GHOSTLY ACTIVITY

It seems that a building doesn't need to be incredibly old for there to be ghostly activity within. Here's a picture of 'King Bill', a Totnes pub and commercial hotel that was first built in 1830 (when William IV ascended the throne) - then rebuilt in 1902.

Apparently Jackie and Ron Hodder, who were landlords there until 1988, grew accustomed to the activities of an entity they called 'Bill' - who, as well as playing with lights, jamming doors and moving things around, once pulled someone from their bed!

'Bill' was thought to have once been a cook at the hotel who died in an upstairs room.  Some visitors staying at the pub in 1979 actually met and talked with him. In an attic room they found an old man who complained to them about the music sounds coming up from the bar - and it transpired that this man was 'Bill'!

SPIRITUAL SYMBOL

 Soon after I met Djoser, my spirit guide, a dear friend asked me if I could ask him about her spiritual symbol. I’d told Yvonne mine and she was intrigued to know what hers was like.

So I asked Djoser who, speaking mind to mind, told (and showed) me that her symbol was a peacock. Although I passed his information on to Yvonne, I was a little worried (being new to this whole process) as to whether I had ‘heard’ Djoser correctly.  The last thing – obviously - I ever wanted to do was mislead anyone.

That afternoon, walking Sam - my Bearded Collie - in unfamiliar woods, I heard the weirdest sound. Unable to make out its source, I tensed while wondering where and what it came from. Sam tensed too and looked bemused.

We walked on, treading watchfully when the somewhat strident screech sounded again. Then we entered a clearing and right before our startled eyes there appeared a peacock, spreading its amazing tail in exactly the way Djoser had ‘shown’ me earlier that day.

Things didn’t end there! We now found ourselves in the grounds of a large house – with several peacocks strolling around. I gazed in awe at their beautiful eye-marked tail-feathers and told Djoser I’d never doubt him again.

All the same, he saw fit to give me some extra emphasis a few days later, after my daughter asked to know her spiritual symbol. But that story can wait for my next post …   

HAUNTED INN

A group of us had lunch yesterday at a haunted inn.  The Kingsbridge is the oldest inn in Totnes, dating back in parts to the fourteenth century, and apparently has long been the scene of  apparitions and strange occurrences.

We sat in a room with incredibly thick walls and the landlord identified the one between us and the bar as being the reputed 'resting place' of a seventeenth century barmaid.  Mary Brown, so the story goes, was seduced and subsequently murdered by the landlord of her day before being buried in the wall!

Her ghost, it seems, only ever shows itself to women (maybe because she was treated so appallingly by a man?) and over the years the figure of a tall, dark-haired woman has frequently been seen by various people - standing at the bar and gliding through to the kitchen, where the chef and waiting staff grew quite used to seeing her.

Disappointingly, we didn't see Mary - but we did enjoy our delicious meal! 

RESCUED BY ANGELS?

Back in 1992 I read a newspaper story about a Mrs Dorothea Sargent, who was staying with her sister, Mary, in Iowa.  They were driving along a country back road when their car had a puncture.

Neither sister knew how to change a tyre so, with no house nearby, they sat in their car hoping for another motorist to appear.

Shortly after they had resigned themselves to a possibly long wait, a car appeared seemingly from nowhere and pulled in behind them.  Three fair-haired men in white suits emerged and offered to change the punctured tyre.

Having difficulty in fixing the scissor jack in place, one of the young men lay full length on the road to position it and Dorothea scolded him for soiling his lovely suit.  But he said there was no problem – and, when he stood up again, despite the road being greasy and slick after a day’s rain, she saw that his suit was not at all stained.

After quickly changing the tyre, the young men – refusing to accept any payment – drove away.  That is to say, their vehicle travelled about fifty yards down the long empty road stretching between the twilit winter fields and then began to shimmer as if liquefying.

The shimmer became brighter, rendering the car virtually transparent, before in a final pulse of brilliant light, it vanished altogether.

My question now is, do you share Dorothea’s and Mary’s belief that they were rescued by angels?  Apparently there were dozens of similar sightings across the USA around that time – and the ‘angels’ were always young, white men dressed in pale clothes that never became dirty or creased.

They only ever changed tyres – and never accepted payment.  Well, angels wouldn’t expect to be paid, would they?

FUTURE LIVES

How is it possible to remember future lives? I wrote yesterday about Jenny Cockell’s well remembered past life as Mary Sutton in Malahide.  Now I’d like to share with you Jenny’s vision of a future life.

When she first experienced such a vision she felt she had two selves – herself and a two-year-old Asian girl, Nadia, who will live in Eastern Nepal around 2040.  Jenny said (in an interview with Seth Linder of the DAILY MAIL back in 1996): “I remembered Mary, but this felt like Nadia was remembering me.  It felt alive, as if I were being touched by a future existence.”

