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Introduction: The Voice of an Angel

The guardian angels of life sometimes fly so high as to be beyond our sight, but they are always looking down upon us.

Jean Pavl Richter

I have always believed in the afterlife. I believe that loved ones watch over us from the other side and that guardian angels, or spiritual guides, walk with us through the journey of our life. I also believe that guardian angels can manifest themselves in countless miraculous ways. They may appear as a bird, a feather, a child, a puff of air, a gentle touch, a song on the radio, a coincidence, a dream, a mysterious scent, a flash of insight, or in other people who are consciously or unconsciously guided by those from a spiritual dimension.

My earliest recollection of forming an intense connection with the afterlife began at the age of four or five when my great aunt Rose told me to always save part of my seat for my guardian angel. It makes me smile even now as I remember shuffling forward in my seat to make room for an invisible guest without hesitation or doubt.

In the years that followed – although I did eventually stop shuffling forward every time I sat down – I never lost my belief that an angel was always at my shoulder. My family was constantly on the move and I never got opportunities to build lasting friendships at the various schools I attended, but I never felt lonely. Why should I be? My angels were constantly with me.

Looking back it’s no surprise that great aunt Rose’s words made a lasting impression on me. Although she died just before my tenth birthday, I remember her vividly as an independent and impressive lady with a twinkle in her brilliantly blue eyes. Growing up at the turn of the century, Rose’s decision to devote her life to the work of a professional medium raised many an eyebrow among her peers – even though spiritualism was all the rage at the time. It was common place for séances to be held in church halls and private homes and Rose’s mediumistic skills were much in demand. During both World Wars she was a source of hope, comfort and healing to those who lost loved ones.

I had the privilege to watch my great aunt in action on just one occasion when she agreed to give a rare public demonstration. I was very young at the time, and most of the details of what transpired at this gathering have faded from my memory, but I do recall how electric the atmosphere was.

One of my remaining memories from the demonstration is that of Rose telling a recently bereaved widower in the audience that the spirit of his wife was standing right behind him with her hand on his left shoulder. The man shook his head in disbelief. Rose told him that his wife had always wanted to hold hands in public but he had never let her and it would be healing for both of them to hold hands now. The man nodded in surprised agreement and admitted that holding hands in public had never been his style during their 20-year marriage. Encouraged by Rose he gently raised his left hand to his left shoulder and caressed invisible fingers. I remember looking at him and wondering, as only a child can, how it was possible to have tears in your eyes and a smile on your face at the same time.

Rose wasn’t the only medium in my family. My grandmother, mother and brother were all born with the gift. My grandmother could not only see spirits but she also had the uncanny ability to know exactly what people were thinking and feeling; a gift inherited by my mother who earned her living as a psychic counsellor and my brother who also worked in the field.

Obviously, talk of sensing, feeling and communicating with spirits was commonplace in a family like mine. There were, of course, embarrassing moments – like when my mother told my first boyfriend to stop seeing my best friend behind my back because the spirits were watching (she was right, as mothers usually are) – but there were also magical moments – like the time my brother told our neighbours exactly where their missing and much loved dog was.

When you consider that I was born into a family of psychics, my unshakeable conviction that there is an afterlife isn’t surprising. However, it is surprising when you consider that until my mid-thirties I never actually received any personal evidence of the existence of angels or spirits.

I didn’t levitate in my cot or see dead people in the school playground. At college I couldn’t read my tutor’s mind and later in life I often couldn’t tell the difference between intuition and fear. I couldn’t talk to angels or sense when spirits were present and my dreams, although surreal and colourful, were never precognitive or particularly illuminating. In fact, I was completely normal – if there is such a thing as normal. I had a wealth of anecdotal evidence from people I loved and trusted but I had certainly not inherited the gift. In fact, I was often gently teased by family and friends for my inability to make contact; my brother had great fun calling me ‘square head’.

Despite the light-hearted teasing I never felt jealous or anxious that I couldn’t sense, hear or see the spirits and angels like the rest of my family. In my mind I simply accepted that encountering an angel is extremely rare and that even though the angels weren’t connecting, speaking or appearing to me they were still watching and guiding me. And if truth were told I was secretly relieved they didn’t reveal themselves directly to me as I openly admitted to moments of fear. Like many people who share an interest in the spiritual side of life, I didn’t actually need or want proof that angels and spirits exist, or even think proof was necessary. I was content to observe and believe in the psychic world that held me spellbound rather than experience it first hand.

