Anna Sayce

Tag: life after death

  • Encounters with Ghosts

    Encounters with Ghosts

    Were you fascinated by ghosts as child? I know I was. I would spend my lunch times in the school library, looking at books about ghosts and scaring myself silly with ghost pictures, like this one:

    (This is a famous photograph taken in Newby Church, Yorkshire, and although it looks kind of fake to me now, it didn’t when I was a child!)

    I was both fascinated and terrified by ghosts growing up. My first brush with a ghost was when I was about five or six years old, in our family home. The more I developed my intuitive abilities in my early twenties, the more I perceived ghosts. In my own home I rarely came into contact with a ghost, but I regularly came into contact with ghosts in hotels and in friends’ houses.

    I spent the last three and a half weeks on holiday in England. During my holiday, I visited Blickling Hall in Norfolk, which is the supposed birthplace of Anne Boleyn (the second wife of King Henry VIII, who was beheaded by him in 1536 for adultery). Legend has it her birthplace Blickling Hall is haunted by her headless ghost, among the many ghosts that reside there.

    I was looking forward to having a look inside and seeing what I might ‘pick up’ about the place but unfortunately only the grounds were open – the actual building was shut for the winter.

    The afternoon spent at Blickling Hall reminded me that I’ve never written about the topic of ghosts, even though I get lots of questions about ghosts from readers.

    What Are Ghosts?

    Ghosts are the mental and emotional bodies of the deceased. (Another term for them is ‘earthbound spirits’.)

    They exist in the astrals, but have not fully crossed over to the astral realm and so a part of them is still on Earth. They are often found in hospitals, police stations, funeral parlours, cemeteries, bars, clubs, and hotels.

    Ghosts can stay behind on the earth plane for a variety of reasons. For example, if a recently deceased soul believes they have done something wrong that they will be judged for, they may refuse to cross over. Or if a soul had an addiction when they were incarnated that they are not ready to release, they may also be reluctant to cross over. And when someone dies suddenly and unexpectedly and the person is too shocked and distressed to cross over and leave their life behind, they may choose to stay on the earth plane. Unfinished business can also cause a soul to keep a part of themselves on the earth plane, long after their life has ended.

    (Important note: don’t confuse ghosts with the popular term ‘negative entities’. Ghosts are not scary or even inherently negative – they were once incarnated people.)

    How Ghosts Affect us

    Ghosts can occupy homes and can attach to peoples’ auras too. When they do this, they drain energy, which is one reason why it’s not a good idea to keep ghosts hanging around, no matter how much we like them!

    One ghost will drain a very small amount of energy. But the more ghosts you have hanging around you, the more draining it becomes. The second reason why ghosts are to be avoided is because by nature they are emotionally unstable and very susceptible to negative emotions. When they attach to someone, they amplify and echo any pain and negative emotion in a person’s energy field. So if you feel angry and have one hundred earthbound spirits in your energy field, that anger will be amplified. The same goes for any fear, pain or guilt. Those negative emotions can be reduced by removing any earthbound spirits that are present (although note that removing the spirits might do nothing to remove the actual root cause of the negative emotion – these spirits simply echo negative emotion that is already there – they do not create it.)

    What’s It Like When a Ghost Comes a-knocking?

    Perhaps you have also had the experience of feeling a presence in your home or somewhere else. Here’s what it feels like for me:

    It often happens as I’m falling asleep. The sides of my head get hot and start tingling.  Next, faces I don’t recognize start flashing through my mind’s eye furiously and usually, one or two will stick in my mind’s eye.  If I attempt to sleep, I get woken up, sometimes as often as every ten minutes or so and it feels like someone has hit me on the side of the head to wake me.  (This happens mostly in hotels and friends’ houses – it has only happened once in my own home.) If it goes on for long enough, I can clearly see in my mind’s eye the entity that is bothering me. The last time this happened in a friend’s house, I was told by the family living there that the description I gave of the entity I saw in my mind’s eye matched exactly the previous owner of the house who was known to be haunting the property.

    Who Attracts Ghosts?

    Sensitive, empathic and intuitive people often notice ghosts.  And ghosts notice sensitive people and are attracted to their auras because they are so open.

