My career as a Medium started in my sandpit then progressed to the top of Dad’s shed. At the tender age of five I sat in my sandpit sculpting the worlds best mud creation when I asked myself a simple question, “What shape should I make it?” A flood of suggestions surged into my mind like a raging river. Another time I clambered onto the iron roof of my father’s ‘sacred’ weatherboard shed wearing my brand new Superman costume. Convinced I could fly, I suddenly heard a voice enter my mind and say, “DO NOT jump off there! You’ll end up at the vets like the dog did when it broke its leg.” How could a kid argue with that kind of advice? While these weren’t earth shattering, mind-altering experiences we’ve come to expect from Hollywood, I knew the thoughts coming to me were not my own. They were someone else’s.

In one way it was a lucky thing I never felt compelled to mention to my parents that I heard the ‘voices’ of dead people. Being of Catholic faith, my parents probably would have marched me straight off to the local priest insisting I hold rosemary beads in one hand and a string of garlic in the other – just in case. Seriously, I felt no need to tell anyone because in my heart I knew I could trust my ‘new friends’ even though I couldn’t see them. To my five-year-old way of thinking, my invisible friends felt like my mum and dad. Whatever advice they gave me I knew I could trust and that they would keep me safe. To me, communicating with my invisible friends felt very natural.

So there I was, a kid who could communicate with spirits of loved ones passed, growing up in an ordinary middle class Catholic family doing ordinary things. There was no eccentric aunt with a passion for wearing flowing gowns constantly brandishing crystals at me while promising my mother she could cleanse me of my mischievous boyhood antics.

There was no Uncle with a lucky winning streak because he had an uncanny knack of dreaming the number of the winning horse for the next day’s races. I didn’t even create social disasters for my mother like announcing to the lady’s gathered at her afternoon tea that Betty Jones’ husband was going to have an affair or by predicting that Mrs Walsh would run over her neighbour’s cat tomorrow afternoon at 3. Nothing about my family, school, neighbourhood or community experiences pointed me in the direction of Mediumship. Saying that, I did however experience odd things.

Most kids are blessed with a fertile imagination. Sometimes I wished my real experiences matched other kids make-believe stories. You’ve got no idea how I prayed for a monster to be living in my closet, or for dust bunnies to be living under my bed that turned into flesh eating creatures after midnight if I got out of bed to go to the toilet. Instead, I’d wake up very aware of people standing around my bed. I couldn’t see them but I knew they were there. “Have they operated on me and removed my gizzards? Or have they turned my legs into a fish tail?” Sadly, none of these exciting things ever happened. To my eight-year-old mind, I still didn’t have a story to compete with the closet monster or flesh-eating dust bunnies.

Eventually, the spirits did start to form in front of me. Even so, for a ten year old boy, they were rather disappointing wispy puffs of smoke. They were nothing like ‘Casper - the Friendly Ghost’. Instead, I caught glimpses of light and misty shapes while being aware of their presence as male or female, young or old. I paid as much attention to their chatter as a kid does to an adult conversation around a dinner table. While the spirits sometimes caught me off guard or surprised me, they never scared me. They added a certain level of comfort and security to my life. Spirits being around were just a normal part of my life as kid growing up. I didn’t really think it was anything too special. Then one day I turned thirteen. Hello testosterone!

My boyhood legs suddenly felt the surge of man building power hormones. Sports were in and I was the King. Girls were hot and in need of much attention. Cars were mean machines in need of owning. So “Hey good looking, my name is Tony and I talk to dead people,” simply wasn’t going to win me friends or impress the most popular girl in school.

It wasn’t a conscious decision to block out the spirits in my life, but the conversations and surprises became less frequent. Looking back, I feel the spirits gave me the space I needed during my teens to deal with puberty. But in saying that, my gift never left me during that time. I can remember walking into houses and instantly becoming aware of any spiritual energy present. Of course I didn’t tell anyone, especially my mates.

By my early twenties the spirits had begun flooding back into my life again. By design or default, I’m not sure which, I was being drawn to all things paranormal. I read anything I could get my hands on about ghosts, hauntings, psychics and the unusual.

I hit thirty experiencing an inward turmoil. I tried to forget the spirits and move onto Wilbur Smith novels, but I couldn’t. Novels felt wrong. I couldn’t help the feeling I was swimming upstream. I only felt like I was going with the flow when I was reading about the spirit world. There I was, a man of the world who felt he had something to give to society. Yet, at the same time, I was burning up inside because I was aware of a destination I had to get to but I was obliviously on the wrong bus.

Not knowing which bus to catch, I even tried politics. I seriously thought politics was my future. I reasoned that as a politician I would be able to improve people’s lives by strengthening the infrastructure and services that govern them. How wrong I was! Thankfully, I quickly realised politics was not for me. After all, who ever heard of a politician with an electorate full of dead people, but then again…

Nothing I tried career wise felt right, despite giving everything and everyone I dealt with my personal best. My sense of restlessness just kept intensifying as my paranormal experiences escalated. It wasn’t long before those disappointing puffs of smoke I saw as a kid were reappearing in a much stronger form. Before I was married, I remember I arrived home late one night. I barrelled around the corner and slammed straight into an old man standing in the corridor wrapped up in his dressing gown. I found myself apologising then realised he was in spirit. I hadn’t bowled over a poor old man at all. I’d just passed straight through a spirit.

Despite my inner turmoil, I created a life that was acceptable by normal society standards. I worked hard; I saved my money and started gathering assets. I found a wonderful woman and married her. However, at one stage during our courtship, I thought my grandmother had destroyed any hope I had of landing such a beautiful woman. I hadn’t told Vikii much about my extraordinary talent for ‘talking to dead people’ – a hang-up from my teenage years perhaps.

In the house I was living in at the time, the presence of an older woman was always with me. Even though I had never met my grandmother, I felt the presence was her. One day I was standing in the lounge room trying to impress the wonderful woman I intended to marry. I thought I’d demonstrate to Vikii that I was a man in touch with his feminine side. To my male way of thinking there was no better way to demonstrate this than to stand in front of the portrait photograph of my grandmother hanging on the lounge room wall and reveal my deepest emotions about her. “This is my grandmother. I regret I never met her before she died; yet sometimes I feel like she is with me. I feel her presence all the time.” Before my eyes, dear old granny rotated her portrait 180 degrees on the hook before promptly crashing to the floor and landing at our feet upside down. Vikki and I looked at each other then down at the floor.
Granny just smiled back up at us, upside down. All I could think to say was, “There’s something else you probably should know about me Vikii.”

Vikii, the champion that she is, took the news about my evolving mediumship in her stride. In fact, it was Vikii who suggested I learn to meditate in order to help relieve my inner turmoil. And as it so often happens, the very next day I was told of a very gifted medium living in Busselton. Sadly for me she now resides in America, but to this day I thank her for guiding me in the art of quietening my mind while teaching me to just ‘be’ with my gift. The problem was that when I did learn to meditate and ‘be’ with my gift, the spirit world wanted to ‘be’ in my space with me. My meditation sessions, in the beginning, often got a little too crowded.

Learning to meditate was the turning point for me. Meditation opened up my mind and my perception to the great world of spirits and spirit communication. I have never looked back, nor have I regretted my decision to embrace the spirit world and develop the skills I need to connect loved ones passed to the living.

The awakening of my gift as a Medium was not brought on by a tragedy, loss, or a near death experience. I was born with it. Now that I know my destination, I am at peace within myself. I feel like I am on the right bus, finally. You can’t begin to imagine the joy I experience connecting the spirit world with the physical world. But perhaps the most magic feeling of all is knowing that communication with the living, for those passed, is just as wonderful for them as it is for us. There is no greater sense of fulfilment for me as a Medium than making a connection through which comes a message encapsulated with the healing power of love.

Wherever you are in this amazing world of ours, and whomever you are, I offer you my personal message of hope and joy. I’d like to reassure you that we never die. Our souls are eternal. We are eternal to be at peace. So take time to notice a butterfly sitting on a colourful flower; the soft fluffy kitten that rubs up against your ankle, or the small child who offers you a mud cake from his sandpit bakery. It’s the little things in life that bring us so much joy. Live in the now and listen for the whispers from beyond and happiness will be yours.

Anthony