EPISODE 77: I See Dead People

0:00Hello, sorry to bother you. Can I ask you a slightly odd question. I'm making a podcast called Strangers on a Bench where essentially I talk to people I don't know on benches for 10 or 15 minutes. Are you up for that? Do you want to give it a go? Do you have a favourite day of the week? Probably Friday because Fridays I don't work and I don't tend to plan to do anything on a Friday evening other than have a

1:05cheat meal and watch a film or something just chill on the sofa. It's my day to just do nothing a little treat for myself. Take me through it as much detail as you possibly can. You're kind of ideal Friday. I mean we know about the evening now, the cheat meal and the chill time. What is a cheat meal? What is a cheat meal? A cheat meal is eating food that you wouldn't normally. Oh do you say cheat or cheat? Cheeked. Cheater. Yeah. So you know like I don't generally eat carbs and processed food and things like that. But then on a Friday I might have fish and chips or something. And a packet of bringles. But I don't cheat that far. The stuff they put in the unnamable crisps that is really quite bad. Really bad. So a day a Friday day. Yeah. That's what that's going on. What are you waking up? What can you see when you wake up? Well I mean I'm quite lucky because outside of my bedroom window there's some trees, some mad squirrels. I'm in a woodpecker once. So on a Friday morning I wake up, get up,

2:13go to the gym. And then after that a perfect Friday for me would be when it was really sunny. No clouds in the sky, blue days. And then I would come in here to sunbathe. And I love being in nature and I love the sun. So I can lie in the sun for hours. And there were parts of this that quite quiet and secluded. And my job is talking to people. So ideally on a Friday I won't talk to anybody. If I can help it. And I'll just spend the day on my own and the evening on my own. And then I'll probably socialise over the weekend. And then it's back to work on Monday. So Friday is my real no-talking just relaxing day.

3:22What's it like to sunbathe around the dead? We are at the exact place we are now but we are in a cemetery. Yes it is a cemetery. It's also a park. And ever since I was a kid I've had a fascination with cemeteries. I was a big fan of the Adams family and that kind of more eccentric type of life. And for me cemeteries generally are quite peaceful places. Not just because they're for the dead people but because when people visit cemeteries they tend to be more respectful and quiet. And I have a kind of spiritual practice in my spiritual belief that the dead don't hang around the graves. They just don't. Graves are what the living do to feel some kind of connection with

4:22the people who have passed into spirit. There's nothing wrong with that. I mean if you go to a grave side to connect with the spirit of somebody that's passed that spirit will come to the grave because it knows you're there and it knows you're there because you want to talk to it. But the minute you leave they're not just going to sit by the grave. You know they got better things to do. Invariably if it's somebody you're close to in the spirit world they're around you anyway. So when you leave the grave and go home they just follow you home you know not in a weird way but just in a kind of supportive way yeah. So people have this kind of real weird notion about cemeteries but actually for me it's a very peaceful place but I'm also a big fan of honoring the dead but more in a celebratory way. Who do you seek as honour most frequently of the dead? So I work as a psychotherapist and I had the same supervisor for 22 years from when I did my

5:27training right through all my practice and sadly she died of cancer last year and they did a big kind of memorial for her. Honoring all the things that she'd done she was so full of life and she did so many things she made films and she wrote poetry and she started women's groups and she played the band she was just an incredible person and people sang and people made music from the various groups she was in and they even set the place up like her living room and then people would go and talk to that I love that kind of celebrating who people are I'm really not a big thing of the everyone wearing black and crying it's like it's not going to bring them back you know we focus on the positive we remember them for what they brought your life remember them for what they did for your life and celebrate that yeah um do you feel like in a sense whereas your teacher feels like a kind of a moment of closure almost this is like a moment it kind of sounds

