The doctor, barrister, civil servant and Cambridge academic who say they have PROOF there’s an AFTERLIFE
eternal energy of the departed? For me, thousands of people’s experiences bear witness to the very real possibility that the strength of the energy between two people can sometimes make communication between this life and the next possible.
Ali Norell, 44, has had encounters with deceased loved ones that have convinced her it is indeed possible. Married to Darius, a leadership consultant, she should have four children aged between two and nine. But her third child, Romy, died of a brain haemorrhage in July 2014, aged just four months old. Ali, a former reflexologist-turned-author, says: ‘The first encounter happened when I was 14. I saw my grandfather, who’d died when I was four, in my bedroom. What stood out were his clothes. They were so scruffy — baggy, shapeless trousers and a bottle-green, cableknit sweater, like a fisherman’s.
‘There were no photos of him wearing them, and I was so young when he died that I have no memory of them, either, but when I spoke to my mum, she said that was what he was buried in.’
But it was a sitting with a medium a few months after Romy’s sudden death that really persuaded Ali the human spirit can survive death.
She says: ‘I’d never met this woman before, or given her any details at all about my life or the fact one of my children had died.
‘Straight away, she started talking about a baby or a very young child who had passed very suddenly and quite recently.
‘I was wearing a heavy coat with a scarf round my neck, and she told me I was wearing a gold locket with a photo of my daughter and a lock of her hair in it. This was correct, though there was no way she could have seen it underneath the scarf.
‘She was also able to give me specific details, not known to anyone else, about how Romy had died — she collapsed after we had got back from a trip out.
‘I had left her sleeping in the living room while I went to make a cup of tea.
‘Then I heard this weird rasping sound. I realised it was Romy and she was gasping for breath.’
Romy was rushed to hospital, but her parents had to turn off her life-support machine the following day.
‘I beat myself up for months afterwards, thinking: “What if I’d stayed with her and hadn’t made that cup of tea?” ’ says Ali.
‘Technically, Romy died the next day when we’d turned off the machines, but the medium said she had passed on in the house. It was something I had also known in my heart. But apart from my husband and mother, I never told anyone that. ‘The medium said she was given information to reassure me that Romy had gone to sleep, had slight difficulty breathing, then hadn’t woken up. There was nothing I could have done.’ Ali adds: ‘The most stunning thing was that she said, out of the blue: “Has your TV been moving?” She said it was Romy’s spirit trying to communicate with us. ‘This was a bit left field, even for me. But the funny thing was that the TV had been moving. For three mornings in a row, I’d found it had swivelled round 180 degrees. I’d assumed my husband had moved the screen to reach the plugs behind it, or perhaps it was our four-yearold son. ‘When I mentioned this after my reading, my husband not only said he hadn’t moved the TV, but that he had also discovered it turned round on several occasions at night. ‘He thought it was me and, of course, our son would have been in bed by then. I have no explanation other than it must have been, as the psychic said, Romy trying to communicate with us from Heaven.’ One argument that is often used against mediums is that they research their clients in advance. Claire Broad, a respected medium with whom I co-wrote my latest book, counters this with an experience she had connecting a client to her deceased mother during a sitting. Claire was able to ‘see’ a handbag she strongly felt belonged to the mother. The mother’s spirit made her aware there was a ring inside it that she wanted her daughter to have. Claire recalls: ‘My client put the information to the test. She contacted her father and asked him to search the house for a handbag. To her amazement, he discovered it — and inside was the ring! ‘My client contacted me to let me know that she was blown away by the discovery and is now the proud wearer of her mother’s ring.’ There is no way Claire could have researched or uncovered that information anywhere. The only person who knew about the ring and its location was the deceased mother. With so many experiences such as this out there, is it any wonder there are those like Jane Clark and her circle of high-powered women who want to prove that the spirits of the deceased really can communicate with us from Heaven?
ANSWERS From Heaven: Incredible True Stories Of Heavenly Encounters And The Afterlife, by Theresa Cheung and Claire Broad, is published by Piatkus at €12.59, easons.com.