Speaker 1: You're listening to the Paranormal UK Radio Network and now
it's time for the Paranormal peep Show.
Speaker 2: Hi, this is near Ward of the Paranormal Peep Show,
wishing you a very happy new Year. For twenty twenty five,
We're taking a slightly different approach this month because I
am a snow l under with a lot of work
to do with publishing deadlines and things, so I'm going
to use an archived copy or two of some previous
interviews that I've done. So for the first one, we've
got ben Emine Jones interview in me and doctor Kate
Cheryl of Beryls and Beyond, who we met at the
Seriously Strange conference back in August of last year, and
Ben interviews both myself and her concerning paranormal topics. And
then in part two, we have an interview again with myself,
but this time conducted by my own daughter, Morgan geddis Ward.
Speaker 3: And welcome everyone. Welcome. My name is ben Emlin Jones,
and I'm here for another discussion with my good friend
Conrade and colleague Neil Ward. Wherever you are listening in
the world, morning, evening or afternoon, I hope you enjoy
this particular program. We are joined by our special guest,
Kate Cheryl, and I'm very very interested to hear what
she has to say. So, but it was before we
go a go, Neil, how are you? Are you all right? Yeah,
I'm great, Ben, Thank you.
Speaker 2: My book True Tales of Paranorm has just recently come
out in November, published by Ucturius Press, and I've been
writing that for a few years now, but it's all
based upon like stories and encounters that I've heard over
the years, and I thought it was about time actually
put these down on paper before they're lost forever. So literally,
as I think a lot of people did projects during
the lockdown, and that was one of my pet projects
in Lockdown to actually get cracking on that. So you know,
after four years of messing about with it, it's finally
come to a figuration, which is quite nice. So yeah,
I'm very pleased about that.
Speaker 3: Excellent congratulations. So I've got my own puppy. I haven't
read it yet, but some so he looks very interesting.
And I know you well, so I know that whatever
you have to say is extremely interesting. And I would
like to introduce our special guest, Kate Cheryl. So Kate. Hello,
how are.
Speaker 4: You Hello, I'm good, Thank you good.
Speaker 3: Welcome to our show, our discussion. I hope you hope
you have a lot of interesting things to talk about.
So would you like to introduce yourself in your own words?
Speaker 4: Right? Okay, Well I'm I'm Dot Kate Cheryl. I am
a writer, a paranormal historian, and a broadcaster, and my
book is coming out next year in May. So I'm
still twiddling my thumbs until my novel comes out. So
I live vicariously through Neil for the next few months.
Speaker 3: Oh so it's fictional, it's you're doing a fictional work.
Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, it's like a It's a paranormal Gothic thriller
but written in Victorian Gothic traditions. So it's the sort
of book that I'd like to read. So I tried
to write that, of course, that.
Speaker 3: You got to have me and that sounds excellent. I mean,
I really like Dennis Wheatley. I think he's very good.
I've read The Devil Rides Out, which is a great book.
It's a great Oh that's really excess. So that's interesting.
You for fiction fit one, fiction and fact overlap. It's
always interesting. My own literature is like that too. So
did you do you speak at conferences and things? I
can't remember whether you were at the ASSPS seriously strange
has were you there? Yes?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm usually lurking in the background of a lot
of conferences and conventions like a little goblin people watching,
But I did present at the last ASSUB conference. One
of my many, many, sort of spectral obsessions is celebrity
seance and popular seance in popular culture, and trends in
paranormal investigation. Again, people watching. I see the whole world
like an airport departure lounge. Just that one nosy neighbor,
just taking notes, all right. I spoke about celebrity seance
and Elvis and his many afterlives and yeah that's for
my next larger nonfiction work, but that won't be.
Speaker 3: It's coming back to me now actually because I was there,
so it's sort of coming back to me now. Yeah,
that's right. So, which celebrities have been to seances? I mean,
I know I can think of a couple of names myself, but.
Speaker 4: Well, this is my interest is more than well more
celebrities have been siances. And you can never think generally
a lot of people will visit them, and certainly did
in the past. But my interest is really mediums and
spiritualist groups and paranormal groups who say they are communicating
with the spirits of dead celebrities, and what comes through
comes through. Everything is taken with not so much a
pinch of salt, but like a dump truck of salts.
But I find what a lot of these celebrity ghosts
have said to be very indicative of different social, cultural, financial,
religious trends that time. So I think looking at the
ridiculousness of celebrity seiances and tells us a lot about
ourselves and a lot about our relationships with celebrity and
parasocial relationships as well. So I've been looking at everything
from this is like one of my many rooms of
tat like Elvis. I've got a seance with Elvis, two
saans with Elvis's, two salances with Elvis, rather only one Elvis,
several seances on record books on John Lennon's Afterlife and
what Toot and Carmoon has been up to in the
mid noughties, and Oscar Wilde even dictated Oscar wild Mark
Twain and Dickens dictated books and poetry from beyond the grave,
if the means are to believed. The contents I find
to be very interesting, especially when that contents is coming
through was as like music or poetry or a very
very creative aspect. I find that incredibly interesting.
Speaker 3: That is fascinating. Actually. I mean, now, when it comes
to celebrities who communicate allegedly, Elvis Presley is always her
name is going to come up because and he is dead.
I'm afraid, let's say that to my fellow conspiracy theorists.
This is what is the one that's not true. I'm
afraid he is dead. It's and it's sad, but you know,
he died a lonely, quite young man. It's very sad,
but these things happen, you know, sometimes people just do die.
And but a popular newspaper, not one of the most
intellectual in the world, which I remember in this country,
once did actually a series of articles claiming to be
in contact with Elvis. And there was a whole list
of the whole list of various communications, including some people
who's a woman whose own son had died and said, well,
do you know him? And the answer was yes, yes,
I know him. We make music together in heaven and
things like this, which must be incredible because there are
so many people who knew Elvis. Is he making music
with all of them? I mean, it's going to be
a pretty big tribute part, then, isn't it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it does seem that in the afterlife everyone's got
very clear diary, everyone's really open to immediate creative collaboration,
and there are endless recording studios that stretch out into eternity.
So I think when it comes to Elvis, because he
was known more as just a straight singer rather than
a songwriter, I haven't come across that many instances of
Elvis producing new music in the afterlife. For he's in
many instances he's held up like a almost like a
messiah figure, like a deity in himself, which I suppose
he was. He was a pop culture god for decades,
and so he's become this this figure onto which many
people can project their own needs and wants, and he
represents far more in death than he ever did in life.
And so there are so many collections of experiences where
Elvis was seen when he was live, in multiple places
around the globe where people had interactions with him and
then he went off. But he was never in that
location physically, So from that psychologically you can extrapolate a
lot of really interesting and sidelines. You can think, well,
were people sort of manifesting Elvis? Were they projecting that
onto all the people? Were they completely inventing these whole experiences?
Or theoretically, can someone's consciousness and they're an appearance of
themselves like a shadow of themselves, appear in several places
at once to suit other people's needs. Whereas people like
John Lennon, who was known far more as a songwriter
and a symbol of peace and that very idealistic movement,
he has produced far more music and far more pseudo
profound messages from the afterlife and his well Elvis has
I mean, I've got like a rack of Elvis books
there that I'm working with at the minute. I've got
a small clutch of John Lennon once as well, But
the eldest ones are more there's more of a crossover
with a different paranormal fields, parapsychological fields, psychic fields and
UFO UAP fields, Whereas John Lennon is very firmly spectral and.
Speaker 3: Well, what's interesting, I mean, I take your point about
the cultural influence I mean, I was just thinking of
the song by Mark Cohne called Walking in Memphis, which
is about a special encounter with Elvis Presley, which it's
a lovely it's a lovely song. Actually, I really like it.
Now I suppose the question is, firstly, you mentioned the
euthological elements. Now, John Lennon is very, very famously associated
with euthology because he alleges he had an encounter with
a UFO in New York City, United seventy three. It
was during his last weekend when he left Yoko and
went off with Maypang and then came back to her
and things like that. He calls out his last weekend.
So it's easy to put it down to, you know,
mental turmoil and maybe some taking a few substances to
try and eat the pain. So it is, it is,
I mean, but it's but as I never heard about
a euthological connection to Elvis.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, there's there seems to be a lot of
crossover in that Elvis has all the answers, he becomes
this godlike figure like it's just out of reach. But
there's a there's an album. It was a very small
press called a Seance with Elvis. The King lives on
and talks to the world from beyond the grave, and
it's several short conversations between a psychic called David Bair
and the spirit of Elvis, and within that in the afterlife,
he can tell you very firmly through that and many
of the books what the little Green men are, because
we're working within the context of common parlance at the time.
You know what UFOs are, what aliens really are, using
different terminologies rather outdated now. But he, you know, can
come through and on several different occasions have said, yeah,
they're real, they're angels, they're visitors. And he's given so
many different reasonings and explanations for unidentified aerial phenomena as
the decades have progressed. But I find that very interesting,
Like you say that Lenin is so linked with a
claim of like an alien experience, shall we say, but
people don't focus on that. They seem to focus far
more on his songwriting and his sort of profound sort
of ways. I suppose when beyond the Grave seeing him
more as a like a Jesus like figure preaching rather
than offering any real explanation to any unidentified and unexplained phenomena.
Whereas Elvis is clearly there with all the answers to
the universe.
Speaker 3: Wow. I mean, Neil and I discussed this regularly. We've
been collaborated many times on many different programs, and I
think it's fair to say we're both somewhat centrists when
it comes to this issue. I mean, what do you
think about this, Neil? Because I personally have an open
mind about the possibility of afterlife's communication. It's I understand
that it's a very difficult thing to prove. There have
been claims that it has been proven by some people.
Others disagree. But what do you think about Elvis?
Speaker 2: And so from that position that I do come from
the position that I believe there isn't afterlife, and obviously
I do nediumship myself, so I communicate with something that's
out there now, whether it's some sort of psychological process,
some sort of partly is a psychological process that makes
your mind work in a different fashion to be able
to bring those communications in. But I mean, I've been
to many many psychic readings, mediumistic readings, and the strations
of cray voids. Some are absolutely being downright bloody awful
and some are being absolutely cracking bang on stuff, you know.
But to give an example of celebrities coming back from
the afterlife, I went to this demonstration of this guy
called Chris Howorth who came from somewhere up north. I
can't of them, like somewhere up in Yorkshire, I think again.
He traveled all the way down to the south in
Dorset to Portland. He came to which you've been too
bad and did a demonstration. No, he didn't come to Portland,
bigger party. He came to Weymouth and he did a
demonstration in a hired room that we went to, and
he claimed to be a.
Speaker 3: Going into trance.
Speaker 2: You go into one of these little psychic cabinets, if
you like cabinets, these mediums going They're typically used in
physical sciences, where a medium would go into something like
a cupboard, but in this case it's like material. So
I think very very Victorian. Yeah, think of a toilet
tent in a camping field. That's what they're using these days.
They're using toilet tent type scenarios. They go in there
and they draw the curtains. The idea it helps build
up the energies within the frame of this covered or
this tent. Now, in typical manifestations, in a physical manifestation,
a spirit would emerge from the said cabinet and in
a suse. But on this particular occasion, this guy was
going into trance and supposedly speaking with voices of the dead. Now,
I have seen other demonstrations are clearvoys where people are
speaking doing voice mediumshit, and they don't need that sort
of paraphernala that this guy's using. And this guy was
putting up big posters of himself around the room, calling
himself international medium. So it was kind of really blowing
his own trumpet, I felt. But anyway, halfway through he
was coming through. First of all, one of the first
spirits he brought through was the spirit of Louis Armstrong,
and they played a recording of It's a Wonderful World
and everyone was singing along to it to raise the vibrations.
And this medium was then coming through with a voice
of supposedly Louis Armstrong, and he's trying to sing in
time with his own song, and he couldn't actually sing
in time with it. And I'm thinking, if you're really
Louis Armstrong, surely you'd know how to sing your own
song and sing it in time, and then later on
he brought through Quentin Crisp, the famous gay writer and
actor performer The Naked Civil Servant. I think, I think
it's famous for, but he got it wrong. Instead of
Kat saying hello everyone, it's Quentum Crisp, he got his
own name wrong. And I write about this in the book.
