An Angel By My Side: Amazing True Stories of the Afterlife

CHAPTER 1

Mystical Mum

How did I get here? What was it about? Was it her smile? Was it the way she crossed her legs, the turn of her ankle, the poignant vulnerability of her slender wrists?

Martin Sage and Sybil Adelman, Northern Exposure: The Bumpy Road to Love, 1991

‘I’ve done a lot of research. It’s fascinating, and I’m really hooked. Even though people in your family die … they’re not dead. I mean they are, but they’re not.’ I gushed to my dad over coffee one day. He smiled politely.

‘I’ve discovered that spirits have the ability to manipulate energy, especially electrical and clockwork items,’ I babbled on. ‘It’s how they let us know they are still alive!’ I added breathlessly.

I think Mum had gone shopping with my sister and Dad always loved a good gossip so I’d driven round the corner to visit him. It really was ‘just’ around the corner. I was lucky that my parents lived a five-minute walk away but I usually drove as I always seemed too busy to stop and enjoy the short walk, even though I visited them several times a week.

A busy mum with two teenage daughters of my own, I always seemed to be rushing from one project to the next. Books for review were stacked up on my desk and a whole carrier bag full of readers’ letters from my magazine column, all with questions about readers’ psychic and paranormal experiences, were waiting for personal replies. I was halfway through my third book on angel and afterlife communication experiences, and wary of the looming deadlines, but the research was really exhilarating. I was keen to chat about it to anyone who might listen … or not … and dads always listen, don’t they!

I rushed on excitedly about my latest research.

‘After our loved ones pass over to heaven, they come back and let you know that they are okay, that they are still alive in some way. I have hundreds of stories now from all over the world, Dad. They come in their spirit bodies and visit people in dreams, and make the lights flicker and things. I really believe that we don’t die … at least not in the way that we think!’

Dad looked on kindly. Did he think I was crazy? Bless him, he never said, and he just smiled fondly in the way that dads do.

I’d been sharing a weird story I’d read about a music box. Paranormal, I guess you would call it. A woman had inherited all of her mother’s jewellery after she’d died, but couldn’t find her mother’s precious pearl necklace. Sitting in her mother’s home after the funeral, the woman wondered where the necklace might have gone. As she was thinking about the problem, a family music box started playing inside a locked cupboard. It was a musical jewellery box and it had sat in the cupboard, without being wound up, for some time.

The woman opened the cupboard and lifted out the box which was playing inside, and when she opened it up she found the missing pearls inside. The music box had given the clue to where they were hiding. It was a great story but was it just a coincidence? I just loved it.

I looked at my watch and sighed. Wary of the mountain of writing I needed to complete by the end of the day, I picked up my coat and leant over to kiss Dad goodbye, thinking of how much he looked like his deceased brother, Eric. Eric was a cherished and much missed family member.

‘When I leave, Uncle Eric will do something to let you know he’s been here nosing in on our conversation again today,’ I joked. ‘You know he will want to show us this is all true.’

As the words left my lips, we heard the smoke alarm give a single bleep and we both burst out laughing. Good timing! Had my late Uncle Eric communicated his visit from the afterlife? I know that he did.

Later on that day, Dad told me he’d checked the smoke alarm just in case, and the battery was fine. Was this a coincidence, or perhaps another piece in the afterlife communication puzzle?

The lights often flickered at my parents’ house, and anywhere the family gathered for special events together. If we mentioned Uncle Eric’s name the lights would always begin to flash, almost to indicate that he had joined in the family fun. We knew he was with us.

Was it more amazing coincidences or was my uncle really communicating with us from beyond the grave? We were certainly convinced, and each time a light went on and off we all laughed and said, ‘Hello Eric.’ It wasn’t a frightening thing, just a bit of family fun and I guess a great comfort. We never like to think that our loved ones really leave us when they die, and I’m totally convinced they don’t.

We felt him around us a lot. I remember another time I was sitting in my living room late one night. It was 1 am and I was snuggled down on the sofa in our dimly lit living room with my head in my hands. I was feeling very distressed about a problem at the small ‘new age’ store where I worked part time when I suddenly felt the familiar presence in the room with me. I knew it was Uncle Eric. How? I just sort of felt it – you know, in the same way that you ‘feel’ when someone is looking at you behind your back. Those eyes piercing into your back … you just know.

‘Is that you Eric?’ I asked out loud. The lights flickered on cue in the living room and I laughed. He had announced his arrival in the usual way.

‘Flash the lights once for yes, and twice for no,’ I joked. The lights flicked once more. I swear we had a five-minute conversation using the yes/no system before I felt his energy pull away! I can’t prove it to you, no one was physically there – but I knew it was him! He’d cheered me up a lot! I knew then it was time for bed. I needed to ‘sleep on it’, as they say.

The next day I decided that the problem with my shop job was that I needed to not be there. I decided to leave. I needed to concentrate on my writing. Writing was what I wanted to do for a living and I was just getting more and more frustrated spending my day doing something I didn’t want to do. The following day I handed in my notice. The shop owner seemed very upset with me but I meant nothing malicious by it, it was a personal decision only. I had to follow my own dreams, I needed to be elsewhere.

The next few days were difficult at work. There was a serious tension in the air but I was sad to leave the staff who had become very good friends. I’d been at the shop for a few months – I actually began working for the owner before the shop even opened. Initially, I’d been looking for a part-time job so that I could still meet people whilst I wrote from home. I didn’t want to be isolated totally, and the job in an alternative/new age store seemed the perfect choice.

