could see it clearly in my mind. If you have a house party and leave the front door open, yelling for any passing folk to join in, you soon get a full house. Word spreads and people begin turning up on motorbikes and in cars with radios blaring and disturbing the neighbours. They walk into your house in large groups with packs of beer. They spill drink on your carpet and are sick down the back of your sofa. Who are ‘they’? They stub out their cigarettes on your coffee table and steal your leather jacket which is hanging in the hall. Why would we invite just anyone? I understood the word INTENT. I was being given a visual image in my mind. Intent is everything.
‘Write down specific words to invited people. Ask God to come, ask the angels to help. Ask them to act as “bouncers” so that only the people we invite come.’
I never did search online. I rang Debbie later, and shared my list with her.
‘It’s a good idea but I’ve got something else for you. I heard a phrase. Write down ABC.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Angel Board Communicator.’
‘Okay, I get it.’ I said, and I did get it. It was important to show we were aiming to contact only the highest realms, indicating we wanted messages of love and positive intent. As soon as I put the phone down, more messages came. It wasn’t a ouija board, it was an angel board.
‘With the love of God, we ask our personal Guardian Spirits to act as a gateway to the spirit realms.’
I had to write this down to stick on the board.
‘We ask for protection from the highest source and contact only those specified for the highest good,’ I continued.
Later on I rang Dilly again.
‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I know you don’t have time to make anything. Tell me what you want and I’ll print off the letters and things on the computer. We can stick them on the kitchen table.’
‘That’s great.’ I felt immense relief at not having to prepare everything. ‘Don’t forget to print some pictures of angels. Shall I send you some?’
‘No, I’m good.’
When Debbie arrived home from work we rushed round to Mum’s. Debbie had already called my other sister Di to join us.
Mum took it all calmly and I suppose there is no reason why she wouldn’t. We went down the list a few points at a time and Mum filled in all the blanks. There were a few things we’d been unsure of, but in a way this was much better. Now Mum was confirming things for us that we hadn’t known about in advance, so we couldn’t have given away any clues to either the medium or any passing spirits, and best of all, we couldn’t have influenced the information that was coming through.
‘Don’t you remember that Nan worked at the Home Made? Aunty Marline worked there too. She worked there for years.’
On and on it went. Aunty this and great uncle that. She knew all the bits we didn’t. It’s funny how you forget important family information, and there were a lot of things we should have known about and hadn’t. I’d seen an American psychic on TV call it ‘psychic amnesia’, where people will forget the names of even the closest members of their family during a psychic reading.
Satisfied with the update we planned to make the long trek from the Midlands to the West Country the following weekend. We all squeezed into Di’s small car and filled the endless journey with excited chatter. We were on an adventure into the unknown.
On the first night I was ready to get started but everyone was tired. We did chat a little more about the whole phenomenon but I was disappointed. I wanted to do this now! Let’s get on the angel board!
The next day was filled with girly shopping and family fun but I was distracted and eager to start. When my nephews went to bed I fetched my bag to lay out my ‘kit’. Dilly reassured me that the boys wouldn’t come downstairs so I felt happy.
With no luck finding the frankincense oil I felt we needed, I placed my substitute frankincense aromatherapy candle on the side and lit it. We all sat around the kitchen table and Dilly whipped off the tablecloth to show us the ready-prepared table with letters and angels stuck on it in a circle. It was like opening an exciting present, a secret, hidden beneath the cloth. It was brilliant.
I’d already walked around the room with some incense before saying a few reassuring words. Dilly fetched a small tumbler and placed it in the middle of the table. We all looked at each other, wondering who would start, who would say the first words. I offered to read out the messages I’d written in my notebook. We needed to write down the messages as we received them so we wouldn’t forget. Dilly got up from the table and returned with a pen and pad of paper.
‘Okay?’
‘With God’s blessing, we wish to communicate with our loved ones on the other side, receiving messages of love and good intent.’
The glass moved immediately and I was aware that my cheeks felt warm with anticipation. We’d positioned the table so the pendant lamp hung low over the centre of the table, illuminating the letters clearly. The glass had already spelt out its first word.
HI.
‘May we ask you your name?’
The glass spun round and round as if in excitement before spelling out its message: GUESS WHO. GUESS WHO.
‘Please can you spell out your name?’
ERIC.
The glass went wild now, moving in and out, right to the edges of the board in front of each of us in turn as if someone were acknowledging us all, saying hello.
ERIC, ERIC.
‘Uncle Eric?’
ERIC.
The light was flickering wildly over the table now as we all burst out laughing.
‘Hi … Hello!’ we all grinned.
‘Do you think it’s really him?’ someone whispered.
‘Hello, Uncle Eric!’
Everyone had tears in their eyes.
‘It’s real isn’t it?’ I said, more as confirmation than a question.
Over and over again the glass moved, one letter at a time, before BANG!
The flickering light bulb had blown over the table, and the room was plunged into near darkness. Di and Dilly gasped and Nick reached over and switched on another light, but the drinking glass continued to spin at speed around the table, still pointing to each of us in turn. We all sat wide eyed and slightly shocked before someone burst out laughing once again.
‘Eric, was that you? Oh my God do you think he blew the light bulb?’
Dilly jumped up from the table and the giggling commenced.
‘It’s okay, I have a spare bulb, but someone has to come with me! I’m not searching in the cupboard