6:30like what you're describing there is a kind of springboard where you kind of fly forward with something rather than go that person in the ground now totally totally in this event that I went to the beginning of the year was like that there was book for people to put their email addresses in and for people to connect with each other because like I say she in particular had so many different aspects to her life and this day all those people were in the room and there was this thing of like get to know these people because these are other creative people and she would have loved that she would have loved bringing people together to go forward you know I mean I really love that idea as well that you can be buried underneath a tree yes and it's like the tree takes the nutrients from your body to grow I mean I never got the idea of like burying people in lead boxes it's just the weirdest thing and even though I don't believe in in spirit spring and body I still think I would not want you know my rotting corpse to be in a lead box forever I'd rather go back

7:33to the land and create something good for me you know that makes perfect sense you you mentioned this is a spiritual friend of yours you know how lots of aspects to her life so that awaken any kind of potential strings in your life as in as anything you've kind of you've been keen to grow the reason I had her as my supervisor for more than 20 years was our interest fed each other as well I mean like she was always encouraging me to do more writing and to study and I think having her support allowed me to do a lot of creative things I mean it's kind of serendipitous because things fell into my way anyway that I never dreamed I would end up doing I mean the other thing I just say which I'm also talking about spirit and that kind of stuff is I've always been a kind of psychic medium so I see dead people that's how I know they're

8:35not here see that we've got to it so we see dead people but we're and and so the none of them are here no okay let's go back to the beginning so go wanted to ask you about you said you've always been fascinated by cemeteries yeah how did you kind of kind of actualize that you know I don't know what initially drew me to that because I'd always seen dead people but you know when I was very little I thought everyone could see them and then I kind of realized that not everyone could and then I went through that thing which a lot of people go through of like oh I'll stop talking about grindy sitting on the sofa for everyone no one else can see it because it's freaking everyone out and they think I'm weird but I always had that kind of connection and then I went to a boarding school when I was 11 it was a really interesting place not necessarily in a good way because it had been a barstall place for wayward boys before it

9:41became a boarding school and they still had what you call it cells in the basement with bars where they slopped them if they must behave they were used they had been used yeah and by the time we were there at the school it was part of the laundry room so it was a bit weird but there was a graveyard that was attached to the school I think the school may have been made probably in the late 1800s so the boys that had died while they were there were buried in this little cemetery and the thing about being a psychic you know as well as seeing dead people were very sensitive to energies so I was very fascinated by these young men who had lived and died at the school in a long time before we were there that I used to go there and try and connect him with their

10:47energy no one else went in the cemetery you know all these boys that had died there and young men that had died there had probably been abandoned runaways whatever delinquent so their families didn't care about them their families didn't visit the graves they were pretty much neglected graves of all these young boys and men who had just kind of been forgotten and I remember once then they must have been still using it or for something because there was an open grave and I thought I'll go and line the open grave and see if I can connect him with the energy there but not much happened really it was just a bit cold and damp so you got on an open grave really really you got stuck in yeah but it's just a hole in the ground all the rest of psychology you know to mean but I thought maybe being inside the ground I'd be able to connect him with the energy of these bodies but it didn't work at the time

11:48so in this particular school um it's going to be right you you saw the dead boys no I was trying to connect him with their energy by going to the cemetery but I didn't but they were okay yeah you know invariably unless you do some kind of say on sort of intention and this actually has an energetic connection with you it's not going to come so you were hanging out this the cemetery is as a kid and other kids they just thought I was pretty weird and yeah I wasn't affected anyway no no I loved being weird all my life you know I mean it was my my thing they hence big fan of the Adam's family you know one of the things about the early black and white series you know sort of run home from school to watch it was that as a family

12:49they kind of flipped everything on their head so everything they kind of liked were the things that people wouldn't normally like but as a family there was this unconditional love and acceptance for their weirdness everyone's weirdness was great so you know I was very much of that kind of thing and I wasn't particularly worried about other people's opinions but it did peak people's interest and says this strange story so they asked me you know the other boys you know if you can communicate with the dad would you do a say-ons and I was like mmm so I'm a bit dodgy but they persuaded me in the end I think I was probably about 13 but I didn't really understand how mediumship worked and I know I had it I didn't know how to use it but you know we'd all seen that thing about Ouija boards and say-ons and things like that so we got Ouija board but one of my my friends was in the