As the weeks went by I’d ended up doing more and more hours in the shop. I needed to be home to meet the girls after school but due to lack of staff I found myself having to work much later than agreed. As the most experienced member of staff, I became the shop manager by default. I was now beginning to resent the whole thing. I’d only ever wanted to work a couple of days but now my part-time day job was taking over my life and I was beginning to hate it.

Had Eric picked up on my misery when he came and flickered my living room lights that night? I’d wondered whether our relatives on the other side could zoom in on our strong emotions like a distress call; I’ve since discovered that they do.

I had two more days’ notice to work, but when I woke up the following morning, I knew I wouldn’t be able to go in that day, but what could I do? I really did feel ill, but felt guilty, too, that I should be working my last two days.

I looked skywards and sighed. ‘Angels? Can anyone help me?’

I had no idea who I was talking to in the seemingly empty room but I felt sure that someone, somewhere in the Universe would hear my silent cry!

‘If I’m not meant to go into work then I need a big sign and I need it now!’

The phone rang immediately. Seriously – it rang the moment the words left my lips. It was a good friend, a local Reiki healing teacher and she needed my help.

‘Jacky, I’ve had someone let me down for my class. Would you be able to come over? I just need someone to lie on a couch so that my students can practise healing on them. Oh, and I always do a vegetarian home-cooked lunch. You’d be doing me a great favour,’ she said. ‘I know you’ve done Reiki I and II before but I thought you might enjoy doing it again.’

I laughed but she’d no idea why. Let me see … go into work or lie on a couch and be ‘healed’? I had my answer. Had the angels stepped in, or was it Uncle Eric intervening? I didn’t mind either way.

As it turned out, my friend needed my help for both days of her two-day course, so I decided to join in the Reiki class, and then later I did the next course and the next. I was ready for a change of direction. Was this yet another coincidence? Yes, I’d done the healing course before but never had I needed healing more than I needed it at that moment.

We always feel stressed and depressed when we find our lives or aspects of our lives are out of control. Part of my life was out of control. This was definitely one of those times for me. The only way to move forward when we suffer from stress is to change something in our lives; to get back in control of one small aspect of it.

Of course, sometimes we can’t control the very thing which is making us depressed. If someone has died, for example, we can’t bring them back: all we can do is change the way we feel about it. It’s hard, I know.

Mourning the loss of a loved one is a natural thing to do. Some people take years to recover a normal sense of life and others may find that laughter comes again after a few months. It doesn’t mean we love them less but we deal with stress in our own way.

Mourning is about feelings of loss for the time we never had together. Moving on is about celebrating the wonderful life they had and the opportunity we were given to share that love for however long or short a time. I wanted to teach the message that I felt my own spiritual helpers were bringing me, but first I had to live some of the lessons myself.

Eric ‘called’a lot at that time, and although I never saw him then, it was clear that my little dog Lady could. I felt Eric come into my living room for a visit one sunny afternoon a short while later. It was that same knowing, that same feeling. Something in the very air around me had changed.

‘Is that you Eric?’ I asked the empty room.

Lady, my Lancashire Heeler, was jumping up and down in excitement and lifted herself up onto her hind legs. She was sniffing and looking at something in mid-air. What could she see? As anyone might, I checked the room for insects or some other distraction but it was clear that the excitement was for something, or someone else!

‘If that’s you Eric, get Lady to pick up her newspaper chew toy and bring it over here!’ I asked, confident of a failure.

Lady was lovely, but not the most intelligent dog in the world. I had given my spirit friend a difficult task indeed … or had I? Lady immediately ran over to her squeaky toy, then jumped back as if someone was there! She rushed at it again and picked it up before turning around and bringing it over to me and planting it proudly on the floor at my feet. Amazing!

I thought about it a lot afterwards. Had my little dog suddenly learnt a new trick? Had she at that moment understood my words? Had she been wagging her tail at some microscopic fly? No, seriously, whatever way I looked at it, the obvious solution seemed to fit better. She had seen a spirit visitor and followed their instructions rather than my own. Eric was there and although I had sensed my spirit visitor, Lady had actually seen him. I LOVED this!

I’ve had many encounters with my spirit friends and not just Eric. Eric, because he had been my uncle, was the easiest to recognize when he visited but others also came in ‘dreams’.

My first spirit visitation ‘dream’was from an old school friend. Guy had died of cancer in his twenties and it was a real tragedy. We grew up together. As soon as he appeared in the dream I immediately became lucid (I was aware that this was not a normal dream and my visitor was actually dead). Even though I was aware that my body was asleep my mind was perfectly awake. This was real, and I knew it was, even at the time.

‘Guy! How lovely to see you. Why are you here? You’re dead aren’t you?’

A short conversation followed about the fact that he had come because he could. I felt like he was testing a new skill. I chatted to my late friend in his spirit body, although I remembered none of the conversation afterwards. I asked him questions about the meaning of life – why are we here and what is our role in life? I obviously wasn’t supposed to remember the answers to those. Shame!

I remember asking him, ‘Can I pass on a message to anyone for you?’ I assumed he had visited me for some higher spiritual reason.

He just told me no, and said it was time to go. Two chairs, me and Guy, sitting in an otherwise empty room – that was it. But even then, I knew it wasn’t a normal dream. It was so real, so vivid, so different from a normal dream, and I knew I was talking to a dead person, and that it was okay to be doing so. And that’s part of the reason why a ‘dream’ visitation is used, because we accept things that we would be unable to do in normal waking life!