eventually changed his job and we moved to a modern family home in a new area. Not that it was safe, especially the way we three young girls carried on. One of my sisters would hang upside down from the top bar of the swing set and we would all climb trees. I even remember following my mother across a very busy main road as she rushed over to the corner shop on one day. Boy, was she mad at that! But children seem to manage to scrape themselves out of serious situations every single day. And perhaps our guardian angels were working hard even then?
Since that time many unexplainable things have happened in my life. Many of my family had these experiences, too, but I don’t think we are special in any way and I’ve since discovered that lots of families have their paranormal ‘secrets’! It’s funny, some families talk about their paranormal experiences and other families keep them quiet, but if you open up the topic of conversation with a group of people, you soon discover that all families have ‘unexplainable’ experiences or people who have ‘dabbled’ with alternative healing or paranormal ideas of one sort or another. I have the most fascinating conversations about this with people at my local gym. It’s amazing what you can talk about to strangers when sitting in a hot tub!
Some of our family stories have been passed down through the generations. They include premonitions, out-of-body experiences, lifesaving dreams, alternative and spiritual healing, ‘invisible friends’, mediumship (sending and receiving messages from the spirits of our loved ones on the ‘other side’ of life) and psychic abilities. As I said, I know my family is not alone in this. Research has shown these phenomena occur all over the world, to people young and old, of all religions and none, and all walks of life. Who knows, perhaps it’s normal for families to have psychic experiences from time to time. Why not interview your own family members and see what you discover? It could be very revealing!
The scariest experience in our family was that of my grandmother, who regularly dreamt that her young son would drown, and he did. I also discovered that a great uncle, desperate for help for his daughter, who was deteriorating with multiple sclerosis, tried all sorts of ‘alternative’ healing techniques. My mother tells me that back then, in the 1960s, there were many people trying things like spiritual healing or the laying-on of hands. But not many like my uncle—a pillar of society, a clerk for the local town council! Great Uncle Ernie wore suits to work, not flowers in his hair, but along with his wife Mary he was prepared to try anything to ease the suffering of his daughter Jennifer. Healers were dispatched from Devon to Oxfordshire, where the family lived, and we heard that for days after the healing had taken place Jennifer was a lot better.
Another uncle, Eric, my dad’s brother, also joined in with the healing sessions and he and Great Uncle Ernie would also try things like acupuncture and the wearing of copper bracelets to ease Uncle Eric’s arthritis. This was at a time when these things were still ‘alternative’, although nowadays these treatments are easier to come across and you’re not thought of as quite so weird if you use them.
I also found that other relatives were interested in ancient sites, paganism and magic. It’s amazing what you can find in your own family if you delve deep enough.
Nowadays, because I am very open to these things, people will share their experiences with me, but often still in whispered tones. ‘My great grandmother was a medium,’ they will say quietly, or ‘As a boy I would watch as the family attended séances to call up the dead…’ These events were always wrapped in secrecy! But I’ll bet your family and friends will have amazing stories to tell if you ask them.
When I first started writing about paranormal experiences, my close family was worried about what others might think about me. Later we were all surprised to discover how many friends and other family members had already bought my books, often without realizing I had written them! On the other hand, one lovely man knew of me first as an author and later discovered we were distant cousins.
Magic exists in all of our lives and it’s time we all stepped out of the magical cupboard and shared our amazing stories with each other. Fascinating stories of angel intervention are worth so much more when shared. I believe that the intention of God ‘himself’ is that we share ‘his’ miracles with the world. One person’s positive paranormal experience reaches out and helps so many others.
Just as an example, one of my own daughters, like me, has experienced premonitions. We’ve even had very similar dreams on the same night. And my husband and I once shared exactly the same dream. In it we were together and felt as if we were detached from our bodies and having an out-of-body experience. Perhaps we were. Has this ever happened to you?
Throughout all of my books I’ve also talked about my own amazing and often bizarre experiences of afterlife contact. My dear Uncle Eric has often been in contact since his passing. The whole family has received communication of one sort or another from him. He appears in dreams and helps to create ‘coincidences’ when we need his help. He also loves to flash the lights, set off the smoke alarm and ring the doorbell—just to show us he’s around and to have a little fun with us! At the moment, however, his wife is ill in hospital and he has withdrawn slightly from us so that he can spend time with her (in his capacity as a spirit of course).
In the meantime my father-in-law, Jack, who died nearly 20 years ago, has stepped in to take his place. However, he has ‘technical difficulties’ in reaching either me or my husband in dream visitation experiences. Apparently I sleep ‘on a different level’ and that’s why he has difficulty in bringing me messages, while his son, my husband, blocks everything out when his head hits the pillow and never remembers any dreams. Fortunately, for some reason known only to the heavenly realms, my father-in-law is able to communicate with my sister Debbie when she sleeps and he regularly passes messages to us via her.
Loved ones often reach out from the ‘other side’ in dreams and visions in this way. These ‘visits’ are different from ordinary dreams in that we are very ‘lucid’ and aware during them. We know that the person appearing in the dream is dead and will often tell them so. But of course their spirit lives on and they are back visiting us.
These deceased loved ones watch over us and keep in touch with what is going on in our lives. They’re not real angels in the traditional sense of the word, but they do act as our guardian angels on occasion. There are examples of them saving lives later on in the book.
I experienced this myself when a dream visitation saved my father’s life. Briefly, my uncle appeared to me in a dream to warn me that my dad shouldn’t have ‘the operation’. We were all on holiday at the time and Dad hadn’t even been taken ill at that point, so we were more than a little confused. The following day, though, he was rushed into hospital—in a foreign country. An operation was offered, but we refused it and flew him home, preferring to take him to our local hospital where his medical history was known. A simple procedure then saved his life. Would he have died if he’d had the operation abroad? We’ll never know for sure, but I know what I believe.
Actually, I haven’t always believed in help from the other side—or the other side itself. In fact I wasn’t born with any belief at all really! ‘I don’t believe in God, Jesus or angels!’ I announced to my startled religious education teacher at school. The poor man was so worried that he called my parents into school to discuss it. My mum wanted him to challenge me and make me put my point of view in class, but the poor teacher didn’t really know what to do with this non-believer!
Like many people, I just thought the idea of a higher power seemed almost too good to be true. And if there was one, why were things the way they were? ‘If there is a God why do bad things happen in the world?’ I would ask. In fact I still do. If Jesus came to save us then why have we still not been saved?
I was very confident in my disbelief as a child and had conveniently forgotten some of the many paranormal experiences