13:51school choir he was like an altar boy and he had a key to the church so I said oh I don't need to do it in the church so at least we'll have protection I don't know why I thought that again I didn't really understand church is just a building at the end of the day so we went and did this say-ons it was about four or five of us and I called for a spirit to come and to be honest at that point I thought this probably isn't going to work it just kind of happens in the movies or whatever and then I felt a presence trying to enter into my body and I'd seen the exorcist so I was like that ain't happening so I completely panicked broke the circle to neighbor all out my god you never mean what we done and we brought some spirit through that's now going to haunt us or whatever but bless them the guy who was the altar boy then felt so bad he went and told the priest what we done and what happened and they actually had

14:56someone come in and perform an exorcism on the church because then somebody said they saw some spirit running around on top of the church and that kind of thing which I don't think they did but they actually had an exorcism in the church what did you remember the sensation of this I mean what do you remember of this spirit you say we're trying to enter you well I mean this is a thing it did freak me out so I put that whole kind of mediumship stuff away for a very long time and then in my kind it's like teens early 20s it used to just come out randomly usually when I was drunk and it's not the best part you trick really um no it really isn't but it would it would happen and it happened a few times and one

15:59way I describe it to people it's it's like a door opens somewhere and then spirit can come through and I'd be at a party some random person suddenly this door would open I would get all this information which would then just come out of my mouth which I wouldn't feel too because I was drunk and invariably people would end up in tears so what was killed apart so what was this person who ended up in tears well and often when people get messages from the dead it's upsetting it reminds them that the person's died one of the reasons why spirit come through is to reassure people that actually death isn't the end and and they are around them and that kind of stuff but for a lot of people it's it's not so good but also some of the messages weren't so great we never loved you no no I remember being at this party and there were two couples but part of what came through was the one part of a couple was actually in love with someone in the other couple

17:06oh yeah and I said it and I did not go down very well you know because they were supposed to be just friends so I got kicked out of that part in an Uber and then another one didn't we it was accurate well if it wasn't accurate they wouldn't have kicked me out the power in an Uber and then I mean and I didn't know these people they were kind of random people why would I it wasn't just oh he's in love with that person it there was background to it but you're claiming that someone is speaking through you doing that so it's someone that knows if they are or you can expect yeah but you see the thing is if you do it intentionally and you're not drunk you would check who the spirit is and whether what they were going to say was a good thing for the person to hear or you could get a spirit that's mischievous and I think on that particular evening it was mischievous it wanted to create chaos and I didn't stop it and chaos ensued so going back to what

18:08you said before after a few years of this happening and me being like this is a bit tedious I thought I should go and I actually explore this whole mediumship thing and find out what it's about I started going to the spiritual church and doing workshops and stuff one of the things they do in the spiritual church it's called platforming you know when you get up on the stage at the front and the people sat in the church and then you suddenly get a message for somebody sat in the pew and you go oh I've got a message for you and then I was I was platform when I was up on the platform and I felt someone come through for somebody here but I suddenly felt their energy into my body and then I felt as if I was shorter than I actually am a bit dumpy and I could feel these two like heavy weights on my chest though I knew it was a woman and then after that I did another one for someone else and then I felt this energy me and I became really tall and quite rigid and the first one was somebody's auntie and the other one was a guy who used to be in the

19:11military and that's when I realized that you know one of the abilities I have is that spirit will enter into my energy to give me physical evidence they were physically giving me information by putting their energy on me and that's when I realized that that is probably what happened when I was a teenager and I was doing that sales that the spirit that I was calling in was just trying to give me information but of course I thought I was going to be possessed by some mad demon or something like in the excess and just panicked yeah so you know once I understood it you know by then I was in my 30s I think then I was like oh that's what it was it wasn't that bad after all how do you kind of live what I mean is this you know you've got so much going through