Little did I know that, at the age of 33, all this would change!

Take the Right Path

About ten years ago, when I was living and working as a journalist in Dallas, Texas, I had a vivid dream. In this dream my mother was calling my name and telling me – just like she always used to do whenever I felt anxious or afraid – to follow my intuition as it would lead me to the right path in life. When I woke up I lingered in bed longer than usual reliving the dream in my mind’s eye. My mother had passed away a decade previously and I missed her wisdom and warmth greatly. She had always told me to follow my heart and I silently promised her that even though I was working in journalism now I wouldn’t give up on my dream of establishing myself as a writer of books.

That afternoon a radio interview was scheduled for me to talk about a series of articles I was writing for the local newspaper about ordinary people whose lives had been touched by the extraordinary. I was running late and as I leapt into the car to drive to the studio I soon realized that if I was to get there on time I would need to put my foot down. All was going well on the roads until I got stuck behind two massive trucks travelling at what seemed like 30 miles an hour. They were probably going much faster than that but when you are in a hurry every vehicle in front seems slow. I tried to overtake but couldn’t get a clear view of the oncoming traffic so had to settle for a frustratingly slow crawl.

Finally, we reached a junction and I had a clear choice. I could turn left and follow the trucks along a shorter route and reach the studio in the nick of time or I could turn right, free myself from the trucks and take a longer route and possibly end up a few minutes late. I was just about to turn left and chug slowly along behind the trucks in front until I reached my destination when out of nowhere my dream flashed into my mind’s eye. Once again I saw my mother calling my name and gently telling me to take the right path. Without hesitation, and not really understanding why, I turned right and predictably turned up at the studio late. I missed my radio interview. The network didn’t have another slot to schedule me in.

As I drove back that day I felt frustrated and angry at a missed opportunity and time wasted. I got even more irritated when the traffic slowed to a crawl and then a halt. My irritation soon turned to horror when I gradually edged closer to the scene of what was clearly a terrible accident. Close to the junction where I had turned right the truck I had been following had clearly swerved off the road. Three or more cars – it was hard to tell in the chaos – had smashed into the truck and each other. The car immediately behind it – which would have been my car – was a mangled wreck and the two cars behind that also looked like smashed and battered.

Later that evening, I turned on the television to hear the local news. Images of the accident flashed onto the screen. A stray dog had run into the road in between the first and second truck. The second truck driver had slammed on the brakes and caused a pile up. Although the lorry driver and the dog were unharmed there were two passengers in the car immediately behind, a recently married couple called Jane and Harry, and one in the car behind that, a retired postal worker called Sam. All three had died on impact.

By telling me to take the right path, the voice of my mother had saved my life that day. I had not expected to ever find proof of an afterlife, but I had been given it all the same through a dream and a sudden flash of intuition. But instead of feeling elated by my experience, nothing seemed to make sense to me at all. All I could think was, ‘Why should I be alive and not those poor people?’

Emotionally drained, I fell into bed that night to wake in the small hours of the morning from a restless sleep. My pillow was on the floor and the sheets and bedcovers had been pulled off the edge of the bed. ‘What did it all mean?’ I prayed. So many emotions clashed inside of me – the gratitude for living, the pain of hearing that people had died and the guilt of still being alive when they weren’t. Why did they have to die? Why wasn’t it me instead? Where were these people now? Were they all right? Still pleading for answers I fell back to sleep.

It was a voice that woke me. I heard a voice, a whisper really, calling my name. At first I thought it was my mother’s voice. I sat up and looked around my bedroom but no one was there. Then I heard the voice again. ‘Don’t feel afraid. My name is Jane and I am all right. Everything is all right for us and everything will be all right for you too.’

And that was it. The voice was gone. I only heard it for a few seconds but it was just long enough to affect the rest of my life. A feeling of peace and comfort came over me, a feeling I had not known before like a warm, soft and luxurious blanket wrapped all around my body.

I pinched myself and it hurt. I was awake. I had heard the voice. This was real. I got up and turned the light on and the feeling of peace, the comfort of knowing everything would be all right continued to envelop me. My prayer had been answered. I still didn’t know why my life had been miraculously spared on the day before but I did know that Jane and the other two people who died were okay. And I felt a new resolve to live a life that would make those who died instead of me in that terrible accident proud.