    Your aura may be even more open if you practise automatic writing, channelling or mediumship, and you are willing to channel whoever ‘comes through’.  Ideally, you would want to be channelling your Guides in spirit or your Higher self – not just any old spirit. For this reason, I recommend starting an automatic writing session by addressing your Higher self or Spirit Guides. Because if you are willing to open up to whoever comes through, you may actually be channelling the emotional body of a ghost who is still around on earth because they couldn’t let go of their physical addiction (as an example). That’s the earthly equivalent of asking someone who is on drugs or addicted to drugs, for advice on your latest life issue.  It’s possible that you might not get very helpful advice because it is could be coming from a place of stuckness and fear (remember that many ghosts won’t cross over because of fear, pain or sometimes a desire for revenge.)

    In the first chapter of my Intuitive Awakening Course, we get clear on who it is OK to channel, for exactly this reason – there is no point asking for advice from disembodied entities who have no more (or even a lot less) perspective than you do on your own life. If you do end up channelling a ghost, the channelled information may not be very coherent or helpful.

    How to Avoid Channelling Ghosts

    To prevent ghosts entering your aura, don’t open yourself up to channel just any old spirit.  Instead, channel your Higher self or the beings who were assigned to you to help you on your path (i.e. Spirit Guides and Guardian Angels.)  When you do channeling, request to channel your Spirit Guides, Guardian Angels or Higher self only – those beings who are with you at the choice of your soul.

    Those who smoke marijuana can also attract ghosts in even larger numbers because this substance opens up your aura to these spirits.

    What about you – ever had an encounter with a ghost? What happens for you when you perceive one? Do you have any further questions about ghosts? (I may write another article on this subject.) Feel free to share your experiences in the comments.

  • Where Is My Dead Father Now & How Can I Communicate With Him?

    Where Is My Dead Father Now & How Can I Communicate With Him?

    Where is my dead father now; I want to talk to my dad who passed away

    Hi Anna,

    I have a question about mediumship and the afterlife. I want to talk to my dad who passed away in 2018. Do I have to do this through a medium or can I do it myself? Where is my dead father now?

    – Mirush

    Hi Mirush,

    Thanks for your question. I’m sorry to hear about your father’s death.

    First of all, I wanted to say that your father most likely crossed over fully to the other side following his death. Soon after death, his soul would have undergone a ‘life review’ which is where his soul gets to go over what happened in his most recent lifetime and what he learned from it. Then most probably, he will hang out in the afterlife for a while before incarnating again into a different body. Even if your dad is now reincarnated, part of his spirit will be on the other side, and you can talk to him any time you like.

    So, the answer to your question “where is my dead father now” is:

    (1) Either his soul is in the afterlife or (2) he has reincarnated into a new body. He will have moved forwards on his soul’s path in some way.

    If you have things you want to say to your father, say them out loud. He will hear you. In order for you to have a 2 way conversation with your father, you both have to build your half of a bridge. This bridge is between heaven and earth. Your dad builds half of the bridge and you build half. That means, to communicate ideally you will develop your psychic sensitivity to reach him and he will lower his spiritual vibration to reach you.

    You need to “build” your half of the bridge in order to communicate with your deceased father

    Many times, deceased spirits are already communicating with us, but we haven’t noticed (which means that they have “built” their half of the bridge, but we haven’t built ours). So I would say it is a good idea for you to sensitize yourself further. Be really observant and pay attention to see if you notice any of the following ways deceased loved ones communicate with us from the other side. You can also ask your father to send you some of these signs.

    (Note, if you would rather watch this article as a video, instead of read the article, scroll down to the bottom!)

    #1: Through Dreams

    When we are dreaming, we are very open to communication from deceased loved ones and from the other side in general. This is because we’re already in the astral planes, which is a non-physical place that we visit when we’re asleep. It’s easier for our deceased loved ones to ‘meet us half-way’, energetically speaking, by visiting us there.

    I had a dream visitation from my great-grandmother (my mother’s grandmother) a few days before my mother got remarried in 2007 (although I didn’t realize at the time that it was a dream visitation.) Great-granny turned up, looking frail, grey and old – just how I remember her. The only thing she said to me in the dream was “your mother looks lovely in brown”. I felt a great deal of affection coming from her even though I hadn’t known her very well when she was alive. It was a nice dream, but I forgot about it soon after I woke up.

