ISSUE NO 4135£3.80 | JANUARY 2016

770033 2800149

01>

WIN

A PAST-LIFE

REGRESSION

HEALING

2-CD SET

UNLOCK THE SECRET CODE OF PRECOGNITIVE

DREAMING

ICELANDIC MEDIUM’S AMAZING PHYSICAL

PHENOMENA

HOW TO NEUTRALISE YOUR KARMA

THE GHOSTLY MONKS OF ST DUNSTAIN

SPIRITUALIST AND MEDIUM PLAYED VITAL ROLES IN UNCOVERING SUTTON HOO’S HIDDEN TREASURE

NICKY HUNTINGFORD ON PROVING LIFE AFTER DEATH EXISTS

CRAIG HAMILTON-PARKER SEARCHES FOR 500-YEAR-OLD ORACLE IN INDIA

THE SPIRIT RETURN OF

RUTH RENDELL

PLACEBO EFFECT CANNOT EXPLAIN HEALING RESULTS

PSYCHIC NEWS | JANUARY 2016 3

05 Ruth Rendell’s spirit return

07 Kirstie Allsopp’s encounter with a ghost

08 News in brief

13 Did Bulgarian seer predict rise of Isil?

14 Indridi Indridason Icelandic medium’s astonishing repertoire of physical phenomena

18 Monks of St Dunstan’s John West recounts what vicar, parishioners and visiting journalist saw

22 Nicky Huntingford Roy Stemman meets a dress designer who is now an established medium

26 Messages from the Universe Craig Hamilton-Parker wonders ‘Why are you here?’

30 The Lady and the Mound We delve into the archives to learn how Sutton Hoo’s treasure was discovered

35 Placebo effect not responsible Scientific study shows there’s more to healing than mind over matter

42 Here we go again! David Hopkins gives a Spiritualist viewpoint on topical issues

46 COVER STORY Precognitive dreaming Billy Roberts reveals how to unlock the secret code to seeing the future

48 All Worlds Are One Roy Stemman’s paranormal reflections

52 Have your say Readers’ letters

55 How to become Karma Neutral T J Hobbs advises on how to balance your spiritual debts

58 A good read Our selection of spiritual titles and gift ideas

18

30

05

4246Contents

1422 35

Ruth Rendell (Photo: Geraint Lewis/REX/Shutterstock)

22 PSYCHIC NEWS | JANUARY 2016

IT’S DIFFICULT to believe that until she was 21, Nicky Huntingford knew nothing about mediumship and was only dimly aware of her psychic abilities.

She went on to make a name for herself as a creative caterer and a talented dress designer. In addition, she brought up four children, now aged from 21 to 31, with her second husband, Richard, a high-profile businessman well known for his ability to manage companies and realise their value for their shareholders.

Yet, today, those early achievements are almost a distant memory as she pursues a very different career as a sought-after medium and psychic.

Nicky sees clients either at one of the UK’s most popular centres, the College of Psychic Studies, or at her home in south-west London, from which she also runs meditation classes and mediumship development courses.

“I now have something that I really enjoy doing,” she confides, as we sit in the summerhouse she uses for readings when the weather is fine. “I love it. It’s the best thing I’ve ever done. I love working in this way.”

Nicky’s father worked for a bank and spent almost 30 years in the Far East, moving to a different location or country every three years. As the youngest child, Nicky experienced just eight years of that nomadic life but being the only English girl in each locality and constantly changing schools meant it was a rather solitary existence.

PROFILE

As a child she believed in life after death... now her job is to prove itNicky Huntingford tells Roy Stemman about her unusual journey of mediumistic development

PSYCHIC NEWS | JANUARY 2016 23

PROFILE

Looking back on her childhood, she acknowledges that she was different – something her family noticed, too.

“I was an odd child, I guess,” she explains. “I used to see and talk to fairies, as far as I can remember.

“Also, I have always believed in life after death. From a very young age I used to talk about it, I think, because I remember my family used to joke and say, ‘Of course, Nicky, she’s a little Buddhist’. I just always knew you had lots of other lives. No one ever told me that. I just knew.

“The other thing I remember is I always knew my mother was going to die early. In the Far East, people tend to have a sleep in the middle of the day because it’s so hot. When Mum slept after lunch, I would always go and check she was alive, and that’s not a normal thing for a child to do.”

