The Journey - Life After Death, A Spiritual Journey of Discovery

By Laurie Pett

The journey I would like to take you on with me is not the type of journey where you take the Orient Express or the Trans-Siberian Railway, although it is just as exciting and I feel a need to share it with you. I strongly urge you to read this, and open your eyes.

My journey is a spiritual journey, and a voyage of discovery and knowledge, a path that has answered many questions for me, and a journey that was unstoppable once I had taken that first footstep. That brings me nicely to the start, where I took that first footstep, and everything I write here is the truth, as it happened to me.

Once Summers day in August 2006, I picked up my youngest daughter May who was twelve at the time, and after having a MacDonalds breakfast in Cheltenham we drove to Mount Snowdon in North Wales, with a view to doing some basic rock climbing. Although you might think this was stupid of me, and in retrospect I would agree, it was what my daughter really wanted to do and I do have some experience in this area so I went along with it. It seemed like a good idea at the time ! I had a great adventure weekend planned for the both us, and the weather was perfect, and May was really happy and excited.

The day as I said was really hot and sunny, very beautiful and Snowdon looked stunningly beautiful, really quite breathtaking as it soared golden brown and rocky into a bright cobalt blue cloudless sky. Perfect climbing weather, and a rarity in North Wales, believe me ! The sheep were grazing lazily on the slopes, many walkers and climbers abounded the mountains, chatting excitedly and happily, and it felt like nothing could go wrong. We were literally basking in warm golden sunlight.

To cut a long story short, which was extremely traumatic for my daughter and for myself ( please indulge me and allow me to skip the details ), we had an accident, a serious one in which my daughter was badly injured, with her head splitting open on the hard craggy rock. I heard her scream and saw the blood, my hell on Earth, every parent's nightmare. At that very moment we both saw my maternal grandmother in Spirit, as she had been dead for several years. My daughter and I both saw her, as clear as I see you.

This was the first step on this journey, that critical step. I just wish it had not been quite so traumatic. I can't even find words to describe how horrible this experience was.

I rushed over to my daughter and grabbed her in my arms, the feeling of utter dread indescribable, and looked at her head and examined her in a terrible panic for any signs of the huge impact with hard mountain rock I had just witnessed. Not a scratch, not a mark, nothing. I asked May if she was all right and she said she was fine, but asked that we go home. I carried her for the first few steps, until she insisted on walking herself, and she walked alongside me quite happily all the way down the mountain to my car at the bottom. I kept stopping, and examining her head for signs of injury, but she said she felt fine, just wanted to go home.

We got to the car, and although I had booked and paid for an expensive hotel for the whole weekend for us both, we decided to drive home. On the motorway I stopped at the services to buy us something to eat, and May ate well and had a drink, and she seemed fine. Me ? I couldn't eat a thing. I was still shaking like a leaf, still in shock at what I had seen happen to my own daughter with my own eyes. Still in shock at seeing my dead grandmother there.

I had to ask her.

' May ' I said trying to be casual and calm ' when you hit your head on that rock, can you remember doing it ? Can you remember anything ? '

' Yes dad ' she replied, disinterestedly. ' I hit my head but its fine. I don't think we should go climbing anymore though dad ', and she carried on eating her sweets and reading her magazine, not even bothering to look at me as she spoke.

' May ' I said again, I had to ask, ' do you remember seeing nan when you fell ? '

' Yes dad ' she said, ' nanny Ede was there, I saw her. We both did. '

Nanny Ede was my maternal grandmother Edith, May 's great grandmother, a truly wonderful, kind and giving person who I loved very dearly, and May still remembers her but she died not that long ago and I used to take my children to visit her in hospital when she was dieing with a brain tumour.

That's where it all started and I couldn't talk about it for six months I was so shocked by events, I could only talk to May about it, although she didn't seem in the least bit bothered about it.

After a few months this awful accident still kept gnawing away at me. I could not get it out of my mind. Although I was raised a Christian and had a deep and genuine faith in God, I never thought about the afterlife, ghost and spirits, not for a minute, but I couldn't get what had happened out of my mind and felt driven to find out more.