20:12you and does it not kind of dominate your existence is this something you can turn off and on does this kind of see when it well it's I mean even though I did all the training and everything I still kind of decided I didn't want to be one of those people you see doing the platforms or on the telly or charging people readings because I actually find it a bit boring doesn't sound that boring well what do you be boring well it's not novelty to me because it's been there all my life invariably the dead come through because they want to pass some kind of message of comfort onto somebody so I just become the vehicle to pass the comforting messaging on there's not much in it for me yeah the person's comforted but it might be a random person and I'm like so and also I like to say work as a psychiatrist anyway it's my job is helping people so I was already doing that and then about 13 years ago one of my median friends was like oh

21:16have you ever thought about doing shamanism and I was like don't you know what that is and then a couple of days later another median friend of mine said oh you should do shamanism when I was like I didn't know what that is but the way that spirit works with me if I get the same thing twice especially within a short period of time yeah then I have to investigate it it's a message so then I looked up shamanism and as soon as I started reading about it I was like okay this is the thing I've been looking for so then I I went trained in shamanism and so that's another thing I do and when I was saying about my supervisor earlier and as she was dying of cancer she was in hospital in hastings so in a shamanic journey we used trumps and meditation to go into the spirit realm yeah and then in that I would see the hospital room but I would not just see her in the hospital bed I would see the spirits like her dad and the sister of part of people like

22:16that because when we're preparing to die more of our spirits gather around us and welcoming committee we we see all the people that have passed so my thing with shamanism is that I make a decision to go into trumps and go and investigate things energetically or spiritually and the thing that excited me about shamanism is that we don't just connect into the earth's vibrational feel we can contact much higher beings of light beings from other dimensions from other galaxies you know guides that are much more interesting and they have much more knowledge than earth bound energy and that is what fascinates me so I became a teacher and I teach people how to connect him with their own guides because we all have a way we can connect him with our guides more directly

23:19and which include the dead often people who've been in our life are part of our soul family and they become guides and help us for us from the spirit world who are your guides I mean just so my mom occasionally she's a funny mom well only occasionally because when my mom was alive she wasn't one for talking much I mean she was Dutch and she didn't really learn English she was just very like do this don't do that and she's like that in spirit and my mom was always very she loved fashion and she loved having a really nice house and having nice things so if there's anything I need to do with clothes or the house she will just come

24:20through but she won't say much I'll wake up she'll just be like you need to go to Zara home today and I'm like I don't want to go to Zara home and then I went that actually happened and what I know is that when I get there if I walk around the shop I will eventually see the thing which is the reason I've had to get there random stuff like because you know the thing people are not so conscious of and I forget is that every thought that we have is an intention and it's picked up by spirit so I can say something like oh I probably need a new duvet cover at some point and then my mom hears that and then she goes off looking for a duvet and then I get to Zara home and I'm walking around and the other thing my mom always loved the bargain so I would and there would be like a duvet which is just the kind of thing I would like and it would be in the sale and I'd be like okay so it sounds almost like the spirit equivalent the

25:20algorithm yeah but it's more direction but it sounds good and then yeah but it's so weird and random there's a bigger picture to that as well like she did another one like I remember thinking to myself well I really wouldn't mind some quite colorful socks it's good to have I'm with it's good to have colorful socks although you're not today you'll never know it I'll go through but this is my phase of like I want colorful socks yeah and then I forget about it and then I was on my way to meet some friends for lunch and I was running a bit late and I got off at Picadilly and I was walking past I think it's called St James's this church yeah another one yeah and I'm walking to lunch and I'm brushing some late and suddenly my mom goes you need to go in the church hard and I'm like I don't have time for this shit I'm late for lunch already she was like you need to go in the church hard so anyway I go into the church hard and there's a market stall so I was like oh god there must be something I need here and I just don't know what it is so I start going

26:22around the market in a rush and panicking some late get all the way around to the whole church who came just about to leave again a stall selling all these really colorful socks and I was like oh those bloody socks I forgot I asked about them and you know they had like a five for some cheap offers so my mom loves the bargain yeah so I was like okay that's right great but I am really late so I just grabbed five pairs of socks and then I rushed off to lunch and I was telling my friend and I was like and a couple of them I'm not sure I really liked and she was like oh I need some new socks can I see them so I get these five socks out and the two that she liked for the two I didn't like so even though I was late she also got socks and I got my socks absolutely perfect how weird is that I'm very intrigued by you know you're on the way to go to the lunch and your mums kind of interjecting and gone to go to james is whatever and you're like oh mom I've got

