deserve such a cruel punishment? Jane readily agreed but she also told me – and it is the way she said this which has stuck so firmly in my mind – that she didn’t resent the nun. She wasn’t angry with the nun because she believes she knew no other kind of life. She was raised in the same way and therefore knew no alternative. Yes, she was strict and yes, she was cruel, but Jane forgave her.
I found this one particularly sad because it was clear that it wasn’t until this nun reached heaven that she realized her cruel and severe ways were wrong. She was obviously remorseful but I wonder just how many children she affected as badly, and how many didn’t grow up with Jane’s marvellous forgiving nature.
Jane is now a mother herself and, as you can imagine, is a wonderful, caring and patient parent.
The Elephant Man
I have to say that I find difficulty in using this subheading for the following story. My more sensitive side feels it’s cruel. However, as you read on you will see why I have decided to use it.
Linda Millar came to see me in July of 1999. The minute she walked in, I knew she had experienced a great loss. Her eyes were dark pools of sadness. I was instantly drawn into a feeling of immense grief, pain and loss. Linda had clearly lost someone she loved deeply. But there was more – at this point I didn’t know what, but somehow I knew I was about to find out.
After the usual brief small talk, I suddenly blurted out, seemingly from nowhere, ‘Tommy is here and at last you can have your questions answered.’ Tommy was clearly the person Linda had lost – the one she was in mourning for.
From the very outset, I felt left out of this consultation. I say this because Tommy so desperately wanted to pass on crucial messages to Linda, and Linda even more desperately wanted to hear his messages.
I heard Tommy speak clearly, ‘I really looked like the Elephant Man! I didn’t want you to see me looking like that.’ I remember being intrigued by the way he emphasized that he ‘really looked like the Elephant Man’.
I passed this on to Linda who began to cry uncontrollably. Then Tommy said, ‘I remember nothing. I felt no pain. In fact, I slept through the whole thing!’ After passing that on to Linda, she seemed calmer. She looked relieved. I must surely have looked perplexed!
It was my turn to ask for some answers. ‘What does all this mean?’ Linda went on to tell me that her beloved husband of only two years had died in a house fire – in their beautiful new marital home in fact. She had been at work and received a call halfway through her shift advising her of the tragedy. She raced to the hospital, terrified, fearing the worst. The worst was confirmed minutes after she arrived. Her darling husband had died in the fire. He was dead before they got to him.
The consultant at the hospital refused to let her see Tommy, a decision backed by other senior staff, police and members of her family. Linda admitted to me that she was just as devastated by that as she was by her husband’s death. She could not get over the fact that she never got to say goodbye and then was denied the right to see him in his coffin. They’d told her he was just too badly burned and that it was deemed entirely for her own good that she did not view his body.
When she asked if he had suffered, the consultant merely shook his head, admitting that they had no way of knowing. Poor Linda had visions several times a day of her beloved husband screaming, terrified, knowing he was locked in a blazing house with no way out. She had nightmares of him trying to escape but failing to do so. She imagined the fear, the pain, the awfulness of it all.
But now, on the day of her consultation, without prompting and without me actually having a clue about what was going on, Linda was finally told the truth about what happened that fateful night.
I asked Linda if she thought it a bit cruel of Tommy to say he looked like the Elephant Man – surely he couldn’t have been that bad. But Linda merely laughed and told me that Tommy had been a vain man, and as he had bushy hair, he spent a long time fixing it. He would joke in the morning, when his hair was all over the place, that he looked like the Elephant Man. Apparently, one side in particularly was very bushy and stuck out much more than the other side. So Linda reassured me that Tommy wasn’t being hard on himself, that he did in fact use the term jokingly.
I wonder just how badly marked Tommy was. It must have been bad if the medics refused to allow Linda to see him. At least she now knows he didn’t suffer, that he didn’t even know about the fire until after he died.
What comfort Linda must have felt that day. And thank goodness there is life after death, otherwise Linda would have gone on for years enduring the most horrendous nightmares and day visions, wrongly assuming that her husband had suffered a torturous death when, in fact, he had simply stayed asleep, quite oblivious to the blaze about to take his life.
Jim, My Gay Spirit
Messages from spirits come in all shapes and sizes – all styles and all sorts of different, unimaginable formats. One, which caused me and my client great hilarity, sticks in my mind. I still smile about it today, some four years after it occurred.
Jim from Glasgow arrived for his scheduled appointment. Without wishing to sound demeaning, he was ‘obviously’ gay. In fact, Jim took this as a compliment. To say that Jim was camp would be an understatement. He was clearly a colour freak, as I counted at least six different bold, bright colours on the clothes he was wearing. And his nature was equally colourful.
Jim was a delightful man but a sad man. He put on a brave face for the world but underneath his gaiety (pardon the pun) lay a very unhappy and lonely man.
Jim had lost his lifelong partner, also named Jim, just a few years earlier. My client wasn’t a young man. In fact, he was well over 60. In his words, being gay in those days wasn’t as easy as it is today. He had only ever known one partner and vowed he would end his days alone, as no one could ever replace his Jim. I believed him.
Jim told me his reason for visiting was that he so desperately needed to have proof that his partner was near him. I instantly told him that of course he was because I firmly believe the dead are so very near us. But Jim told me he desperately needed proof, real proof. He had visited many other psychics, clairvoyants and the like, but no one had given him anything of substance. ‘What makes him think I can’, I wondered. However, I knew I would try very hard because it was clear to me that this colourful, amusing chap in front of me was aching for some sign that his lover was nearby.
I didn’t have to wait long, for within a split second, the loudest, most gregarious, most delightful spirit joined us. In an acutely feminine voice, I heard words to the effect of ‘Why did you do that to the lounge? What possessed you? And those curtains, tuh! Those curtains.’ I could all but see this spirit’s hands rise in disbelief. ‘And get that bloody awful wheelchair out of our bedroom – I hated it when I was in it, so don’t make me have to look at it every minute of the day!’
Jim burst out laughing. This indeed sounded like his lifetime partner. He admitted that Jim was bossy, loud and brash, liked his own way and more, but he was so, so thrilled that he had come over.
Jim had kept his lover’s wheelchair – not for any sinister reason but because he felt it was such a part of him. Clearly the other Jim did not want it to be a part of him. My client told me it would be removed as soon as he got home – to his newly decorated lounge.
Spirit Jim had much more traditional taste. Although client Jim admitted he really hadn’t minded, their home was largely decorated to spirit Jim’s taste. After his death, Jim redecorated and completely changed the look of their home. It was evident that his dead lover did not approve, yet everything he said, albeit in a somewhat imperious manner, was really quite light-hearted. I somehow knew to take no offence from the spirit’s words, and clearly so did my client.
My client was by now much happier and the entire consultation was taken up by the spirit giving orders, making affectionate comments, then giving more orders. Clearly the two had loved one another deeply. We laughed a lot, and when Jim left, I thankfully saw that not only were his clothes colourful but his face, his eyes and undoubtedly his