Simply Believing

Just as angels can appear in various guises, everyone connects with them in their own unique way. Some people are blessed with the rare ability to see or hear angels, or the spirits of those who have passed on, but it is more common to smell an essence, hear a familiar sound or simply sense a shift in energy or feeling. More common still – and my experience seven years ago may fall in this category – are revealing dreams, meaningful coincidences, subtle signs, flashes of insight and those little whispers, voices, inspirations and understandings we hear that encourage, comfort, guide or support us through life.

It is difficult to prove to someone the existence of angels since most of us can’t touch or even see them, but this lack of proof only seems to be a problem to those who don’t believe. To those who do believe there is no need to prove something they already know with absolute certainty.

Angels can occasionally appear uninvited in times of grief and danger to both believers and non-believers, but more often than not we need to let our angels know we are open to their help before they speak to us. Simply believing in them is really all that it takes to invoke the love and guidance of angels into our hearts and our lives. Our belief lets them know we want their guidance and we want them to be a part of our lives. Our belief is what lifts the veil between this life and the next.

Save a Seat for Your Angel

In this book I want to share with you just some of the thousands of compelling true stories I have collected from people whose lives have been touched and transformed by angels over the 25 years I have been researching and writing features, books and encyclopaedias about spirits, ghosts, dreams and the psychic world. The stories range from the inspirational to the comforting to the spine tingling, but despite varying widely in content they all have one thing in common: they are all real-life stories based in fact not fantasy.

I’d like to begin our psychic journey together, though, with some more of my own experiences. I hope that understanding a little more about me and what I have experienced and continue to experience every day will help you get to know me a little better.

I’m a 40-something married mum of two children; my son is ten and my daughter is eight. Although astonishing things have happened in my life – and I hope they will continue to happen as nothing fascinates or delights me more – I’m not a psychic, a medium or a spiritual guru. I do believe, however, that we are all born psychic in one way or other and there are times in our lives when we can tap into this. Many unusual things that I have experienced have been tied up with my work as a paranormal writer, which has encouraged me to reach out and explore the world of spirit, but other things have simply ‘happened’. By sharing my personal psychic journey with you in the first chapter I hope you’ll see that anyone, whatever their age or background, can hear the voice of an angel.

The rest of the book explores some of the incredible ‘angel stories’ I’ve encountered over the years. I’m extremely grateful to all those people who allowed me to interview them and gave me permission to share their experiences and their integrity. A few sent in their own versions of their experiences but in most cases I have written up their stories from what I was told or sent. Everyone who contributed touched me deeply with their truth and honesty.

Many of the people I spoke to were extremely relieved to tell their stories, sometimes for the first time. They wanted them included to show others that angels are always with us, even if we can’t see them. Although names, dates and personal details have been changed at the request of those who wished it, the true accounts from ordinary people show just some of the many different ways those who pass on can reach back into our world. At the end of the day they are all heavenly stories that bring simple messages of support, hope, reassurance and love through angelic encounters and angelic words that transform this life and offer tantalizing glimpses of the next.

As momentarily unsettling as encounters with spirits and angels can be, especially to those who were previously unaware or unconvinced of their existence, I can assure you that the more I’ve learned and continue to learn about the world of spirit, the more comforting, wonderful and fascinating they become – and you will find that the same is true for you.

So save a seat for your angel and prepare to be inspired and astounded – as I never fail to be – by the true stories of people leading outwardly normal lives, but who have been comforted, inspired and transformed by the voice of an angel. Working on this book has opened my eyes to new paths and possibilities and given me a renewed connection to the realm of spirit. It is my sincere wish that reading it will serve as a catalyst for your own belief by proving to you that miracles can happen and that even ordinary people, like you and me, can wake up one day and hear an angel call their name.

May angels rest beside your door,

May you hear their voices sing.

May you feel their loving care for you,

May you hear their peace bells ring.

May angels always care for you,

And not let you trip and fall.

May they bear you up on angel’s wings,

May they keep you standing tall.

May they whisper wisdom in your ear,

May they touch you when you need,

May they remove from you each trace of fear,

May they keep you from feeling greed.

May they fill you with their presence,

May they show you love untold,

May they always stand beside you

And make you ever bold.

May they teach you what you need to know

About life here and here-after.

May they fill you always with their love

And give you the gift of laughter.

Anon

An Angel called my name