He actually came through and hello. He did a camp
voice to try and betray himself as Quentin cris and
he goes, hello everyone, it's Crispin Quentin here, and you
could feel everyone in the room kind of look at
each other, even though it's dark, with each other and
whisper and thinking, hang on, it's Quentin Crisp, isn't it.
Surely you know he's got the name wrong. So he
did a bit of a parade about that, and then
later on even it got worse. It was really going
downhill this this sales. He later on he brought through
the voice of a spirit guide who then said that
because they've played the song My Sweet Lord by George Harrison,
he said that during the next few minutes in the dark,
George Harrison and John Lennon will come out of this
cabinet and walk around the audience and touch them on
the shoulders. Now this is a festation, yeah yeah, but
this was completely in the dark, so there's no infra
red lights to see these spirits in an even in
in for red light setting. And I thought one absolute
waste of time because even if it was, you know,
you can't prove it's George Harrison tapping on the shoulder
because a you can't switch on the lights and look
be there not even saying anything. So I thought that
was a complete stupid thing to say. Really, he was
just trying to make it sound fantastic. I mean he
was really insulting the intelligence. And there was a lot
of people there that like me, that have been to
seances and mediumship and things who really know the kind
of material that what it should be, the standard should be.
So this was an absolute parody of it. I think
the only person he did bring through was Elvis. Maybe
that's because he couldn't sing his voice or something. Louis
Armstrong has a very unique voice. I mean I've never
met anyone who can imitate that actual voice.
Speaker 3: I mean famous for it, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well he was trapped and accent and it was
a very poor American accent. And I have to say
the only accent that he did do convincingly he brought
through this unknown miner from North Yorkshire, and because Chris
came from Yorkshire himself, that's the only accent he could
do convincingly was a Yorkire accent because it hamp to
be his own.
Speaker 3: Oh that's you get back some good results and bad results.
But have you had similar experiences, Kate? Have you been
to these events like Neil House?
Speaker 4: Well, quite, frankly, I'm got it that I've never been
to one of these. I'm like, I'm going to lock
up his dates if I go and see him.
Speaker 2: I'm just the Union, I mean, that's how worth is
his name. And I did actually check out afterwards, like
you always can't when I do this once i've seen
a medium and I'm really suspicious of their abilities. If
they're fantastic, I don't really check out on the big wall,
when are they going to come back?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 2: But when they've done a really poor show and they're
really bad, and I then look into them afterwards, I
really should look it into them beforehand, but I kind
of do it the wrong way around, really, and I
read all these reports and on forums about this guy,
and they said either he's a downright fraud or he's
totally deluded and thinks he can do it.
Speaker 3: But I don't know if he's still doing it.
Speaker 2: But his name is and imon'll say his name publicly
because he's advertised himself publicly and I'm allowed to have
an opinion of him. People also I won't mention names,
but I'm thinking, well, why why you're protecting them, you know,
So I'll say Chris Howard and he's an alleged trance
medium and he comes from around the North area, and
I thought it was Yorkshire or something like that. Well,
how Howorth itself is in North Yorkshire, so it's either
Howarth or Howard. Chris Howth or Howard I can't quite remember,
but his number about five years ago.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I think I was.
Speaker 4: Just gonna say I love that. I think when it
comes to trance mediums or anyone who says that they
channel anyone who was wants a public figure. I think,
regardless of the quality of the of the manifestations of
the messages, the sheer front or self belief, that you
have to have to think, you know what, sad it
I'm going to charge people. I believe that I can
channel this person. Whether or not it's legitimate or not
is it doesn't matter to me. It's the very realization
and the decision making to go, yeah, tonight, me and
the ghost of Joan Rivers are gonna have a great
time and have a picnic on stage. I think fair play.
If you've got that much self belief that you can
do that, and you can do someone, especially like Quentin
Crisp or Crispy Quentin as he may be being caught
by now. And to have that self believed to think
I can mimic or channel one of the country's greatest
ever wits, I think is staggering. I love it. It's
like there's have I got it here? There's a book
called this is a very dramatic pause, but it's relevant.
Speaker 3: I mean, I would say, yeah, okay, sorry.
Speaker 4: Psychic messages from Oscar Wilde by Hester Travers Smith, and
I think this is kind of the ultimate version of
channeling Quentin Crisp. If you think that you're a good
enough medium to channel one of the world's greatest writers
and greatest wits and say that these are his legitimate messages,
this is what's coming through from the afterlife. I think
fair play for you know, fair play. I'm going to
be in that audience, and I'm going to write about
you relentlessly because that's fascinating to me.
Speaker 3: I don't resent people if they really believe it, even
if they're right, or even if they're wrong about their abilities.
If they somehow have got it into their mind that
they can channel, then I don't feel resentful to them
because they're not committee of fraud. They may have deluded themselves,
and I personally believe, like Neil says, I personally believe
there is such a thing as genuine channeling. But there's
also going to be people who believe they can do
it when they can't. But they're not deceiving people deliberately.
Speaker 4: That's the murky nature of medianship and spiritualism, spiritual beliefs.
Because everything is based on a faith system. The ones
that aren't so great are going to get mixed up
with the ones that you think, oh, they're really onto something.
So it's it's terribly awkward I think to try and
you discern for yourself what fits in your personal belief
system and what doesn't.
Speaker 3: Well, sort of an issue of murky areas. Now, I'm
fascinated with the idea that some of these spirits, the
claim is they are creating. There's creating, continuing to create
the works of art that made them famous from the
other side through channeling it to people in this world. Now,
that's what's interesting about that is I'd be curious to
hear the songs, to read the books, to look at
the paintings and things like that. There's several issues over this.
One of them is copyright. There is nothing in the
law which where there's any kind of precedent for this,
because officially, the arter life doesn't exist, and even though
most people believe in it in some form or another, officially,
in terms of the law, it doesn't exist. So the
estate of the person who's passed away might have some
kind of claim to take action. I mean, there's a
good example of this. It's not specifically channeling up, it's
this channeling at a deceased spirit. Jason Knight, American author
who claimed that she she's claimed for many, many years
she's been in touch with a priest from Atlantis called Rantha,
and she she's quite You probably heard of that. Yeah,
she set up the Ramp School of Enlightenment which has
become very famous, and as many many videos recordings interviews
she'd done with David Letterman and Terry Wogan where she
actually goes into a trial state and starts speaking, and
to be honest, the voice does change and she does
appear to be taken on different mannerisms. Of course, she
could be a good actress and that could be all
it is. But she did sue a lady from Switzerland
who claimed that she was also channeling Ranther and One.
So in other words, she is claiming her challenge from
Aunt Ramp as her intellectual property.
Speaker 5: Now, so what was the court case label as Rampa
versus Ramp Think something like that. Yeah, anyway, his holiness
from Lands didn't intervene trying. It didn't appear as a
witness or anything like that. But I mean this this
doesn't enter. It does kind of open a legal loophole,
and I think it's niel. I had discussed many times
the witchcraft trial where Helen Duncan almost got to perform
a me a seance in court and it was stopped.
Speaker 3: It was stopped by the judge. And if that happened,
then we maybe things have been a bit different. But
has there been any situations where the the loved ones
and those left behind have actually commented on this supposed
work being created by the spirit.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, I mean when when it comes to loved ones.
When the pay per view seance the Spirit of John
Lennon was broadcast in the early two thousands, the Lenin
Estate and Yokowono very publicly condemned its broadcast and condemned
the content. And I think if the contents had just
been here's a song that we channeled of John Lennon's. Yeah,
it's an alright song, it's an album track, it's not
a single, it's fine, then I think, you know, maybe
there would be an overreaction and just dismiss it. But
I think their primary issue was with the mediumship that
happened up to that final reveal of This is Lennon's
New song. So the issue was more of an ethical
issue of the channeling of this, say Liverpoodlian medium called
Joe Power. He did all the mediumship in that and
he also had a horse drawn carriage trip around Central
Park where he was joined by the spirits of John
and George. Again, so they're clearly knocking about in the
afterlife in many, many capacities. But it's funny that you
mentioned copyright issues, because I'm not sure if you've heard
of a medium called Rosemary Brown.
Speaker 3: I was going to go into her.
Speaker 2: Actually the pano playing teacher, Yes, who channel Chopin.
Speaker 4: And yeah, yeah, she was a dinner lady from London,
and she she started to channel and see these great
classical composers, and in particular she formed a very close
relationship with List, and List channeled new work through her,
and she could play the piano a little bit before.
But if her story is to believe, she suddenly became
this amazing concert pianist.
Speaker 2: Can I just say something out there about that. I mean,
in the book that I read, I don't know if
she produced more one book. I certainly really one book,
she claimed she and in interviews she she would say,
I am a mediocre piano player because I could never
do the actual piano playing justice and what I've seen
her do on TV she would sometimes engage the services
or it was a public performance, you engage services of
a grader piano player to actually perform the written music,
and she would, you know, even not play it. I
mean and she'd probably play a little bit just to say, well,
this is how it roughly went. But she always claimed
that she was never a great piano player, and she'd
always try and get someone else better than her to
play it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think she did for the public broadcast, but
I think the vinyl that was produced the music and
Rosemary Brown, I think she did herself by channeling. And
I think I've got let me go, Rosemary Brown. I
don't have some of my books to hand. This is
a few, a few select ones.
Speaker 3: I've been working the gravest last in case of emergency
type books. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yes, But her channeled work from Liszt was this big
piece called Grublelee, and it's beautiful. It's a genuinely good
piece of music. And I think out of everyone who
was claimed to channel a great musician and produce a
new piece of music, Rosemary Brown has the most compelling argument.
But when she was trying to get Grubilee pressed and
registered and everything, she tried to initially publish it under
Brown and List, whereas the List estate had issues with that,
not trying to claim it, but trying to remove their
name from it, so they felt that she didn't she
couldn't have the endorsement of the List name, so she
couldn't list him. She couldn't list him. Obviously going to
get confusing, isn't it. She couldn't list him as a
co composer without their permission, so ultimately it ended up
being released as Grubeli Rosemary Brown inspired by List, so
on legal grounds they couldn't say that List was directly
involved in any capacity, living or dead. But she did
still get that piece of music out there, and it
is still regarded as a Brown List, the next collaborative effort.
Speaker 3: It's interesting that it was so long ago because John
very famously died in nineteen eighty but List, according to
what I could see, he had died in eighteen eighty six,
so it's much further than far longer ago. But there's
still this issue with the estate and copyright. After all
this time he has he has living descendants presumably somewhere.
It's funny actually, because I remember reading in one of
the books where Rosemary Brown will go shop into the
supermarket and it's either List or show panels. Someone comes
through or Bark, I can't remember, would go shopping with her,
so she claimed and say, if you turn over that
packet there, you'll see a better price on that packet
of baked beans than the one that you're picking up,
sort of thing. You know, it's straight handy. Yeah. They
didn't happen to help her on the on the musical front.
Speaker 2: They helped her on a kind of a whole lot
of things apparently, which is very helpful of them.
Speaker 3: That is, I mean, I suppose with John because it's
more recent, I suppose it's he has a living relatives, yeah,
one generation for example, his son and people like that.
I mean the ethical issue I suppose with the pay
per view mediumship show and the song would be it
was the money being made. I suppose that would to
me would be the big ethical issue because these people profited.
I suppose off a story about John.
Speaker 4: Yeah it was. It was very much around the same
era of lots of unofficial DVDs about reality reality show stars.
And the company that made the two there only two
pay per view seances was a company called star Cast,
and that was run by a man called Paul Sharrett,
who sadly died just a couple of years after the
Lenin seance. And they kind of specialized in those adjacent
tie in DBDs, you know, like when you go into
supermarkets when like the Da Vinci Code came out, and
before the actual film came out, they'd be like stories
of the code of the da Vinci for your Alligane
to Night. So someone would go, oh, that's that film
you like, isn't it. So they sort of traded on
that unofficial name by association.
Speaker 3: I've got a few times for that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've seen more terrible bay Rectory films
through those little impulsive supermarket purchases than I care to admit.