    A couple of days later, I was out shopping with my mother for something to wear on her wedding day and we had looked all over town for the right dress for her to get married in, but we hadn’t found anything suitable.

    Then, just before the shops were shutting at the end of the day, we found a gorgeous brown dress. My mum tried on the brown dress and it fit beautifully and she looked gorgeous in it. It was perfect. Then all of a sudden I remembered the dream where great-granny had told me that mum looked lovely in brown and I told mum about it. She smiled and said, “Great-granny always used to tell me how nice I looked in brown.” Mum thought it was just a coincidence that she had found a brown dress but I felt like it was great-granny giving her blessing from the other side.

    How do you know if your deceased loved one is visiting you in a dream or not?

    I’ve had a few dreams with deceased spirits in them since then and they’ve all ‘felt’ very similar to me.

    It’s hard to put my finger on it exactly, but for me, the ‘climate’ or ‘mood’ of the dream changes when a deceased spirit shows up. You might feel their love or affection for you, transmitted in the dream whereas before there was no particular mood or feeling to the dream. The setting of the dream may suddenly change to somewhere quite symbolic and it may become more vivid. You will often have the dream just before you wake up so that you remember it.

    #2: Deceased Spirits Can Move Objects

    Can the dead move objects? Yes, it is possible. Don’t ask me to explain how deceased spirits manage to mess with objects. I just know they can and do.

    My mum’s sister who passed away from ovarian cancer around two years ago made her presence felt in a few different ways after her death.

    Shortly after she passed away, my mother’s sister visited me in a dream and told me that she was messing with the clocks in my grandmother’s house. I rang up my grandmother the next morning to tell her what I had dreamt and she told me that the grandfather clock in their lounge had stopped overnight with the pendulum in the wrong position and they couldn’t get it to work again (it had never happened before and they’d had it for decades.)

    Another time a book that belonged to my mother’s sister about ovarian cancer fell off the bookshelf while my grandmother was in the room.

    #3: Communication Through Signs from Nature

    The world of Spirit is entwined with and superimposed onto the physical world and the natural world. You just have to be looking for Spirit in order to see it. I’ve heard of deceased spirits sending natural symbols which were meaningful to them when they were alive – such as flowers, birds, animals or animal symbolism. Other signs from nature include rainbows, the person’s favourite flower taking up residence in your garden randomly – that sort of thing.

    A while ago my mother told me about a local man here in New Zealand who died in a diving accident. He hit his head and drowned while diving in some coastal caves. When they recovered his body, three whales were sighted nearby, on the coast, hanging around the area where the body had been recovered. (Whales are the Maori symbol of divine protection.) In this area of New Zealand, whales rarely show up on the coast – you have to go many miles out to sea to see them. So that was interesting in itself. Then a few weeks later they were having a memorial service for this man in the place where he died, three whales showed up again.

    #4: Communication Through Mediums & Through Your Intuitive Senses

    Deceased spirits are energy, like your Spirit Guides, so they can impulse us and connect with us in a similar way if they are around. But I do believe that it is easier to communicate with Spirit Guides than it is to communicate with deceased spirits. This is because guides are connected to you, so if you tune into a person’s energy, you can also tune into their guides fairly easily if you know how. But deceased spirits are not attached to you as such.

    So, if you cannot connect with a deceased loved one through a medium, don’t despair. There are many reasons why the communication might not be successful.

    Remember that the ether is far removed from the physical plane. Communicating with the other side is a little like building a bridge (made of energy). It’s like you are on one mountain, in the physical plane and the dead on another in the ether. In between you is a valley. In order for you to make contact, someone, or both parties has to build a bridge. You can build an energetic bridge by raising your vibration and opening up your psychic senses and the deceased spirit can build half of the bridge by lowering theirs to meet you halfway. Sometimes deceased spirits may not be available to build their part of the bridge because they’re working on the next stage of their soul’s journey. Some recently deceased spirits want to build the bridge but they’re not yet fully comfortable in their new energetic state and cannot.

    Even if you cannot connect with your deceased loved ones through a medium or if they are not showing you signs of them being around you, you can still honour and love them in other ways.

    One of the best ways of honouring another soul is by letting them go.

