Kitabı oku: «An Angel Held My Hand: Inspiring True Stories of the Afterlife»

CHAPTER 1 Angels and Me

It is not your aptitude but your attitude that determines your altitude.

Zig Ziglar

Like most children I was frightened of ghosts. I have an early memory of running across our landing screaming. I was six years old and we were living in a 100-year-old three-storey house in Birmingham. It was dark and I’d stepped out of bed to visit the bathroom, just a short sprint across the squeaky floor and out of the door to the left. As I walked through the open door, though, a strange white shape drifted in front of me and seemed to float in front of my eyes for a moment before disappearing at the other end of the landing.

For the briefest moment I wondered if my sister Debbie was playing a trick on me, but she was only six and was snoring loudly in the room behind me, along with my youngest sister Madeline. And the shape hadn’t had any feet and had been floating a foot off the ground. No, I guess she hadn’t learned to levitate just yet! So what was it?

Terrified, I ran back into my room. Actually, this wasn’t my usual room. I had my own bedroom, but once a year I was chucked out of it so an elderly aunt could come and stay. When she arrived, I was despatched to the ‘big bedroom’ that my two sisters shared. This old house had large rooms compared to modern homes and the three of us fitted easily into the space.

The aunt, Aunty Edie, was tiny. I remember she used to repeat everything she said at least twice and follow me and my sisters around, walking so closely behind us that when we turned round quickly she would bump into us. We found her slightly scary. It wasn’t her fault, you understand. When you’re aged four, six and seven, a woman in her late seventies is ancient! Aunty seemed so old to me then that I worried she might die in my bed. Would she come back and haunt me? Perhaps my floating vision was the result of my sleepless nights of worry rather than an actual ghost? I’ve never been too sure.

The house we were in at the time was no ordinary house. It had a lot of character to it, and that character included lots of scary bits. The walls held memories—some good and some bad—and anyone a little sensitive would find it easy to pick up on the energies of that spooky old property. I’ve always had a healthy respect for the supernatural and I’m sure growing up in such an eerie house sparked my interest from an early age, though I do look back on it with affection.

In many ways it was a fascinating place to live in. It had two large cellars and a wine store beneath the ground floor. The basement area was always freezing cold and we girls were never allowed down there on our own. The stone steps and hard concrete flooring made these rooms a great danger to small children. They were always kept locked with a large old-fashioned key that my mother used to hide. My sisters and I used to make up horrible stories to scare each other and other children, and if someone left the key in the door we would sometimes lock one another in, which always resulted in much frightened screaming as well as hysterical laughter. Kids can be horrible to each other, can’t they?

The breakfast room had a collection of original servant bells hanging high upon the walls. Originally, Mum explained, they were wired up all over the house and the wealthy owners of yesteryear could summon their household servants from any room in the house.

The kitchen was more of an old-fashioned scullery. Stone steps led down to an old conservatory, which was always full of spindly geraniums, tomatoes and a great many spiders. My mum hated spiders and for many years we were all terrified of them too.

I remember we once found a locked tin in the conservatory cupboard that had been left by the previous owners. It remained locked for many years until, bored one day, we persuaded our kindly father to break into it. For years that tin had been full of imaginary treasures, but the reality was a little less exciting: tennis balls, golf balls and other balls of all shapes and sizes. This was hardly the treasure we had hoped for, but it kept three bored little girls quiet for a few hours at least.

I remember one day getting into a lot of trouble. One of my sisters and I had climbed onto the conservatory roof using the tree at the end to reach up. The thin panes of ancient glass could have shattered at any moment, but that thought never entered our minds as we crawled along the precarious glass until our mother spotted us and gave us a well-deserved telling-off.

We also used to slide all the way down the beautiful curved banister rails that ran right from the top of the three-storey house down to the bottom. We never had any thought of falling. How my poor mother managed to keep her sanity I shall never know.

The gardens of all the houses in the area were very long and narrow. Mum grew a lot of plants in ours and it made a wonderful place for imaginative games. We used to pick the flowers and eat the blackberries that grew along the lane that joined all the gardens together at the end. One day we discovered that maggots were living inside the blackberries and were all very sick—probably more from the shock of seeing the maggots than from eating them!

At the end of this lane there lived a little girl and her younger brother. As the oldest child in our family, I was allowed to visit her and play. Then one day I wasn’t allowed to go anymore and Mum explained that the little girl’s brother had died and the family was too sad to have visitors. It was a natural death; the little boy had had a hole in his heart. I’d never known a young person who’d died before and this was the first time I’d considered my own mortality. At the time I was already suffering from horrendous nightmares and I’m sure this experience didn’t help.

Later on, while we were still living in this house, my dad suffered a horrific car crash. I remember waking up to the sound of the doorbell and creeping to the top of the stairs to see what was going on. Two police officers were at the door and I could hear them telling my young mother that her husband was in a serious condition.

Dad survived that crash, but nearly lost his life many more times over the following years, and my fears of dying were much exaggerated by these experiences in my young life. I was so terrified that my father might die that I dared not love him too much just in case. But of course you can’t stop loving someone! I wish I had realized then that he would actually live through the car accidents, perforated ulcer, stroke, brain tumour, coma and many other things that happened to him through the years. These experiences were all very difficult, but perhaps they were part of his chosen life path? They certainly taught us, and Dad himself, many lessons about love. I remember saying to him one day, ‘Thanks for teaching us about unconditional love, Dad.’ ‘That’s OK, my darling,’ he said, as if on some level he too understood.

Dad 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 in my own short life. Had angels been there the whole time and I just hadn’t noticed? In fact God had chosen to give me my proof—over and over again—and I had quite simply missed it. But I’m not the only one. How many people do the same? And how much proof is proof?

If only I had known then what I know now! Imagine how amazed I would have been to discover that in the future I would gather stories of lifesaving and life-changing encounters with guardian angels.

So many people have amazing experiences that they have never shared with anyone before. They often begin their stories with the phrase ‘I’ve never told anyone this before but…’ Fear of ridicule or disbelief is a good reason for people to keep quiet. I understand that. But angels can help us so much in life and it’s good for us to know it! I am always amazed by how much our angels can do for us. No matter how many angel experiences I read, I am always stunned by their power. The fantastic real-life experiences I have been privileged to read bring me great joy—and I hope you feel the same.

Angels really do change lives and save lives. How can we recognize them? Their interaction with us is often subtle but sometimes dramatic. Not everyone is going to meet a 12-foot being in a golden light, but it does still happen on occasion. Mostly, though, angels appear just in time to sort out emergencies before disappearing into the night. They bring message of hope when all seems lost. They appear in dreams and visions and everyday life. Who knows, they might be the stranger at the bus stop or even merge briefly with your pet cat. Angels are everywhere and you could well have met one without even knowing it. Remember the saying ‘Be not forgetful to entertain strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.’

I’ll give you a little clue, though. Angels often appear with the lightest of blonde hair and piercing blue eyes, even if they are dressed as humans! You might want to watch out for that. Their clothing can also be a dead giveaway. They don’t seem to understand fashion at all and often wear what we would consider inappropriate clothing for the time of year or the era. There is usually something that doesn’t look quite right!

So many people have written to tell me about their own lifesaving experiences with both their human ‘family’ of ‘angels’ and the winged variety. Angelic contact really is going on all around us. Children, too, have amazing stories to tell of their own contact with loved ones who have died and their own foresights into the future and insights into the past. There is so much magic in our lives and so many of us are guilty of walking around with blinkers on. We miss things that are right in front of our nose.

I want to open your eyes to the wonders that are all around you. So many children want to be like Harry Potter and perform magic. So many of us want to live in a world where miracles exist. But what if I told you that we already can and they already do?

I know that you’ll enjoy the angelic wisdom, messages and amazing lifesaving adventures in this book. By the end you’re sure to be a believer!