By Samantha Brick

NOT long into Matt Haig’s best-selling novel, The Midnight Library, heroine Nora Seed finds herself in a supernatural library, surrounded by endless shelves of books. Each tome represents a different path she might have taken. Within their eerie pages lie all the infinite variations on the life she is currently leading, with every possible twist and turn and different decision she could ever have made branching out into countless alternative existences . . .

It’s a brilliant conceit and makes for a creative novel. But what if I told you some people believe a similar ‘library’ really exists?

Welcome to the unusual world of the Akashic Records — a compendium, say believers, of all universal events, thoughts, words and emotions ever to have occurred in the past, present and indeed future of all life on earth.

Not that they’re actual books of course. These records, we’re told, exist on a non-physical plane of existence, and can be accessed by guides with psychic abilities (perhaps a little like Matt Haig’s enigmatic librarian, who guides Nora through all the other versions of her life).

Jennifer Longmore is one such guide, and with all things woo woo increasing hugely in popularity since the beginning of the pandemic, her services have been much in demand in recent months. Year on year, sales of her books and ‘readings’ have more than doubled as women turn to the idea of messages from alternative lives as an unconventional form of therapy.

‘Some envision the Akashic Records as an endless filing cabinet of information,’ she says. ‘Others view it as an online database. According to the records themselves, they exist in another higher dimension, referred to as the Akasha, which means ‘sky’ in Sanskrit.’

Renewed enthusiasm for the records — Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop website showcases several other guides or ‘readers’ — comes 140 years after the concept first gained currency within Victorian spiritualist circles, among whose number were the author and mystic Madame Blavatsky and the educationalist, and self-proclaimed clairvoyant, Rudolf Steiner.

Having been taught how to use her ‘psychic gift’ by her grandfather, who worked as a medium with the police, Jennifer now reads people’s individual Akashic files via guided meditation. She says they enable her to identify a person’s ‘soul purpose’, help them learn useful lessons from their previous existences, and live their best life in the present.

Here, four devotees reveal why they’ve turned to the world of Akasha, and why the past lives they say they’ve uncovered — from Egyptian slave to English witch — are helping them radically change their lives today . . .

I USED TO OWN SHIPS — I COULD EVEN TASTE THE TANG OF SEA

Business coach and former merchandising manager Marina Beech, 50, is married with two sons and lives in Crewe, Cheshire. I fIRST heard about the Akashic

Records while in a facebook group over four years ago. A guide was doing a demonstration of how it worked and asked for some questions which she would follow up on during the facebook live chat.

I gave her my name, date and place of birth and asked the question ‘what is my master programme?’ This is like a thought pattern you repeat in life, or a set of personal beliefs which often hold you back.

It was quite a surprise to hear that I had a master programme around alcohol, which was preventing me from moving forward and living the life that I was here to experience. It was true, I enjoyed a couple of beers out with my husband most days and this was something I just couldn’t stop. Mentally, I couldn’t switch off the desire to drink every day.

The guide took out a pendulum and spun it before me and as soon as it stopped, the block lifted. As incredible as it sounds, it immediately created a shift in me. It was a warm friday evening in June 2017, normally my cue to go out with my husband for a drink or two. Yet I didn’t have any that night and have not touched or thought about alcohol since.

Afterwards, I had another reading of my Akashic Records and this time the reader got into my different lifetimes. I discovered I worked as a slave in Ancient Egypt, and in the 1700s I was a female business owner in the Greek shipping industry.

How did this help me in my present day life? I was launching my business as a spiritual consultant in my present, yet I knew back then I was a huge rarity working in a man’s world. I saw myself on the dock, witnessed the scenery of Greece; I could taste the tang of the sea on my lips. In that lifetime I needed real inner strength to do my work and the confidence I had then is something I draw on today.

I viewed these visions of my past lives as something of an epiphany and afterwards I learned how to read them for myself. The first level of study took three months and cost £1,000. I use the records in my business and as a way of supporting others to create positive change in their own lives. Today, no longer drinking, I feel like a more authentic and much happier person.

I CHANGED MY CAREER AFTER FINDING OUT I WAS ONCE A WITCH

nutrition and wellness mentor and speaker, Julie silver, 53, is a former administrator at Granada tV. she is single, has a 26-year-old son, and lives in Prestwich, Greater Manchester. MY dAd died suddenly when I was 28. It was a massive shock and not helped by the fact I split with my husband, too. My son was then one.