    You’ve probably heard the saying ‘if you love someone, set them free’. This is as true in death as it is in life. Deceased spirits can really benefit from permission to leave and go and pursue the next stage of their long journey. I know deceased loved ones who still have one foot in this dimension one year after their death because they feel guilty for leaving their family behind.

    My grandmother told me about a friend of a friend who punched her dying husband in the face (he’d had a heart attack) because she was so angry that he was leaving her. My grandmother always found that story quite funny and sad at the same time. I’m thinking of this story because we do send out clear messages to dying and deceased loved ones about whether they are allowed to cross over that will affect their willingness to move on. And of course it is natural to want to hold onto people.

    Something that is very powerful is to give your loved one permission to die while they are still alive. My grandfather did this in the moments before one of our relatives was on her deathbed. He talked to her to sleep like a little child, telling her that it was OK to go and to not be afraid. She died shortly after.

    During the funeral, some native cultures consider that the spirit of the dead person is there, so they address them directly and tell them that it’s OK to cross over fully now. Then, they promise to honour their dead and check in with them at certain times, like on the anniversary of their death.

    Even after they are gone, you can speak to your deceased loved one and tell them that it’s OK to move on. They will hear you.

    You can also honour the dead by focusing on new life

    Death is not just an ending. With it, new life begins, although you do not see the new life and the new stages in the evolution of the soul of your loved one (you only see the ending which is what causes grief). Know that your loved one lives on, and experiences new life and goes on to the next stage in their soul’s evolution, even if you cannot see it. You can honour and witness this cycle symbolically through planting something beautiful and seeing it grow.

    How have your deceased loved ones got your attention? Please leave a comment if you have something to share.

    Further Reading & Resources:

    This article is the third part in a series of articles about the afterlife. The first two articles were:

  • What Happens After Death?

    What Happens After Death?

    There are two parts to you – your spirit and your physicality. Your body holds your spirit. So what happens to your spirit after death?

    When you die, your spirit (or Higher self) all of a sudden is no longer confined to a human body. You become the whizzing, vibrating ball of energy that you always were – except now your energy is no longer contained by a physical body. Instead of perceiving things physically, through a body, you begin to perceive energetically and you can do everything that energy does.

    This is much like being in a dream state, except it’s not a dream. You can fly!

    What happens after death is that your thoughts and intentions take you to places and people in a flash, in a way that you never could when you were physical. Because you’re energetic, the soul gets to read energy and to know what the energies are around you and what their intentions are.

    When you’re dead, you move at the speed of light. Have you ever felt impatient that things won’t manifest instantly in the physical plane, as soon as you think of them and want them? That’s because compared to being non-physical, being physical can feel like wading through mud.

    This shift in perspective can cause a sense of confusion, sometimes it’s a sense of shock, especially when the death was sudden, traumatic or unexpected. A soul always knows when it’s time to go (you choose the timing around your death) but some souls don’t integrate the event very well or they weren’t prepared for how they would die.

    I have a clairaudient relative who works in a hospital. She told me that while she was in the morgue with a young man who had committed suicide, she heard him speaking – asking questions about what had happened to him and where he was. So that kind of confusion happens after death sometimes.

    But the person’s Spirit Guides, angels, and the third order will be waiting to guide you (The third order is the spiritual order that transports souls to the Ether after death.)

    All of the above can take a matter of seconds, minutes or hours in terms of Earth time.

    Then, you cross over.

    Some souls wave goodbye and just cross straight over after death.

    Some souls at this point won’t cross over fully – there are stages to the crossing over. Some want to stay behind and remain attached to their families and loved ones for a while (some cultures believe that a soul stays with the family for seven days exactly before it crosses over). Some souls can be here for longer. This is especially common for example when there is a strong attachment in the physical – for example, when a parent leaves a young child behind.

    Some souls at the time of their death are at such a low vibration – such as fear, hatred or anger that they cannot cross over because they’re afraid. They may believe that they’re going to hell or that they deserve God’s judgment so they remain in the Earth plane after death. So, in a strange way, after you’re dead you’re still manifesting and getting what you expect. Those souls get help from their angels and the third order to raise their vibration so they can cross over.

    Shedding All That Is Human

    So we have said that when you die, you shed the physical body. You also shed certain human aspects such as any negativity or pain you were holding. Sometimes this can take a period which lasts several days. You begin the process of embodying everything that you learned in your lifetime and integrating all your experiences into the fabric of your soul. The negative falls away and the learning and wisdom remain. That is why when you connect to deceased relatives who were not your favourite people on Earth, they are usually more reconciliatory and loving. They can see more and their perspective has changed.