27:25on my way to lunch do you kind of have arguments my mom doesn't argue I argue with my dad my dad's past two you know I'll say should I do this thing my dad will be like no that's not a good idea and then I'll do it anyway and then he'll be like I did tell you in an ring so you know it's more like that something this is how kind of spirit works because they can see the future and a big picture and all this kind of stuff so who else in the on the guides team then so for a very long time I had a partner that died young many years ago 30 years ago and I found it very difficult to get over that loss how's it he's done he died of AIDS back in the early 90s and I wasn't able to really get my head around that he was of my life because I couldn't let go of him he was energetically connected to me in spirit even though he kind of wanted to move on really

28:27and then I held on to him so long my soul family like my mom my dad adopted him as part of their family because I wouldn't let him go it took me a long time to realize that actually he wasn't in my soul family some people come into our lives for a reason and then they go and you just have to let them go but I'd made him stay around for a long time and then more recently my nephew my nephew died in a rugby accident when he was 24 my brother's youngest son and we come from a military family my brother was in the military you know my dad was in the military so he grew up in this somewhat restrictive environment but there was always a kind of spiritual aspect to him and when he was dying because unfortunately he died of a bleed on the brain after a rugby accident and it took him two days to pass so I did go to the hospital while he was in a coma and I was

29:33able to connect him with him energetically and talk to him but the once he passed him to spirit he's become fascinated with my life and he just follows me everywhere now and just thinks it's really cool so he's become a rather impusiastic guide of mine which is sweet he's very much like that kind of energy of like fuck it just do it you know I'm like guess because he died at 24 he's like you have one life just do it don't be afraid of things when he was in the hospital and in a coma you know close to death did your family kind of ask you for any you know we did you do that if you're on back or with the days do they say look

30:34can you step in and do something at the time I didn't tell him because what was happening was there's a bit in between living and dying and he was in the in between so his soul hadn't left his body that didn't happen to laugh to his they switched the machines off but in that in between you can leave your body you can like astral project so he was in the room he could see his mom and dad crying in his brother crying in everybody so he was distressed to see the people he loved distressed and but at some point I sat and held his hand and that's another thing if I doesn't play a send it if I touch somebody I I connect into that energy field so it was while I was holding his hand that I was able to go into spirit and talk to him I'd kind of calm him

31:39down and explain what was going to happen because a lot of people fear death because they don't know what's going to happen but no I didn't it was about him it wasn't about his parents they were upset and I've already you know what I mean so they wouldn't have wanted to know that he was scared and distressed and that didn't like seeing them upset so but only a weird thing happened later on I wanted to talk to him because I could tell he was still around me and so I went to see another medium friend of mine because as much as I have the voices of spirit talking to me I also have my own voice in my head and my own voice can be influenced by my ego so sometimes it's hard to tell if it's the spirit talking or it's what I want them to say so for clarity I went to my

32:44medium friend and my nephew came true but he did this weird thing he told me a lot of stuff about my brother and his wife and his childhood and growing up and this kind of stuff but then he asked me not to tell my brother not to tell his dad to be fair a lot of the stuff that he told me was not flattering and I was like you know by and I'm not really close to my brother I got well with these kids but I'm not close to my brother for various reasons but then my medium friend I had met him through my brother's wife so she'd contacted him because she wanted to talk to her son but has someone come through for which is obviously very upsetting for her but then my this bloody medium guy idiot said oh I don't know why he hasn't come through a few he came through

33:45for me but so of course straight away they contacted me and they were like you know what did he say and I was like oh god you had to what did he do she had to make the lie they say you couldn't say anything or what did he do I just gave them a very very edited version of what he said really and I just told them the stuff that I thought would be palatable to them and there were things that he said you absolutely not you cannot tell my dad this so there was no way I was going to tell them those things but so that was strange so we got and the guides got we got mom, dad, nephew, grandparents, grandparents as well

