A psychic has spoken of how seeing the soul of her friend's dead hamster rising from its body has led to her hearing messages from dead animals. Helen Ellwood, 64, a trained occupational therapist, has said after a sceptical early life she found an unspecified faith in an afterlife, describing herself as "slightly psychic".
She says she has experienced other paranormal activity including dreams of events unfolding that she was not yet aware of and visits from angels, including after collapsing from heart failure in 2019. Helen, who has written a book, Love, Death and Beyond, about her experiences, told Derbyshire Live: “We all wonder where our pets go when they die and whether we'll ever see them again. As a youngster, I would have said they go nowhere. I was sceptical of everything spiritual and terrified of death.
“There were no angels to take care of us and heaven was a fairy tale. That all changed when my friend's hamster, Beryl, died in my hands. Seeing her soul rise from her body changed everything.
“She was in my arms and I knew she was dying. Before then I had no belief system, it was all nonsense as far as I was concerned. But suddenly Beryl’s body became fractionally lighter, and a hamster-shaped sort of dark gold mist began rising up.
“I couldn’t quite believe what I could see because I didn’t even believe humans had souls, let alone hamsters. I was stunned and so dismissed it initially as a trick of the light, it was just too strange.
“But as a teenager I had clairvoyant dreams. I dismissed every one of them because I was afraid of being thought of as crazy and ridiculed. My dad was a Christian and my mum an atheist.
“I denied it within myself even though my dreams were coming true. I had repeated visions, for example, that a friend of mine was in trouble by a road. I contacted her by post and she told me that she had been by a road after a bike accident.
“In another, I was visited by my uncle who had died. When he came to me in my dreams, I didn’t know he had passed away and was told he had died the next day.
"This has led to me accepting a bigger world, a wider world, and accepting that I was part of it. These experiences are also really common. I’ve spoken to a veterinary nurse who told me loads of people have these experiences.
“That is the reason why I wrote my book. Some people, for instance, feel their dead cat jump on the bed or hear their dog’s tail wagging. I’m not an extraordinary person, I’m an ordinary person who has written it down. Also Christmas is a time when people think of those they’ve lost.
“I used to be frightened of death before collapsing with heart failure. After that, I’ve had my beliefs changed. It’s really helped and I’m less afraid than I would have been. I was able to take some deep breaths and pray, even though for no specific religion. It has given me courage and I want to share that with other people.”
Helen's book can be purchased from Amazon as a Kindle version or in paperback. It is published by Local Legend.
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