Wartime Sweethearts
A lot of people wrongly assume that my kind of work is sought only by ‘women of a certain age’. This is certainly not the case. My clients are of all ages and come from many different walks of life. I have teenage boys, old men, professionals and manual workers among my clientele. So why am I telling you this? Read on …
Bertie came to me at a ripe old age. He was an agile man for his age, although arthritis had made him smaller as the years went by. The lines on his face defied his age but his heart was worn out, both physically and emotionally. His eyes were sad. In fact, I’d say his eyes were pretty dead. Gone was the sparkle I immediately saw when I imagined him as a much younger man.
Bertie came into my office and sat down. I was about to close the door behind him when I stopped as I felt the presence of another. I waited and unseeingly allowed the other person to follow us in. As they did so, I was engulfed by a smell I couldn’t name but which reminded me, for some reason, of my childhood.
This ‘other person’ floated past me. I heard her say, ‘Hello dear, I’m Elsie’ as clearly as Bertie had said, ‘Hi Katie, I’m Bertie’. But no, I didn’t go as far as to pull up another chair!
Naturally, I described everything I was seeing to my client, and to my surprise he told me he already knew. He told me Elsie had been his wife for most of his adult life. Together they had survived a war, the raising of seven children and many other hardships life had thrown at them. But they were strong and as much in love more than 60 years later as they had been the day they met.
Visions crossed my mind, many going back to when they were young. I simply sat and narrated to Bertie everything I was seeing. I saw their children, now grown, as little people playing in a park (this particular scene flashed before me many times and clearly I was seeing them over many years as the children were bigger each time). Bertie smiled at this as he remembered well the park I was seeing. He told me that the park no longer existed and that it had been turned into a housing estate.
One very profound scene involved Bertie as a handsome young man, dressed in war uniform. The couple looked sad, which was to be expected, but there was something about Elsie’s eyes that made me more inquisitive. I asked Bertie why I felt extremely sad, apart from the fact that he was going to war. My query was answered when Bertie told me that the day he left to go to war was the same day Elsie buried her mother.
If this story serves to teach me anything, it is that death needn’t be final. Bertie believes he has lost his wife – at least he’s lost her body – but he firmly believes her soul and everything she was inside is with him every waking moment. He still misses her, even though he is comforted by the presence of her spirit.
Sisters
Caroline had been troubled for some time. This was by someone or something that seemed to be following her everywhere. She had never believed in the spirit world. To her it was nonsense dreamed up by people with vivid imaginations who wanted to believe that their loved ones hadn’t left them. That was why she was so surprised when she first sensed that the shadow flitting round herself didn’t seem to belong to anything. This was just the start.
Caroline found herself haunted by someone who picked up pieces of jewellery from places where she had left them and put them down elsewhere, by a shadow which went into rooms ahead of her and put on the television – a ghost which seemed to know exactly what she was thinking. Caroline was terrified.
When she first came to me I was a little sceptical. Caroline lived alone and I thought she might be suffering from an over-exuberant imagination – one that saw ghosts in every corner. But then I became convinced. As the reading progressed, it seemed to me Caroline did have a spirit round her, and this was someone she should have known well, because it was a sister.
The trouble was, Caroline said she didn’t have a sister. She was, she said, ‘an only one’. This didn’t seem possible. The girl I was seeing was exactly like Caroline. In looks, in height, in weight, they might have been twins. I was amazed she could say there was no one in her family like this, that her parents had never had another child. What was more, it was coming across clearly to me that this sister had chosen to look out for Caroline since she moved away from home.
‘But you must have had a sister,’ I could only gasp. Like most of us, I hate being wrong, and in this instance Caroline’s insistence made me feel like a complete fool. Here I was, having actually set out not believing her story, now saying it was true and a non-existent sister was looking out for her.
I was very glad when Caroline left my office. This was one phantom that didn’t exist, a real ‘phantom phantom’, so to speak. I wanted to go and lie down in a darkened room and forget about ever doing a reading again!
I didn’t though. The next day I was back at it, with several new clients. I’d even managed to put Caroline out my mind when the phone rang and there she was. ‘You won’t believe this,’ she said. I confess I actually thought, ‘What is it now? More doings of the phantom sister?’ – quite uncharacteristically, I must add!
‘I expect this won’t much surprise you, but I do have a sister. I asked Mum.’
It turned out that Caroline was not an ‘only one’ after all. There had been a ‘first born’, a girl who, if she had lived, would have been two years older than Caroline. But she didn’t live. She died roughly a day after she was born. Caroline’s parents had been devastated. Then Caroline came along. With a typical ‘stiff upper lip’ they never again discussed the little girl they had lost, throwing all their energies into raising Caroline. And after a while there seemed very little point in mentioning it to her, until Caroline asked.
Yet her sister was very clearly with her. In fact, she had probably always been but was waiting for her moment, for the time when she felt she was needed. That was when she decided to make her presence known and do what every big sister does – look after the little one. It was as if she had decided that even death wasn’t going to stop her.
‘You must go back for Alison … she needs you’
When Kirsten first came to me, she’d no idea who this phantom Alison was. But she was very disturbed by the thought of her and by what had happened only a month before. So disturbed, she felt she had to seek help, at least to get it off her chest. The experience was so profound, she didn’t know where to turn. Although she knew that the people, or rather the spirits of the people, involved were her own dearly loved parents, the confusion was such, she was left wondering if she had imagined it all. I was convinced, however, that she wasn’t. When one of the things they said to her came about, what other proof was needed? When you hear this story, I’m sure you’ll agree, to quote the bard, ‘there are more things in heaven and earth …’.
Kirsten’s story begins on Christmas Eve. She had been allowed home from hospital just for the festive season to spend some time with her husband and children. Kirsten had been very ill. So ill that, at one point, staff had feared she would die. Kirsten didn’t die, however, but held on bravely. As Christmas approached, she begged to be allowed to go home. All the other members of her family – her beloved parents and grandparents – were dead, so she was especially desperate to be home with those she was devoted to. The hospital staff agreed, and at five o’clock that evening, the taxi carrying her drew up at the door of her house.
She was delighted to be home but she had not been there long when she began to feel unwell. The excitement of the trip had been too much for her and she begged to be allowed to go upstairs and lie down. Her temperature shot up. She became delirious and, as she did, realized she had made a mistake in asking to come home. Downstairs she could hear her husband and children laughing as they set up the table for the next day. Suddenly she felt strongly it was a meal she was never going to see.
As she grew progressively weaker, the room seeming to fade away before her, she attempted to rise from the bed. But she was weak and toppled over. Instead of falling down, however, she was aware of a strange sensation, as if she was floating. Suddenly, she