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1
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The medium started
by talking about my work. He said I did research and had recently submitted a
paper for publication – “It feels good doesn’t it” he asked/stated. I
assented. This way of semi-asking a question and semi-making a statement required
some sort of acknowledgement and helped keep The medium on track to some
extent.
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I was initially
impressed by the fact that he had started on the right track. I am doing
research and have recently submitted a paper for publication – but as an academic
this is not unusual and previous mention of my connection with King’s College
London in an email could have prompted this suggestion. I am frequently submitting papers for
publication rather than just one.
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2
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He talked quite a
bit about “collating”, that I had taken or was taking a break from work, but
that things were now coming together. What I was now doing was the fruit of
many years research. I was already well respected in my field but things were
moving or were about to move to a new level.
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These statements
were a mixture of reasonably accurate description of my circumstances but not
quite spot on – they took a little interpreting. I am taking a break from
full-time paid work, having taken voluntary severance in 2010. I am well respected
in the field of anthropology of religion, but my current research into
afterlife material doesn’t go back all that far, maybe four or five years at
most. I have not yet published much although arguably things could be said to
be coming together after considerable reading and some personal experience in
the world of parapsychology and mediumship.
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3
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He also mentioned a
recent book contract and said later that it would be completed by the summer
or end of the year.
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If he had me down as
a university researcher it was not a bad guess. I had recently signed a
contract for a 3rd edition of my Anthropology of Religion text, and did move the completion date
from October to December. I do, however, have other on-going book contracts
with various deadlines (past and future) so it is not a unique event. I may
have looked sceptical when the end of the summer was mentioned as a
completion date. A video of the session with body language would show what
sort of cues I was giving.
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4
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The medium had me
down as a research scientist, which came up several times. I explained that I was not a medical
doctor and he replied, “No, you are more into research aren’t you”, with
which I agreed.
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One might regard
this mistake as an indication that any information The medium had was not
obtained by googling my name, which would have revealed a considerable amount
about me and my interests and projects. On the other hand, it was inaccurate
as regards my discipline.
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5.
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I was asked if I had
a connection with Africa and immunology. I mentioned a friend (from Africa)
who worked on sickle cell, but otherwise no. He mentioned immunological
research again. This was so far out that I told him that I was a social
scientist.
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As above, the
information was inaccurate, but suggests that at least he had not looked me
up. I do have connections with Africa, having done my doctoral fieldwork in
Cameroon. I have kept personal and research interests in Africa, but nothing
to do with medicine or immunology.
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6.
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The medium said that
he heard (from his discarnate sources) the word “King’s” and said that I had
a connection with King’s (College London). I agreed that I did, but that it
was not a very strong one.
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He may have
forgotten that when arranging the time and place to meet I had said in an
email that I would be coming on from seeing a postgraduate student at King’s.
As a Visiting Senior Research Fellow my connections are not particularly
close and it is rare for me to meet students there. I could not place any
evidential weight in this having mentioned a connection with King’s prior to
the sitting. None of the universities I have had or do have stronger
connections with (Bristol, Oxford, Durham, Lampeter) came up during the
sitting. It might be worth noting that Oliver does work at Kings. He took
some of the information as applying much more straightforwardly to him, which
could be the case. (Was he also in my aura? to provide an emic explanation?).
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7.
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The medium mentioned
the East Coast of the USA and the name Harvard. I said I had no contact with
Harvard, but did have contacts on the East Coast. I was told that it would be
significant in the future. He said I would be travelling to the US and it was
paid for, and that being careful with money was an issue. I agreed, but said
I was going to the West Coast, albeit via the East Coast.
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We spent two periods
of Study Leave at the University of Virginia in 2000 and 2001. I have kept
contacts there, particularly with Edie Turner. Esalen are paying for me to go
via Charlottesville to accompany Edie to a conference in California in
October, all paid for. I do have
family connections on both the East and West coasts of the USA. When naming
places (Harvard) it was inaccurate, and although the bit about travel and
expenses paid was/is hopefully true, it is not unusual for British academics
to attend conferences in the USA.
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8.
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The medium then
talked about Asia and said I would travel there this summer in July or
August. There was some important event for my work. It was not altogether
clear whether this important event would take place in Asia, but that was the
implication. I said that summer was usually family time, but I had tentative
plans to go to China in Summer 2014. The medium responded that it is quite
difficult to interpret, maybe I would go to the East of China in a year or
so.