    You also do a ‘life review’, where you watch the movie of your life, which also helps you to see more about your life and integrate everything you have learned. I have come across souls in my Akashic Record Readings who do these life reviews with recently deceased spirits, as a career when they’re non-physical. Such souls tend to be counsellor types when they are incarnated and find that people will talk to them about anything.

    What Do You Do Once You’re Dead?

    You can do a variety of things.

    Staying Close to Earth

    You can incarnate again.

    Or you can work with souls on the Earth plane – you yourself may be a member of the third order, helping souls leave their bodies and helping souls integrate new bodies that are being born into the world. If you do that kind of work, it will be written in your Akashic Record.

    You may help others with their life reviews once they are dead (to become a kind of counsellor and healer). Again, if you do that it will be in your Akashic Record. You may become one of those advisor souls who helps others to choose their parents, family, and path for their next lifetime on Earth. You can prepare new souls for their very first incarnation. All of these are roles or non-physical ‘careers’ that my clients have had in between lifetimes.

    You can even leave Earthly life behind and become a Spirit Guide (although this is not a usual path to take after an incarnation).

    Going ‘Abroad’

    There are other places and star systems to explore and some souls (perhaps you) even come from these other places. So, at the end of your physical life, you can check out other star systems and places to incarnate. That’s a whole other ball game.

    Learning and Studying

    You can also study certain things that are useful to life here on Earth, that you could implement next time around. Are you a natural energy worker? That’s probably not an accident. Some souls study how energy integrates the physical human body and then come into their next incarnation with an understanding of how energy moves through the body and they can do cool things with it. Some souls study the original blueprint for the Earth plane and look at what they can do to bring the planet to a state of love and peace. There are many things to study and learn and this is just the tip of the iceberg.

    Further Reading & Resources:

  • Is There Life After Death?

    Is There Life After Death?

    This is part one of a three-part series that explores life after death. You can find parts 2 and 3 below.

    Part 2: What Happens After Death?

    Part 3: How The Dead Communicate With Us

    Clients and readers sometimes ask me ‘Do you believe in life after death?’

    Life after death is one of those things I am certain exists. I don’t offer my services as a medium but I have had plenty of experiences communicating with the other side that I want to share in these blog posts.

    An ‘Intuitive Knowing’ that There Is Life After Death

    I personally have always believed in life after death. It just made sense to me, on an intuitive level, that a spirit that exists in a body would still exist long after the body has disappeared.

    I remember that this belief really hit home for me when I was in my early twenties and I saw our dead cat Hunter who had just been killed by a car. Her body was empty – just a shell. It was then that I consciously realized that there was something in the cat – you could call it the cat’s “essence” or “consciousness”, that had been there and which was no longer there. The people around me were talking as if Hunter no longer existed, as if she had just dissipated into nothingness. But I knew that if the cat was no longer here, she had to be somewhere else.

    Then something that I had been taught in physics popped into my mind – that energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be transferred. To me, this seemed like a good metaphor for the dying process. It seemed wrong to me on an intuitive level (the level I have operated on for my whole life) that the life that animates an animal or human just dissolves into nothing.

    I later learned (or remembered) that we are all pieces and individual projections of Source or God energy. You can’t destroy Source/God, and you can’t destroy our souls. I do believe our souls can and do return to Source or the Creator and lose their individual essence, but I don’t believe they can be destroyed or can just disappear after death.

    My belief in life after death actually became something I could verify when I began practising as an intuitive. That was when I began to see and hear evidence of the afterlife.

    Evidence of the Afterlife: Talking with the Dead

    I wrote about the very first experience I had with a client’s deceased relative in this article and my boss Pete wrote about it in a testimonial for me. That experience stopped me doubting my psychic abilities once and for all because the deceased spirit I communicated with told me things that were true, specific and which I could not have known otherwise.

    Since then, I haven’t connected with clients’ deceased loved ones very frequently (only a handful out of 350 or so readings) but when I have, it’s been an amazing experience. Last week I had the pleasure of contacting a client’s deceased relative during a reading. At the end of this reading, this client asked me to tune into her Spirit Guide team. Well, someone else showed up as well when I tuned into her guides and it was a lovely surprise.

