Hi Ilulkea and Rena,
Read your posts with great interest and pleased you both got something positive from your "encounter."
I have been involved with Spiritualism for nearly 30 years and I would stress that no true medium can guarantee to bring through a particular person. Spirit people, like us, have freedom of choice and can choose to come through or not at a particular time. Also its not an exact science and is always an experiment.
Please do not waste your money on an expensive private reading but get the name of a reputable medium from your local Spiritualist Church.
Many won't agree with my religion but its a personal thing and we all have to make up our own minds.
As to mediums being able to help directly with genealogy - I have my doubts. As for me I will continue to do my research in the usual way - brick walls and all.
Dorrie
I quite agree about wasting money. My father thought they were all charlatans from his experience of having to accompany his mother to gatherings after his father died when he was 16 in the 1920s. It was his belief that the spiritualists had helpers who listened to conversations in the queue and would pass on the details thus there were the "clues" that anyone in the audience could relate to.
Then there was my own experience at the local fair when a group of us teenagers sat in a caravan and had our palms read, coincidentally all had the same future foretold of each meeting a rich and handsome beau and living happily ever after. Roll forward four decades and I was invited to a wine and cake evening where there'd be a tarot card reading. The reading given by a young woman who who was taking her first step towards making a living reading the cards and the guests were all her friends. As the evening progressed it seemed obvious to me that all the young women had heard more or less the same thing in that they were "not happy" with their lot and life would continue to be dissatisfying. I was the last to have a reading - I thought I was probably having the same message given to me that the other guests had been given but as I wasn't her idea of a disillusioned middle aged woman with a stale marriage, I stopped the reading and told her the reality. At that point she gathered up her cards, acknowledged she'd made an error and even returned my money
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I suppose it is a bit difficult to get your head around the fact that I used a medium/clairvoyant/psychic as a tool to aid/confirm my research, especially after reading the above when it should be obvious I wasn't a believer and echoed my mother's words of,"When you're dead, you're dead, full stop". I think I've described on another thread how I came into contact with this person and it was another two years before I retired and eventually took up genealogy to find; "His pals called him Harry but he preferred his real name Henry .....died in the war" and it was many moons afterwards that I made my second visit with the intention of having more family clues to aid my new hobby.
As intimated I'd already asked if she could help with my research. Admittedly you have to be good at puzzles to work out the clues and here's an idea of what transpired:-
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"You will get help from Bury"....
not long afterward I surfed onto this site:- RootsChat.com, Europa House, Bury.
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They're all singing "The Lights of Old Aberdeen".I could see there was an old song "The Northern Lights of Old Aberdeen" but neither the author or the singers had a familiar surname.
I knew from my brother-in-law that he had a tinsmith somewhere in his father's ancestry but didn't know any further details. I'd become member of "English & Scots Origins" and subsequently found his father's family up in Newcastle in 1881 with a wife from Aberdeen, Scotland. The marriage cert showed her surname and her birth showed she belonged to the Shirras tinsmith family of
Old Machar,
Aberdeen, that manufactured Lamps (
lights) for collieries, etc.
Of course, I always add new surnames of interest to my rootschat profile and that's how a Findlay=-Shirras descendant eventually found me. Co-incidentally she made contact on RC when I was puzzling over a new list of clues and names given me by the clairvoyant. The place names were outside of the counties where any of my lines resided and the given and surnames weren't the usual "John" and "William" lol. I soon received a private email and from the county she purported to live in I guessed that some of the clues I'd been given could possibly belong to her and if they did this would strengthen/confirm a family attachment. I remember responding telling her I had a far fetched theory and did any of these "clues" belong to her. She replied the same day, Yes "Mary" had been her mother, yes "Harvey" was a family surname, "Yes", the family lived in the manor house in the northern town stated and Yes, "Bristol" was relevant as back in time the family had made "Harveys Bristol Cream Sherry".