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This was one point
when Oliver wondered whether The medium was reading him rather than me. He is
booked to go to China for a conference in August this year and China is an
important area for the expansion of his work. My going would probably be
linked to his contacts, even if I was able to do my own work and teaching
once there. He is going to the South China Sea rather than East this time. I
had forgotten about the IUAES anthropology conference in Manchester in August
at which I am organising a panel. This is potentially important for my
afterlife work (but is certainly not in Asia). One would have to say that
there were more misses than hits here. The wide sweep of time and geography,
lack of specificity or where there was specificity (East China in Summer
2013) it was not accurate.
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9.
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The medium then
returned to the subject of ‘collation’ as he called it. He had a sense of
things moving on. He predicted that I would spend more time in Asia/China –
the East of China, more than a few weeks – maybe a year or so. It would be an area of expansion of my
(immunology) work.
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This sounded a
little like returning to a safe subject. The reference to China and more
specifically East China (Beijing wouldn’t be a bad guess for contacts in
China) rather than Asia, came from me, although the East bit was added by The
medium. This is a prediction that may or may not be true but is not totally
implausible. I might well have given that impression. It is hard to imagine spending a
year, or more than a few days, away from home while the boys are still of
school age and living at home, unless we moved to a new job as a family.
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10.
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I would be offered a
nice teaching job in the near future, which I would enjoy.
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Another prediction –
not implausible but impossible to verify at present. It is more likely to
happen if I am proactive in seeking such a job but we will see!
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11.
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There was then a
change of tack from reading my aura/energy, or as The medium put it when I
asked if that was what he was doing, ‘his guide talking to my guide’, to
‘bringing through’ discarnate spirits. The medium said that he had brought
through a man he said he saw clearly. He wasn’t family member but had
probably taught me when I was a student. His signature was a light summer
suit and bow tie. He died at about 75. This man described himself as one of the most intelligent men in
the country. He was a bit pedantic and would correct The medium’s English. The
medium saw him in Cambridge in a college garden party type situation and
associated him with summer. He would have been an important person in my
intellectual development but not necessarily best friends or particularly
close. I said that I couldn’t identify him and asked for a name. The medium
came up with ‘Jones’ and an ‘Owen’ or ‘Owens’. I responded that the only
person I could think of who was a Jones and might match part of that
description was Cheslyn Jones but he never taught me. He would have been in
his 60s when I knew him in Oxford, but we did become friends and he was
influential personally, particularly for Oliver, rather than intellectually.
He did wear light suits and a bow tie but the personality and occupation
didn’t fit, nor the Cambridge link. He ended his career as a humble parish
priest rather than a don. I said that I had studied in Oxford rather than
Cambridge, to which The medium responded that it could be either – it was an
Oxbridge type college setting that he saw.
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There were parts of
the description that could fit a number of people but altogether did not
resemble anyone I could think of. Edwin (Owen?) Ardener, for instance, was my
supervisor in Oxford. He did wear light summer suits, in summer (and in West
Africa) but I don’t think of him with a bow tie and he died aged about 60. He
was associated with the LSE and Oxford rather than Cambridge. The ease with
which The medium moved his location from Cambridge, which had been quite
specific, to Oxford, was a little disconcerting. The intellectual arrogance
of the personality The medium described didn’t fit with anyone I could think
of, certainly not someone who had taught me or who has been influential
intellectually. The teachers who have influenced me are very different in
appearance and character. Godfrey Lienhardt would be another contender –
light summer suits, Oxford college (we were both in Wolfson and he did
influence me). I think he might have worn a bow tie on occasions and I can
imagine him saying he was very intelligent after a few drinks but he never
struck me as pompous or someone who took himself or others too seriously. Godfrey was an undergraduate in
Cambridge but spent most of his career in Oxford. He was in his early 70s
when he died. One is casting around for composite characters, not the
specific individual The medium had in front of him. This was similar when I
went to the public demonstration of mediumship at the College of Psychic
Studies. The person brought through with a message for me sounded like a
general composite of several people but matched none very well. In both cases
I was left with the uncomfortable idea that a projection of a stereotype
seemed a better explanation than a discarnate spirit with accurate
information.
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12.
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Not having had much
luck here, The medium said he had someone he thought was a father energy
(surely a fairly safe bet as it didn’t have to be an actual father, just a
paternal male relative). He described a rather diffident figure who was
rather wary of the situation as he hadn’t ‘been through’ before. He died from
problems with is chest but also problems in the head or brain. He had been
ill for about three years. I hadn’t been around much for some reason during
this time. I was geographically or otherwise separated. I said that this was
true. My father had died from lung cancer with secondaries in the brain, and
had been ill for a while. It was also the case that I hadn’t been around much
(I was at university and in Africa doing my fieldwork). He mentioned a lot of
tubes and drugs at the end, which would have hastened his death. He was
moving in and out of consciousness. When he was in hospital there had been a
Welsh nurse who had looked after him very will.