34:48yeah usually our grandparents are our guides your grandmothers and mothers when they pass often they work with more kind of relationship kinds of things emotional kinds things or in my mom's case anything to do with vanity but my grandmothers they're terrible they are they were very feisty women in real life yeah you know we're going back a long long way now they must have been born in the late 18th century or whatever and they were both like real no nonsense kind of people but my grandmothers their main role as I understand that is if anyone pisses me off or wrongs me they go and do bad things to them oh what yeah yeah a bunch of heavies yeah heavies out there what kind of stuff they do so I I had an interview and there were two women doing it and one of the women just didn't like me and she was like really unnecessarily horrible to me in the interview which

35:55was quite upsetting and then when I saw my medium friend the blah blah mouth one he was laughing and I was like really just apparently my grandmother went and gave her very explosive diarrhea for a couple of days no for what she did yeah they're like the mafia my grandmothers were you always interested in death well I was never scared of dying because I understood that it was a transition back into spirit this is just one thing that we do and we reincarnate you get other options if you want to come back and do it again and we've probably done it you know now I've reincarnate thousands of times but the weird thing for me on the concept of death was when I was 10 years old my parents were very responsible parents and there was a swimming pool on the army

37:00base we were living on and it had been fenced off because it needed some repair work and my dad was a swimming teacher my sister was very good swimming me my dad didn't get on I couldn't swim but my parents let us climb under the fence and go into this swimming pool me my sister while they went shopping so I was 10 my sister was 14 and I was down in the shallow end my sister was doing all this swimming thing this was one of those old fashion pools that had the sloping side and it had a railing alongside on the inside of the pool so because I was bored I started with my feet on the slope started going up using the railing till I was at the deep end to get nearer to my sister and just at that point I could see my parents coming in the distance and I let go of the railings and wave to them okay yeah and I couldn't grab the railing again and I couldn't swim so I just thanked and because my sister was off swimming all of us she

38:04didn't realise but my parents had seen me go under so screaming at my sister at which time I was already at the bottom of the pool but the weirdest thing happened it some point this incredible calm just came over me and peace and then I went into the light it just went white and I had this incredible sensation of bliss absolute bliss it's just the most lovely feeling in the world it's just feeling credible and then the next thing I knew I was on the side of the pool and my lungs were on fire because my sister had got me from the bottom of the pool got me out the pool and giving me mouth to mouth for a cessation and I was furious that she brought me back because what I experienced on the other side was so amazing I didn't want to come back oh well you you wanted her to let you die yeah yeah I didn't want to come back

39:05are you happy that she saved your life now um still not it's the choice point you know no mean it's it's kind of like I've actually never saved it all I get after that probably not but the the thing for me was it was a it was a weird kind of dilemma because I mean I had a very difficult childhood it's lots of people who come here who are older souls have many lives we choose difficult lives because we're gathering information so we come here to learn about human emotions and human struggles so fear and pain and all this kind of stuff so I was having a difficult childhood and it was like I could have just got off the roundabout and gone back to spirit and gone back to this lovely feeling of bliss because spirit don't have emotions they're just in perpetual bliss and my life continued to be difficult so there was always this part of me that was like you know you could just go back you could just you know jump shape just give it up but we come here for a reason and also I very much understood

40:16probably falsely at the time that if you come here with a mission and you don't complete your mission then you just have to come back and do it again and start at the beginning and I was kind of like oh well you've kind of come this far you may as well keep going how long do you want to live for well I will I will live to my mid 80s oh you know really yeah which was never my plan I've been just who's told you this other mediums and my life is unanimous yeah I even had my palmistry done same thing mid 80s solid do you know how you're going to die um no in a blaze of glory I hope so we I mean our human ego and what actually spirit wants to do two different things so I don't know if I had a choice over dying I know how I want to die so I was recently in the Algarve and I was stood on this cliff and there was like a

