From Spirit With Love – Part 3
Extract 3 – A Little Bit Of Spirit Magic
My brother and I stored our toys in an old ottoman that was frequently upturned, emptied, and then used as a boat or a car. I thought one day that it would be great fun to put my brother inside it and make him disappear, just as we had seen on a magic show with Paul Daniels. He didn’t seem too keen to play but I managed to persuade him and he climbed in as I sat on the lid so that he could not escape.
‘Are you ready?’ I called through the wooden padded top.
‘Yep!’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Get on with it’ came the muffled reply. I struck the top three times with my plastic wand as I invented a spell and waited.
Silence hung in the room as I climbed down gingerly and I opened the lid. To my great disappointment my brother was grinning back at me.
With this going on, Mr O’Neill the man who lived next door had let himself into our kitchen. He was a large man with wiry black hair and I remember him having an enormous laugh. Having been considered locally as a bit of a rogue he never seemed to notice that in some places he just wasn’t welcome.
My brother and I watched him in fascination one day as he crept in through the back door of our house and before my mother could protest he had seized her and waltzed her around the kitchen.
On this occasion as he couldn’t see my mother about anywhere, Mr O’Neill strolled into the front room to see what we were doing.
‘I’m trying to make my brother disappear but he won’t go’ I sulked.
‘Let me try?’ Mr O’Neill offered.
I nodded happily and shut the lid again. Mr O’Neill bent forward and without any effort, scooped up the whole box with my brother in it. There was no sound as this huge man shook it three times and held it out before me, instructing me to open the lid.
I did I was told not knowing what to expect and to my amazement the box was completely empty.
‘Where has he gone?’ I gasped. Mr O’Neill smiled broadly ‘Put your hands in if you like’
I did this and realised that my brother was not in there at all and I began to feel rather worried.
‘Will you be able to bring him back?’ Mr O’Neill smiled again ‘Close the lid then’
After doing this he shook the box again and set it down on the floor.
The lid opened and my brother sat up, rubbing his eyes in the light. I remember being without words and my brother had missed all the action! I don’t know where my brother went to on that day and we never really spoke about it afterwards but there was one thing for sure, my mother may not have taken to him but to me, Mr O’Neill was amazing.
My family thought I had imagined all of this but I have never forgotten the experience and although I did not think it was possible for this to happen, I remember very clearly what I saw that day. It was only recently that I discovered there have been reports of this type of phenomena for many years. Knowing this I can truly accept what I saw actually happened as missing pieces of a large puzzle in my life were beginning to come together.
Children As Mediums
Children can make the most wonderful mediums. Their natural ability to accept what they are show without their minds interfering creates the ideal environment for the Spirit World to communicate.
There are people who think that children should not have contact with Spirit should they become frightened or worse still, possessed.
However babies often react happily to seemingly empty spaces and I have heard people say that their young children have described relatives or animals that they have seen but never known. Only as children grow older and conditioning sets in can this change.
We all come from the Spirit World and return to it when we depart from this life. Before our arrival here we have been living with our loved ones on the other side of life so why should they not live as part of our lives now? Spirit people in their world are often thought of as separate from us and they are not. We are all the same family with the difference that we have a physical body to transport our Spirit around here on earth. Children are no exception to this Universal law.
Thinking of ourselves as different from Spirit is the same as thinking we are a different life form to our parents and should be kept away from them. It is usually a lack of understanding or fear that causes parents to worry when their son or daughter begins talking to what appears not to be there. Imaginary friends are not usually imaginary, and often the child is quite happy to talk to whoever they can see or sense. Having said that, through my lack of understanding and, although my parents are quite open to the subject, I spent many years being terrified of the presence of Spirit. How little I knew!
Humphrey
As a child I had an animal who was my childhood companion. He was a little like a small brown bear and I named him Humphrey. I became aware of him in the early 70s when I was 10 years old and he followed me closely where ever I went, even to school. I had to be careful not to talk to him in the company of others, believing of course that no one else could see him. I feel sure that my parents went along with it in the hope that I would grow out of the phase they thought I was going through and I suppose I treated him as an imaginary friend. That is until one day in June 1973 when our class went on a day trip to Matlock in Derbyshire.
There was only one seat left on the school coach and it was next to me. My travelling partner had been taken ill and another girl was looking for a place to sit.
‘Do you mind?’ She asked, gesturing to the seat beside me. I said that I did not and to be honest I was glad of the company. She down gingerly on the edge of the seat.
‘It’s okay’ I told her ‘I don’t bite’
I know she replied looking timidly down at the empty space between us ‘But your friend might….’
As the years passed I came to realise that animals also have a Spirit so reflection I think that Humphrey was the name I gave to a Spirit bear.
Because my parents accepted my link with the Spirit World it was made easier for me to live alongside it without ridicule or approach from them. Although I have said that my father was quite psychic, so is my mother and they have that acceptance even if they did not fully understand what it was
A Spiritual Connection
My mother and I were rather good with telepathy over the years, especially between the two of us.
I do remember my teacher reminding the class at the end of the day not to forget cookery ingredients for the following days’ lesson. My heart sank because I had forgotten to ask my mother to buy a tin of pineapple which was on the ingredients list. In those days the small village in which we lived had only one shop and that was already closed for the afternoon. I was very worried about what I would do as I never liked to be in trouble.
When I arrived home however, my mother had felt inspired to buy a tin of pineapple while shopping that morning, something that she would not usually buy.
There were many episodes like this and as life moved on and I came into my teens, the connection with ‘upstairs’ went unexpectedly quite overnight. I thought that perhaps this was the end of something that I had never understood but had come to know as an old friend and I missed those moments that un-nerved and yet amazed me. Little did I know then that this was about to change again.
Next time – Someone Is Listening!
Donna Stewart Copyright 2018
Loved this extract Donna….
Question though. Does your brother recall that episode of disappearing from the box when Mr. O’Neil shook it?? Xx
Hi Caroline, so pleased you enjoyed it and thanks for reading. My brother and I spoke briefly about the episode some years later. He remembered the circumstances but not what actually happened. This would make sense as he was in a darkened box and the process only took a few moments. He was disorientated when he came out of the box which could also have been his eyes adjusting to the light. I think the experience was for me to witness,
Hope you continue to enjoy!
Donna Xx
My maternal grandmother, saw and heard spirit, my mum was the same,
I used to play in grandmother’s back garden with my brother,
There was a railway track behind the garden,
We played with spirit children, even though I was young I asked them did their parents know they were there, they said yes, pointing to the railway track,
My mum used to feed children, but not these two, she saw them,
A boy for my brother a girl for me,
We played a Indian dance round the washing line pole,
My brother reminded me what happened,
Spirit changed the pole to a miniature totem pole.
Hi Christine,
Thank you for this lovely recollection of Spirit memories. There must be so many people with stories to tell of growing up with Spirit and the amazing things they do, perhaps sometimes without realising what it was!
Donna Xx