Speaker 3: But yeah, there's about four films about bay Rectory came
out between about twenty twenty and twenty twenty two. And
that's some were better, some were better than others. That's true, yes, yeah,
But you know it's it's an extraordinary idea that I mean,
for example, if this was ever proved this is, it
would open up a can of worms. I think this
is why the issue of Helen Duncan came about. I mean,
there's the whole there's a whole issue to do with
espionage in World War Two and things like that as well.
But it's uh, I think maybe people frightened of the
implications of this actually being essentially it was not a
laboratory accord, but it's it's still very similar because it's
a controlled environment where it's it's you can't imagine someone
put doing a fake sales in it in a courtroom.
Speaker 4: Hmm, yeah, I think Helen dor Hanson.
Speaker 3: Sorry, carry on, say I was going to say, what
would happen in your view if we were speculated here?
But it's a very interting idea of what happened. For example,
there was a situation like The Discovery. I don't know
if you've ever seen that film. It's a good movie. Actually,
Robert Redford plays a kind of mad scientist character who
proves that the afterlife is real and it transforms society.
And this was one of the things that would it
would be transformed, wouldn't it. I mean the idea that
spirits exist and spirits can communicate. For example, it has
proved the spiritual communication was real and it was accepted generally,
we'd be in a situation where all to all kinds
of channel information. You know, Charles Dickens's new book Charge
Dickens enter the public domain years ago because he died
in when it was a late nighteenth century so how
could he still stay in the public domain if he's
like channeling new books through a person a sightly turn
the whole legal thing on its head.
Speaker 2: When I mean, this is the society that we're presently
being under, tries to turn the official world there is,
tries to turn its gaze away from there goes my light.
Speaker 3: I think we just say, can I just start going
on what would happen in terms of you, obviously, how
do you pay? You can't pay the author royalties. At
the same time, who would those royalties belong to?
Speaker 4: There were many living creatives who have outlived the it
in the US, I think it's seventy year rule seventy one. Yeah,
so there are people that are outliving that and they're
seeing their own works become public domain. So i'd imagine
that regardless of their blood pumping status. So I would
I guess really that that would stand in the afterlife,
there is no copyright and there are there is no
trademark infringement in the afterlife because in.
Speaker 3: This country, yeah, it's actually it's seventy years off the
death the creator, not the publication date.
Speaker 4: Well, there was something recently with publication dates. I can't
remember which it was. There was an issue with it
entering public domain, whether was still alive.
Speaker 3: God and the Biolence, I don't know. I know that
God in the Bucket. Yeah, he's never tried to sue. Yeah,
but well, I mean I know that Frank Bourne. I
had to look into Frank Bourne, the guy created the
Wizard of Oz, because I included some words from that
novel in my first novel. I included some words from
that particular work at some passages, and I just had
checked when he died. And luckily he died literally seventy
years before two thousand and two when I published my
first novels, and he was just he was just in
the public domain under British law. Now, the I mean
in terms of the books and things. I mean, if
you were channeling him, how at the moment in a
position where any I could write thing and say it was,
you know, especially someone I'm familiar with, an author I'm
familiar with, and I could write something and it will
be I suppose you How could I prove it's just
not some kind of fan fiction and it's not the
person actually really giving me this information. It'd be pretty
much impossible.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't think you can, because to to feasibly
say that this isn't mine, this is channeled by someone,
it would take for society as a whole to broadly
accept that that channeling spirits was was viable. So I
don't think until you can empirically measure spirit contacts and
psychic abilities, then you'll just have to whack on caveats
of supposedly and reportedly and you know, there's those little signifiers.
Speaker 3: That was actually a big criticism I had of the
film The Discovery. It was a good film, but it
didn't I think it didn't explore the subject matter deeply
enough and it could have addressed points like that. I mean,
I'm Neil and I often discuss what would happen in
the UFO disclosure situation. So, for example, the government just admit, yeah,
we've got alien bodies frozen somewhere and things like that,
aliens are real, et cetera, et cetera. How did that
transform society? And these these scientific discoveries and revelations always do,
They always have some effect far outside the world of
science and politics. You know, that's it's a curious And Neil,
have you ever have you ever heard about these people
who I'm asking you both now, who try to solve
historical mysteries by channeling people from the past. Like a
good one is Diana, Princess of Wales. How did she die?
Who killed her? If she if someone did kill her,
was it just an accident and things like that. Well,
there was.
Speaker 2: Jane Roberts who channeled the entity Seth in the late sixties,
mid sixties right through to the early eighties. She died
in nineteen eighty four, I think, aged fifty two. It
was funny actually, because I've got this death book Seth Speaks,
and I was actually doing some mediumship at the local
way in the spiritual center here, so I bought the
book along because I wanted to talk a little bit
about the book to people about who he was and things,
just a five minute brief overview of it. Now, the
lady I was with who was like introducing me. I
was explaining who Seth was, and I'd say, this book's
written by Jane Roberts, she's the medium and her husband,
Robert Butts, used to take the notes, handwrite the notes,
and Jane used.
Speaker 3: To speak for this spirit called Seth.
Speaker 2: But then I went on to explain that Jane Roberts
passed away in nineteen eighty four, and a few years
later her husband, Robert Butts, passed away. She goes, all right,
and she goes, is that Seth still alive? Then when
did he die? And I said, no, No, Seth is
the spirit. So she didn't quite get it. But basically
Seth in the book Seth Speaks, I think it's published
about nineteen seventy one, he actually spoke about Jesus. It
was quite controversial because he actually said that Jesus did
not die on the cross. Now, this actually has an
interesting twist in the teel, which I'll come to. Jesus
didn't die on the cross. He said what he did.
Ponscious Pilot, accord to what Seth said, did not want
to kill Jesus. So they got another man, drugged him,
beat him up so he wouldn't recognizeble anyway, and they
crucified him on the cross. And that's why it says
in the Bible one of us disciples, Peter or some
denied knowing him or something on the cross. I don't
know who that man is because it wasn't actually Jesus.
And then this explained the alleged resurrection of Jesus later on,
which was you know, Jesus actually recovering frohim whatever, and
he was walking about and it actually, you know, he
didn't go on across at all, so he had to
be got rid of, not not in a nasty where.
But he supposedly went to India. I guess, I don't
know if that's the true thing. So he had something controversial.
He was sort of saying, how history as different than
what it's been changed to.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: When I first heard that, I was quite a standard.
I was thinking, that's pretty heavy stuff.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: At the time, I was in my first development circle.
Speaker 3: This is many years ago.
Speaker 2: We used to have this lady that used to come
along and she used to channel her spirit called Manico,
who to me sounded very much like Fuzzy Bear when
she spoke with it. And it's very hard to keep
a straight face when someone comes through from wisdom from
the higher realms, but it sounds like fuzzy Bear, and
you just don't know where to look in the room.
You're trying to not look at her like that because
you're just going to burst out laughing. So I really
thought this woman was fake channeling this African spirit guy
called Mannico. But at the same time I was experimenting
with challenging because I was reading a book on how
to Reach your Spirit Guides by a lady called Katherine Ryder.
When she gave information about how to channel spirit guides,
I thought that sounds good.
Speaker 3: I'll give it a go.
Speaker 2: So I was experimenting and I was having some sort
of success with it. I was bringing something through. Whether
it was a psychological state or its actually was the spirit,
I wasn't sure. But on the last time that this
lady who was bringing through this spirit guide came to
our circle, I couldn't actually go on that evening. So
I got a friend of mine to ask her to
ask this spirit guide the question did Jesus really die
on the Cross? And so she went on my behalf
and she asked the question, and it was actually recorded
so I could hear it later on. He said, you know,
did Jesus.
Speaker 3: Die on the Cross?
Speaker 2: And this bat spirit guide, Manico, said, give me a
few minutes, and he came back and he said, it
appears in his fuzzy bear voice, it appears we don't
know the answer. And I thought, ah, that's definitely fake then,
because you know, if you're a spirit guide, you would
know the answer of these things. That's what I was
thinking at the time. So I definitely was convinced that
this Mannico was fake. All right, yeah, but my brother's
trying to bring me. I should put it on silent
and let me do that now because he's going to
ring me up again. I suspect he's got my book
through the post I said in the copy of my
book ironically, and he's probably ringing me up to thank me,
and I've got to be rude and block him. So
getting back to Maniko. So anyway, some about a week later,
remember I didn't go to this session where he came through,
so he didn't know who answerd the question apart from
this girl asked on my poalt but she didn't even
say my name. And so what happened was is that
I was practicing my own channeling session and I was
expecting to get this Victorian spirit guy through who I'd
kind of had some sort of communication with, but instead
I suddenly got an image in my mind that I
was like sitting on the shoulder of someone on the cross,
like Jesus. I thought, what's going on here? You know,
I've got a viewpoint where I'm sitting on the shoulder
of Jesus like a parrot wood, you know, getting that
kind of viewpoint. And then suddenly my voice literally and
it sounds embarrassing, my voice literally changed into the voice
of this Manico like fuzzy bear, and it said, you
are the one that asked the question.
Speaker 3: And I thought, what what?
Speaker 2: I shook myself at the transfer, thought, hang on a minute,
and then he said, I am Manico. He finished I
am Mannico, and he said, it really forcefully threw me.
So I'm thinking, hang on, that that really throws open thing.
Does that mean that lady was really channeling this spirit
guide Manico? And why did I suddenly get this sane
spirit guide come through me? And how did he know
that I was the one that really asked the question?
That was what freaked me out.
Speaker 3: That is, especially when you've sort of thought about it
and thought that thing's fake anyway, And so yeah, yeah, yeah,
that's very that's very hard. Indeed. Yeah, so that's in
terms of Jesus. Obviously, Jesus lived and died two thousand
years ago. I mean you mentioned a franz List Kate,
the composer.
Speaker 2: Is it.
Speaker 3: I mean, is there some kind of shelf life on
these sorts of things. I mean, I've often heard it said,
you know, the spirit when it comes to spirit communication,
after a while, they start to go silent. You know,
after a couple of hundred years, they stop communicating, or
they fade away, or something happens or prevents them communicating. Otherwise,
presumably there have been an infinite number of souls out
there going back to the beginning of life. Is what's
the oldest celebrity seance you can actually think of, or
the terms of the spirit being channeled?
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I think in terms of spirits fading away
or lacking strength. I see that more to be reflective
of their relevance in the popular culture at the time.
So the only trend that I've really seen within seances
is well, the populace at large recognize this figure, and
so a lot of the big names from the past,
like the aforementioned classical composers right through to more modern celebrities.
Michael Jackson's forever skipping around seance rooms, and most most
singers now they don't have to wait for their bodies
to be cold before, you know, meat loafs chatting through
a spirit box. But I've seen I think the further
away you get from the point of that individual's death,
the fewer seances there are. Whether the individual is not
particularly known in the cultural consciousness, or the individual is
so far back that there's very little known about them
their messages, to claim that you were channeling them seems
to be a far greater to have far greater risk.
So I've seen a couple of sances where Shakespeare has
been channeled, like like you're saying, Neil, some with quite
interesting outcomes, and others where someone clearly went I've got
a gcse in English, I can do this, and then
thirty seconds in you see their faces go oh, I
can't keep up Elizabethan English for this long. And so
I think kind of Shakespeare, And then before that there
have been a great number of channeled I see does
Jesus count as a channeled celebrity because in the then
diagram of channeling that goes into more like charismatic Christianity,
and there's there's so much involved in that. But certainly
there's a medium called Netty Coben Maynard who's associated with
Abraham Lincoln, and she put out several she did several speeches,
and I think a couple of books relating to Christ
as the first Medium and Christ as a contactable spirit
by accomplished spiritualists and channeling mediums, trance mediums.
Speaker 3: So Arter Finley mentioned that in his book and.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so I think Christ is pretty happy to chat
through the ages Shakespeare let so.