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This was a good
description of Dad’s illness, and possibly of his character. It was also true
that I had not been living at home when Dad was ill, and was in Cameroon for
14 months during the last two years of his life. I returned in September when
Dad was already quite poorly, but I don’t think had been diagnosed. He died
in January 1982 in the Royal Marsden Hospital in Surrey. I was preparing for
my wedding as well as writing up fieldwork, teaching and in and out of
hospital myself at the time and could not confirm the medical details. I do
have photos of me after the wedding visiting Dad in hospital and he was full
of tubes. I have no way of verifying the bit about the Welsh nurse. There
were no obviously inaccurate statements here and struck me as a more accurate
description of Dad’s illness and death, plus my being separated at that time,
than likely by chance or cold reading. There was no sense of fishing for
details that I was aware of.
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13.
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The medium asked if
I had any questions for Dad. The medium was inviting him to come forward, but
he was a bit tentative. I asked if Mum was with him. Apparently Yes, Dad
laughed and said something like “that old bag” in an affectionate way. Mum
then came forward, also tentative as she had not ‘been through’ before
either. The medium said she had died much more quickly, about 6 weeks from
diagnosis to death. She hadn’t really had times to come to terms with it and
to take it all in. She had problems in the lower body and they didn’t operate
on her as it was too late. If they had opened her up they would have found
everything a mess, she was too far gone. I think he alluded to the sense of
trying to separate – something trying to come out, but I don’t remember how
he phrased it.
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The description of
Dad calling Mum ‘that old bag’ jars somewhat. It doesn’t sound quite like Dad
and is not a phrase I remember him using. They had a close friendship but not
a jokey relationship. The description of Mum’s death is again much more
specific and accurate than seems likely by chance and I hadn’t given any
hints or cues. She did die very quickly (of prostate cancer). She was
diagnosed in July when she developed jaundice after a pilgrimage in Israel,
and died on 8 October (1990). It is true that they didn’t operate and that by
the time she went for tests she was told that the cancer had spread to her
liver and there was no point. She was still trying to absorb the fact that it
had all come to an end so quickly. Maybe the bit about something needing to
come out was my projection, but it chimed with the experience immediately
before she died when she said to me that something was trying to come out. I
did wonder whether it was her spirit/astral body trying to separate. She had
a haemorrhage so may have been describing the sensation of the internal
bleeding. She was conscious and at home until a few hours before she died (in
a hospice from a morphine overdose).
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14.
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I was invited to ask
a question. I was told that Mum and Dad were quite excited by the process –
“very respectful your parentals”, they didn’t push themselves forward. I
asked what the connection was between me and my mother’s sister. The question
puzzled The medium and he asked for clarification. I said that she had died
before I was born but that I had been seen as a replacement for her in some
sense. He said that he didn’t get much except that they wanted to hang onto
something of her and seeing her in me was a way of doing that – that they saw
me as replacing or continuing her life. The medium asked if I looked like
her. I said ‘No’, I didn’t think so. It was only my grandmother who made an
explicit connection between us. The medium said he felt a constriction
breathing, that she had had a problem with her lungs or chest. I said that
she had died of drowning. The medium then mentioned a family problem with the
chest. As I was coughing during the session this may have suggested it to
him. He didn’t appear to have any sense of connection with Gill other than
problems breathing.
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Once again the most
accurate part of the reading seemed to be the mode of death. Gill drowned in
her mid-teens from drowning. We had the story of how it happened recounted on
a few occasions, normally when in the company of Mike, her younger brother,
as the family rarely mentioned her and there were very few photos of her
around. I have had occasional strong impressions of Gill and relived the
scene of her accident in some detail in my mind, mainly made up of components
I’d been told over the years but adding things which may or may not be true.
