the Russian technician Demyon D. Kirlian, who developed it in 1939. It wasn’t until the 1970s that Kirlian photography hit the US, and most certainly later than that when it was unveiled in Ireland. But it was new and quirky, and somebody in our group got the idea that we should try looking at each others’ auras.
Auras can probably be best described as energy fields that surround our bodies – sort of radiate out from them. We all have them, but the question was, that evening, could we see them? We felt that we’d have the best chance of succeeding if each person in turn sat against a white background. The rest of us would concentrate on looking (in as relaxed a way as we could) at and around that person. Some of my acquaintances quickly saw a light around the person – either white, or in colour. I didn’t see anything at all, but I suddenly started getting all sorts of impressions about the person sitting down: about her relationship with her partner, her feelings about her career, the place where she lived. I passed them on and she said that they were not only very relevant, but helpful for what was happening in her life at that time. The impressions didn’t come to me visually or as if somebody was soundlessly putting words into my mouth; they simply dropped into my mind and I articulated them as clearly as I could in my own words.
After that, the other guests asked me to do the same thing for them, with similar results. At this remove, all I can remember is that the general reaction was one of surprise and interest – which, I suppose, would have been true for me as well. It was all very odd.
As I didn’t want to be put into any sort of ‘guru’ slot, I asked the group to keep quiet about what had happened. Since the spirit guides first made themselves known to me, I’ve made every attempt to avoid putting myself into the limelight, and I continue to do so to this day. These are private conversations, and while I am always more than happy to use the information they provide to help others, it would be all too easy to become a sort of modern-day medium, and have my life taken over. I invariably aimed to forget whatever transpired in my individual sessions with people in case I might, unconsciously, reveal something that they trusted would be confidential.
Slowly but surely the wall that I had tried to build around my secret life began to crumble. Sometimes, much to my embarrassment, and after a little too much to drink, I was a bit too eager to impart the information provided by the spirit guides. As a result, word began to spread and a rapidly increasing number of people began to ask if they could come to see me. I was still very careful not to let any of that impinge on my work life, and kept things quiet when I was with my colleagues. My personal and social life was, however, beginning to follow a new track. The contact with people who were searching for meaning and direction in their lives was like an affirmation for me. I had to accept that guidance was coming to me from some benevolent source or sources outside of myself that I understood to be my guides.
My ability to provide people with guidance continued to perplex me. I had never regarded myself as being abnormally perceptive and, yet, when I asked for guidance I was able to tell people many things about themselves, their past experiences, their families, their relationships, their careers, their challenges and their gifts – facts that I couldn’t possibly have known in any other way. Many of these people were strangers to me, and the information I received about them was startlingly vivid and accurate. I was still, at that point, unsure where it was all coming from. I considered all the obvious explanations, such as telepathy, and subconscious or unconscious suggestion, but they made no sense in my situation. If I were using paranormal skills I would have been able to do so all of the time – not just on isolated occasions when people came to me for guidance. I considered it vitally important that I was completely unable to intrude on anyone’s privacy unless I was asked to do so by the person concerned.
The trouble was that word was getting around too fast. I was in a senior management position in the Civil Service, and part of my job included implementing a major reorganisation programme to do with property registration. I loved my job. It was enjoyable and fulfilling, but it made a lot of demands on my time. On the domestic front, the telephone was ringing constantly – day and night – with consequential inconvenience for the whole household, as people who had heard of my ability to make contact with spirit guides sought advice. All of this happened entirely through word of mouth. I struggled with my double life until I was given the opportunity to take early retirement from the Civil Service in 1988. This was a turning point for me. I was torn between continuing to do a job I enjoyed and accepting that something much bigger was going on. It was time to do something different with my life.
My family were supportive of my decision to retire from my job. My wife had long been interested in the area of communication with guides. I think they were glad that I was now able to deal with the telephone calls myself because they were less inconvenienced by its demands! And, of course, I was in a position to respond more frequently to requests from people to come to see me. After a session with me, individuals would tell their friends about the results and I’d get more calls until the whole thing snowballed.
Since that time, and across many years, I have had the privilege of meeting thousands of people. I have written eleven books under the pen-name Patrick Francis in collaboration with three spirit beings with whom I have established a strong communication. The first was an ex-nun called Margaret Anna Cusack. The second was Shebaka, an Egyptian pharaoh after whom the Shabaka stone in the British Museum is named. This stone was given to the museum by the First Lord of the Admiralty, George John, 2nd Earl Spencer (an ancestor of Princess Diana) in 1805, and registered with the museum on 13 July of that year. I spelled Shebaka’s name with an ‘e’ rather than an ‘a’ because I knew nothing about him initially, so it was a huge surprise when I found out about the stone. The third guide is Jiddhu Krishnamurti, the famous Indian philosopher and teacher. I set up my own self-publishing company but I did not actively seek publicity, nor did I advertise. I believed that people who would be interested in – or benefit from – the material in my books would be drawn to them. That arrangement suited me and it worked well.
One of the most rewarding and compellingly enlightening elements of my new work involved individual sessions with people. During these sessions all sorts of issues surfaced, including wide-ranging fears, relationship difficulties, career problems, a search for meaning in life, depression, financial issues, guilt, past lives, the desire for contact with ‘dead’ loved ones, communication with spirit guides, health problems, curiosity about what happens after the death of the body, and more. Most of these issues fell outside my own range of experience, which helped me to be non-judgemental in my approach. People came to see me about anything and everything, and the sessions that ensued moved into areas that were not confined to the particular issue that troubled my visitors. The floodgates were opened during our sessions, and both my visitors and I were often dumbstruck by what evolved.
I remained reluctant to intrude on people’s privacy unless they were completely open to the idea of hearing what the guides had to say. I knew nothing about the vast majority of my visitors, and put complete trust in my spirit guides to supply insights that would be in their best interests.
My life had changed, and through that I was beginning to help to change the lives of others. My story doesn’t stop here, though; in fact, this is and was just the beginning. I continued to devote a good proportion of my life to providing the guidance that the spirit guides offered. Later on in the book I will be going into more detail about guides and making suggestions about how people can connect with their own guides, if they so wish. First, though, since the book is primarily about what happens to people when they die, I must introduce the soul who inspired this book and who, as Margaret Anna Cusack, lived on earth from 1829 to 1899.
Chapter 2
Meeting Margaret Anna
In the late 1970s, shortly before I was, or more accurately agreed to be, catapulted into my new double life, I had an idea to try and write a film script about Daniel O’Connell, a charismatic Irish historical figure. He was a renowned barrister, the first Catholic member of the House of Commons