    At first, it was difficult for this spirit to communicate with me. Unlike when I talk with Spirit Guides, who present to me in my mind’s eye clearly, easily and quickly, I could tell it took energy and effort for this spirit to convey who she was. At first, she looked like a green and white ball of energy that was moving and whizzing really fast. I felt she was trying to convert this energy into an image I could understand and convey to my sitter. She told me her name and then this energy changed in a flash to a human appearance which I described to my sitter and then changed back into the whizzing ball of energy. The spirit, because of her name and appearance was identified as a dearly departed relative. The messages the spirit conveyed showed that this deceased relative was still watching over my sitter and being her ‘cheerleader’ in the non-physical.

    Feeling the Love the Dead Still Have for us

    One of the nicest things about connecting with some deceased relatives is feeling the love they still have for those they’ve left behind. As soon as I connected with this deceased spirit, I was hit by this overwhelming love and such beautiful energy. I think this was the love the deceased relative had for my sitter. It felt so lovely to be bombarded with this energy – quite different from speaking with a Spirit Guide.

    Reasons for the Dead to Come Back to us

    Why is communicating with the dead so hit and miss? Why can mediums sometimes communicate with the dead and not other times? I have noticed that usually, the dead have to have a strong motivation to come back to us AND actually make their presence felt, probably because it takes a great deal of energy and effort to communicate with us.

    # 1: To give us peace, reassurance and comfort

    Spirits who come back to remind the living of their presence do so often because they see the healing it brings. They remind us that there is no imposed separation from those you love. The dead can be with us in spirit in a flash, when we think of them. Whether we perceive them is another matter. The Maoris – the native people of New Zealand – say that the spirits of the dead are on the shoulders of the living and we carry them with us wherever we go.

    # 2: Because their path is still entwined with yours

    Sometimes deceased relatives stay very attached to their living loved ones. This can be for a variety of reasons – sometimes because they want to see their loved ones succeed – like the deceased relative I encountered recently. (She was standing behind my client’s Spirit Guides and had a ‘cheerleader’ and supporter role.)

    In another case, a spirit can stay attached because they feel a responsibility to watch over the actions of the living and warn them of certain things. This has happened before in one my sessions. A deceased spirit warned against doing something the client was considering, that would have had dire consequences. This spirit had been dead for many, many years and you would have thought he would have cut ties with the living, but he was obviously still quite attached to whether or not this person was doing the right thing, and he had vested interests also in the situation.

    # 3: To say what went unsaid

    If there’s something important that’s left unsaid, spirits can stay around to attempt to resolve it instead of moving on. The dead returning to communicate with us is also a reminder to check if there is anything left unsaid in your life. I have a stiff upper lip that I either inherited or picked up from my background, so the people around me rarely know just how much I respect, admire and love them because I am not good at getting it out. My encounters with the dead have taught me how important it is to say the words that can heal, reconcile or just communicate how much you care, because once you’re gone it’s harder to do.

    So, I know it’s a massive cliche, but make sure YOU communicate to those you love how much you love and appreciate them.

    # 4: To resolve something that went undone

    The spirits that are most motivated to hang around are perhaps those who left something unresolved or undone. In particular, I’m thinking of those who experienced some sort of injustice in their lifetime, like a murder which is still unresolved.

    The dead can also remind us not to leave things undone for an extended time period. The biggest thing you can leave undone is pursuing your own dreams. Are you happy with how you spend your days now? Or do you live for tomorrow, planning, with your mind continually in the future, putting off life? The lesson that the dead brings to us is to live in the present moment and do what we want now, because there may not be as many tomorrows as we think.

    # 5: When you’re reviving their memory

    Sending the dead a lot of energy also brings them to you, in spirit. For example, my mother as a hobby digs up the past and reconstructs our family tree. She has uncovered interesting and scandalous stories of our family. In dreams, I have seen the bodies of long-deceased relatives turn in their graves and communicate to me that they are watching what she is doing with the family tree. So, sending our ancestors energy – studying their past and our ancestral roots – can also call them to us.

    Do you have any thoughts you want to share on the subject of life after death? Please leave a comment!

    Further Reading & Resources: