I was born in Abingdon on Christmas Day having been conceived nine months earlier in Singapore. At the age of five I moved to Kent with my family before moving back to Oxfordshire in my teens.
It was in Kent where I had my first psychic experience. I was seven and my mother was expecting my younger sister. She wanted to give birth at home and I went to stay with family friends who lived in an old rambling property in Hawkhurst.
I was sharing a bedroom with two other children when I became aware of a noise on the landing. I could hear someone walking along the corridor to the bathroom, the door closing and the toilet being flushed. This happened repeatedly but I could also sense a great sadness and depression within my whole being. It frightened me to such an extent that I began distressing the other two children, who couldn’t understand what was happening. Their parents tried to console me, telling me that there was no one in the bathroom and that it was probably the old pipes clanking and floorboards creaking. However, as much as they tried, my fears worsened and I just had to get out of the house. My father came and picked me up.
I forgot about the incident until some years later, when I mentioned it to my mother who told me that someone had actually committed suicide in the same house by hanging himself in the bathroom!
I had a very happy childhood in Kent where, bizarrely, we lived opposite an undertaker and Chapel of Rest. I developed a fascination with the comings and goings and always felt as if I knew the corpses in the coffins. As you can imagine, my mother was horrified at my interest in such morbid things and she was forever telling me to stay away from the window.
My primary school was at Cranbrook and my mother would drive me there each day. The school was just a few yards from the local church and I would often ask her to walk with me through the graveyard. I would feel such great comfort being drawn to particular gravestones. I could not understand the feelings and emotions rushing through my body at that young age but I was seeing mental pictures of people, who I now believe were those people who had passed over into the spirit world.
Occasionally, my mother would play the Ouija-board with her friend, Vivienne, and they would often ask me to join in. On those occasions the board would go berserk and I would know the words before they were even spelt out.
I continued to have an affinity with people and buildings. I would either feel total comfort or take an instant dislike to them. But it was not until I was eighteen, when I was an apprentice hairdresser, that I experienced one of the most frightening events of my life.
I was in a deep conversation with a customer whilst cutting her hair, when, all of a sudden, I became completely oblivious of the customer and the surroundings. I felt as if I had been anaesthetised. I couldn’t hear or feel anything and then, suddenly, I could hear a soft voice calling “Terri, Terri”. The voice became a face staring straight at me! It was my cousin, Peter, who had died some years earlier at the age of twelve.
At the time of his death his family couldn’t afford a proper headstone. However, his mother, who had remarried prior to his death, had decided to emigrate to Canada and she had, at last, saved enough money to buy a headstone before leaving. She was proposing to inscribe the stone with her new married name rather than that of her former husband - Peter’s father. Peter was so incensed by this thought that he couldn’t rest and had to make it known through me that he was unhappy with his mother’s proposal.
Whilst this experience had a major impact on me at the time, I dismissed it and took no further action. There had been a longstanding family feud and we weren’t on speaking terms. However, Peter was determined and shortly afterwards, whilst driving home one night, he took over my body and I very nearly crashed into a ditch. He again made his point, but this time I did something about it. I wasn’t going to risk that again! The outcome was twofold; it not only satisfied Peter but also brought the family together again..
I gave up hairdressing and went to work for Wimpey Homes as a sales negotiator in Swindon. It was there that I met Pat Cole whose husband had died some years before. She had had a very happy marriage and often went to mediums and clairvoyants to make contact with him.
At the time I didn’t consider myself to be a medium but, nevertheless, I was intrigued as to how they could harness their powers to link the spiritual world with the material world. I started to go with Pat to numerous mediums and it became apparent to me that I had an awareness of what they were seeing and who they were communicating with. I had no need for tarot cards or crystal balls; I could link directly with spirit.
I now felt that the time was right to harness my gift properly. I could sense a presence around me and a building of energy. I now realise that it was at this point that my spiritual guide, Simeon, was wishing to make contact with me. However, I was oblivious to his approaches. At first they were quite subtle but, as time went on, they became more violent, until I finally realised that there must be ‘someone’ there. Initially, I would see lights going off and then on, I would lose things that were, seconds before, in front of me, only to reappear in a totally different but yet obvious place. Sometimes objects would have a peculiar feel to them; they would either be too cold or too hot to handle as if they had been in a fridge or oven. My car would cause me all sorts of annoying problems. It had an alarm which was automatically set on locking. I would walk a few yards and the alarm would go off, on turning around it would stop. This would continue for three or four times until I would shout at it to stop – and it would!