Speaker 3: Has some I mean, it's interesting that I'll go back
to the newspaper the famous sect of the famous communication
with the channeling of Elvis by this that was published
in this very popular British newspaper. This was published in
the early nineties. Now, at that time there was there
was a situation in the world in which Saddam Hussein,
leader of Iraq, had invaders Q eight and there was
a massive international response to that, which resulted in the
military action known as the Gulf War. And this is
very controversial because some people saying, yeah, yeah, we've got
that's absolutely, very very necessary. In other people say no, now,
we should need to stay out of it, you know,
people should stay out of other countries affairs. So this
was a very controversial thing. This newspaper had always taken
a very pro invasion stance or a very pro interventionist
stance in that particular political situation. And I started to
smell a rat a bit when it said, oh, Elvis
says how much he support the efforts to liberate you. Wait,
and I thought to myself, does he really or is
that is there? Are they just saying that it's whoever's
created this saying this channeling, this alleged channeling, actually just
saying that? I mean, are there any examples of a
person with a political bias using an alleged channeling to
promote their own their own positions? So, for example, well,
the spirits are on our side, and you often hear
in the what was it the in the Great War?
We knew that God was on our side because they
talked about the sanctity of the Allied cause when they
were attacking, when they were playing for war against Germany,
And of course the other side used to say the
same about the war against Britain. So God is obviously
a bit schizophrenic. But have you ever have you heard
of any other examples that of channeling entities being used
to promote a very worldly political agenda?
Speaker 2: I have to carry on, well, I know, yeah, I
remember the Sun newspaper many years ago in the eighties.
Speaker 3: I think it was.
Speaker 2: Featured Doris Stokes, quite a lot of famous Grantham time
and I think it's the general election was coming up
and they asked Doris Stokes to communicate with Winston Churchill,
and Winston Churchill allegedly said from the other side, vote conservative,
you know, and that is the big headlines of the day.
Wiston Churchill says spoke conservative as brought through by Doris
Stokes or something, which it obviously worked because people did
you know.
Speaker 3: I don't think I'll work for Keir Starmer natally, no,
I don't want to reply that, but it was it
was his own party. He's still partisianed in that sense.
But that's have you word of anything like that, Kate.
Speaker 4: Well, like my go to is always Churchill, Like you say,
when it comes to times of general election in the UK,
certainly the ghost of Churchill immediately crops on. It helps
if there's a kaftan wearing medium in the vicinity, of
which Doris Stokes is of course the greatest of all.
The caftan's next to were Demis Rusos. But I think
certainly in the Middle East, humph and I think in
so a lot of these names I've got written down,
but I can't bring them to the fore. But there's
a lot of countries that have traditions with ancestral worship
and things like spirit houses and more of a religious
connection with their ancestors and revering the wisdom of the ancestors.
There's many instances of political parties invoking their predecessors and
saying that this is you know, it's been said, they've returned,
and they say vote me. But that seems to be
far more prevalent and far more accepted as a campaign
tactic in other countries rather than in certainly in North
America and Western Europe, where those sort of things are
are kept within within the Sun, that's where Churchill speaks,
and that's where Jack the Rippers unveiled via a variety
of mediums. It's all the same playing ground over here.
Speaker 3: Has any of these claims ever been proven false through
subsequent investigation? Yea, Silvia, what's her name? Sylvia? What's an angel? Oh? Yeah,
she's over brown. She said that someone was dead who
later turned out to be alive because she was childing
as you the spirit as someone who died it's late
turned up to be alive. But has anything ever happened
that in the celebrity field that that's not that celebrity
died has turned out to be alive and the corners
if Elvis turns up, now, yeah that's something they said,
it's been proven wrong.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's a medium called Blanche Cooper. In the twenties.
It was a very similar story where she was having sittings.
She was working at the uh god, was it the
College of I think it was the College of Psychic
Studies and I think it was there. It was a
different college with a very similar name that was around
in the twenties. But anyway, she was doing a load
of sittings and with this particular individual and they were
chatting with the spirit of his brother. And then there
were certain celebrities that came through Touton Carmoun for example,
because once, yeah, yeah, in the in the twenties, obviously
there was a lot of Egit Germania going along and
they were just about to open the tombs. So Touton
Carmun popped in and said, by the way, what you're
gonna find in the tomb is it wasn't very revelatory.
It was things like gold furniture, precious things. So no
great you know, great, no great insight there. But they
they contacted a spirit of I can't remember his sirn
It was Gordon. They contacted a spirit of his, of
the city's school friend, and he was saying that you know,
he'd gone to war. This was just the first world.
While he'd gone to war, he hadn't come back. And
they were describing his house where he lived in Eastbourne,
and his wife and his son, and there were landscapes
on the wall, and he lived on a road with
lots of ease in it, and slowly gave more and
more information about this this childhood sort of friend who died.
But then a couple of years later they found out
that no, he was alive and well and living by
the seaside, and they had realms and realms and rooms
of communication with this spirit who was he was fine,
and he was just living in a terraced house by
the scene. But they went to see him and they
communicated with him. And there's this all a big ferrari
about it all, because it looked like, ultimately afterwards, to
make blanches a channeled knowledge fit with reality that a
lot of the documents had been doctored, but there was
a prolonged period of time where this spirit was incredibly
chatty about his life. The lifely enough behind his poor
wife and kiddie. Not much of him was left after
he was blown up, and then he was fine. I
think he might have been working in insurance or something,
but he was completely clueless that he was busy being
channeled across the country.
Speaker 2: It reminds me, reminds me of very interesting and I
met Davis. Sorry, Okay's right. I mentioned it in my
book because it was a very uncanny thing. Again, going
back to that first psychic developing circle I was in
where I met the lady who produced Manico, the African
spirit guide. There was also a chap there who was
called Oh gosh, his.
Speaker 3: Name escapes me. Now.
Speaker 2: It's terrible, isn't It's more than thirty flus years ago.
Let's call him Derek for example, because I can't remember
his name. But anyway, he told me an interesting story
when he came back to the circle. He've been on
holiday for two weeks in a Mediterranean country Spain or Italy,
orn'th that, And he stayed in the hotel and he
said that during the night and he was like on
the tenth floor of this hotel. During the night, he
said he saw a man in a tuxedo suit walking
through the living room part of his apartment because he
had the bedroom door open or his open, sort of
planned thing, I don't know, but he said he walked
through there and he said he saw this man walk
out into the balcony and then fall off the balcony.
He thought, bloody hell, and he looked but there was
no one down there, and he thought, I think I've
seen a ghost or something that's you know, some goes
re enacting this last moments or something. So anyway, he
checked out a hotel but he said, has anything ever
happened in that room? They said, no, nothing's ever happened
in that room. So he's a bit perplexed. So he
came back to the UK, and about a week after
returned back from the UK, he suddenly got a phone
call from the very same hotel saying, hello, is that
Derek Smith? You know again I'm making out a pseudent
in here? Is that Derek Smith of such and such road,
you know, Chesham in Buckhams here? And he goes, yeah,
they said, who stayed at the hotel such and such,
and he goes, yeah, ah, OK, we just want to
make sure we've got the right Derek Smith, because we've
got luggage here belonging to a Derek Smith who's now deceased,
and unfortunately he's stayed in your same hotel room after
you had checked out, and he had walked through the
lobby of the room of the hotel in a tuxedo
and fell over the balcony to his death. And they
were ringing up to make sure they was returning the
luggage to the correct family is he But it's just
by weird coincidence, if you want to call it coincidence,
that another Derek Smith checked into the same room a
week after him and he fell to his death, and
yet here he was the Derek Smith eye in the
same name. Had seen that vision, if you like, of
this man going to his death.
Speaker 3: So weird.
Speaker 2: So he was like either seeing a psychic thing that
was about to happen. But it's the weird coincidence it
happened to have the same name as him. It's just
sort of what's the odds of that. It's an unusual name,
But no, I mean the name I'm saying, and I'm
making the name up because I can't remember his name
and I can't remember the guy's name. But talking of
unusual names, I'll get to another weird coincidence to do
with spirits, which it kind of really hammers home some
something going on, I think, and this has going back
about six years ago. There's young medium from Southampton area
called Ross Bartlett, and I've known a few people that
had readings with him.
Speaker 3: They said, he's very, very accurate. You've got to see
this guy.
Speaker 2: And my dog's now pestering me under the table here,
so I'm going to have to twiddle her ears. So
I'm not doing anything rude, like I'm promising that so anyway,
So basically, yeah, what happened. So I made arrangements to
go and see him in the town of Rice Slip
in Middlesex. And the guy that organized it said, you
want tickets because I told him this guy, I said,
you want to you know, you really need to get
this medium. He's really good. So he said, okay, I'll
book him, and he said you want tickets. I said, yeah,
reserved me a couple and I'll pay them on the
door when I get there.
Speaker 3: So I turned up there, but I got.
Speaker 2: Their lake because the traffic was really bad, and then
I'm trying to find the right building it was. Eventually
I found the building and by the time I got
in there, the thing had started. It had been going
for about ten minutes, and thinking, oh my god, I've
got walk through these people and try and find a chair.
Now there's a guy on the table who welcomed me in.
He was the guy that took the money, and he
was an elderly gentleman and he had a nice white
shirt on and he said, they said, look, I tell
you what, he goes, go and sit in some seats
over there, and you paid me the money at the end.
And we said okay, so that we wouldn't disturb anybody
with so so we crept in and then we sat
down in our seats and literally just got my coat
off when this young medium who's doing a reading already
for a lady, suddenly turned to me. He says, I'm
now coming to the gentleman. I left, and I looked thought,
oh my god, that's me. So I quickly got my
recorder that I always taken me to these things and
pressed it into record. So it's there for anybody that
really wants to listen. I've got the evidence on tape
if you like. And he started talking about this lady
called Agnes, and he goes, I've got a lady called
Agnes for you, and I said, sorry, I don't know
anyone called Agnes. So you're thinking this reading is not
very good because he's got the first hit is wrong.
I don't know one called Agnes. And I thought it
could be the lady behind me maybe, and he goes, no,
she's definitely saying she wants to connect with you, and
she wants to talk about Morgan. And soon he said Morgan.
I thought, oh my god, Morgan is the name my daughter.
So I kind of sat up and went yeah. And
she said she likes children, this is why she comes
to visit Morgan a lot. And then she says, you've
got a brother, Phil, haven't you. Went, yeah, that's right,
and she goes and Phil goes and checks on graveyards
of family members and he's gone to visit her own grave.
Speaker 3: That's all bloody hell.
Speaker 2: And he was actually wanting me to bring up my
brother's confirmness, but I never had my brother's phone number
on my phone at that time, which is really just Maine.
But he was that confident, you know that ring ing
up now in front of everybody, did time confirm this?
So I kind of let the team down a little
bit on that one. I'm afraid, but this becomes a
cracker because he said, Agnes, who's married to Edward? And
again I couldn't place Edward at all. I said, sorry,
I don't know an Edward. But it was still the
other facts. He was getting my daughter's name right, and
also my brother's name, and then he went on to
name two more of my brothers, Simon and Jason, which
I thought was amazing. So then he said, now do
you see that man over there by the door in
the white shirt, and he was pointing back to the
guy that was the guy that took the money on
the door. He said, his name is Chris Hayes. And
then you're thinking, okay, why I mention that. But to me,
as soon as he said that, my mouth dropped because
I knew someone by the name of Chris Hayes. And
he said, and this is it. He says, I'm not
sure if I've got this right.
Speaker 3: This is his words.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure if I've got this right, but let's
go for it.
Speaker 3: He said.
Speaker 2: He says, that man over there called Chris Hayes, Agnes,
this spirit who's talking to him is telling me that
your daughter Morgan is also connected to a Chris Hayes.
And I said, yeah, that's absolutely right. She's been going
out with the guy Chris Hades for the past two
years now. And everyone clapped at that. Who's like Matt
bang on evidence. And it's like the serendipity of having
a guy called Chris Hayes over there on the door
and my daughter known Chris Hayes. And then I kind
of thought about it afterwards. I think, I know why
they got me second. And they picked on me straight
away as soon as I sat down, because from their
point of view, this was an opportunity not to be
missed because they had the energy I suppose, in the
early part of the seance, if you want to call
it a salanes or presentation to do it, and they
could connect me with that Chris Hayes back to my daughter.
It was a three way kind of connection. But then
the old, the ultimate kind of proof came later on.
Is the next day that I was talking to my Mum,
who's no longer with us on the phone, and I
was saying, but who's Agnes And she goes, I don't
know who Agnes is. So then she chatted to my
auntie Sue and my dad's sister, and she said, I
know who Agnes is. She goes, that's your Auntie Doris.
But she never liked to use her real name of Agnes,
so she always used her middle name of Doris. And
so I grew up with this lady, known her as
Auntie Doris all my life until she died, but her
real name was Agnes the whole time. Now, Auntie Doris
was married to men who we called Uncle Ted Edward,
which was the name of the spirit that they associated
with this. So it's a massive bang on coin statist
if you like. If you want to call it costace,
I prefer it to call it some sort of organizational
psychic event, if you like.
Speaker 3: And as I've said before, you can't disprove a coincidence,
and there's no there's no real cutoff point, there's no
statistical ceiling above which you know people will stop using
the saying you stop using that argument because there's nothing
physically possible in this world that is so unlikely. You
can say, well, that just cannot ever happen. But I personally,
you know, I would personally be very impressed with that
if I am to. I've got I've got one more
question on mis Kate, and you might not want to answer,
but the question is, have you personally ever had what
you might call a mystical experience involving a celebrity.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's a very very short answer, but no,
not really. I mean, I've one of my one of
my favorite pastimes is is visiting graves and cemeteries. So
when I'm not you know, covering every possible surface and
stacks of books about spiritualism and mediumship and psychic matters,
I'm generally looking looking for dead people that are very
firmly in one place. I'd have to look that far
for them. And so I've I've been to a lot
of crypts of royals in Europe and places like that,
and I haven't ever had any experience that I'd say
particularly mystical. You know, I haven't seen a long dead
Kaiser stomp past me or anything. But I've being in
a lot of the royal tombs beneath the Berlin Cathedral
in particular, had a certain feeling that other royal tombs
in many countries haven't had. There was a certain feeling
of it sounds like a contradiction in terms, but a
quiet stillness alongside a busyness. And I was there so early.
I was the only person any tourist in the tombs,
and it felt very It was very busy, I suppose.
But that's the closest I could get to having any
kind of interaction with the celebrity spirit. I've had plenty
of strange experiences outside of that, but I hastened to
say that they were very much lay people. They were
they went egelon with the Netflix series.
Speaker 3: Sadly not access interesting because very often a lot of
people do report that they report, well, I didn't see
anything or hear anything. That's just had a very strong
feeling what my brother and my dad thought felt when
my mother died. My brother and my dad both reported
a very strong sensation. They called it a religious experience
of presence. In this few days since the presence, thanks,
I mean, I can't think of anything else to say
except did you have a website or any Do you
have a have you written your own book you want
to tell us about or anything else they're not that's
coming out. Are your novel that's coming out? Yeah? You
it's your first book ever.
Speaker 4: This is my first, my first book ever.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I've previously just been an magazine writer, really a journalist
in that capacity, and Brittain academic stuff and various bits
of journalism. But yes, I well, one thing at a time.
I've run Burials and Beyond dot com since twenty seventeen,
so that's a blog about life, death, weird bits in between.
So there's little bits about spiritual matters, about history of spiritualism,
weird victorian's curiosities, lots of graves, lots of churches because
that's where I spend most of my time. I'm not
the most sociable of people, so there's a lot of
a lot of dead people on there. But my I
have a TV show coming out, a Haunted Homecoming series two,
which is with Jonathan Ross. That's coming out on the
twentieth of December, so I'm officially festive programming me versus
the Snowman.
Speaker 3: I did you just see that? Yeah, I didn't know
Jonathan was into that sort of thing. That's cool. His
wife was.
Speaker 4: Yes, Yeah, Jane did a brilliant series. I think it
was in the nineties.
Speaker 2: I've never watched it, but something that I saw reference
to it in a magazine somewhere.
Speaker 3: I know you used to be very much a skeptic
because he was a big fan of James Randy.
Speaker 4: I remember, oh, yes, yeah, we spoke a lot about he.
Speaker 2: Must have had a problem saying James Randy though Jaye Wandy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we overcame that fu but yeah, he's had a
It's no, we're not taking any liberties by saying Jonathan
has always believed in the paranormal. It's like now he
is very firmly a skeptic, but he's always had an
interest in paranormal as an entertainment and as and he likes,
you know, horror history and you know there's kind of
stranger histories and folklore. Is very much into folk law.
So he went in with an open mind. Now, I
was very fortunate enough to be part of the team
that took him round his old haunts the Pond in
East London and see if we could incite any experiences
through paranormal investigation or through mediumship. Plenty of different things,
but that's two parter and it's on really on twentieth
and it's also on Discovery Plus from the same same
point onwards. So that's fun. And yeah, it's I think
it's fun. It's fun programming and everyone likes a bit
of a festive scream, I suppose. But my debut novel
is out next May, but it's available for pre order now,
and preorders really really help. It's called Bigotten, and I
basically say it's like it's a paranormal thriller. But if
you've ever read any accounts of you know, Victorian seances
where mediumship isn't as simple as here's a message from
the afterlife, they're really extreme reports. They're almost like horror films. Sorry,
at the tail end of a chest infection, I've been
fighting very cold copy for all hope.
Speaker 2: So okay, let me just ask you a question. Are
you an absolute Are you convinced that communication between the
living dead is possible? Or do you think it's some
sort of something else.
Speaker 4: Personally, at the most base level, yes, I believe it's possible.
I've had too many experiences that have profoundly changed me
for me to say absolutely not. I feel like that's
that just i'd be lying. It's a lot easier to
be very flat and skeptic and say all of it's nonsense.
So I'd say I'm a skeptical believer, but I'm coming
from a background of I've had some extraordinary experiences that
I've been chasing ever since, and I believe I've had
direct communication in very very small ways with loved ones
that have passed, and with all the spirits that I
don't know that have passed. And as I'm sure we've
all had been called every name onder the sun for
believing such things. But once it's part of your life,
and it's part of your whole belief system, it's it's
part of the fabric of your very being. So I'm
very much a skeptical believer, but I think that's the
healthiest way to be.
Speaker 2: You believe, I've found the the ASSEP seriously strange confidence.
I mean, I didn't know what to expect, but Ben
told me about it, so I went along to it,
and I kind of got the impression that most of
the people, I mean, I may have got a false
impression of it, but I got the impression that most
of them were interested. But they're all mostly skeptical of
the whole thing, and I thought, why why are they're
on stage tell us about it? Is they don't believe
in it?
Speaker 3: I kind of I.
Speaker 2: Don't know what to make of that, But I mean,
we spoke to Matt Arnold recently, and obviously he's coming
from his Christian perspective, so he definitely believes in an
afterlife and spirits, the dead and ghosts. He's just looking
at it through the lens of of Christianity, which is
a fair point, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I.
Speaker 2: Thought, you know that that came across as a very
genuine kind of thing to me. But I kind of
got the impression that the pair majority of them were
coming in from from a skeptical point of view, the
exception being the well, obviously yourself now you've told us
about that. But the lady that was the involved in
the Doddleston messages that was on the stage, yes, Debbie, Yeah, yeah, yeah,
obviously she had that experience of the whole port guy's
thing and messages coming through her computer and things. Very
interesting story. Now I actually cover that in a book
as well, But yeah, whether that was true or not,
I can't say, but it seemed to be very very interesting.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think there's a healthy mix between believers and
skeptics as well, but I think there's far more of Certainly,
I think it's far more of a skeptical edge, because
having a skeptical ledge it's healthy, but it's also a
safety net, and it's a safety net to ridicule. And
I've done plenty of talks where I've spoken about my
childhood experiences of living in a house with a poltergeist,
and then immediately afterwards, any kind of credibility that you
had in some people's minds just went out the window immediately.
As you know, as soon as you say I've had
these interactions with with a ghost with a spirit, then
you're a flat notter to many people. Whereas if you
framed that as I'm very skeptical, this is what happened
to me. Let's try and dissect that and see if
I created it myself, so on and so forth, then
it's a bit safeer it. It feels like it's more
of a a comfortable discussion point. I suppose.
Speaker 3: Similarly, I like I liked, I like seriously strange because
I'm even though I'm I think these phenomena are real,
and I've got I think there's good I've got good
reasons for believing these phenomena are real. I'm I understand
there are a lot of people who don't believe they're real.
Were still interested, and I like it, to be honest,
I like to test my my beliefs against ascent because
that's the where you find out an awful lot about
whether you're right or wrong. This is why I take
a keenest and the skeptical side of things and you
and the good thing about seriously strange is you do
get that input which don't get like a probe. As
much as I loved the probe conferences, they were extremely credulous.
You know, we have people like with Channey animal spirits
and things like that, which I don't object to, but
it's just i'd liked I liked it about the sides
of the story.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I think that's the sort of thing where you
can be objective, which is what I enjoy with the
more extreme end of celebrity science and so forth, if
you can. If you don't believe in something, that doesn't
mean you can't be interested in it. So I might
not necessarily believe that Elvis is chatting with people from Atlantis.
But I want to know everything about those conversations because
that says so much more about the people involved than
it ever could about anything spectral. So there's always that
sort of funny relationship going on.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's and well, if we go, I just want
to mention just a bit of reference for the viewers
or listeners that if you go to YouTube, there is
a documentary the named Joe Power, whom Kate mentioned earlier
being involved in this pap per view Saiance the Live
a Pudlian. There's a documentary with which he did with
Darren Brown the Skeptic, which is interesting. It is interesting
to watch to see whatever your beliefs are about about
this thing. It's very interesting to want to do check
that out. And of course sir Neil has this Neil
let people know about your book. Yeah, I tell about you,
but you've got a copy of it of you with
you not a hend I mean worris to say.
Speaker 2: So this is radio is called True Tales of the
paranorl and it's published by Arctura's press Or Publishing, and
that came out in October twenty twenty four, and then
next year with the same publisher. I'm coming out with
another book, probably summer of next year, I think, called
Modern Unsolved Modern Mysteries, where I go through all kind
of mysteries of the twentieth not all the mysteries, but
some mysteries of the twentieth and twenty first century, covering
things like the Diatloff past incident and what else is it?
The Oakville Blobs, which was strange, mysterious Gettinist blobs that
dropped on people in the town of Oakville in Washington State.
But then I also gone to other mysteries like the UFO,
the Roswell mystery and cut stuff like that. So I
go and take territories where I'm kind of more interested in.
They gave me about four or five titles they went
to cover and then I could choose the rest.
Speaker 3: Basically, there's the blobs falling down makes me think of
invasion of the body snatches. Well something either say to me, really,
and I mean, of course, don't forget my own book here. Oh,
I don't know if people see this or not, if
it's audio elic in A novel of Disclosure by myself,
Ben and Len Jones, available for ten pounds it's all
good bookshops. Now it seems more pertinent now than ever.
Speaker 2: Ben, your book actually can well yeah.
Speaker 3: Well it could be. You know, I didn't know how
hot that iron would be when I struck it, but
you know, I was just lucky. But yeah, if it
is very topical, more topical than I thought when I
wrote it back in twenty sixteen. So a big thank
you to everyone who's listened or watched and or watched
this program. Much appreciate that, of course, to our guest
doctor Kate Cheryl, and of course my steamed co host
Neil Ward. Thank you all of you. It's been a
good show and it's been a good discussion. So to
talk to all of you, well, well with Neil, but
to talk to all of you again very soon, thank
you very much. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2: Right and here we are in part two. Now you
may recognize this intro.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Paranormal UK Radio Network and now
it's time for the Paranormal Peep Show.
Speaker 2: And that is the voice of my daughter, Morgan geddis Ward,
who kindly lent her vocal talent to the introduction of
each of our programs there and she expressed me over
the Christmas period when she came today that she's got
some aspirations to do voiceovers and similar things like that,
so she would like to have given it time over
to practice with me. So she said, could she interview me?
And so we discussed paranormal topics as a point of reference,
and so I thought i'd include that here as our
part too, to illustrate maybe a little bit about my
background and how I got into this whole field of activity.
So I hope you enjoy it, and thanks for joining
us once again on the Paranoral Peep Show. Hi.
Speaker 6: My name is Morgan Gettisword, and today I'm going to
be interviewing my dad, Neil Ward, because I am a
follower and sort of of Paganism and I'm interested in spirituality.
I have my own coven, and I I've grown up
in a very with a very spiritual upbringing essentially and.
Speaker 2: Laptop behind you.
Speaker 6: Oh okay. My dad is a medium and has always
been well. Both my parents have been always encouraging me
and telling me about their spiritual experiences and it's fascinated
me from a young age and I'm just sort of
going on that personal spiritual journey myself now. So I'm
interested to hear how my dad discovered his own spirituality.
So Dad, I was just wondering what I did that matter.
So you've just had your first book, True Tales are
the Paranormal, published in October this year, twenty twenty four,
And you've had an interest in the paranormal for many years?
Can you begin by introducing yourself and telling me where
it all begain?
Speaker 2: Okay, So our new award born in December nineteen sixty four, as.
Speaker 6: Of course we need all that infod kay, But I'm
now sixty. He's just celebrated his sixtieth this year, which
is why I'm here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So, how I began my interest in the paranorm?
I was always interested in things like on TV Space,
so a love of space and science fiction programs on
the TV. So I grew up with programs like Thunderbirds,
Joe nine, t Stingray, all the Jerry Andson shows UFO,
and later on came another show called Space nineteen ninety nine,
and through all that was Star Trek. Three seasons of
Star Trek from about sixty seven to sixty nine, I think,
and they were repeated throughout the nineteen seventies and I
think they still repeated today.
Speaker 6: I remember you watching Star Trek when I was little
as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the original series and then later on the next generation.
Speaker 6: And I now have my t Elgray Hot.
Speaker 3: Okay, so.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so, and there was Doctor Who as well, and
then later on Blake seven, and of course in nineteen
seventy seven Star Wars came out. But prior to things
like Star Wars and Blake seven coming out and Space
nineteen ninety nine, I was curious about ghosts and spirits
as well as the space stuff. And so, for instance,
we just recently watched the Screwge film on Netflix or
Amazon Prime, which I remember watching in nineteen seventy four
at my film club to my junior school when I
was about ten years old, and I loved anything to
do with ghosts. I don't know why I had a
fascination with ghosts and spirits. I remember reading a book
about the ghost dog of Killer cut as a novel.
Because it had the word ghost in it, I thought
it was going to be interesting. I wasn't scared of it.
We also watched hammer horror films as kids, even though
we shouldn't perhaps be more something of that that age
with Dracula, Christopher Lee, that kind of stuff, vampires and stuff.
So it had all that kind of interesting stuff about
the magic, the occult, that kind of stuff, but also
about science and space and aliens, did they really exist?
Et cetera, et cetera. So I had a wide kind
of scope of into that alternative field, and consequently I
grew up with an interest in making science fiction space
models from scratch out of old washing up liquid bowls
or shampoo bowls and bits of cardboard, and you hoop
glue and bits of old ethics kits glued to them
and spray paint with car spray paint. And I was
actually featured on bbctv's program at the time, which is
not on air anymore, called why Don't.
Speaker 6: You It's even a famous for a young age.
Speaker 2: Not famous now, just had an appearance, really, And I
remember reading various articles in things like the Readers Digest magazine,
which was given we didn't subscribe to it. We given
old back issues by someone, and I remember flicking through
them sometimes and it would have I died on an
operating table type of article, and I came back after
five minutes, and I saw a mysterious light when I
went out of my body, and that really intrigued me,
and I thought, that's fascinating. So I had a linklin
that there was something after death or something beyond. When
people died, they might have gone to this other place. Now,
the Christians, I wasn't a Christian, although I had heard
of it, and I didn't really subscribe to it, but
they had this idea of going to heaven. So thought, well,
what is this place. I don't really want to call
it heaven because you expect to see God and angels
there in Jesus, and I wasn't really happy if that
was going to be heaven for me, So I didn't
really believe there was a hell either, But I thought
this thing seemed to be a consciousness, some sort of
conscious being a big ball of light at the end
of a tunnel was a typical description. And this ball
of light or something there would ask you questions, are
you satisfying with your life? Do you wish to go back?
Or do you wish to step forward and continue into
the great beyond or something? And these people then get
later resuscitated after having a heart attack, and they'd tell
of their experiences. So that became very fascinating for me.
And at some point, either around that time or maybe
before then, I was really curious about things. And so
I said to my mum, Mum, where was I before.
Speaker 3: I was born?
Speaker 2: And she said, well, you didn't exist, And I said,
but I must have existed. Surely I must have existed.
I could not comprehend not existing, and I said it
a kind of not an official task, but it became
a bit of a kind of drive within me to
try and understand, well, who was I? Where was I
and where was I going? Maybe and some of those
questions that were in the Reason Digest magazine might provide
some other clues to look for of where to get
the answers from.
Speaker 6: I think I asked the same question actually to to
my mum when I was little. I remember being in
the in the back of the car and ask him.
I'm like, so, where you know what? Where was I
before before I was here? And I can't remember, but
I was. I was at that just curious age where
I was just asking questions about anything, you know, anything
and everything. I think I also asked her, so when
do we go back to normal? And she was like,
what do you mean? And she said and I said,
you know, we're in winter now or summer now, and
I was like, so when do we get back to normal?
And I hadn't comprehended that there was seasons, you know,
so I thought this season was just like a thing
that happened and then you just go back to the
normal period. And it twiged to me that suddenly we've
been going through the seasons the whole time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, through No one throws a big switch and
it all comes off. I think you said, similar to
when there was an eclipse or pretty much in ninety
five percent clips over the UK in July nineteen ninety
nine or June, maybe it was August, I can't remember.
In nineteen ninety nine, a lot of people went off
down to the southwest to Cornwall and Devon to see
if they could see the fuller clips. But we stayed
in our place in Buckinghamshire and I went out of
the telescope and placed a piece of paper up the
eyepiece so it'd project the sun onto the paper and
you could see the moon moving across the sun.
Speaker 3: Oh we did that, well, I did it.
Speaker 2: Maybe didn't understand, but you sat with me and it
suddenly went.
Speaker 3: Really really cold.
Speaker 6: I was about four years old.
Speaker 2: And he says, Daddy, I don't like it. Can you
make the sun come back? And I said, well, I
can't make it come back, but it will come back,
I promised you.
Speaker 6: I remember screaming and crying and being so scared that
the light had gone out outside, you know, and I was.
Speaker 3: Like, can you done it back on? That's right? Yeah,
it's very rare to have an eclipse, isn't it.
Speaker 6: Yeah, but I do remember it, and i'd actually been
talking to a friend he remembers it as well, vaguely,
and because there's people my age who it happened to,
all of us when we were very young, you know,
So yeah, it's interesting.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So things like that are fascinating eclipses and things, and
they were herodly as great signs in the sky by
people of medieval times and beyond. It didn't really understand
the signs behind it. And also like just leading up
to the French Revolution, the peasants claimed that, you know,
falling rot would come from the sky and they were
just laughed at by the aristocracy. But when the French
Revolution happened, someone of science decided to look into it
and found that the peasants weren't talking nonsense. Rocks did
fall from the sky and they were called meteorites, and
that's how meteorites came to obvisually discovered. But because the
peasants are out working in the fields the whole time,
they'd see these things frequently.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so how does that lead on to ghosts and spirit?
Speaker 6: Well, that was going to be my next question. That
is really fascinating. So what occurred to me was that
there wasn't unless you remember, was there any particular kind
of one instance where you were like, oh, ghosts that
interests me or was it just that build up of
the pop culture.
Speaker 7: At the time.
Speaker 2: It was a slow boil build up because there was
I saw one problem on the telly was quite spooky
about a ghost of a nun and the nun was
haunted this woman and she would make herself appear in
a mirror and that's quite scary, so we kind of
scared by it. But also I was intrigued by it.
You know, how could you be a ghost? What was
it like being a ghost? And I didn't understand that
there possibly could be a difference between the term ghost
and spirit at the time when I was youngster. I
thought they were interchangeable.
Speaker 6: So can you explain actually what the difference?
Speaker 2: Okay, A lot of people might give you different answer,
so I'll tell the answer as I understand.
Speaker 6: Okay.
Speaker 2: So a spirit is what we presumably all have inside
of us. We are spirit in a material world, as
the song goes, or something like the soul. Yes, so
the soul or the spirit. And so when we shed
our physical body and leave this world, the spirit, the
driving essence of us continues on in some other form,
a bit like a caterpillar changing into a butterfly a scenario.
It becomes a different form and continues. It doesn't caterpillars
dropped away, but the butterfly that was the caterpillars now
saw it onto new heights. I speaking a metaphorical set. Okay,
So we're the spirit and we continue on, maybe in
a spirit world or another dimension, some other plane of
existence where hopefully by the sounds that we do, meet
our relatives that have gone before us and our friends,
and maybe we're coming into contact with other people, and
you slowly go through different levels of existence development and
you go to higher planes of existence. Now a ghost
is perhaps not a ghost appears from the signs of ghost.
They appeared not to kind of see you. So people
tend to see a ghost, and it's like looking at
a video recording, like in the TV. You're watching a
film on the TV, the person and the TV. Apart
from if it's a newsreader, of course, if it's a
film you're watching, they don't tend to look at the
camera and say hello, everybody out there. They interact in
their environment, of their time frame, at their scenario of
what they're doing the film about and toward intents and
purposes you're observing them, can't observe.
Speaker 3: You that they're a film.
Speaker 2: And I think it's the similar thing with ghosts is
that the ghost can't observe you because it's a replay.
Some people suggest it's a repleaven action that happened a
long time ago. There's something called the stone tape theory
where they seem to think that ghosts are recordings on
the atmosphere or recordings on the stone work that they
might appear. And if it's an old castle and an
old Roman building or something like that.
Speaker 6: How energy clings to places and you know we're all
made up of benage.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, And.
Speaker 2: Though it is it some sort of recording that's happening now.
There's a case of a guy called Harry Martindale who
in nineteen fifty two, he was a an apprentice plumber
in York and he was working in the basement of
this Chancellor's house in York, and they were renovating for
English Heritage, and they were putting in things like boilers
and radiators and stuff like that. So they had to
draw all these pipes, and he was tasked to go
into the basement and he's about seventeen eight at the time,
and he found a trench dug in the basement, which,
unbeknown to him, was actually an archaeological trench that had
been dug a few months before by archaeologists who had
found what they thought was a Roman road running underneath
this building. And so he saw the trench and obviously
it hadn't been filled in with it because they were
still working on it, and he thought it was a
handy place to wedge his ladder in secure it. So
he wedged his ladder into this trench, climbed up against
the one, and started drilling holes in the wall. After
about four hours, he started to hear a strange horn
like noise, and he thought that's a bit of a
weird tune on the radio. It got louder and louder
and louder, and eventually below him marched a Roman on
a horse through the wall below his ladder. He was
above the Roman because the ladder a Roman centurion, and
then followed by all these other Romans on horses or
walking onside the horses. And he was so shocked that
he fell off his ladder backwards onto the ground in
the basement, and he scurried over into the corner bavements
hide away from these Roman soldiers who continue to march through. Now,
as they marched through, he noticed that their legs appeared
to be disappeared halfway through the floor. They were at
a different height than the people that their legs were
sort of like there, but there are.
Speaker 3: A lower height.
Speaker 2: But as soon as they got to the trench where
the treasure being, their legs appeared because they were at
the floor level of their own words.
Speaker 6: And it was almost like a shadow. You know, you
wouldn't see certain parts of a shadow that maybe blocked.
Speaker 2: By all or yeah, right, so in that kind of sense,
that's right. So so he said. He could see mud
splattered on their faces and clothes. They had green tunics
on round shields, small daggers, and he saw their their unshaven.
He looked like they were tired of being marching or
something like that. He could hear them talking even but
he couldn't understand what they were talking about. And then
the source of the noise, that was the horn noise.
He saw that come through last, and that was a
man blowing a great big horn who was like the announcer.
And apparently in Roman legions and marches, when they're walking along,
you tend to blow the horn as you're approaching the
gates of your fortress and they open up the gates
for you. And so this is what he was hearing.
Speaker 3: And so the.
Speaker 2: Romans didn't see him. They were just enacting their own
scenarios their time frame. But somehow he was looking from
the future back into the past. And so I think
it wasn't a recording, because later on, about seven years later,
in the same building, these Roman ghosts were spotted again
by the lady who was a caretaker with her dog.
Her dog observed from first barking down and selling she
saw the Romans come through a bit. It was a
different scenario. This time they're all coming through and they
were asleep on their horses. They weren't walking and talking.
