An Introduction to Mediumship: Hay House Mediums on the Topics that Matter Most

By Gordon Smith and John Holland

Bestselling Hay House authors answer big questions on a range of mediumship topics.

In An Introduction to Mediumship, Hay House expert mediums discuss:

What ghosts are, and why they come back

Renowned psychic Gordon Smith has a wealth of experience in answering questions about Spirits and the afterlife. Here he explains how Spirits communicate with us in subtle ways, and why their messages can so often be missed.

How do I find a medium?

Heidi Sawyer explains how to find a medium that suits your needs, including:

• how to spot an experienced, highly ethical psychic;
• psychic specialities; and
• how to develop your own psychic skills.

How to find your spirit guide

Understanding spirit guides can be bewildering for many. Sylvia Browne explains what spirit guides are; what they look like; how they make themselves; and how to find your own.

Signs from Heaven

Bestselling medium John Holland describes the "Spirit Boot Camp" in England where he developed his psychic and mediumship abilities. John describes the incredible range of ways in which messages and symbols from the other side can show themselves, including dreams, smells, synchronistic events, electricity, numbers, and many more.

What is Reincarnation?

Lisa Williams describes what happens when souls decide to return to the Earth plane, and guides you through their process for reincarnation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Nov 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9781781803790

Book preview

Contents

What are Ghosts? Gordon Smith

How Do I Find a Medium? Heidi Sawyer

What is Reincarnation? Lisa Williams

How Do I Find My Spirit Guide? Sylvia Browne

A Sign from Above, John Holland

Continue Your Journey with Hay House

About the Authors

Copyright information

What are Ghosts?: Why They Come Back

Gordon Smith

People often ask me why a lot of the messages the Spirits choose to pass on are so personal, and sometimes full of trivial bits of information, when they could be giving us next week's lottery numbers or the answer to that old chestnut about the meaning of life instead. The fact is that the chief purpose of those conversations with the other side is to reassure us about life after death. They have to convince us that they are still conscious and not only that they still have memories full of the tiny details and secrets of our lives on earth together but also that they are aware of what is happening to us now.

To this end they offer up scraps of information about illnesses they know we've endured since their passing, or even the fact that we've changed the wallpaper in the bathroom. They can give us precise dates or addresses, or describe a scene from the previous day. Usually messages this intricate come via mediums, but there are many ways that the Spirits use to communicate, and they certainly don't need a medium to do it.

I feel that everybody is clairvoyant and in theory open to word from Spirit. We've all got a sixth sense and should use it, although it might take a bit of development. If you are aware of Spirit they will be able to reach you directly as you are, without the middleman. You may choose to see a medium at some point, but don't think that they are your only chance to hear from a loved one.

I have always tried to explain to people that when a Spirit person comes close to us we experience a sense of something strange, a feeling which tells us that something different is happening around us. The feeling of a Spirit being close to us is different from anything our mind can create and the feeling leaves us in no doubt that what we have received has touched our very soul.

Spirits can use the full range of human senses to reach us – sight, smell, touch, sound, even the sensation of taste. Spirits make themselves known to us in our dreams too, and when we're daydreaming – those times when we're a little spaced-out and out of focus.

In that state of mind we make room for our Spirit friends to get near to us as we open up and allow them in. The barriers created by 'being logical' and analysing our thoughts are down, and we're receptive to their messages. The trouble is when we snap to and try to write off the experience as wishful thinking. 'Of course I dreamt about him,' we think. 'I miss him; but that can't mean that he was actually there.' We'd rather think our subconscious was playing tricks on us or even that we were hallucinating than believe that our loved ones have been close to us.

For some, the creeping idea that maybe that was a communiqué from the other side provokes them to take steps to finding a medium. Others get signs that repeat themselves many times and become more and more persistent. When they are impossible to ignore, the recipient is often quick to find a good Spiritualist church in order to find out what on earth the other side has to say to them so urgently.

One of the best things that can happen in a sitting is that the message that I pass on to the living relative explains another experience that they've already had, and therefore confirms that their loved one has been in touch with them from the other side. For example, I once gave a reading to a girl whose brother had passed into Spirit following a car crash when he was travelling in Australia.

Partway through the sitting he suddenly said, 'Tell her it was me who gave her the coins' – which of course made no sense to me whatsoever. The expression on his sister's face told me that – if you'll forgive the pun – the penny had dropped. She grinned broadly and we went on with the session as her brother gave her more and more evidence and messages.

Afterwards we chatted and she told me all about the coins. It turned out that since her brother's death she had been finding stashes of Australian coins everywhere – in her car, her house, in different handbags and coats. They were real enough, and she couldn't work out where they were coming from, as her brother was the only person she knew who'd been to Australia.

Her brother was letting her know that he was still around and he only needed me as a medium to corroborate that for her, as of course I had no idea about what had been going on. That instant when she realized that her brother had been hiding the coins for her also reconnected the pair because now the sister knew that the bond between them had not been broken. Accepting that the link between them was still open meant that she had not lost her brother at all.

This kind of benevolent 'magician's trick' of making little objects appear in unlikely places is by no means common. Instead it seems that most often the departed use their family's and friends' dreams to communicate with them. Sadly those left behind usually have these vivid dreams in the immediate aftermath of the death, and because they are beside themselves with grief they dismiss them out of hand.

I knew a lady called Margaret Alexander who had been recently widowed and repeatedly dreamed of her husband. He'd be younger, and he always took her dancing, quite as they had in the early days of their marriage. She always woke up the next day feeling elated or even with laughter on her lips, only to be hit with the cold, dawning realisation that the man she had loved for so long was not with her any more. She was extremely rational about this and tried to put it out of her mind, only for the dream to recur, and the cycle of joy and disappointment made her sadder still.

Eventually she attended a Spiritualist church and a medium gave her a message from her husband, who protested that he didn't like the fact that she was doubting these experiences when he had put so much energy into creating them. For him it was a time when they could be together, and he could bring a smile back to her face. When Margaret understood this she was transformed, and the knowledge that the dance was real helped to lift her out of deep sorrow.

Sometimes the meaning of a dream can be less clear and takes a bit of figuring out. At a public demonstration I gave in America I gave a woman a message about a dream she had had. Her father came through to say that he had appeared to her as fit as a flea and skipping around like a mad thing, and that she found this more than a little nutty, as you would. After looking nonplussed for a second she confirmed that it was true, she had had that dream, and now that she thought about it she supposed he'd been trying to remind her of the way he'd been before his final, debilitating illness.

She'd been upset because she thought the way he was acting meant he'd somehow lost his marbles in the Spirit world, so she had ruled the dreams out as a mere quirk of her imagination. Hearing the message from her father at the demonstration changed her mind and she saw it all in