Her mother, Rachel, was still alive when Nicky reached 21 and was going through a traumatic time, unable to make a decision about what to do in her love life. Exasperated, her mother said, “Look, I really give up with you. I’m going to take you to a gypsy lady that I heard about at the hairdresser’s”.

The Romany fortune-teller had set up her two caravans – one to live in, the other for consultations – on the road between Beaconsfield and Gerrards Cross in Buckinghamshire, where the family lived.

Her mother drove Nicky to the caravan and waited in the car while the reading was given, eager to hear if it had offered useful advice to her confused daughter.

“This Romany woman was extraordinary. She told me so many things: it was as if she’d been through my room looking at everything. It was unbelievable. She was spot on, she was so accurate, and it has stayed with me.”

But towards the end of the reading she

made a prediction that was clearly wrong.“She told me my parents were getting

divorced. Afterwards, my mother and I went for a cup of tea and I said, ‘Mum, she’s rubbish. She’s just told me you and Dad are getting divorced.’ We laughed and laughed. They had been married 38 years and it was a ludicrous suggestion. But six months later my parents did divorce. It was as much of a surprise to my mother as it was to me.”

So did the consultation with the incredibly accurate gypsy help sort out her love life?

“She told me stuff and, of course, I ignored it all because I was 21 and believed I knew better,” Nicky responds. “But everything she told me happened. I married the man that she told me I shouldn’t and I did have a child and get divorced.”

This experience awakened her to psychic realities, though it was only with hindsight that she began to fully appreciate the insights into her future life that it had offered her. The gypsy, it seems, was also a medium because Nicky clearly remembers being puzzled that she kept expressing thanks to someone, although nobody else was in the room with them.

Her mother’s very sudden passing from lymphoma, in 1988, was the next stepping stone on the road to becoming a medium.

“I think she had been hiding it from us, it happened so quickly. She was totally normal on Thursday but by Saturday she was talking nonsense – it must have gone very quickly to her brain – and by Monday she was dead. It meant I didn’t get a chance to talk with her and say goodbye, because she wasn’t lucid at the end.”

It was Nicky’s sister who, realising

how upset she was at having lost their mother in such circumstances, suggested she should have a sitting with a medium she had heard about. Nicky agreed, on condition that her sister accompanied her: she confesses she found the prospect of sitting with someone who claimed to be able to speak with the dead somewhat frightening.

The medium she sat with was Don Galloway, a noted medium and speaker who, it so happened, also had a close association with the College of Psychic Studies, where Nicky now works.

“As soon as I sat down he said, ‘I’ve got your mother here’. And the things he said and did, his mannerisms, were just like my mother. It was so comforting. Then he said, ‘Why am I doing this?’ and he started flicking his hand across his legs.

“I knew exactly why and I recognised the motion immediately. My mother was a heavy smoker and as she chatted the ash would fall from the cigarette into her lap and she would brush it away with her hand.

“Most importantly, she was able to say sorry that she couldn’t say ‘Goodbye’ when she died. She wanted me to know she was alright and ‘they’ had come to get her. I knew she was referring to her loved ones, like my granny and her Mum, who had passed away.”

Nicky doesn’t have a recording of the sitting and she can no longer remember everything that was said, but it proved to be enormously comforting. And from that moment on, for around 10 years, she sought out other mediums and psychics for help and guidance, having perhaps two readings a year.

By this time her marriage was breaking down and the advice she was seeking was

Nicky Huntingford and her mother, Rachel

Don Galloway, the medium through whom Nicky’s mother communicated

24 PSYCHIC NEWS | JANUARY 2016

PROFILE

largely about her everyday life and what the future might have in store. But time and again she was told that one day she would be doing the same work: giving readings to people. “I just dismissed it and never gave it a thought,” she laughs. “I didn’t think I had the ability.”

After her divorce, Nicky and a friend ran the restaurant at Chrysalis Group plc, which was where she met her future husband, Richard Huntingford, a qualified chartered accountant who joined that company as corporate development director in 1987 and served as chief executive of the music and media business between December 2000 and September 2007.

Among his many associated responsibilities he was executive chairman of Virgin Radio, overseeing its sale to Times of India in 2008.

It was only after her marriage to Richard that Nicky’s latent mediumship began “awakening”. She had been given a card advertising psychic development classes by one of the mediums she consulted and had put it in her purse where it remained for three years.

One day, she took it out, looked at it and decided to call the number. “I don’t believe in coincidences,” she observes. “I was guided. In the same week that I looked at the card, I was in conversation with someone who began talking about going to psychic development classes. So I rang the number on the card and started going to the classes in south London. I got a friend to go with me and we had no idea what to expect.”