They were all asleep on the horses, and their horses
were carrying them back to wherever they had to go to.
So in that sense, from my point of view, I
don't believe it's a recording on the atmosphere, because otherwise
they'd be playing the same thing. I think that what
it was is that their peering into the past, and
it's like, say, it's the winter of the seasons, get
back in seasons. Harry Martindale saw him in the winter
of nineteen fifty two, like November. He could have been
looking back to November of eighty fifty five in their wintertime. Yeah,
so this is why they had wetness on their face
from the mud, because it rains in the winter and
it might have been cold and damp and they're fed up,
et cetera, et cetera. And then maybe the lady saw
them in her winter of seven years later, but in
the February and again they were covered in mud, but
this time they were asleep on their horses, so that
there was always going on a muddy road that hadn't
been tarmacked or anything like that, and the rain had
been pelting down on them. So I think that they'd
seen him in their own times. But if if Harry
Martinell happened to see them in the summer, and he
was working in the basement in July on a hot
July day, he might have seen the Roman soldiers coming
through fairly dry and clear, with no mud on them,
because he's seen him in July fifty five.
Speaker 3: AD. Yeah, my theory.
Speaker 2: Rather than a ghost of the recording, they're not alive
in the sense of like when you're watching a TV program,
they appear to be alive, but they're just digital images.
This could be some sort of recording or time frame
that we're looking through, rather like one might look at
an old newspaper see an image of an old photograph,
but rather like in Harry Potter, you see the images
moving around. It's like watching an old film. But I
suspect they're watching through time in some way.
Speaker 6: So can I ask, because obviously, I mean, I've heard
of ghosts being almost like in a loop, you know,
and as you say, like a recording. But then there's
also people experience ghosts interacting with them. You know, sometimes
you might feel like a pull at your Yeah, that
might be more of a spirit then, right, Okay, so.
Speaker 3: Go spirits interact, ghosts interact with each other because they're
in their own time frame. Oh makes sense? Yeh think?
Speaker 6: Okay. So that kinda leads on to a question. Have
you had any early sort of childhood or just any
childhood spiritual or psychic experiences, or any experiences of ghost
or spirits when you were a kid?
Speaker 2: Well, one of my first ghostly memories, if you want
to call it ghostly memories, It always freaks out my
friend men and she likes me to keep telling this
dog because it's spooky.
Speaker 6: Am I going to get scared?
Speaker 3: You might do?
Speaker 6: Oh no?
Speaker 2: In my beard dream Iana, when we all lived at
what we call the flats in Little child f On,
there was these flats and we lived at the very
top of these flats, me and my brothers, and we
all share the bedroom, and I remember we had thunderbirds wallpaper.
So this would be the.
Speaker 3: Middle to late sixties.
Speaker 2: I was born in sixty four, so this could be
about sixty five, sixty six, sixty seven something that before
Phil was born who was born in sixty eight, So
it's got between somewhere between. It's got to be sixty five,
sixty six, sixty seven. Yeah, that's the year time we're about.
And I remember waking up and I had two brothers
in their beds beside me.
Speaker 3: We had a white.
Speaker 2: Chester drawers over in the corner of the room, and
I remember a vague memory of my brothers screaming and crying,
and they pulled the blankets over their heads, and there
was this Chester draws and it was rattling down.
Speaker 6: Oh god, I think.
Speaker 2: Towards and it's coming towards me. Yeah, it's going past
my brothers. And I remember putting the blanket over my
head like my brothers. I thought this is a thing
to do. And I had a woolen blanket like it's knitted,
and I could still see through it coming towards Oh no,
and it's still coming towards me. And I was and
next minute I found myself waking up. So perhaps it
was a dream, because I did say to my brother's
years later, do you remember that? And meant no, So
I think it must have.
Speaker 3: Been a dream.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 3: I think very real.
Speaker 6: Sometimes they can be. I've certainly woken up from dreams
and I thought it was real, and I've had to
ask people like was that a dream or was that,
you know, real? So was there anything that you experienced
maybe later on that was you definitely feel wasn't a dream.
Speaker 3: Well, sometimes when I was half asleep, I interpret things
as I'm half asleep, and I think it's spooky.
Speaker 6: I really went, we're just talking about ghost. So I
just felt something crawling over from what I arm. I
looked and there's nothing there.
Speaker 3: Oh, they esteemed in the stories.
Speaker 2: And I remember this hand tapping me on my head
and it said, Neil, I'm going to eat And that
really scared Neil. I'm going to eat it it tow.
Speaker 3: You on the head.
Speaker 2: I was probably about five or six, and I remember
going to school terrified. Somehow I hadn't been eaten, but
I remember going to see Terrible and I told the
friends I had at school, Oh, a monster came to
me last night. He was going to eat me, and
he tapped me on the head.
Speaker 6: The sound of that isn't a monster, so it's roxy
the dog.
Speaker 2: And I told my dad when I got him when
he came in from work. That night that the monster
was going to eat me. He says, oh, no, that
was me, And he said your window was open it
was raining, so I came in to shut the window,
and I tapped you on the head, saying, it's all right, Neil,
it's only me, and he tapped me on the head.
But I was half sleeping in my dream state, Okay,
I suddenly changed it into a monster.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you see, that's interesting. What about any experiences when
you were a bit older that one't sort of dream
related at all?
Speaker 3: You mean, have I seen a ghost? Yes?
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, I haven't really. Yeah, I haven't seen these
spirits or ghosts or anything like that.
Speaker 6: So what keeps your faith in them? Since you've written
a story and blow box?
Speaker 3: A lady called Doris Stokes came on the scene in
the late seventies, well the mid seventies to late seventies,
and I was coming out about twelve or thirteen by
that time, and she used to appear on television and
she was doing this thing called mediumship, which is her
claiming to have the ability that somehow she could hear
spirits talking to her and she would relate what the
spirits were saying to the people in the room because
it was their relatives from the other side. And I
was fascinated by that, and so I went and bought
some of her books. As time went on, I think
me and my mum maybe my brother read them.
Speaker 2: And she had Voices in My Ear More Voices in
My Ear and other books like that, and she described
how these things went. And then as time rolled around,
I remember there was a premo and I still got
our fan on DVD from enough to get on DVD,
and it was Arthur C. Clark's Mysterious World. And this
would be about nineteen eighty or eighty one, I can't remember.
I was just coming up to about fifteen or sixteen then,
and it was a probab about the mysteries and stuff,
and he covered mediums and life after death. It was
a fascinating story in there. As they interviewed one lady
she's obviously long since passed away now, being about forty
five years ago whatever. She said that her nephew, I
think they all lived, and all of her family had.
Most of her family had emigrated to South Africa at
the time and she remained back in England, but her
nephew had got killed in the Second World War and
he was in a tank or something, and I think
his name was Owen. And one day she said she
was at home and Owen, her nephew, after he had died,
appeared to her in a blaze of little golden.
Speaker 3: Sparkly life. Wow.
Speaker 2: And he was there for a minute and she couldn't
believe it. And he was saying, tell mom, I'm all right,
I'm okay, and said a few other things. But she said,
but I need proof. I need proof. She's not going
to believe me. I need proof. So she goes with that.
He put his hand in his jacket. I think Jennie
Saw took off him. I'm not quite sure. And he
took out she says, a beautiful orchid flower. Absolutely's standing.
And she goes the room filled with radiance. As soon
as this flower came out, and the smell and everything,
she gets it. And she said, he then put the
flower back in his jacket like that, and then he
took it back out again, and he put it back
in his jacket again, and then he took it out again, right,
but like a strange thing, right, And then he said,
tell mom, table mountain And she goes. When that he
just vanished completely away. Oh, and so she wrote to
her sister because it was our nephew, remember. And it
turned out that Owen, before he died, had gone up
table Mountain in Africa, Tabletop Mountain, South Africa. Yeah, he'd
gone up there, and apparently it was forbidden to people
to pick orchids from up there, and if you did,
you risked imprisonment. But he stole a beautiful blue orchid,
oh my goodness. And the only person he told was
his mum, And he had the orchid under his jacket
in his lifetime, and he took the jack the thing
out and showed the flower to his mum. And then
he thought he heard someone coming up the darm pass.
He quickly hid in his jacket again. So he was
repeating that his arm she and then he said, tell
mon tableman. And she would understood exactly what all that
meant once it was explained to her what he was doing.
Speaker 6: And was there his actual jacket in real life with
this orchid in all?
Speaker 2: I don't like that. I mean that was a memory
of it. I mean the jacket might have you know,
it might have been in the family. I don't know
what happened to the actual orkid.
Speaker 6: Be interesting to see if they found.
Speaker 2: The actual orkid. Yeah, I'm sure sure the mother probably
kept the orchid, you know, because he had bit it
and said some world wall. I think we better go
Missy more.
Speaker 4: Oh.
Speaker 6: One of the main questions I was going to ask.
Speaker 3: Okay, come on, one more question.
Speaker 6: So thank you for telling me about your experiences. That's
really interesting and obviously it's interesting to hear, you know,
almost the difference between experiences that people might think, sorry,
people experience start again. It's interesting to hear experiences that
people might think a ghosts, like when you were saying
you felt the hand on your head and it was
your dad, and then you had a dream and you
thought it was real and your brother saw it, but
then you know it was probably a dream. And then
obviously the woman whose son came through, Yeah, what was
that the aunt.
Speaker 3: Well it was she was the auntie and it was
her nephew that came through.
Speaker 6: Right, the woman whose nephew that came through. Yeah, And
that was a provable thing, you know that that was
information that could have improved.
Speaker 3: In the PAMI.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 6: So what I'm interested in is, I know you're a
medium yourself and you regularly go to a psychic circle
and to was it a.
Speaker 2: Psychic Yeah, psychic development, psychic.
Speaker 6: Development circle, and is that the same as the spiritualist church.
Speaker 2: Psychic developing circle is often affiliated to spirituist churches, and
so the people that go to the local spiritist church
tend to start the psychic developing circles. That's how I
got into it. So how I got into my very
first psychic developing circle and arnts Bridge was I read
in the local newspaper. I'd already been to I think
one Spiritish church before then. I was taken there by
my step grandfather who was all also into spiritualism, and
he took me to one and I was kind of
interested in it. Spirituallym is the official religion of people
that believe in life after death and communication with the afterlife.
That had the official religion started by the Fox sisters
in America who were getting wraps and knocks on their
door from a spirit in their house when they were younger.
But anyway, that has had a completely odd story and
you could read about it in my book Who Tales
of the Paranorm on Amazon. Yeah. Yeah, So basically I've
read in the paper that there was this place called
ux Spiritualist Association. So I phoned up the guy and
he said, yeah, come along for a meeting or our
Thursday night in their civic hall. They went along there
and I explained to he was and they said, oh yeah, fine,
take a seat.
Speaker 3: And I'd go there every Thursday and they'd have different
mediums there, and it's all the interesting stuff in the mediums.
Speaker 2: It wasn't scary, it wasn't scared. There's nothing spooky happening.
Just a medium would give messages to the people in
the room. Sometimes I got a message, sometimes I didn't.
And and anyway, one of the means I can't remember
how far in from the point of me going. The
man who ran it said, oh, we're going to be
starting up our psychic developing circle soon, so anyone that's
interested in joining a psychic developing circle please come and
put your name now. Now, I, by this time, because
I've watched the Arthur C. Clark's Mysterious World program, had found
out about the Spiritualist Association of Great Britain, where they
did demonstrations of clairvoyance or mediumship, and they also gave
you readings. And that was in London, and so I
found out about it and I went there on the
train because by this time I was working, and I'd
go there on the train every other Saturday. It's fascinating
and I'd get readings from different mediums. I'll pay them money,
but many of them held, by the way, do you
know that you can do this? I what me do this?
I never believed it, So I thought, I haven't seen
any ghosts or heard voices.
Speaker 3: Or anything like that.
Speaker 2: So this opportunity to join the psychics developing circle at
the Oxfridge Spirituals Association came up, and I thought, well,
I'll go for it. See if I do have any
powers or something. So I went to it that evening
a few unions away, a few weeks away, and a
lady called Anne ran it and she was like the
chief medium and we would have to do meditations and
then we'd have to practice doing readings on the people.