41:25sheer drop of like a couple hundred feet onto these rocks and there's like crashing waves and everything you know I was like that's how I'd like to go I just like to launch myself off the cliff hit the rocks and be washed off into the sea for all the sea animals to eat me you might use it my body so I mean if I'm in the Algarve in 25 years time and I see 85 row looking go hurling yourself off a cliff it's me I mean you obviously must accept that like some people hear you talk and they just don't get it you know they just don't tune in with it at all it's the story of my life I remember is that I was a little left I thought I was weird so what is the kind of typical backlash you receive I mean people a lot of people just don't believe it and it's kind of like what you want me to do I know what I can see do you make what I was a bit confused about is your is your income based on your psychic abilities no because that's what I mean

42:30that's what I never wanted that kind of gives you more credit I suppose as in like I mean the obvious thing is to say like you know if you're if you're fusing it with the financial gain yeah then you it's harder to trust I suppose from afar and that's what spirit wanted me to do with my mediumship all those years ago and I was I was I don't want to do that so in your normal you said you're psychotherapist yeah so you're telling me that like you rock up with these clients and you just don't use anything of what you have occasionally if it's appropriate it'll come through but otherwise you're just listening to your talk so it's all part of a system so all my clients come to me by referrals and they think they come by human referrals but they actually come by spur referrals so it's often my grandparents that will talk to someone else's grandparents and they'll be like oh you know my grandsons struggling and they'll be like oh you should send him to our grandson he'll help him and so there's always a spiritual connection when people arrive

43:33anyway yeah and sometimes it's obvious from the beginning and sometimes it's not but it's it's serendipitous people meet me because they need to meet me and I think for me the thing about like the talking therapy I mean I'm not your traditional psychotherapist but the talking therapist is the if your friend said oh I'm I'm struggling and you said well go and talk to a medium they'd be like and I'm not going to do that that's bullshit but if you say go and talk to a therapist never die you know that people do that that seems like a normal thing to do so people come and talk to me thinking they're talking to a therapist they are talking to a therapist but it will eventually once they build trust and I eventually bring them round to yeah and there's a spiritual aspect to this you see I see okay because it's kind of on my website as well that I do the shamanism and the iOS scary and stuff and I've had a couple of

44:34people come to me and they'd be like I just want therapy I don't want any of that kind of yeah focus focus bullshit I believe in any of that and invariably they end up being the people who become very spiritual but because it's the unknown it seems a bit scary you you mentioned as a kid being weighed and people look you and not understand and who was the first person that understood you not long after the Ouija board thing where I was really kind of freaked out a new nurse started at the medical center at the school and straight away there was a kind of energetic connection between me and her and she felt it too

45:39and when she was staying overnight in the medical center you know overnight duty I would sneak out of my dormitory and I'd go round and she'd let me in the window and we sit talking and she was somebody that described herself as a witch she was a full-on witch and that actually like recognising someone else I'm like my god yeah it's not just me and I also met a husband and a kid and everything she was just honestly she is the coolest person I've ever met in my life to this day she was incredible there were a huge figure in her life yeah yeah absolutely without her what do you think would have happened the universe would have put someone in my path it just happened to be her what became of her so let me read stories so then they got a new matron and she didn't like how close I was within her so I ended up volunteering in the medical center to be close to the nurse yes so one day the matron

46:43called me into office and was questioning me about my relationship with the nurse you know they thought there was something inappropriate going on between us you know 15-year-old boy in a married young nurse she was in the 30s but I met a husband and a kid and that was not it and I was gay anyway but the matron she said I couldn't work at the medical center anymore and I was allowed to see the nurse and I went ballistic and cavities are regressive I said to her I hate you and I wish you were dead there's only me and her in the room and similarly the nurse was proper pissed off and then they got rid of her three months later the matron found her she had breast cancer and six months later she died and I felt so bad

47:48because it in my anger I'd cursed her and the nurse had too so I felt so guilty and I never told anybody and years and years later my single and I was in my late 20s when I first met this medium through my brother's wife he said well I've got a message here and he was like well she was your matron at school and I was like the color draped my nose and I said oh my god and he said you had this argument with her and you told her you wish she was dead then she died and you've been pretty guilty about it ever since and I was just like how the fuck do you know that I never ever told anyone that in my life and I wouldn't tell anyone that in my life and he was I wish he's here to just tell you it wasn't your fault you didn't kill her let it go you don't

