy my usual white flowers but was drawn to the yellow roses. Why was I buying flowers for a woman I’d never met?

On the way over in the car, Debbie and I chatted about which of our deceased loved ones we were hoping to visit. Would any of our relatives really come and chat to us through the medium?

Perhaps our Nan would come through or maybe Mum’s lovely friend Pat who had passed just six months before, and was still very much in our minds. Wouldn’t it be great if Uncle Eric made an appearance? He was such a funny man and we missed him such a lot. We chatted excitedly about what might or might not happen, and in no time at all we pulled up outside the medium’s house.

Sandra was a small lady and she explained how she’d been ‘poorly’. She made us a cup of tea in her very tiny kitchen, and as an unexpected bonus Sandra had her friend Janice helping out for the night. It looked like we were going to have two readings for the price of one.

Embarrassed, I handed over the plant to Sandra. She seemed pleased but confused. I found myself mumbling about how I’d felt drawn to buy her the flowers but I didn’t know why. The medium explained that a dear friend of hers had always bought her yellow flowers when she’d visited. She felt that the roses were a gift from ‘spirit’. I wondered if a passing spirit had manipulated me into buying the plant or if it was a wild stretch of my imagination. Perhaps it was just me after all?

Janice waited patiently before handing Debbie and me a sheet of paper each. Each sheet had a circle drawn in the middle. We were intrigued as pots of paint sat on the table. She sat us down and had us drop splats of paint into the middle of the paper. We had no idea what we were doing or why, but it was a lot of fun. She carefully folded the paper in half and smoothed the two sides together before opening them up and giving us both a reading based on the smears of paint on the paper. I have to say that it just looked like a big smudge of colour to me but she seemed to see something else.

‘Look at the angel shape on the paper,’ said Janice (I couldn’t really see it). ‘Look, can you see, it looks like angel wings … and lots of purple, that’s a very spiritual colour.’

Hmm, interesting. She wasn’t to know that I had already started collecting angel stories with the idea that one day I might write a book. Maybe she could read something in the paint after all. How disbelieving I was in those days.

We hadn’t yet finished our tea but as we’d finished our paintings we were keen to get on with our other reading. We followed the medium and her friend upstairs to a small bedroom with a sofa, a smaller armchair and a collection of small tables; there were even chairs and a cupboard crammed into the tiny space. This was the reading room.

She looked so normal. I guess I didn’t know what to expect but if I’m honest I suppose I was a little surprised she wasn’t wearing a purple cloak with stars on it and a pointy hat. Sandra started her reading.

‘I have a woman here. She’s quite snooty, stuck up. No, that sounds rude and I feel embarrassed now that I know she can hear me say that. Sorry, love. I don’t mean stuck up, I mean posh. Oh dear … well, you know what I mean.’

We laughed and she continued.

‘She’s very well dressed and she’s showing me that she liked nice things and expensive holidays.’

We both leaned forward on the tiny sofa. This was good stuff and we looked at each other before nodding in agreement. This person sounded familiar.

‘She’s showing me a ring.’

‘Um, maybe,’ Debbie added.

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I think I understand.’

Mum’s friend Pat had given my mother a brooch and a gold ring set with a large crystal stone about two years before she died. It seemed a strange thing to do because Pat was several years younger than my mother and I remember thinking at the time that it was more usual to hand down jewellery rather than hand it up. But Pat had sons rather than daughters of her own. Maybe she thought that the pieces might go to her friend’s daughters after she passed? I’d hoped so, as she was like an aunt to us, and it would be natural for Mum to pass us the jewellery at some future date.

The stone in the ring looked like a large solitaire diamond and we jokingly called it the ‘Elizabeth Taylor’ ring. It was a ring I had coveted a lot and I occasionally borrowed it. I secretly wondered if this was the ring she meant, but I was wary of giving anything away so said nothing. My Mum promised to leave it to me in her will, but I teased her that I would get a real diamond instead.