And there's about five or six other people that I
can't remember their names now, and I remember starting to
get information about people. And the guy Eric who was
the Rand Spiritualist Association, sorry that the ox Fridge Spiritualist group.
He was there as well, who was one that announced
the circle okay, and we all had to kind of
meditate on the persons sitting opposite let's to see if
we could get our relations Yeah.
Speaker 6: The dog also as a co host on this podcast.
Speaker 2: So so basically she's doing the spooky sounds.
Speaker 6: Yeah yeah, she's adding there the moaning monk, the vibes.
Speaker 2: So I went into a meditation, and I'm not very
good at meditation, but I concentrated on this bloke, Eric,
who was sitting ahead of me. And as I started
to almost drift off into almost like a sleep, I
heard of Cockney, a distinct Cockney voice in my mind,
like you would hear in a dream someone talks to you.
So it wasn't a physical voice, but it was in
my head like telepathy, and it.
Speaker 7: Said, tell him he's got something wrong with his waterworks.
And I thought, I thought, baddy, hell, where did that
come water works?
Speaker 2: It was like a cockney taxi driver. I saw criche.
So I'd heard about mediums wrapping up messages where they
don't tell the whole thing for fear of embarrassing you
in front of other people, and because he might have
had trouble with his water works, I didn't want to
sort of sell it in front of all these other ladies, right,
So I just said to him, and I was young
at the times, I really didn't know how to rephrase it.
I said, oh, I understand you might be seeing a
doctor about a small complaint.
Speaker 3: And that's all. I mean, loads of.
Speaker 2: People go to document and he goes, yes, yes, you're right,
I am seeing to about a small complaint. Now, if
i'd actually been a bit more students said lot, I've
got a cockney guy that came through, tacking him on
with a cockney accent, he might have said, yes I do,
And I said, he's talking about bladder issues here, you know,
being polite, can you take that? But I said, he
said the word water works. You know I would have
said it like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and oh yeah.
Speaker 2: Now my friend Steve, who was ten years older than me,
he said, oh, it's probably his prostate and went, what,
I didn't understand what the prostate was or anything.
Speaker 6: A little bit more awareness about this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and he said and he said, I mean this
would be about nineteen eighty seven or eighty eight, I
think it was. He said that, you know, men get
prostate problems. It makes them have to go to the
loo a lot more, you see. So I said, oh right,
I didn't know that, and this guy was probably late
sixties at the time.
Speaker 3: So it was kind of true. I think, what happened.
Speaker 2: I've got that message and he confirmed it, although I
wish I'd given it in a much more accurate way.
So I was gobsmacked. I think that I got this
power from somewhere because I never thought I could. But
it just shows that you develop it. You meditate and
you start to hear these voices and you have to
start to learn discern what is your thoughts and what
is their thoughts.
Speaker 6: I think that's what I struggle with as well. I
mean I read oracle cards and tarot cards, but I
find it much easier to do a reading for other
people than it is myself, because I think when it's myself,
I struggle to know. Was that just what I want
to know?
Speaker 3: You know? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Well, for faults, when you get the thoughts from spirit,
they tend to be outside of your mind in a sense.
So I remember doing I'd gone to do a mediumship
workshop in Hertfordshire at some point and the end was
all asked to do reading. So I got up and
I sort of said to the lady very back. I
didn't know I'd started just talking to her, and I said,
I think I've got something here with you. I feel
like she's a grandmother. Blah blah blah blah. And I
felt that this spirit was to my right. You get
a sense that sometimes you're right, sometimes you were left.
They're not generally in the middle. They can be, but
more if not, they feel that they're on the right
or the left. And that seems to be a common
thing talking to other mediums, you see and so and
as I was talking to us, was giving this information.
But out in front of me like a meteor way,
there wasn't physically in the room. I saw the word Sainsbury's,
the logo of Sainsbury's as it's written orange, float in
front of me. There wasn't physically there in the room.
It was like in my mind's eye, almost as I'm
having awakened dream. But I saw the word Sainsbury's float
across in front of me. Yeah, I was talking. Oh,
so the word Sainsbury's has been put in my mind
visually the logo, but nothing was said about it is
just Sainsbury's. So I had to think, well, this lady
has connected Sainsbury's somewhere, and so I said, now, look,
I don't know if you work there. No, I didn't
say that. I said, I don't eat you like shopping
there if it's your favorite shop or anything, but are
you connected anyway? I've got the word Sainsbury's with you.
And she went, she goes, that's where I work, she said,
So she worked at Sainsbruings. I was told people that
work at Sainsbruys, Yes, you've.
Speaker 6: Got other things as well. I remember something to do
with a guy that was in France.
Speaker 2: Yes, So that was more later on. And that was
in Weymouth and I was doing a reading at the
what was called the Moose Lodge Spiritualist Church back in
about twenty twenty, I think it was before the pandemic.
Speaker 3: And I was doing a reading one lady.
Speaker 2: Talking about a dog or something, I can't remember what
it was now, and then I suddenly got the voice
in my head or the words disappear in my head
Colin France, just like that, right, And I went, oh,
So I said, can you take the name Colin and
possibly the country of France, but it goes to be
the surname of France and she went, no, sorry, when
are right?
Speaker 3: Okay?
Speaker 2: So I thought, well I failed.
Speaker 3: So what you do? Then?
Speaker 2: You ask other people? Is there anybody else in the
room that can take the name Colin and France? I said,
I don't know whether it's a surname of France or
a country of France. And no one put their hand up.
Do you think a shit? But then someone did this,
This man tentatively put his hand up and he says,
we can take the name Colin and the country of France.
I said, can you? He goes yeah. I said, is
it the country not? It's the country of France. And
as soon as I started, I started to get information
and I knew that I was with them.
Speaker 6: And you've got that link.
Speaker 3: The link came.
Speaker 2: Through and it became strong. As soon as he started talking,
it opened up some sort of connection with this Colin
and I started to get the not the words. It
was more of an idea popping into my head. Holiday
not holiday, holiday not holiday, and that's like, what does
that mean? That's very confusing, And so I said, I said,
I've got something to do that you have something to
do with It wasn't on holiday in France, But I'm
getting the word holidays with him.
Speaker 3: They said, yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2: He wasn't on holiday, but he worked on like a
holiday camp there and he ran holiday accommodation.
Speaker 6: Interesting, so it was holiday.
Speaker 2: Note and that was how they got it through it. Now,
a lot of people that skeptic say said, why don't
you say, my name is Colin, I work in France
and I worked on a holiday camp, and this is
my why can't they do it? But it's the equivalent
of you know, this is words and messages that are
coming through a different dimension, and so what happens they
have to try and send it through and the easiest
way possible. So the analogy I give imagine before we
had mobile phones and telephones and things like that. You know,
if you're Adgine a Native American Indian, they used to
give smoke signals across from one mountain to another under
a blanket light the leaves and the smoke would come
up there and put the blanket and keep smoke down there.
You know, two puffers means your tea's ready, or one
puff of smoke means no, it was not ready yet,
or three puff of smoke means come now you're late
something like that, although he's so in a sense, they
were getting a symbolic message and they would learn to
interpret those things.
Speaker 3: You see.
Speaker 2: Now, I've spoken to a famous meeting called Colin No sorry,
Tony Stockwell, who he's been on TV and stage and
that sort of thing. And he gave a reading for
a friend of mine I knew, and he gave a
reading and he said, oh, and I knew this to
be the case before we went there, that the guy
that this person was hoping would come through, and he
did died of cancer, but it was caused by asbestos
toxins in his lungs, poisonous. And so this guy picked
up the photograph of his blow can. He put it
to his head and he says, this guy he died
in his late fifties. He had a bar in his house,
like he had his own barber, cocktails and his own barber,
which are very rare for people to act. He got that,
and he said, oh, and he died of cancer through
asbestos poisoning and it was spawn. And so after us,
I said, how did you get that? Because obviously, as
a medium, I'd like to learn and he said, well,
what happened was he said, I felt that he died
of cancer. And then I was shown my grandfather's motorbike
and he had a sidecar and it like Watas and Gromet,
and I knew that that was made of asbestos panels.
And so when they showed me that sidecar, I know
that they're talking about asbestos. Right, So they have to
show you something that you can identify. And it's the
same with names, you know, like when I've given names
before for mediumship, I sometimes see the person's face, Like
when I was talking to you and I said, I
get names now, and you just started to go out
with Chris, and you said, well, what's Chris's mum's name?
And you said, I'll give you a clue. Starts with them.
And I said, I wish you had said m so
I just said the first word that came about Mary.
Oh my god, how did you get out? So but
you did say em. So then you then you said,
and you can confirm this, You said, okay, what's the
name of Chris's dad?
Speaker 3: Then? And then in my mind I saw my own father,
who you know as granddad Brian, and his name is Brian,
So I said, Brian and it was.
Speaker 6: Correct, and they went, oh my god, I.
Speaker 2: Didn't get that, but I saw the image of Brian.
So what they tend to do is give you the
face an image of someone that you know their name,
and that tends to be the name of the other person.
And so I was doing a reading at the Pilgrim
House thing, and this is where I started to get
a lot for this particular lady. And I was the
first word that came to my head, wasn't the name
being spoken? As I walked across the room, I suddenly
saw this face of this man that I'd known from
Witchfest appear. His face was there, and I knew his
name was Rufus, right, So I thought, I've got to
give the name Rufus. L That's what I knew I
had to do it. So I said, can anyone here
take the name Rufus? Very rare name, not it's called Rufus.
And this lady put a much because my nephew is
called Ruthless. And it turned out her brother had died
and it was him that's coming through me.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So as the reading went on, I started to get
all sorts of facts about her, and then the one
weird thing about her that I got. I suddenly was
shown a pair of hands in front of my face
in my clairvoyant vision.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they call it.
Speaker 2: And with that pair of hands being shown, just saying
look at these hands, I felt a medical problem, medical
issue or something with hands. So I said, I don't
know if it's you or something you know, but is
there anyone that you can relate to that might have
had a medical problem with their hands in some way.
I don't know if it's broken fingernails or broken fingers
or anything, but there's medically wrong with fingers and hands. Yes,
And she goes, oh, yes, yes I can. She goes,
my brother and my father, they were both dead and
they were coming to talk to me. She goes, Unfortunately
I didn't get it. They both had a genetic condition
that calls them to be born with weird thumbs. He goes, Essentially,
I mean there's a medical name for it, and I
can't remember, but essentially their thumb was genetically deformed, so
it's more like your big toe, right, okay. And the
father got it and the son got it, but she
bypassed it. And this is why I's been shown hands.
Speaker 3: That's incredible.
Speaker 6: There was the one last question to wrap up before
we go. What advice would you give to anyone who's
looking to go into mediumship or discover there? What's the
name for it, spirit guide? Spirit guides?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 6: Would you what advice would you give to somebody who's
looking to wow?
Speaker 2: I read up lots of books, first of all, and
I would suggest going to spiritist church or spirituoust meetings.
Get used to the idea of mediums that do readings.
Some are going to be bad, some are going to
be okay, and some going to be absolutely brilliant. The
brilliant ones are very read find. The bad ones are
easy to find. With regards to spirit guides, you might
be given that by a medium in a reading, and
it might get confirmed to you later on by another
medium sometime later.
Speaker 6: And is that something you could ask a medium?
Speaker 2: You could ask, can you give me some information about
my spirit guide than white tune ins? Or got a
Chinese gentleman, or got a native from America, or an
old lady or an old Victorian gentleman, you know, And
normally they would try and verify who they are in
some way, out shape or form with information in another reading.
Perhaps okay, okay.
Speaker 6: Well, that's excellent. Thank you so much for joining me
today and for discussing this in what I hope to
be my first podcast episode. And yeah, it was really
great to learn more, and I hope we can continue
talking about more spiritual discoveries and ventures into other realms
in the future.
Speaker 8: Thank you, Thanks Dat, bye bye.
Speaker 2: Well that concludes the January edition of The Paranormal peep Show.
I hope you've enjoyed it, and we'll hopefully be back
next month with some more exciting guests and discussions. Take care,
thanks for listening.
Speaker 6: Yadakaki haten Bo Kangada pa
Speaker 3: In Chemubai, Kagadakata Nataka