It started with a mirror.
Decades ago, when I first moved to London – rich in youth and a sense of adventure but poor in cash and a sense of direction – I worked for a while as a ‘serving wench’ in the Beefeater by the Tower of London. In its day, this historical
re-enactment, complete with flickering torchlight, Henry VIII tribute artist, strolling players, jousting knights, and all-singing, all-dancing serving wenches was a quintessentially British, boisterous recreation of a Tudor banquet – or how everyone imagines it to be. Tourists from all over the world eagerly devoured it.
One night, as I was quietly reading a book and enjoying the calm of a few minute’s break in the staff changing room, I heard a rustling sound behind me. I looked up. In the dressing table mirror in front of me, I glimpsed a pale-looking woman in a floaty, long-sleeved white dress swaying from side to side a few feet behind me. I turned around, but there was no one there.
I don’t remember feeling alarmed. After all, I was working in a Tudor recreation, so I assumed it was probably another staff member in costume who had swiftly exited the changing room. I returned to my book. I heard the rustling again. This time, when I looked up in the mirror, the pale lady wasn’t a few feet away but standing right behind me. I noticed her sparkling blue tiara, which matched her blue eyes. Again, when I turned around to say hello, nobody was there.
At the moment, I put it down to the power of suggestion given the environment I was working in (not to mention the book I was reading, a collection of Edgar Allan Poe stories), but I couldn’t escape the feeling that this vision felt very real. The most surprising thing was that the pale lady didn’t scare me in the slightest. I sensed that whoever or whatever she was, and for whatever reason she was revealing herself to me, she meant me no harm.
In the evenings that followed, I found myself returning to sit in front of the mirror in the hope of seeing her again, but I never did. When I shared my story with a few of the other cast members, most rolled their eyes and suggested I was dreaming or had been drinking. I have always had vivid dreams, but I wasn’t asleep when I saw her, and I don’t drink. A few colleagues mentioned that the Tower of London allegedly had many ghosts, so perhaps she was straying from there. It wasn’t until my last day of working at the Beefeater that one of the strolling players took me aside and told me I wasn’t the only one – she had seen the pale lady in the mirror, too.
Was this woman I glimpsed in the mirror my first sighting of an actual ghost? Or was I simply imagining her? I don’t know, but one thing is certain: it whetted my appetite and I began to properly research the supernatural from that time onwards. And all these years later, whenever I glimpse my reflection in a mirror, I know a part of me is still searching for her.
I have had other unexplained visions since then, mostly of dancing shadows and flickers in the corner of my eye. None of them have been quite so visceral – or seen with my wide-awake eyes – as the pale lady in the mirror. Often, it happens just as I’m about to fall asleep, so I’m never sure if I am dreaming or awake.
Typically, the experience is subtle and could easily be a trick of the light. But each time, the experience feels very real. It is also unforgettable – it quite literally haunts me – and if I close my eyes and take myself back to the vision, I can relive it in intense detail.
These supernatural experiences didn’t stop with my glimpse of I’m-not-sure-what in a mirror. On one occasion, I believe a disembodied voice may have saved my life. If the pale lady was a catalyst to ignite my desire to see the other side more clearly, this experience encouraged me to have a little more faith in my own potential mediumistic abilities.
I was in my early thirties. I found myself driving behind a slow-moving van that was impossible to overtake due to oncoming traffic. We reached a junction. I needed to turn left, as that was the fastest route to my destination, ensuring I would arrive on time for my first-ever radio interview. I was excited about this new opportunity, which was why hearing the voice of my departed mother telling me to ‘take the right path’ while I was waiting at the junction was wildly unexpected.
The voice – which I had already heard in my dreams the night before – seemed to be coming from both inside and outside my head at the same time, and it was so calm, clear, and decisive that I did not hesitate to obey. I instinctively turned right and missed my radio slot because the roundabout route to my destination from that point involved heavy traffic delays. I cursed silently to myself all the way home.
Frustration transformed into shock when I found out later that evening that if I had turned left as intended, chances are I might have been involved in a fatal crash. A pile-up close to the junction that happened moments after I had turned in the other direction tragically killed three people. The van I had been trailing was involved in the crash.
