My friend who experienced the castle ghosts in a previous blog, here tells us about some of the other strange happenings that have taken place in her life:
Small things used to happen when I was growing up; usually when I was highly upset or emotional, things moving across the room, a glass cube my mum had in her kitchen that served as a candle holder once slid untouched across the countertop and jumped the sink one day. These were rare things, though.
There were nicer moments, too. My friend and I would go to Stanton Moor a lot where the ancient Nine Ladies stone circle is. There is a sunken area there which looks like a natural altar has formed. We climbed down there once and found the fresh corpse of an unfortunate rabbit. My friend was becoming interested in shamanism. He stood over the rabbit and tried to guide its spirit. As I watched him, I saw the rabbit, even though its body still lay lifeless on the ground, stand up and run around my friend's feet and off into the moor. After I saw it go, he relaxed and said he’d felt it move on.
My friends from school called me “witch”. I used to do tarot readings in the sixth form common room between lessons. I remember one girl walking away calling me evil when I told her that the operation she was about to have (and hadn't told anyone about) was a good thing and would allow her body to heal. She refused to even look at me after that.
One night, my friends and I had been to the cinema. We were driving home in two separate cars. I was crammed into one and our other friend, Tim, was in another. I could see his car going too fast, trying to beat us to the roundabout ahead. It was late at night and the roads were empty, but we all saw a van coming from the other side. Our car stopped but James hadn’t seen, and was continuing fast about to enter the roundabout and collide with the van. I don’t remember if I said or did anything, but at the very last second, James slammed on the brakes and stopped just in time.
My phone rang an hour later, after I was settled home and in bed. It was James. He said the weirdest thing had happened to him as he approached that roundabout. He had been racing us, which is what I thought, and he hadn’t seen the van. In fact, he didn’t see it until he’d already stopped. The reason he stopped, he said, was that suddenly, from nowhere, he’d heard my voice scream at him to stop. He was so shocked he’d slammed on the brakes and the van had just missed him. It had been closer than we thought.
The next day, he came to classes and handed me a small quartz crystal angel, a gift for being his “guardian angel,” even though he had no idea what had happened. He always swore it was my voice, even though I don’t recall doing anything other than willing him to stop and not hit that van.
I’ve worked hard to suppress this “psychic” side of myself. My best friend found out about it when I met her and always had my back if I saw or felt anything while we were out.
I remember being at her old house, sitting in the conservatory playing board games. I was facing the living room and suddenly saw an old man walk through the room. Moments later, their son banged something on the floor upstairs. The shock of both happening so close freaked me out enough that she took my hand and helped me calm down without alerting anyone at the table that anything at all had happened.
Pitching at Kenilworth Castle one day, there was a little girl standing by my car every time I went to unload something from it. At Dover Castle, two hooded and robed figures walked through the camp while I was preparing dinner. It got too much, and I didn’t want to be the weirdo. I didn’t want people to know I saw things, so I shut it down.
It was easy for me to sense things, though. I knew who was calling before the phone started to ring. I knew my sister was in trouble at one am one morning, before she called. More recently, I knew my mother was dying, and when she would be gone. In 2019, I felt like there was something seriously wrong with my mum, even though she seemed perfectly healthy. In the back of my mind, I couldn’t stop thinking that she had some kind of cancer we didn’t know about, and wouldn’t find out about until it was too late. Later, I dreamt of my sister and me, standing in Mum’s house, closing the door for the last time. We were talking about how she was gone and that the house was sold. My Mum died in January 2021, from lung cancer that had spread to her brain. Seven months before, she had seemed perfectly healthy. There was no way anyone would have known.
A tarot reading in February 2020 had predicted it too. The last card that spoke about the long term future was the Empress reversed. The card meant a loss of motherhood. I mistook it at the time for the IVF we had just failed.
I don’t like these strange, short and confusing glimpses. I don’t want to know. As I said, I try to suppress it all. Still, occasionally I’ll say things without thinking and they’ll come true.
A few months ago I said to my friend Jane that she’d soon be working for the people who made the vampire series we are both huge fans of. She messaged me last night to say they had just hired her.
Comments