Tuning into SPIRIT
I was sceptical about my abilities until granddad taught me to trust them.
So, what class do you think you’ll be in at your new school?’ Mum asked as I perched on the washing machine and watched her cook.
It was 1986, I was five years old, and we were about to move from Forest Gate, East London to Enfield in the north of the capital. Mum had been asking lots of questions to try and get me excited about the move.
‘Er, pink class with Miss King,’ I guessed randomly.
It was months later that we met my new headmistress, who told me my teacher would be ‘Miss King’ who taught ‘pink class’. Mum went ashen.
‘How did you know which class you’d be in?’ she asked on the way home.
‘I didn’t!’ I shrugged. ‘Pink’s my favourite colour and I must have read about a Miss King in a book or something.’
I reckoned it was just a coincidence... but Mum started calling me her ‘little witch’. And weird things did keep happening. Like when I was 11 and Mum and I were waiting in her car at a level crossing.
‘What would you do if we broke down on the train line?’ I asked Mum.
‘Don’t say things like that!’ she replied, looking horrified as she put the car in gear and pulled forwards... only for the car’s engine to stall on the tracks, just like I’d said!
When the car wouldn’t re-start I threw open my door and waved at the men in the van behind us, who pushed us off the train line.
‘Don’t ever say anything like that again,’ Mum said later. ‘You really are a witch!’
I was confused. I’d just been wondering out loud what would happen. It hadn’t been a prediction or anything.
As I grew up I remained sceptical about all things spooky or supernatural, convinced there was a rational explanation for everything.
But when I was 33, I experienced something I couldn’t explain...
As long as I can remember my granddad John’s hearing aid had made squealing noises interfering with the telly.
‘You’re whistling John!’ my nan, Goldie, would bellow at him as we all covered our ears.
In October 2012, six months after we’d lost granddad, Mum and I visited Nan and suddenly granddad’s distinctive whistling noise started coming out of the TV! Nan seemed oblivious, but when I looked at Mum she was white as a sheet.
‘Hearing aid,’ we stammered when we reached the car after saying a hurried goodbye to Nan.
I felt excited and comforted by granddad’s ‘visit’ from the afterlife and convinced at last that there was more to life – and death – than I could explain.
I started listening more to my weird thoughts and feelings.
Four years ago I told my colleague Benito I had a feeling something bad was going to happen at the photographic studio where we worked. That night the place was burgled!
And in September 2019 Benito texted to say his plane was being held on the runway and surrounded by vehicles with flashing blue lights. I replied, joking that he was being ‘quarantined due to a pandemic’.
That same Christmas Mum got diagnosed with skin cancer on her nose and I got a spot in exactly the same place – which didn’t go until Mum’s cancer was removed.
Mum still calls me a ‘witch’ to this day for my ability to somehow predict things and I used to laugh her off, until granddad taught me that the supernatural is real!
The car’s engine stalled on the tracks