When talking to Celia (my younger sister) I discovered that she had had a
similar experience. It had been a major family trauma, not surprisingly, exacerbated
by the difficulty in speaking about what happened and about Gill. It seems
that each one was left to mourn alone and there was a lot of blame and
self-blaming. As children we used to find Gill’s childhood things in the
attic at Pendell, the house my grandparents bought after the war. I was
fascinated to see traces of this person who had been part of the family then
gone; old school books, butterfly and birds egg collections, nature books,
old photo albums. It was quite late on, probably in my early teens, probably
through Mike again as his presence generated family conversations, that learned
I had been given Gill’s godmothers, chosen by Granny. I had wondered why they
were so much older than my parents, and was a bit upset that I was seen as a
substitute. Granny often spoke to me in private of Gill’s difficult birth,
how beautiful she was as a baby, and then how she held me in the car on the
way home from the hospital – making the connection between us explicit. I had
on occasion wondered whether there were other ties between us hence the
question. What was said just repeated back my cues, but not in a way that
sounded particularly accurate or true to life. They certainly didn’t add
anything.
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15.
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The medium then
brought through a tall slim woman in her 30s with long blond hair and a red
dress. He had a sense that she had killed herself. She had mental problems,
probably drug abuse. He reflected that she was probably not the sort of
person he would expect me to associate with but she was a gentle soul,
fragile. I said I couldn’t identify her at all. He asked if my husband had
known someone like that. I couldn’t think of anyone. The medium then
suggested that I ‘brought people home’ and that she was perhaps someone who
had ‘followed me home’. She evidently didn’t match his idea of the kind of
people I might know (which isn’t quite true). I asked whether he meant that
she followed me energetically, and he replied in the affirmative. He said he
would ‘send her away’, presumably ‘into the light’.
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Again a clear
description of someone I couldn’t identify. When reading about spirit
attachments I booked a session with Martin Richardson (hypnotherapy)
specifically to look at the question of spirit attachment, a sort of psychic
health check, as I managed to tick off most of the checklist of symptoms.
Before going I asked myself whether I thought I was carrying other people’s
energy in my aura and thought not.
I had the ‘answer’ that I was strongly protected, with the mental
image of a white or gold cloak of light that I use frequently as psychic
protection. According to which author one reads such attachments are very
common or very rare. Martin confirmed that he didn’t think there were any
attachments and that I was well protected. I didn’t know what to make of this
woman I might have ‘brought home’ with me, other than to feel sympathy for
any possible ‘lost souls’ and to wish them well. It could hardly be described
as a ‘hit’ in terms of the reading.
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16.
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Either before or
after the woman in red The medium said something like, ‘am I right in
thinking your house is a very busy place, or maybe it was noisy, a sense of a
lot of people around’. I though of our empty house (with the boys at boarding
school and Oliver away or in London much of the time) but didn’t say
anything. Maybe it showed in my face because The medium qualified his
statement by saying that people follow me home, spirit presences.
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It can be a noisy
house when the children are around – more high stress than busy – although
the animals make up for lack of human company. I can’t comment on the spirit
company other than to say that I’m not aware of it. I have never had the
sense that the house is haunted or has other discarnate inhabitants. More of
a miss than a hit as far as one can judge.
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17.
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We had had our hour
by now and The medium sought reassurance that I had got something out of it.
He had mentioned some dates that had been ‘lobbed down the line’ that were
significant months. Maybe one was September or November, maybe January. What
ever they were I couldn’t think why they might be of any particular
significance. September is Dad and a sister's birthday but birthdays weren’t
mentioned.
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If these were meant
to be predictive there was not much to go on and almost anything could be
read into them given the lack of specifics. The natural desire to know that I
was satisfied and felt the money well spent wasn’t particularly reassuring.
There had been a mixture of the accurate, vague, unknowable and inaccurate statements
fairly evenly distributed.
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18.
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At the end I asked
if there was any particular help I could give a sister who wasn’t well and
was in a difficult situation, or something like that. The medium said a bit
about her need to accept or take responsibility for the situation and that
she/things would get better. She had to come to a decision. All I could do
was be there for her and give her support. I said that she had MS and that it
had deteriorated. The medium said that he had a cousin with MS. I thought of
Martin Richardson’s comments that people with MS (one of his specialisms)
tend to hang onto their illness and rarely seek his help, even when it is
offered free. In his experience it is often a path people choose. However,
given the nature of her illness, The medium’s comments about getting better
seemed at odds with the progressive nature of the condition.
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I couldn’t attribute
any of this conversation to psychic ability – it was either repeating what I
had said back to me or a bit platitudinous, but in ways that were not really
appropriate to my sister's situation. The medium’s concern was appreciated but
‘being there for someone’ is pretty standard stuff. I’m not quite sure what I
had in mind when asking the question, but maybe something along the
Newton/Richardson line. Was this a path she had chosen? Was there a purpose
in it or just a mess. She did volunteer to me that until recently she had
managed to find some objective interest in the condition, but I would put
that down to her generally plucky, uncomplaining approach to life.
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