An Angel By My Side: Amazing True Stories of the Afterlife. Jacky Newcomb

Our loved ones live on after they pass, and after tonight, I knew for sure.

       CHAPTER 3

      Going It Alone

      Nothing happens unless first a dream.

       Carl Sandburg

      Top priority was calling my sister Dilly in Cornwall the following morning. I remember working with the list and going over every detail of what happened the night before.

      ‘Honestly, Dill, Debbie and I were moving the glass on our own. We did it, just the two of us. I really feel we should all visit Cornwall and try this for ourselves!’ I rushed on.

      ‘I think you should all visit too. Come down and we can have a go together.’

      ‘Are you sure? I really want to.’

      ‘Yes, but Nick will want to join in too.’

      It was agreed. The sisters would visit Cornwall and we would communicate with our deceased relatives using a spirit board we would make ourselves. Nick was my brother-in-law. Of course he should sit with the sisters whilst we made contact. We were going to his house after all! But I was concerned about my nephews, Dilly’s boys. In the back of my mind, I still thought the communication might be dangerous in some way. I remembered tales of adventurous teens who’d communicated with spirits in the way we had … but their experiences were negative. Some of them had written to me on my website.

      One girl told me the curtains in her living room were standing on end and things were thrown about the room by annoyed spirits. A teenage boy said when his friends used a spirit board the pointer spelt out that one of them would die. They were terrified and I didn’t blame them. Surely we were doing something different. We’d be careful.

      I felt exhausted. This was the world’s most exciting discovery, wasn’t it? I felt like I’d landed on the moon. Why don’t more people know about this communication secret? Surely anyone with a few letters and a glass could prove the existence of an afterlife. It really did seem that simple.

      Later that afternoon, in the warmth of the afternoon sun shining through the living room window, I fell asleep. My mind needed to try and assimilate the awesomeness of the experience of the day before, and when I awoke a few hours later my mind was clearer. I needed to try and do some research about the safest way to make contact using this method. Would I find anything on the internet? I felt sure there were rules we needed to follow.

      Picking up my notebook and pen I began to make notes on my own, even before I’d logged onto the computer: ‘clear room, light a candle, bring in the light using appropriate words, use frankincense; add pictures of angels to the table’ I began. I’d no idea where my inspiration was coming from but it seemed as if I had a ‘knowing’on some deep inner level. Perhaps I’d made contact in other lifetimes; I already seemed to know what we had to do.

      ‘Stay polite, ask for specific types of communication, invite relatives, don’t ask for just “anyone”, INTENT.’ What did I mean by that? What you give out is what you get back. If you ask for just anyone to talk to you then that is whom you are inviting … anyone. We didn’t want to talk to just anyone, we wanted a spirit family ‘party’. A party of loved ones who’d long since died, and we wanted to invite only them.

      I could see it clearly in my mind. If you have a house party and leave the front door open, yelling for any passing folk to join in, you soon get a full house. Word spreads and people begin turning up on motorbikes and in cars with radios blaring and disturbing the neighbours. They walk into your house in large groups with packs of beer. They spill drink on your carpet and are sick down the back of your sofa. Who are ‘they’? They stub out their cigarettes on your coffee table and steal your leather jacket which is hanging in the hall. Why would we invite just anyone? I understood the word INTENT. I was being given a visual image in my mind. Intent is everything.

      ‘Write down specific words to invited people. Ask God to come, ask the angels to help. Ask them to act as “bouncers” so that only the people we invite come.’

      I never did search online. I rang Debbie later, and shared my list with her.

      ‘It’s a good idea but I’ve got something else for you. I heard a phrase. Write down ABC.’

      ‘What’s that?’

      ‘Angel Board Communicator.’

      ‘Okay, I get it.’ I said, and I did get it. It was important to show we were aiming to contact only the highest realms, indicating we wanted messages of love and positive intent. As soon as I put the phone down, more messages came. It wasn’t a ouija board, it was an angel board.

      ‘With the love of God, we ask our personal Guardian Spirits to act as a gateway to the spirit realms.’

      I had to write this down to stick on the board.

      ‘We ask for protection from the highest source and contact only those specified for the highest good,’ I continued.

      Later on I rang Dilly again.

      ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I know you don’t have time to make anything. Tell me what you want and I’ll print off the letters and things on the computer. We can stick them on the kitchen table.’

      ‘That’s great.’ I felt immense relief at not having to prepare everything. ‘Don’t forget to print some pictures of angels. Shall I send you some?’

      ‘No, I’m good.’

      When Debbie arrived home from work we rushed round to Mum’s. Debbie had already called my other sister Di to join us.

      Mum took it all calmly and I suppose there is no reason why she wouldn’t. We went down the list a few points at a time and Mum filled in all the blanks. There were a few things we’d been unsure of, but in a way this was much better. Now Mum was confirming things for us that we hadn’t known about in advance, so we couldn’t have given away any clues to either the medium or any passing spirits, and best of all, we couldn’t have influenced the information that was coming through.

      ‘Don’t you remember that Nan worked at the Home Made? Aunty Marline worked there too. She worked there for years.’

      On and on it went. Aunty this and great uncle that. She knew all the bits we didn’t. It’s funny how you forget important family information, and there were a lot of things we should have known about and hadn’t. I’d seen an American psychic on TV call it ‘psychic amnesia’, where people will forget the names of even the closest members of their family during a psychic reading.

      Satisfied with the update we planned to make the long trek from the Midlands to the West Country the following weekend. We all squeezed into Di’s small car and filled the endless journey with excited chatter. We were on an adventure into the unknown.

      On the first night I was ready to get started but everyone was tired. We did chat a little more about the whole phenomenon but I was disappointed. I wanted to do this now! Let’s get on the angel board!

      The next day was filled with girly shopping and family fun but I was distracted and eager to start. When my nephews went to bed I fetched my bag to lay out my ‘kit’. Dilly reassured me that the boys wouldn’t come downstairs so I felt happy.

      With no luck finding the frankincense oil I felt we needed, I placed my substitute frankincense aromatherapy candle on the side and lit it. We all sat around the kitchen table and Dilly whipped off the tablecloth to show us the ready-prepared table with letters and angels stuck on it in a circle. It was like opening an exciting present, a secret, hidden beneath the cloth. It was brilliant.

      I’d already walked around the room with some incense before saying a few reassuring words. Dilly fetched a small tumbler and placed it in the middle of the table. We all looked at