‘Hang on, I’m getting a name now. Pat?’

Debbie and I both slumped back on the sofa in relief. It was Pat! How exciting that she’d given us a great description but then the name too. I was impressed, it wasn’t as if she’d given us a whole list of names … just the one. The medium smiled and we stopped and had a mouthful of tea before she carried on.

I looked around the room. It was fairly dark and dusty in Sandra’s spare room. I knew the medium had been unwell for a long time and when I looked at her now she looked frail. A twinge of guilt hit me in the stomach. Sandra had put off our appointment twice due to ill health and I remembered how anxious I’d felt for our visit, feeling a little cross inside about the inconvenience of the delay. She had a long waiting list and each cancellation meant another wait of several months.

Now as I looked around the room I wanted to search out a duster and rush around the room with it, to help her in some way. But I knew if I’d have even mentioned such a thing I would have totally offended her. The poor woman. Of course she would be offended. What did the dust matter anyway, she wasn’t bothered by it so why should I be? Random thoughts flickered through my mind as I heard gentle chatter in the background. For a moment I just totally zoned out. She was talking to my sister Debbie.

Unusual objects seemed to have been left in the room. A sweater was folded over the back of a chair and a strange newspaper cutting was propped up on the mantelpiece of what would have once been a fireplace. Also on the mantelpiece was a pair of mismatched glasses: one was a wine glass and the other a short tumbler. They seemed out of place. Had someone had a drink and left the glasses in the room? Both had been decorated with glass paints in bright reds and orange. The room was a little untidy and I guess I had wanted mystical chic.

You don’t comment on other people’s things unless you are going to say something nice and I couldn’t think of anything to say which would have made any sense. I realized I had been staring and someone was talking to me. I turned back to face the medium and I smiled as she handed me a pack of tarot cards.

‘Shuffle the cards, dear, and place eight of them on the table. No make it ten, no fifteen.’

Debbie and I looked at each other. We were excited and bemused.

‘Yes that’s it, place them face down on the table. Ok now turn up the first two or three.’

She began talking again and I blurred in and out. Debbie was furiously scribbling notes for me whilst the medium gave me a reading from the tarot cards. I felt that the reader was using the cards more for my benefit than her own. As I turned over each card at her request I noticed she didn’t even look at them.

‘I see you writing,’ she said. I nodded. ‘Writing a book. In fact, although it’s going to be slow at first, eventually you’re going to have more work than you can handle. You’re going to write a lot.’

I grinned and looked at Debbie who was trying to note it all down as fast as she could. Sandra asked me to place another ten cards face down on the table and turn over half of them. Again she didn’t look at the cards.

‘I do write, actually. I’ve just started.’ I muttered.

‘Good, good. Yes I can see you on TV.’

‘TV? Really? Not radio?’

In my mind I’d thought that one day I’d like to go on radio and chat about my new research into angels and the afterlife, but I’d never thought I would go on television.

‘Yes, radio too but TV, lots of TV. You’re going to be well known.’

‘I am? Cool!’

I was thrilled. Was I giving something away in my body language? But why was I pleased about going on television. Am I shallow? Did it matter?

‘You’ll have published your first book within eighteen months, they’re telling me. Then there’ll be others … lots more.’

As it happened, that book took a little longer, about two years actually, before it finally hit the shops, but whether the event was pre-ordained or I’d been encouraged to succeed by the message I’ll never know.

I was desperate to know more but she asked me to pick up the cards and pass them to my sister. It was her turn now and I scribbled furiously until her turn ended, way too soon. I could see how people became addicted to this stuff! Perhaps it’s the ego hearing what it wants, taking what it wants from the message. But she’d already started talking again.

‘I have another lady here, on your mother’s side,’ she began. ‘She’s with someone, her husband I think, and they are showing me a horse and cart. He’s making deliveries door to door.’

We both nodded again. Could this be granddad? He used to be a milkman.

