The truth about ghosts - and my part in them.

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I have absolutely had it with so called intelligent people who have the most incredibly closed minds. What annoys me most, is the 'look' - the one that says, I don't believe in all that psychic nonsense. Or the one that say's - ' you sure you weren't just imagining it?'  Then there's the extremely irritating, and downright insulting – 'I don't believe you, I think you are lying', sceptical frown.

So I am going to put my personal record straight, and tell you, my wonderfully open minded blog readers, about my first paranormal experience as a child.

I think after sixty plus years of seeing and experiencing paranormal phenomena, I qualify for non-delusional status. As a trained Spiritualist 'platform medium', I don't tell lies. I don't embellish. I always consider each encounter with the world of spirit in an open-minded - but rational manner - and I don't believe everything that happens to me is from the supernatural. 

In other words, I'm not a nutter lying my head off to get some attention. I'm a sane, rational individual who just happens to have extra sensory perception.

And this is why, I am going to tell you about my first experience of seeing a ghost.

People who are not able to accept the possibility of anything beyond our mundane day to day lives, are I believe, in the category of someone who -

A, Doesn't have an answer to paranormal occurrences, and therefore pooh pooh everything connected with it.

B, Simply can't bear the thought they don't know everything.

C, Jealous because they don't have psychic abilities. 

Hallucination Argument.

This is one of my most un-favourite closed mind arguments against psychic phenomena. The ill thought out answer to anything paranormal - “It was an hallucination.”

I will concede that not all psychic experiences are actual paranormal events, but to blithely dismiss the paranormal as a mere hallucination, with the glib comment of, “You must have been seeing things.” Is quite frankly, both ignorant, and offensive.

The hallucination theory breaks down when the person who says they have seen a ghost is not an adult seeking attention, as in the case of adult false testimony - but a child who has genuinely had a paranormal encounter.

You are lying.

There are a lot of 'fake' psychics who cause a great deal of damage to the credibility of genuine mediums, and to the Spiritualist movement by casting doubt on the validity of bonafide paranormal activity.

I accept that some witnesses, embellish the truth of what they saw to the point of lying. Either to prove their evidence or simply seek attention.

However, young children, and especially very young children do not have the sophistication to create elaborate lies. They tell it as they see it, without preconceived ideas getting in the way of their paranormal experience. 

I am not saying young children cannot lie – they can. What I am saying is, a lie that is overly intricate in nature, is simply not in their construct.

Children can be led in a complex lie by an adult, but they themselves, rarely weave deceitful webs that involve a story of more than one dimension.

False Memory Syndrome.

Do children have False Memory Syndrome? I am sure they do. It is entirely possible for any of us to remember things differently from the way the events actually happened.

My memory of the day I saw the hanging ghost, is clear and factual.

The idea that I only 'think' I saw this ghost can easily be dispelled, not only by the many paranormal experiences I have had over the years since my first contact with spirit, but by the memories of the other witnesses who were there at the time, and saw my reaction to the actual sighting. 

What those witnesses told me years after the event, about the ghost I saw, confirms that the sighting was genuine, and not the imagination of a young child.

The beginning of my psychic journey - the Hanging Ghost -

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During the second world war, German bombing raids flattened vast areas of London. At the end of the war, the consequence of this, meant there was a housing shortage.

My parents met during the war, after my father was invalided out the army. When the war ended they were a young married couple with a baby - my sister.  Money was short, and every apartment my mother and father looked at, was either too expensive or too dilapidated to consider bringing a child into. 

Not much has changed since the war years. If a young couple, can't afford a house, and have no place to live - answer - move in with mum and dad. 

My paternal grandparents house was a spacious Victorian double fronted terraced property that had by some miracle escaped the bombing undamaged. My grandparents had the bottom half of the house, my mother, father, and older sister the top half, this is where I was born six years later.

Seeing the semi-translucent, white/grey figure of a man, floating in mid-air is the earliest paranormal memory I have. I wasn't much older than five years. A young child with no preconceived ideas of what is abnormal, and what isn't.

This is a true story of what happened to me. 

I was climbing the staircase in this old house of my grandparents, when I encountered the spirit of a suicide, dressed in an old fashioned nightgown. I remember feeling an intense sadness surrounding the figure as I stood motionless, looking at or rather into, a man hanging a few feet above the floor of the  landing halfway up the stairs.

The hem of his nightgown was above his ankles, giving me a perfect view of his long naked straight toes. The hand of his right arm was also clearly visible. The fingers resembled his toes, long, and quite thin. I couldn't see the left hand properly. His head, I couldn't see at all, it was simply an amorphous white light.

I wasn't scared right away, because somehow I knew the ghost meant me no harm. If he had meant me harm, then I am sure he would have shown me his face.

I have since learnt that the face of a hanging victim can be grotesquely distorted, I've no doubt I would have been terrified if I had seen his death mask, and that the spirit of the man was protecting me from seeing such a sight.


As a trained medium, I now realise the dead man's spirit was looking for help to cross over into the ether – but of course, at the time the incident happened, I was far too young to understand that.

When finally I realised I should be scared, and gasped with a sharp in-take of breath, he vanished. 

I recall the whole incident today, as clearly as when it happened, all those years ago. 

I remember running back down the stairs as fast as I could to safety.

“I've just seen Jesus.” I told my family. At such a young age, I had no idea what a ghost was. In my limited understanding of such things, the only person I could think of who would show themselves to me, was him. 

As I have said, children that young are not sophisticated enough to lie. My parents not wanting to upset me, explained, what I had just seen, was simply a trick of the light, and nothing more.

I knew they were not telling me the truth, but I was however smart enough to say nothing more about it, as they clearly did not want to discuss with me what I had just seen.

Many years later my mother told me a man who had once lived in the house had committed suicide by hanging himself on the upstairs hall landing. At the time of my seeing the ghost, there was no way I could have known of this, as my parents never talked about it. So bang goes the notion, as it has been said to me that I was – imagining something I had previously overheard.

I was five years old, I did not hallucinate or lie. And, I remember the incident exactly as it happened.

Okay, it's not a long story – but the actual incident didn't take long to happen. That's not the point of relating the story though.

The point is – someone so young, who had such an extraordinary experience had no reason to make up what they had witnessed.

Children have no preconceived ideas when it comes to the extraordinary. Many of the things they see, and hear are new to them, so they have no reason to think such things don't happen as a norm.

My parents when they were young.......

Does my experience of being protected by the spirit of the dead man from being frightened, and leaving when I did become scared, suggest that ghosts have conscious thought?

Personally, I think it does. I believe ghosts, show themselves knowingly. And in the case of the hanging man, he was calling out to me from beyond the grave for my help. 

What do you think?

If you are a believer in the paranormal, hopefully the next time you meet someone who refuses to accept the possibility that there might be things we cannot explain, tell them about my experience as a child, and it might, open a crack in their closed minds.

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