Nicky and Richard had a young son, Charlie, by this time but despite the difficulties of finding babysitters she persevered. The teacher was Ines Nicholson and as well as meditation they also focused on psychometry, aura readings and healing.

“It was fascinating. I loved it. I attended those classes for three years, diligently. Until that time I had no idea that I could sit with someone and give them information about themselves.”

The next step along the path to mediumship came after a sitting with Angela Watkins, a tutor at the College of Psychic Studies, who invited Nicky to join her group when there was a vacancy. It was a couple of years before she received that call but she accepted without hesitation.

“Angela Watkins was the most wonderful teacher and I did her class for over two years, until she retired. When that time came, she said to us all, ‘Alright darlings. You’re all mediums. Off you go.’ She had taken me to the Barnes and Fulham Spiritualist Churches on a couple

of occasions to share the platform with her. She was very encouraging. It was a case of, ‘Right, stand up. Off you go.’ I have a lot to thank her for.”

Giving one-to-one sittings was just as daunting for Nicky and required a lot of confidence, initially, to give what she “saw”, “heard” and “felt”.

But Nicky’s very first paying client helped her dispel those doubts when she found herself describing the violent death of the spirit visitor, who had been shot. It wasn’t what Nicky was expecting but it was instantly recognised by the sitter.

Client was in tearsJust as impressive was a sitting she gave for a woman she had never met before and with whom she had no prior conversation, which is how she prefers to work.

“I remember telling her, ‘I’ve got a lady here, a most beautiful looking lady, and she’s standing behind a door. And she says she’s your friend and she went to school with you. She looks like an angel and she won’t come out from behind this door.’

“My client was in tears by now. The school friend was Reeva Steenkamp who was shot by Oscar Pistorius through a bathroom door in the home they shared. It was extraordinary.”

The sitting happened before his trial and the friend wanted to know if he had meant to kill her. Nicky conveyed this response from Reeva: “It doesn’t matter if he’s guilty or not, he will pay for it. He will pay for it. His life will never be the same again.”

It’s interesting, Nicky adds, that the spirit communicators won’t judge. “They know that what’s going to happen will be what’s meant to happen.”

What, I ask, is Richard Huntingford’s attitude to having a medium as a wife?

“He’s been with me throughout my development and is very supportive. He would sometimes ask how it was going but I don’t think he had any idea what I was really doing. He was just happy that I had found something that interested me so much.

“Then one hot night in August I was woken by Richard’s voice. I opened my eyes and saw he was sitting up in bed and talking to someone. He does not sleep talk. Never. I said, ‘My goodness, what are you doing?’

“He replied, ‘I’m talking to the lady who’s sitting there on the end of the bed.’ But by the time I looked, she was no longer there. He had been awake and had seen an arc of light appear in our bedroom. Wondering what it was, he sat up in bed and saw this lady who held out her hand to him.

“He thought she looked familiar but as he wasn’t wearing his spectacles he couldn’t see her clearly. He then woke me up with the words, ‘I hope this is for you!’

“I believe it was my mother who had come to reassure him that what I am doing is real and genuine and is not just faffing around. My mother never met Richard but she would have loved him. I think she just came to thank him for supporting me in the work I do.

“It was a classic spirit visitation because although it was a very hot August night, the room suddenly became icy cold, like December, and our teeth were chattering. It was extraordinary.”

Impressive though it was, Richard Huntingford’s brief encounter with a visiting spirit palls in comparison with the experiences of his paternal grandmother. Nicky and her husband learned only recently that she had sat regularly with a medium who produced fascinating apports – objects that are materialised by spirit helpers and given to the sitters.

Many of these apports are on display in the library of the College of Psychic Studies (CPS) at 16 Queensberry Place, London SW7 2EB, where they can be viewed by visitors. They will also be discussed by CPS archivist Leslie Price in a lecture on Friday 22 January, 2016, and the story of this remarkable collection will also be told in the February 2016 issue of Psychic News.

The CPS will also be celebrating its 90th anniversary with an exhibition of some of its unique artworks and artefacts over the weekend of 23-24 January 2016. Admission is free. Full details can be found at collegeofpsychicstudies.co.uk. n

Reeva Steenkamp returned to one of Nicky Huntingford’s sitters (Photo- Gallo Images/REX/Shutterstock)