‘Now I’m seeing a bakery. It’s connected to the lady. She’s making cakes and things.’

We weren’t sure but later Mum reminded us that our Nan worked for years in a bakery called ‘The Home Made’. How could we have forgotten this piece of family history?

‘You don’t know? That’s okay. Write it down, she says, and ask your Mum later. She’ll tell you. The lady is showing herself surrounded by children, loads of them, and she’s wearing a uniform.’ She continued.

This was brilliant stuff. How could she have known? Our nan had worked in an orphanage for years and years. There were pictures at our parents’ house of Nan in her uniform with her starched white apron, surrounded by forty or fifty children!

There were other relatives who came with messages that night. Brief appearances were made by friends and relatives from both sides of the family. I remember looking at my watch again. We had already been at her home for two hours and I wondered if it was time to go. Was she going to ask us to leave now?

‘Do you want to have a go on the table?’ she asked.

Debbie shrugged and smiled.

She beckoned us to stand up and behind her armchair was a low glass table. Stuck on the table were the letters of the alphabet spread out in a big sweep all around the edge. The table was set up to look like a ouija board, or a ‘talking board’. She reached over and picked up one of the glasses from the mantel and I suddenly realized what the painted glasses were for! They hadn’t just been left in the room. When I looked closer they were quite pretty. Maybe someone had made them for her as a gift? The glasses were to be our pointers, to move around the table to spell out words – messages from the other side?

Momentarily, I was nervous. Weren’t these things dangerous? I had a flashback, memories of one day as a teenager. Sitting in my parents’ old house, my sisters and a couple of friends and I had laid out our own felt-tip letters in a variation of what kids all over the world call ‘ask the glass’. We taped the letters onto the back of an old drinks tray and ceremoniously selected one of the best sherry glasses out of the cabinet before placing our fingers on the glass to ask our first question.

As someone called out, ‘Is anybody there?’ the glass began to move at once and we all ran in different directions.

‘Did you push that?’

‘No! Of course not, you know I wouldn’t do that. Swear it wasn’t you! Go on, swear.’

‘I didn’t move it, it wasn’t me. Oh my God, oh my God, do you think it was a spirit?’

‘It wasn’t me, really it wasn’t. Swear it wasn’t you!’

Someone was crying. We were all so scared that we never really got started. I remember someone suggesting that we burned the letters so that the spirits wouldn’t get us. I think we probably flushed them down the toilet or something but that was the first and the last time I had done anything like that … until now.

The medium was explaining what to do and had already muttered some words of protection before placing her finger on the glass and indicating that we do the same. The four of us sat around the table and the medium began to ask questions.

What on earth were we doing? I felt like a naughty schoolgirl but of course we were not naughty – we were adults and we were doing this on purpose. I tried to calm myself down; after all, ‘the medium is in charge and she must know what she is doing’, I rationalized!

The glass spun over to the letter ‘V’and then the letter ‘I’. What was that? I felt disappointed. The medium began chatting in a very normal tone as if a neighbour had popped in to say hello.

‘Is that you, Vi?’

The glass moved over to the word ‘yes’.

I felt annoyed again. ‘We are paying for this and she is chatting to her friends’, I thought crossly, but unreasonably. I felt like a real cow. A spirit friend had crossed the dimensions to communicate and I was quibbling about who it was. Maybe this Vi would be able to hear my thoughts? She would know what I was thinking, she would know that I was a cow.

‘Sorry, Vi love, I’m with clients tonight. It’s lovely of you to pop in for a visit. Could you come again another night?’

The glass went back to the word ‘yes’ again and the medium explained about her old friend and then apologized. I figured it was not really her fault, after all. Did it even matter? What was wrong with me? Why was I thinking like this tonight? I immediately felt guilty again. Perhaps it was nerves.

‘Would anyone else like to come for a chat?’ she asked randomly.

The glass went to the letter ‘E’, then ‘R’, ‘I’and ‘C’. Debbie and I looked at each other and I noticed the tears prick her eyes.

