the atmosphere lifted and I felt fine.
This was the first time that I had been on a psychic journey with a soul into the realms of the spirit world. Even then there was a part of me which understood that I was linking into my friend’s spirit as it moved through the death state and that when my mood had lifted she had been able finally to move on. I did not know where she had gone, but I knew that she was fine.
After that I would often feel her around. Whenever I passed the place where she had died I would feel her spirit enter my body and she would speak to me of her great joy at being in the spirit world but also of her great concern for her family’s welfare. She had been an only child, so the family grief at losing her was terrible.
Soon after this I began to see and feel ghosts and family spirits all around me, especially in my aunt’s house in Spain, which was over 300 years old and in the old part of town. Often the faint figure of a woman would stand on the stairs. She would disappear as soon as I looked straight at her, as if she was fearful of confrontation.
It was a turbulent time. My sleep was constantly interrupted by the spirits of the dead wandering in and out of my dream state and then I became very sick with an illness which the doctors could not diagnose but which meant that I had to spend some weeks under observation in hospital. Yet it soon passed as mysteriously as it had arrived.
At this time I coped with my psychic experiences through my Catholicism. My mother’s side of the family is Spanish and I have warm memories of following the older women to the local church on a Sunday to light candles and pray. At a young age I already understood the concept of purgatory and the practice of praying for the dead so that they could be relieved of their sins and go to heaven. I knew that the spirits I saw needed my help so every night I would say special prayers for them.
MY FIRST SPIRIT COMMUNICATION
I was 17 years old when I had my next experience with a deceased spirit – not a ghost or an apparition, but a spirit that could speak to me, that I could feel and touch.
A friend called Jenny and I decided to play truant from college and go back to her house as her mother was not at home. It was the first time I had been to her house and on the way back she warned me that it was haunted by the spirit of her grandmother. It was a comfortable middle-class home with nothing strange or unusual about it except that it was cold and there was a feeling of someone watching us. Jenny showed me a picture of her grandmother as a child, pointing out a shadow behind her which, she said, had become bigger since her death.
Nothing happened until we went up to Jenny’s bedroom. We were sitting drinking tea and chatting when she suddenly looked behind me. I felt a cold draught entering the room and Jenny whispered that her grandmother had just walked in. I was petrified. I felt this chilly hand stroke my head and all I wanted to do was scream and run away. But then Jenny told me that her grandmother wanted to communicate with me. Speaking through Jenny, she told me that I had ‘the gift’ and that when I grew up I would be working with spirit. This was hard to believe at that time, as I had set my heart on becoming a psychologist.
MY INITIATION
Often the family went to Spain for holidays. One year we decided instead to go to Portugal. It was while I was there I encountered a mystic, a man who could see my future mapped out before me.
We were staying in a town close to the mountains and during one of my solitary walks away from the family I was approached by an elderly gentleman. He spoke to me first in Portuguese, then, when I did not reply, in English, asking whether I knew him. I was very wary and replied that I did not. He laughed at my resistance and I responded to his peaceful and warm manner. This encounter led to a long guiding relationship.
Once I had permission from my family to meet him every day, we walked for hours through the beautiful wild countryside as he taught me about reincarnation, life after death, angels, guiding spirits and most importantly karma, the cycles of life of the soul. We spent a month together and before I left Portugal, he warned me that I would go through a very dark initiation and that this experience would change my life.
So it did. Just after my ‘A’ level exams, I was looking forward to a fun summer. With a place lined up at university to study psychology, I felt nothing could go wrong. Then at the end of the summer I met a ‘wizard’. He was a powerful man with a magnetic charm and was seeking young people to initiate. He used his music business contacts to entice us. Our youthful yearning for fame and power made us vulnerable and he was able to manipulate and coerce us into leaving home, joining his cult and performing rituals and magic that would have frightened even the most adept psychic.
During this period of my life I ‘lost’ myself to the powers of the wizard. Over time, though, I slowly began to become suspicious of the integrity of his methods and through my God-given protection, my intuition, I was able to turn against his cultist regime. This resulted in a serious psychic attack and possession by malevolent forces, which caused a debilitating illness, insomnia and a digestive disorder which led me to lose two stone in weight. My family and friends suggested that I needed help, and for the first time since my meeting with the wizard, I listened to them.
I was not alone in this encounter with the wizard’s wrath. I found two other victims and we set up ritual protection against his powers. We were then approached by a group of occultists who were members of the Order of the Golden Dawn, following the teachings of Dion Fortune and others. With their knowledge and protection, we managed to escape the wizard and return home. The members of the occult group offered healing, guidance and support, and through their knowledge and compassion I was able to recover from this ordeal. It took a year, but with their help I gained an understanding of the practice of magic, ritual and occult lore.
Since the ‘wizard’ had forced us to leave our family homes and stop all professional duties, I lost my place at university, took a job in marketing and my life took a very different turn...
I met Gillian Griffiths, a well known medium who used to run psychic development and healing groups. She also told me that I had a natural talent and encouraged my development. I would come to class with stories of haunted houses and other numerous psychic encounters which became the focus of the class each week. Gillian helped me to become adept at helping the spirits move on until I became involved in a haunting which was far too malevolent for purely psychic skills to deal with. It was then that she suggested that I call on a renowned ghosthunter and healer called Terry O’Sullivan.
THE ST MARGARETS POLTERGEIST
At that time, it was customary for my friends and me to socialize in the pub at weekends and later go on to a party at a friend’s house. One night, my brother Paul, his girlfriend Sîan, Rick, a friend of ours, and I went to Matthew’s house in St Margarets, a quiet part of town close to the river Thames. Matthew was a friend of my brother’s and I had not met him before. I knew very little about him except that his mother had been a heroin addict and had died in the house, and his father had recently died of a heart attack.
It was a small Victorian terraced house. We all sat in the front room and put on some modern rock-type music that was popular at that time. Sîan, Paul, Rick and I sat on the sofa opposite the fireplace, which had a mirror hanging over it.
Within about half an hour the atmosphere began to feel a little tense, slightly chaotic. The boys started arguing over the music. Then suddenly I started to feel a pressure on my chest. I looked up into the mirror and instead of seeing the four of us on the sofa, I saw two old ladies, a white-haired man in his fifties, who I presumed was Matthew’s father, and a woman I did not recognize. This startled me. Then Sîan started to complain of the