I went to the local library in Evesham and purely by coincidence I saw a Paranormal Group being advertised and they were looking for a scientific representative to attend their ' ghost hunts ' to add a more objective, credible voice to their reports and findings. I have an honours degree in Chemistry and Mathematics, and thought that would qualify me, and after calling the group and being interviewed by two founder members, I was offered and accepted the ' post ' .

I attended several ghost hunts with the group, which I really enjoyed and found quite fascinating, and had a lot of fun I have to say on various Fright Nights where we carried out vigils in haunted locations looking for ghosts. It was fun but it was not ' hitting the spot ' for me. I needed something deeper, a little more serious, a little more ' heavy duty ' if you like.

One of the Mediums who was part of the group and developed into a personal friend of mine, recommended I attended my local Spiritualist Church, which I did do, and still do. Here I was introduced to the world of Spiritualism, and Mediumship, and it was here that I received ' messages ' from the Spirit world from various Mediums accurate enough to drive and compel me to find out more. I wanted to be a Medium myself, not just receive messages from Spirit, I wanted to speak to Spirit people myself. I wanted to give messages to other people, to prove to them life after death
and bring them the accompanying comfort and healing. I felt a very strong draw to do this.

That's exactly what I did. I developed as a Spirit Medium, trying to communicate with the Spirit world myself, and looking for proof of life after death, and the huge benefits, comfort and healing that would bring to people, people facing imminent death themselves, and people in bereavement.

One of the great questions in science would be answered : what happens when we die ? A truly great unanswered question, like how does a single cell develop into a human being with a mind and personality etc. Great scientific questions.

I tried to develop in a number of ways, attending Spirit Home Development Circles - development of Mediumship that is, , attending the Spiritualist Church and attending courses at the amazing and truly wonderful Stansted Hall / Arthur Findlay College (check out the website and go there ! ). I love Stansted Hall so much that I have willed my ashes to be scattered there when I die ! It's a very spiritual place and I recommend you visit there yourself. This is the place to learn about Spiritualism.

In short, I developed as a Medium, or at least tried to, but that still wasn't enough for me and I felt compelled, really quite driven to dig even deeper. Although
I had proof enough of life after death for myself, I felt a need to find objective proof for myself, and much more importantly for other people. People who maybe did not believe as I did, people who were even non-believers or atheists.

I wanted to take people and show them that life after death existed beyond all doubt, and to then show them so they could see with their own eyes, whatever their religious beliefs or background or whatever. I wanted to show them objective, unarguable proof.

So that's what I did.

I was led in turn to a truly brilliant Physical Medium, through whom Spirit manifest themselves by displaying physical phemomena, with the medium tied in a chair to avoid any fraud allegations. I illustrate as below.

A Physical Séance has the Medium sat in a chair that he is tied into so they cannot move or walk about. Then as the Medium slips into the trance state the Spirit use his energy and ectoplasm to display physical phenomena. The types I have seen many times now with own eyes include trumpets flying around the séance room, tapping me on the head and rubbing themselves against, a pair of drum sticks banging away on a table, and I have even been lucky enough to see a full Spirit materialisation. I have spoken to my dear dead grandfather in his own voice, and in a nutshell I am lucky enough to now say that I know beyond all doubt that life goes on after death.

Even better, I am in a position to take other people with me to the Physical Séance and show them too, which I did only last week.

Lastly, as a closing statement, I am as you might have guessed sitting myself tobecome a Physical Medium, with some very questionable, modest results so far. It's a long process that requires immense dedication and redefines the word ' patience 'but it's a path I believe I have to follow, and fully intend to.

I am still a Christian, a man of deep and genuine faith in God and Jesus Christ, and do not see or feel that this is anyway wrong. You have to sit for genuine reasons, and that is proof of life after death for the comfort and healing that will bring people, and you must be totally sincere. That's what matters. Plus you have to have the right body chemistry for Physical Mediumship, but that can be tweaked a little if everything else is right.

Very lastly, remember I am a scientist by background and I have challenged and questioned every experience I have had all through this journey, I have doubted what I was experiencing and seeing, and after all that, I assure you now that life after death is a fact. That's my journey, my Spiritual journey, and this is a completely true and factual account of my own personal experience.

LAURIE PETT