I was also accused by my then partner of having an affair because he constantly found the front passenger seat fully reclined. Naturally, I had always left it in the upright position.
When I continued in failing to respond to Simeon, his actions became more violent. On one occasion I opened the fridge and a plate of food shot out across the room, smashing against the wall! Doors would slam shut in front of me and the curtains would blow as if a window was open, when in fact it wasn’t.
By this time I think Simeon was beginning to lose patience with me and he decided to make it plainly obvious to me that he was there and wanted to talk. He chose an occasion when I was driving from London to Oxford on the M40, when suddenly this voice shouted out “for goodness sake, for the past twenty minutes I have been turning your heater from cold to hot. You have been so engrossed in listening to the radio and, without thinking, you have been returning it to cold.” As he spoke I looked at the dashboard to see the lever move from cold to hot and tried to stop it but couldn’t! I was scared rigid and didn’t know what to do. He then said, “Child, do not be frightened, I come in peace.” I knew then that I had to find out what was happening to me and I set about seeking help.
I was advised to go to a spiritualist church in Oxford and as soon as I walked through the door of the Greater World Christian Spiritualist Church I realised that I was at home. I was with like-minded people and I was immediately invited to join a development circle. From that moment I have never looked back.
I was living in a material world, full of ambition and determination without fear of treading on people to succeed. Entering onto a pathway of spiritualism has changed my whole attitude towards life. It has not stunted my ambition or appetite for success but it has taught me compassion and sensitivity towards people. Most of all, however, it has turned me towards God, our Creator.
During those ‘wilderness’ years I had suffered many hardships, both financial and emotional and I believe these traumas were put in my pathway to test my faith and to teach me compassion, humility and understanding. In fact, on one occasion when I was in bed and emotionally distressed about every aspect of my life, Simeon told me to read page 514 of my Bible. To my amazement it was the Book of Job and Simeon was telling me, with this example, that faith will see me through.
By joining the Greater World Church I began to learn how to control the power within me rather than allowing the power to control me. To do this I had to understand where the power was coming from and how best to utilise it. To put it simply, the power comes from God and we all have it within us, although some are better equipped to deal with it than others.
By sitting in a development circle my learning processes began and I was taught how to communicate with and relate to Simeon, my spiritual guide. I had already come across Simeon with my previous experiences but I did not know his name at that time, neither did I appreciate his real purpose nor how to communicate with him unless he contacted me. As my spiritual development expanded I learnt to communicate with him and establish his name and background.
Simeon was on the earthly plain about 3,500 years ago and was the second son of Jacob and Leah. Reference to him can be found in the Bible (Book of Genesis). He moved with his family to Egypt at the time of the great famine and lived with his brother Joseph. It is through Simeon that I am able to communicate with spirit and he is not only my mentor for all spiritual understanding but also a great friend.
I was now able to start helping others as well as myself. On one occasion I was lying in bed when Simeon showed me one large upright banana! My immediate thought was that he was trying to be sexual but he rebuked me for having such thoughts and told me that I should eat bananas because my body was very low in potassium. As it happened I had not been feeling well for some time and decided to go to the doctor for a check-up. He confirmed I was low in potassium and admitted me into hospital for tests. I was diagnosed as having myxodema, which is caused by an under active thyroid. If this had not been diagnosed within a few months I could have ended up in a coma. Simeon had rapidly proved his worth and a true friend!
Whilst I was in hospital having the tests, another patient in the same ward was suffering great pain. The nurses could not administer any painkillers because she was on special medication. She was screaming with pain and distressing other patients. I linked with Simeon and asked for help and, through deep prayer and faith, I was able to send her, what is known as, ‘absent healing’. Within a few minutes the screaming had stopped and she became quite calm and at peace. In fact, she was so peaceful that she fell asleep and started snoring! The next morning I asked her if she was feeling better and she said that the pain had completely gone as if it was a miracle.
On another occasion I was giving a reading to an old gentleman and I could see male genitalia on the floor beside him. It was a way of Simeon telling me that the gentleman wanted to ask me a question but was too embarrassed. I wondered what on earth this could be but plucked up courage to ask. He was concerned about thoughts that were constantly in his mind but could not bring himself to tell me. Simeon then told me that the gentleman was having sexual thoughts towards his deceased wife. The gentleman was amazed that I knew and he then explained that he had constant thoughts of making love to his wife even though she had been dead for some years. The gentleman was then able to open up and talk quite freely about his problems, which helped him enormously.