Gradually, through visions and with the help of hypnosis, Jenny fleshed out details of Nadia’s life in a village set on a mountainous hillside.  Under progression (rather than regression), as she was taken slowly forward in time, Jenny was able to describe her marriage to good-looking Ghunta and the wedding cart they travelled in.

She also experienced the emotion Nadia felt on the death of her three-year-old daughter – “a sense of resignation similar to that felt with Mary’s stillborn child” (whose brief existence Mary’s eldest child had confirmed).

Jenny then drew a temple with a pointed roof and described two groups of priests dressed in dark and light robes.  These details proved promising as she later discovered that the temple she had drawn was typical, while the two differently dressed priests also exist in an area where both Hinduism and Buddhism are practised.

When her hypnotherapist, Jim Alexander, took her forward to the age of 40 she had the shock of discovering nothing there, as Nadia had died.

However, as the hypnosis sessions progressed, Jenny encountered two further lives – one as Janice Thorpe, ‘a plump technician in her 30s’ on a field trip to South America in 2228 working for Unichem, collecting rain forest samples with a ‘syringe-like tool’ for medical uses.

The major problem, according to Janice, was infertility caused by the chemical pollution that had been at its worst during our present era – leading to a dramatic reduction in the world’s population.  On land, where there were tight controls, the situation was all right but the sea remained toxic.

Air quality was good, however.  There was minimal conflict and the third world war had clearly never materialised.  Life expectancy remained in the 80s.  When asked for the major scientific breakthrough of the last century, Janice described a laser used on living tissue to show cell abnormalities.  She also mentioned a solar treatment for breaking down blood clots and said that fuel was from some kind of fermented spirit.

There were social changes too.  Maybe due to infertility, couples did not marry or even stay together for long.

Janice, living in Jersey, described herself as a shopaholic and said there was no need to enter the shops in her local mall as the goods were demonstrated on screens outside.

Jenny’s last ‘life’ was as Sheryl, a ‘bright, happy’ 15-year-old Californian in the year 2285’.  Her parents weren’t married or living together and she herself had no wish for a lasting relationship.

At twenty-three she worked from home, using a computer console linked to independent agencies.  Her one-storey home was open plan, with surfaces that were plasticized, pleasant to touch and easy to clean.

She wore comfortable, loose clothes in a cotton-like fabric - practical but flattering – and was aware of something (perhaps a watch or communicator of some sort) on her wrist.  Energy was from solar and other renewable sources and, again, the diminished population was evident.  However, this seemed ‘a confident and cohesive society and a time of hope and enthusiasm’ said Jenny ...

So – was she describing actual future lives?  Given that physicists are now questioning our linear concept of time, I leave it to you to decide!

PAST LIVES

Is it possible to remember past lives? I certainly think it is – especially after recently re-reading Jenny Cockell’s account of a life she once lived in Malahide, near Dublin.

Right from early childhood Jenny had had ‘memories’ of being an Irishwoman named Mary Sutton, who died in the 1930s.  And she was haunted by a recurring dream of dying after giving birth to her eighth child, plus the guilt of leaving them behind.

As an adult she travelled from her home in Northamptonshire to Malahide, where she finally found the ruins of Mary’s cottage and her children’s baptism records.

Jenny’s bestselling book Yesterday’s Children describes how over the next two years she not only tracked down the five surviving children – who, though much older than Jenny, accepted her as their ‘mother’ – but also reunited the scattered siblings for the first time since Mary’s death.

Seth Linder, writing back in 1996 in the Daily Mail, described himself as one of the many sceptics who – after investigating the evidence and questioning Jenny’s ‘children’ – was forced to admit that her bizarre explanation seemed to be the only possible one.  She really had been Mary Sutton!

If you find this surprising (or even unbelievable) then you might be still more surprised when in my next post I move on from remembering past lives to ‘remembering’ future lives …

LOVE BEYOND LIFE

 

My Spiritual Store

I wrote last about love beyond death.  What about love beyond life? I am now nearing the end of James van Praagh’s Talking To Heaven, where he speaks of making contact with the spiritual realms ourselves.

He explains how this physical world is just one of many dimensions, as is our solar system, and how the human being is just one among many species.  He adds that the spirit world is not limited to ‘an area in the clouds out of our reach’.  Rather, it is intermingled within our own world.

We need to have the ‘right’ reasons for developing our inner skills with a view to contacting our loved ones, as there’s no room for self-indulgence in spirit – only for selfless love.  Love, James tells us, is the strongest component in bringing us closer to spirit.

Only if we want to advance ourselves spiritually and in turn enlighten others by making contact and exploring the spiritual realms are our motivations correct.

I think Talking To Heaven is brilliant – which is why I’ve included it among the books and music in my Spiritual Store!