From the Beyond: Mediumship (v)

Funchal, Madeira, 1st to 8th September 1999

Madeira

“You must go on holiday. Of course you must”.

My mother in law Emily, aged 83, was in hospital in London following a mild stroke. We were exhausted; 1999 had been a year of seemingly unremitting family problems, ill and dying friends, and work stress. Our holiday to Madeira had been booked for a couple of months – looking forward to it was the only thing keeping us sane. With a week to go before we set off, Emily had been taken to hospital.

We agonised. Should we cancel our holiday and go to London? The medical staff had assured us Emily was stable. My husband spoke to her. I spoke to her – there was no question in her mind. We badly needed our break. Of course we should go. We could pop down to London to see her on our return in two weeks.

It all seemed perfectly sensible. There was one problem, though. The tone of the words at the top of this page, the last words spoken to me by my mother in law before we set off for Madeira, haunted me all the way there. Why? The words were innocuous, but in the tone I caught a whisper of the Beyond – that was the only way I could describe it to myself. It had made me shiver. Was she going to die ?

There is a long tradition of what is known in Scotland as the Second Sight – a faculty of seeing the future, being able to see the spirits of the dead…. and at times of knowing when people are going to die. My maternal great-grandmother had been known for possessing the Sight. We never spoke of it, but my mother had it to a less marked degree. The Sight wisped in and out of my life: episodically, unbidden, unpredictable….and unwanted.

I  did not want it now.

I said nothing to my husband, although I felt that we should have gone to his mother. Because I rejected the Sight in myself, I could not trust its wisdom, didn’t know  whether my intuition was the Sight or my own melodramatic streak.

Madeira is a beautiful  island. We stayed in a wonderfully comfortable hotel, and set about exploring the island’s scenic beauty and cultural richness. But I could not relax. Despite telling myself that Emily was stable, comfortable and well cared for, I continued to feel edgy and uneasy. As we returned to the hotel on the afternoon of the 4th September, the third day of our holiday, I just knew a message from Ian’s sister would be waiting. It was. Emily was dead.

The next few days were a blur: grief, shock, regret, the practical difficulty of cutting our holiday short and returning home all created an emotional maelstrom which sucked us in.

I can still clearly recall the first incident. Forty eight hours after Emily’s death, as I stood just outside the french windows of our hotel room, seeking calm in the cool dampness of the grass under my bare feet, inhaling the evening fragrance of jasmine and hibiscus, the voice began.

“Annie. Annie !” There was a soundless insistent whisper just behind my right ear. I shook my head to clear it. I was overwrought, it was just my imagination. The voice persisted. I ignored it, went inside, and got changed for dinner, saying nothing to Ian.

FunchalCathedral Interior

The next day we went to evening service in Funchal cathedral, seeking comfort from the spiritual atmosphere which pervaded this place where so many had worshipped over centuries. We both believe that Spirit is present in any sacred place, whether a Roman Catholic cathedral or a secluded grove of trees beside a remote stream high up in the hills. Besides, Emily had been a deeply religious woman, and she would have liked the thought of us attending church to say prayers for her.

We were seated, watching as worshippers filed towards the priest to make their communion.

“Annie. Annie !” This time I felt rattled and a little alarmed. Was I hallucinating? Once again I mentally shoved the voice away. My rational side came up with explanations. It was my imagination. I was overwrought. But this time the voice would not be shoved away. It persisted. “Annie, please listen to me. I need you to give a message to Ian from me.”

My late mother in law, an open minded lady, had a dear friend living in the same retirement complex who was a spiritualist medium. Knowing that she had accepted this  side of her friend’s life as entirely valid, I had confided some of my own paranormal experiences, including the one previously related in which I had encountered an old lady on a train who had offered to teach me mediumship.

Emily knew that I had this ‘other’ side to myself with which I felt deeply uncomfortable. Was she using this knowledge of me to try and use me as a medium for herself?

“I don’t want this. Please, please leave me alone.” With an effort of will I distanced myself sufficiently to shut out the voice. Again, I said nothing to my husband, who in fact had more faith and trust in my ‘other’ side than I had.

Intermittently over the next couple of days, the voice persisted. It simply would not leave me alone for long, keeping repeating the same thing. A note of mild hysteria and bizarre humour began to creep into my reactions. I felt as though I was being persistently nagged from the Other Side !

Eventually, I gave in, whilst walking up a long and tiring hill in considerable heat towards our hotel for an early afternoon siesta. There was a low wall to our left, and a busy road on our right.
“All right, all right! What is it? I’ll tell him if you promise to go away and leave me in peace.”
“Annie, I have never in Ian’s whole life told him that I loved him. Please, will you tell him this from me?”
“But Ian knows very well that you loved him.”
“ I never said the words. Please, please, say the words for me and I will never trouble you again.”

There in a dusty, hot, Funchal street, I told my husband what had been happening to me for days, and what his mother’s message was. In the silence which followed, the voice came one last time…. “ Thank you ”, and it was gone….

Whilst we were both digesting this experience in silence, an extraordinary thing happened to me.

I still find it hard to describe, despite clear recall. Suddenly, following the silence after the “Thank you”, there was a soundless babble inside my head accompanied by images of disembodied faces whose eyes seemed hungry for something from me. I had occasionally had these images before whilst falling asleep or waking up, but never before in the middle of a busy street in broad daylight.

What did this feel like? It felt exactly as though the word had got around that there was an open channel, and a scramble of ‘people’ was struggling each to get their own message through. My head began to spin so much that I became dizzy, stopped walking, and had to lean on the wall for support.

Something inside me found the mental strength to yell out soundlessly : “Get away from me! I don’t want this! I don’t want this!” Gradually, the babble subsided. I was aware of Ian staring at me intently.
“What on earth is wrong with you? You look as though you’ve seen a ghost !”
I told him what had happened. “Do you think I’m going mad?”
“No, but I do think you have to DO something with this side of yourself one of these days.”
Slowly and silently, hand in hand, we walked back to the hotel. I felt exhausted, desolate, and empty. But it didn’t feel like my desolation and emptiness….

Later that evening, over dinner, having rested and recovered somewhat, I asked my husband whether his mother had ever said out loud that she loved him.
“No,” he replied. “She never did. Not until today.”

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This account  was published in February 2005, titled ‘From the Beyond’ by Atriad Press (USA) in their ‘Haunted Encounters” series, book title “Departed friends and relatives”.

Ancient Witnesses

TO BE CONTINUED.…..next chapter is Part Six : MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE

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1400 words copyright Anne Whitaker 2010
Licensed under Creative Commons – for conditions see Home Page

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