For a couple of years now, I've been going along to a spiritualist center one evening every week.
It's my little bit of "me time" - the one evening out of every week where I get to spend 2 hours enjoying a bit of peace and quiet, doing something that is just purely for me.
I get to spend time with like minded people, do a bit of meditation - and, yes, spend a bit of time trying to develop my mediumship abilities.
Now hear me out...I know this is something that a lot of people will consider odd, but the truth is I've always been a bit of a hippy at heart. I'm in to things like crystals, reiki healing, angel cards and fortune telling - I have been since I was around 12 years old. So I feel very at home around people who are a little outside of the norm, too.
I've also always believed in the existence of spirits and a world beyond the one we know - and I've had some pretty spooky experiences throughout my life that reaffirm this belief for me, in fact even when I was as young as 5 - before I even understood what spirits were - I have memories of hearing voices in my bedroom at night talking to me.
I know that these sorts of things usually result in a lot of jokes and eye rolling, and that's fine - I get it! Its a bit out there. And for many people, it's just not their cup of tea or something they can accept. And that's fine - each to their own! The world would be a boring place if we all liked or believed in the same things.
And trust me, I'm not here to force my beliefs on to anybody. As long as you respect my right to believe in whatever I choose to and whatever brings me comfort, then I'll do the same for you.
But I'm also aware that there are lots of people out there who, like me, are fascinated by this sort of thing...and so I wanted to share an experience I had recently at the centre, one that quite honestly was way beyond anything I ever thought I would get to witness with my own eyes.
The night I saw a physical medium for the first time.
A physical medium, incase you're unaware (as I was!), is a medium who has the ability to let spirit communicate through them by altering their physical appearance.
I'd only ever heard of this phenomena once before - there's a lady back in my home city of Liverpool who is well known for her ability to "change her face" to take on the form of the person she is contacting, but I'd never been tempted to visit her. Apart from anything else, I'd heard that the woman asks people to drink something before she works and this freaked me right out - surely she was giving people some kind of hallucinogenic?! No thank you!
But I was assured that with the medium appearing our centre, there was none of this. No drink to be had before hand...just a lady, and her ability to completely transform her face right in front of our very eyes!
I was intrigued...but, I have to admit, 100% in doubt.
I knew that people were telling me they'd seen her work before and she was amazing, I knew I trusted these people...but my mind just would not allow me to go there. People can't just change their faces, it is not physically possible - so there is no way I could believe it to be!
But intrigue got the better of me, and I found myself signing up to go along.
The event was quite an intimate one. Only around 30 people from the center were invited to attend, and I was there alongside some of my friends from the awareness course I'd been a part of for a few months.
We sat in 3 rows of 10, in front of a little raised platform where the medium sat between two of the more senior figures from the centre's committee.
She looked like your average run of the mill older lady. Pleasant, kind faced.
As she introduced herself to us before she started, her jovial nature and friendly welsh accent put me at ease immediately. There was nothing at all spooky about her. She was a perfectly nice old lady.
She explained that, in order to start, she needed to turn the lights off completely and have us all sing to help raise the energy levels in the room.
As I sat in the pitch black while everyone around me sang "She'll be coming around the mountain" I have to admit - I thought to myself "What the hell am I doing here?! This is like some kind of bizarre cult!"...but not keen to try and find my way out in the dark, I sang along regardless!
Then suddenly, the lights came on...and there the medium sat, looking much grumpier than before and with a striking thick black moustache on her face where there hadn't been on before.
At this point, I was thinking "OH MY GOD...IS THAT IT?! THIS is what all the fuss has been about?! An old woman who has quite clearly just shoved a stick on joke moustache on her face while the lights were out?!"
I'll admit...I was FURIOUS.
And I sat angrily as the woman with the sudden moustache looked around the room from person to person...
And then...all of a sudden...with the lights on, with her hands on her lap, and nothing and nobody around her face...that moustache disappeared in front of my eyes.
It faded out over the course of about 5 seconds until there was nothing there at all.
Still, my mind wanted to search for rational explanations though and I told myself she must be using some sort of disappearing ink to make it happen.
But for the rest of the hour or so that she sat on that stage - with the lights remaining on at all times, her hands firmly in her lap and nothing around her face - I saw her morph into around 30 different people.
Sometimes a moustache or a beard would appear...a different shape and style every time...and then it would disappear soon after.
Sometimes scars or birth marks would appear on different parts of her face...at one point she seemed to have a tattoo on one cheek, which disappeared shortly after.
Sometimes it looked as though she had long flowing hair around her face (her own hair was covered with a scarf the whole time).
Sometimes she had a face full of deep set heavy wrinkles, and sometimes her skin appeared baby smooth.
Sometimes she even appeared to change ethnic origin, with the shape of her eyes and nose changing completely.
Throughout the evening, she invited anyone from the audience who recognised a face to come forward and hold her hand.
Throughout the night, around 10 people suddenly exclaimed "Mum is that you!" or "Oh my god, that's Keith!"...and they'd move forward, and have a conversation with their dear departed loved one.
I recognised nobody throughout the course of the night, but it didn't matter...I wasn't there for that. I was there to experience the phenomenon itself.
I sat there, all evening long, with my mouth hanging open in absolute shock and awe at what I was seeing in front of me.
I knew what my eyes were telling me I was seeing, but my brain struggled to process it.
It was beyond anything I thought physically possible...and yet there it was, happening right in front of me.
As the evening ended, around 30 different faces flashed suddenly across the mediums face...almost as though she was tuning out of a different frequency, or something.
And then...she was herself again.
She answered our questions afterwards, and spoke about how she'd come to physical mediumship and some of the experiences she'd had. And that was it.
I couldn't wait to go home and tell Jon about what I'd seen...but even as I sat telling him about it, I knew he wouldn't be able to believe it. Not properly.
Just like I know that nobody reading this will truly be able to - because there is just no way to comprehend it without actually seeing it happen in front of you.
But I did.
There were no tricks - no projectors, no strange lights, nothing at all - there was no explanation for what we saw other than that to believe that this woman had the ability to communicate with spirit in this way.
And I do believe that's what was happening.
I'm so glad I got the chance to experience it for myself because honestly, I wouldn't ever have been able to believe it was possible otherwise.
Have you ever seen a physical medium perform? I'd love to hear about your experiences!
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