‘Eric?’

‘Who’s Eric, love?’

‘My Dad’s brother.’

Debbie was sobbing quietly now.

‘Is everything okay? Are you happy to talk to Eric?’

‘Yes, we’re fine. Yes, yes everything is okay, she’s just very happy. We both are.’

A single tear was rolling down my cheek and I brushed it away. I was the calm one. I was fine with all of this, wasn’t I? I shouldn’t have been crying.

Oh my God. Was this Uncle Eric? This was the first communication since he’d died and we hardly dared believe it was true. Excitement hit the pit of my stomach and I felt both sick and slightly dizzy at the same time. We were convinced it was him but disappointingly, Sandra was not.

‘Well, you must test them, love. Always check that they are who they say they are. Go on, ask a question. Ask him something like, “What did he do for a living?” Find out if it’s really him.’

I didn’t want to. What if it was some fake spirit trying to trick us? I wanted to believe it was my uncle. We didn’t ask the question because the glass was already moving. It was spelling out a reply. SEW.

‘Sew? No, that can’t be right, can it?’ The medium exchanged confused glances with her friend. ‘Surely he means something else, he didn’t sew for a living did he?’

Debbie and I both nodded before explaining that Uncle Eric did sew for a living; he was an upholsterer. I’d been trying to think of a short word which might suggest the answer, and the word which sprung to mind was upholstery. Not short exactly. Debbie was thinking of the word SOFA, but SEW was just fine too. We both started laughing in a hysterical sort of way. Sew was a good word. It gave us what we needed. He’d passed the test. It really was Eric.

We asked a lot more questions. At one point both Sandra and Janice lifted their fingers off the glass. Debbie and I were aware that the glass continued to move even after they had done so, although it moved a little slower. We were working the glass with the spirits, Debbie and I. Maybe, just maybe, we could do this at home? Perhaps we didn’t need the medium after all – can we talk to the spirits, just the two of us, any time we wanted to?

I honestly don’t remember much else. We chatted some more. I think I’d reached saturation point. We’d already received so much proof and I couldn’t wait to go home and tell everyone about it.

Again, I know that other relatives came through. We still have the notes somewhere. After the medium ‘closed down’ the communication on the table I was ready to go home, but she was ready for more. I looked at my watch and we’d now been at her house for over three hours. We’d certainly had our money’s worth, and I was tired. She was so kind, wanting to make sure we were happy with our evening.

‘We didn’t have time to do the spirit in the mirror,’ the medium said, almost disappointed.

We knew what ‘spirit in the mirror meant’, as our friend had told us about this after her own visit. Sandra turned out all but a small red light and we squinted at the mirror.

‘Soften your eyes. Can you see anything? Is there anyone in the mirror?’

The idea was that in the half light you could often see spirit images overlay your own. It wasn’t that they distorted your face so much as the spirit face seemed to float over your own. I was only half listening. This was a fascinating exercise but there was nothing left in me to give. I’d already put on my coat and my mind was ‘on the way home’. We decided to call it a day … or a night.

We walked down the stairs, both of us in a slight daze. What an extraordinary night! It was one I don’t think I will ever forget. I’d had paranormal experiences all of my life. I always believed there must be something else going on in the world – another world, another life, an afterlife. There was no longer any doubt. I knew there was something else, something out there, something in there.

As for Eric, this was the first of many visits. We handed over our very small fee to the medium on our way out. It seemed way too little for the time she’d spent on us. I pressed another five pound note into her hands but she refused the money. I insisted. I felt the evening was worth a lot more and eventually she took the money, but handed it over to her friend Janice.

‘Thank you both. It’s been a great evening.’

As we drove home we talked about the night. Was it too late to call at Mum’s on the way home? It was late and we agreed we’d both go over as soon as Debbie finished work the next day. There was a lot to share, and a long list of things to check out. Our loved ones live on after they pass, and after tonight, I knew for sure.