48:52have to kill guilty anymore you know I mean but also that goes back to this thing about good mediums will give you information that's irrefutable there was no way he could ever no one else knew that other than the dead matron you know when people say to me oh I don't believe in it it's like well what can I say I have so much personal evidence from both from what I see and what other people see yeah it's just the thing it's like to you if you believe in it and not you know I mean you have to ask have you seen anything since we're talking no good good but it but it I mean it is interesting you know I believe everything happens for a reason and you know I said I wanted to sit on the sunny bench and we've just had an amazing sunny day all day sat on this bench of all the benches and and talking these things through have

49:53allowed me to remind myself and to connect with things that were probably at the back of my mind so that's been a gift for me but also I think you know you were saying about how do people react to this kind of stuff and in the context of your podcast some people listen to it and they might go well that's the part of the ship person's crazy or someone might listen to it and say oh that makes a lot of sense to me hmm maybe I'll go and see medium or maybe I'm a medium and maybe that's that one person that needed to hear that I like that thought hmm I suppose that's what it's about you know exactly there's a million different approaches and ways of living life there's many different abilities yeah they are going to people that don't understand you they're going to be people that do and that's life isn't it and also saying with a religion you're not believing and we've got yeah there's always something that you can you can tap into and extract from that which is which could be of worth I mean however you're doing if you're trying to find purpose and

50:58you're trying to explore as much as you can like why we're here what we're doing where you're supposed to be all this kind of stuff yeah yeah this thing didn't there isn't there there's lots to that that's why that's why that's why it's important to to meet different people all over the place yeah thank you for sharing everything before the last question there's always a last question yeah what I do is get with the closer eyes and then to go back to this is if we can let's keep this as a earthly memory yeah could be a room it could be a space it could be an open space it could be outside could be and so whatever and I want you to kind of take us back then describe what you could see and what you could feel could you do that yeah so where I went as you were talking was back to when I was about 10 or 11 I grew up in North Germany next to a big forest region and my father used to drive me and drop me off in the forest car park and then I would

52:05just wander off into the forest on my own meet my father back in the car park at lunchtime and I can remember the sunshine coming through the leaves of the trees you know they were big kind of pine trees and I'm just seeing deer and rabbits and they even had eagles there as well and I was so deep in the forest it felt like there were no other humans it was just me and nature and we were all one and I felt such peace and oddly freedom it was almost like a escape from the human world and even as I remembering this now you know I can feel the sun on my face I didn't feel that peace again until I went to the Amazon jungle to do my

53:08shamanic I was scary and training as part of my training that I would be left in the jungle for a long period of time's up my arm and I felt that same peace and oneness with nature love the answer look at that sun it's beautiful isn't it we've been lucky you see I'm I don't even say that's a gift shining down on us for doing this it's also indipitous of all the people you could have talked to in the park you caught me just as I was leaving and I just happened to have the afternoon off I'm working later and also I'm supposed to be clearing my cupboards out and I really didn't want to do that um fantastic well thank you so much talk to me it's been enlightening thanks for listening uh last question for you as you we kind of just answered it in a way and what are you going to do next I suppose it's cupboards no this was my

54:11get out of cupboard three yeah it's good point the cupboards can wait get out of cupboard three cups anyway so now that the sun's properly out I'm probably gonna stay here until I have to go to work fantastic and the cupboards can wait the cupboards can wait rainy day because there's bound to be one of them at some point to you right thank you very much you're welcome to the home rest store but spirit don't feel pain in the spirit speaks in my grandma's voice spirit moves in mysterious ways spirit comes to me spirit feels my body

55:15spirit moves I'll be all right I do not feel the other side the other side everything was based in a bright white light I felt the weight around my chest not just like to believe I felt her coming through I felt her coming through oh spirit comes to me spirit feels my body spirit no I'll be all right I do not feel the other side

56:30everything was based in a bright white light in a bright white light you