I have been able to help many people with all sorts of problems, be they emotional, marital, financial, health or other problem – even people who are sceptical about the existence of spirit and the afterlife. On one occasion I had been to a business function with a colleague. After the meeting we were in a room alone and he raised the whole question about spirituality and whether I really did have a spirit guide called Simeon. He was willing to believe but was finding it difficult to do so. At that point Simeon told me to tell my colleague that he was in the room with us and would send a signal to prove his existence. With that, the lights in the room went out, frightening my colleague to death! He stood up and groped his way to the door to find that the lights in the hallway were on. He then flicked the light switch in the room and the lights went on, only to see the lights go out again before he had even got back to his seat – he was convinced from that moment on!
Among other predictions I predicted that Robert Maxwell, the disgraced publisher, would die a few days before it actually happened. Incidentally, I do not believe he took his own life, I know he was murdered!
To create and maintain amazing levels of mediumship and clairvoyance requires continual development, building up the power within, communicating with the spirit world and imparting information from one side to the other in a compassionate, positive and informative manner.
Over the past twenty years I have not only developed my gift to a high and professional standard but also with an interesting and entertaining delivery generated entirely through spirit. In this respect it is vital, and yet often overlooked, to ensure that the medium is the right channel for particular spirit souls.
Souls in the spirit world are really no different from those on the earth plain. In other words, certain people on the earth plain can relate more readily to people with certain characteristics. We are all drawn to different people for all sorts of reasons. Therefore, a good medium should be able to establish whether he or she is the right channel to bring the best out of a particular spirit. E.G. a somewhat timid female spirit might find it difficult to link with a male medium. For this reason it is essential, for the furtherance of better mediumship, to utilise the gifts of both men and women when demonstrating to the public or giving private sittings.
I have appeared at public theatres, on radio and appeared on Living UK television and Psychic TV, in addition to writing features for the Sunday Mirror and Bella magazines. I have also featured in magazine articles including BBC Vegetarian, The Womans Journal and numerous regional publications.
Apart from giving personal readings and public demonstrations, I also support spiritual churches, carrying out church services and giving messages from the spirit world to members of the congregation. I am also involved in teaching those who wish to develop their spiritual gifts and, in this respect, I have recently completed a sanctuary at my house dedicated to spiritual understanding and for giving personal readings.
There are so many facets to spiritualism and so many benefits that mankind can learn from the spirit world, that I have dedicate the rest of my life to furthering its understanding and proving that there is life after physical death. To help others by passing on the love and comfort that God is so willing to give is a totally fulfilling experience.
My passion is to bring Mediumship and Spiritualism to a much wider audience and to remove the myths, misunderstandings and prejudices from a gift that is truly available to all. My spiritual pathway has led me to explore the eastern philosophies and techniques, and merging them with western spiritualism which has taught me deeper levels of attunement.
I look at myself as an ambassador sent to promote and to prove survival of the spirit after physical death and, by demonstrating my skills to a wider audience, I will be able to not only give meaningful comfort to those who have lost loved ones to the spirit world but also invoke their own spirituality.
I can command a great presence when I am demonstrating on stage and my style enables me to pass messages from the “other side” in such a way as to help the bereaved cope and come to terms with their loss. By absorbing the character of the spirit as he or she was on the earth plane I can pass on and share in the memories and emotions being borne both by the recipient and spirit. My work with the Samaritans has helped me in giving this compassionate delivery technique.
My approach to mediumship brings out more than facts, be they past, present or future; it also releases the emotions to the point that you can feel the presence of the spirit personality in the room. When the audience “feel” that presence they need no further proof. It can become enthralling for the entire audience, not just the recipient of the message.
My delivery is captivating, whether it is on a one-to-one or to an audience of hundreds. I can introduce humour when it is called for as well as humility and understanding; in other words, demonstrating the true character.
I do not invite the audience to accept a message for themselves; the spirit world is not unintelligent to the point that they cannot direct me to the right person. I have been trained to go straight to the recipient…no beating about the bush like so many mediums! However, my skills go beyond that! My inspirational and motivatal speaking will enthral any audience. I need no prompting or written words; my delivery is straight from spirit and will touch and relate to everyone in the audience. The philosophy of spirit will demonstrate its power to reach all those in need and those wishing to develop their understanding.
Terri works extensively in the field of mediumship and psychic awareness and is an accomplished keynote speaker and demonstrator. Terri is an approved tutor at the prestigious Spiritualist Association of Great Britain (SAGB) www.sagb.org.uk where students can further their spiritual development and enhance their psychic and mediumistic abilities.