Was this really the voice of my mother in spirit warning me, or was it simply a memory, as she always used to tell me to take the right path in life, meaning do the right thing? Or was it my impatience about being stuck behind a van that made me irrationally turn right? I will never know for sure, of course, but it’s something I often reflect deeply about.
I’m very aware that seeing things that aren’t there and hearing voices is often said to be one of the first signs of madness. Although my family may, at times, disagree, I’m most certainly not mad. I don’t suffer from hallucinations or anxiety. I have gone through every possible explanation, and I feel sure that both the woman in the mirror and the mysterious voice, while I was driving, were not things I imagined.
These unexplained, spontaneous experiences, whatever they were, happened to me. All these decades later, I am no longer ashamed to admit to them.
And I know from the countless afterlife stories I receive from my readers and listeners that their uncanny experiences happened to them, too. Many of them begin their stories by saying that they really aren’t sure if life after death exists, if ghosts are real, or if this was all in their imagination, but this is their story. It felt real; it still feels real, and they can’t explain or forget it. Many are relieved to share their stories, sometimes for the first time, and to be taken seriously.
For the past thirty years, I have written an endless stream of supernatural books and psychic world encyclopedias, and in recent years have become a go-to TV, radio, and podcast expert on matters paranormal. My career has been dedicated to researching, writing about, and talking about ghosts, hauntings, dreams, and the psychic world. I’m on a mission to mainstream the supernatural.
But it’s not just been the theme of my career; it’s been the direction and the passion of my entire life.
I was born into a family of psychics and spiritualists, where talk of ‘seeing dead people’ was commonplace. My earliest memory of attending a seance or mediumship demonstration was around the age of five or six. At the time, I had no idea what was going on. I didn’t see any spooks or tables turning, but I did see a lot of crying and a lot of smiling, and often the two happening together.
Growing up, I was plagued with self-doubt and square peg/round hole syndrome as a result of my inability to consciously connect to the other side as a medium or psychic allegedly can – but despite this, I have always had a strong belief in the afterlife. This was not just because of my spiritualist upbringing but because of my academic study of the metaphysical world while doing my degree in Theology and English at King’s College, Cambridge. What followed was a lifetime of research into the possibility of ghosts, which has shaped my writing career. I’ve been lucky enough to collaborate with academics, doctors, neuroscientists, psychiatrists, psychologists, and parapsychologists researching the science of consciousness, as well as authentic mediums and psychics. Most importantly, I’ve had hundreds of discussions with people who believe they have been through paranormal experiences.
Along the way, my conviction has been constantly boosted by the deluge of messages I gratefully continue to receive from people all over the world sharing their true-life ghostly experiences. These people come from all backgrounds and stages of life. I believe that every experience of a ghost or haunting should be treated with the utmost respect. They are an undying part of the human experience, and instead of dismissing or denying them, I believe that we need to strive constantly to understand them better.
The idea of this book, apart from sharing fascinating and compelling ghost stories is to help you better understand the ageold and globally reported phenomena of ghosts and hauntings. I also hope it will circumvent some of the jargon that many ghost hunters and paranormal researchers easily lose themselves in, making what is a commonly reported human experience feel unnecessarily complicated, impenetrable, elite, and specialist. I believe that once we lose our fear of the idea of an afterlife and of being left alone in the dark, we all have the potential to ‘see’ beyond the material world. Spirits can communicate in countless invisible ways that are unique to each of us. Yes, there are dramatic ghost sightings out there – and this book will showcase some very famous ones – but in general, full-blown apparitions are exceedingly rare and, indeed, no more or less helpful to our understanding of the afterlife than the quieter ones.
And just as you don’t need to ‘see’ ghosts to believe in them, you really don’t necessarily need to seek out the services of ghost hunters or mediums either. This book will show that you can become your own psychical researcher, your own medium. All you need is curiosity, a willingness to go outside your comfort zone, and a hefty dose of self-belief and common sense. And if you have had (or, after reading this book, go on to have) a paranormal experience, I want you to feel reassured that it is not something to panic about or deny. It is something to get excited about and to discuss with people who are non-judgmental. Every report of haunting is a reminder that there is so much more to this life – and to being a human, to being amazing you – than meets the eye.
by Theresa Cheung
Photos by Tom Frances-Palattao and Steiner England
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