How I foresaw my grandfather’s death
One of the world’s top psychics on the moment, aged 11, when she realised she possessed a spine-tingling gift
SHE’S an English teacher whose paranormal powers, which science can’t explain, have made her one of the world’s top psychics. Now, in an intriguing new book, she is telling her life story. On Saturday, in our first extract, she revealed how she can contact the dead to bring comfort to the bereaved. Today, she tells how she first realised she was different.
As AN English teacher at a busy high school, my life is much like any other working mother’s. Except I have special gifts — ones that even I struggle to understand or rationalise.
As a clairvoyant, I have long been able to gather information about people and events through means other than my five senses. I’m also clairaudient, which means I can perceive sounds through means other than my ears, and clairsentient — able to feel things through non-human means.
When I sit down at a table in a restaurant, for instance, I feel the distinct energy of the people who were there before me, as if they’ve left dozens of bristling energy fingerprints. And if that energy strikes me in a negative way, I’ll politely ask to sit somewhere else — which doesn’t always thrill my family.
My greatest gift, though, is being able to connect with people who have passed away and are now on what I call the Other side.
How do they know where to find me? All I can say is: they just know.
What I’ve learned is that each of us is tied to all those we’ve ever loved by cords of light that can never be broken. Think of them like a fishing line of love. If you tug on one end, the other end feels it.
And those on the Other side are always on the lookout for openings between the worlds. They locate the portal they need — and sometimes that is me.
so how did I get to be this way? I don’t know. But I’ve known since the age of 11 that I wasn’t ‘normal’.
It all started on a beautiful summer day as my mother prepared to drive off to see my grandparents. she’d arranged to leave me behind with my brother and we were splashing around in our swimming pool.
But all of a sudden I felt something deep in my bones. It was inexplicable, ice- cold panic. I screamed: ‘ Wait! I have to come with you!’
My mother laughed, telling me to stay and enjoy myself. But I knew I had to go.
I spent the next few hours with my grandfather, laughing and singing and telling jokes. It would be the last time I saw him alive.
Three weeks later he was dead — and the instant I was told, I understood why I’d been in such a panic. I’d known he was going to die.
And that made me feel horribly guilty, as if I were somehow complicit. It was only years later that I understood: what I’d sensed that day was the beginning of the voyage of my grandfather’s soul.
Even before he died, I’d been a strange little child. One day, when I was six, I was waiting at the supermarket checkout with my mother when I was suddenly overcome by emotion.
It was as if I were standing on a beach and a great big wave of emotion had smashed into me — that’s how powerful and unsettling it was.
The cashier who was totting up our groceries just looked bored. Even so, I knew that I was absorbing some extreme sadness within her. I had no way of shutting it off.
All through my childhood and teens, I had experiences like that. sometimes I’d walk by a stranger on the street and be hit by a charge of anger or anxiety. Other times, I’d absorb the emotions of classmates.
This meant that I could go from extreme happiness to dire depression, depending on whom I was near. These mood swings often overwhelmed me. Was I just weird? Or was something else at work?
Then I started playing football and, despite being undersized, became very good at it — not least because I could ‘read’ the energy of players on the opposing team. Was I cheating? sometimes it felt that way, but there was nothing I could do about it.
WHEN I went to university, where I was near dozens of people every day, my receptivity intensified. Every time I passed a student, I’d feel blasted by whatever they were feeling. I felt like a giant human tuning fork.
One particular friend was a boy called John Moncello. One day, as I took a catnap, I had a vivid dream in which I saw a group of our friends carrying his coffin. I woke in a panic at noon and spent the rest of the day praying my phone wouldn’t ring.
At 8pm that night, a friend called to say John had fallen from a fire escape. He had died at noon.
I felt cursed. The source of my abilities had to be evil. so I vowed to turn my back on this so-called gift.
I tried to be a typical fresher. I went to parties, studied hard, dated some boys. Finally, a friend who knew
about my problems suggested I make an appointment to see a psychic called Litany Burns.
A week later, I arrived at her office. Litany was in her 30s and had a radiant energy that made me feel instantly at ease.
‘Well, I see you are one of us,’ she said. She was matter-of-fact, like a school nurse telling a child she has a fever. I told her I felt like a freak, but she assured me I would learn to use my abilities.
‘Do not feel cursed or ashamed. Your gift is beautiful,’ she said.
And with those words, Litany began to make sense of my life. I finally felt someone understood me. After that, I resolved not to let my psychic abilities define me; t hey were j ust something I could do, like speaking French or playing football.
Life went on: I did a Master’s degree in English and started teaching. And then one day, on a whim, I took out an ad in a local freesheet that said: ‘Psychic readings — call Laura.’
One of the people who responded was a young man named Paul. Before he could tell me anything, I started talking about his girlfriend, Amy. But then I felt a presence somewhere behind me and to my right, as though a new portal had opened. And I heard a name.
What was happening? I didn’t know: I just kept talking.
‘ I’m getting someone named Chris connected to Amy,’ I told Paul. The flood of details Chris gave me was astonishing: everything from Amy’s shoe size to her favourite hat.
After a while, I stopped. ‘Paul, I’m really sorry,’ I said. ‘I don’t know why your reading is all about Amy and Chris.’
But Paul didn’t seem offended. ‘It’s OK,’ he said. ‘Everything you’re telling me is accurate. Chris is dead — he died in a car crash when he was dating Amy. She was with him in the car when it crashed.’
I felt a chill. Was I really hearing from a dead person as clearly as if he were right there in my flat? All the old, negative feelings about my gift flooded back. Looking back, I can see Chris was trying to give Paul his blessing. But at the time I was frightened.
And even more so a few days later, at 8pm on July 17, 1996, when my body suddenly tensed.
This wasn’t like the waves of sadness that sometimes washed over me when I was near sad people — this was a deep, existential feeling of horror and chaos and disruption, as if the world were ending. I knew something terrible had occurred.
Later, I turned on the TV and a news bulletin flashed on the screen: a Boeing 747 had just crashed in New Jersey, 40 miles from where I lived, killing all 230 people on board. That event wiped out all the progress I’d been making in coming to terms with my abilities. I vowed never to do a reading again.
Some time later I met Garrett on a blind date. We married and I was soon pregnant.
To my surprise, the birth of my daughter opened a portal of light between the world she came from and this world. The Other Side rushed through with even greater intensity — and I knew I had to start doing readings again.
DurING one with a middle- aged woman named Joann, I was puzzled when her father appeared to me with a kitten at his feet. ‘Joann, this may sound odd, but your dad’s telling me it’s important that you know the kitten is OK,’ I said.
She paused. ‘I’ve never spoken to anyone about this, but I’ll tell you,’ she said.
When Joann was a little girl, she’d heard someone say that cats always land on their feet. Convinced this was true, she’d dropped the family kitten out of a fifth-floor window.
For the next 50 years, Joann harboured a deep guilt for killing it — but now her father was telling her to forgive her younger self.
Just another stunning example of the way voices from the Other Side can bring comfort to the living.
ADAPTED from The Light Between Us: Lessons From Heaven by Laura Lynne Jackson, published by Century on October 29 at £14.99. © Laura Lynne Jackson 2015. To order a copy, visit www.mailbookshop.co.uk or call 0808 272 0808.