Newcomb - Heaven!

JACKY NEWCOMB

Heaven

Incredible true stories of the afterlife

PENGUIN BOOKS

Contents

PENGUIN BOOKS

HEAVEN

Jacky Newcomb is known the world over as The Angel Lady. She is a multi-award winning, Sunday Times bestselling author and regular columnist for Take a Breaks Fate & Fortune magazine. Jacky has published literally hundreds of articles, including real-life experiences of angels, afterlife, life between lives and life after death. She has been studying the phenomena of paranormal experiences for thirty-five years and is one of the UKs leading experts.

She regularly appears in the national press ( Daily Mirror , Daily Mail , Daily Express ) and is frequently featured in magazines such as Real , Chat , Woman , Bella , Woman & Home , Spirit & Destiny , and many others.

Jacky often appears on radio as a paranormal experiences expert and her expertise is also sought for television programmes such as ITVs This Morning and Channel 5s Live with Gabby Logan.

Jacky gives talks and runs workshops all over the country. She has worked with many famous names and has several celebrity clients.

For more information about Jacky and her work visit www.JackyNewcomb.com and follow her on Facebook and Twitter.

The English word heaven is derived from the spelling heven
and before that heofon. The dictionary describes heaven as
the home of God, angels and the spirits of the good or
righteous, after death.

This book explores heaven as the realms of the
souls of the deceased.

Prologue

When I was a little girl, my father was involved in a horrific car accident. Mum was a non-driver and it was difficult for her to get to the hospital with her three young daughters. Occasionally friends would drive her to the hospital and wed have a babysitter for the few hours she was away. I recall the fear she used to carry on her face, and I was old enough that I understood her difficulties, even though I was just a young girl.

After a few weeks Mum asked if she could bring her little daughters in to visit Dad. Yes, of course, young children dont really notice the machines and wires, she was told by the nursing staff. As we walked into the hospital the full horror hit me. Dad had lost his kneecap; his leg was plastered and hung up in the air from a pulley system attached to the ceiling. He had tubes up his nose, tubes in his arms, wires attached to his chest and sixty stitches in his face. He looked less like my lovely dad and more like a monster from a horror film.

From that night onwards the nightmares began. I regularly woke up in the night, screaming in terror. I was terrified of what had happened and what was to come. My biggest fear was that Dad would die. How would Mum, a non-driver, cope? How would we buy shopping? How would she be able to work? What if we were ill and she had to take us to the hospital?

I was scared and vulnerable. Our relatives lived a long way away there was no one to help. In the hospital I sat at the end of the bed, facing away from Dad, too shocked to do anything else, too dismayed to stare into his bloodied face. I darent kiss him, darent tell him I loved him; I was too scared to hug him; it took all of my strength not to cry. Dad didnt need me to cry. I wondered, did he himself know he might die? Did he realize how ill he was and how bad he looked? Had they shown him a mirror? Apparently they hadnt

This single experience left me traumatized for all of my childhood and right through my early and middle adulthood. It wasnt until Id married, had my own children and they were grown enough to live in their own homes that the nightmares that had plagued me for most of my life began to subside. My own children had passed that vulnerable age where, had the same happened to me, they were not old enough to manage. We spent every spare penny on driving lessons and helping them to buy cars. I wanted my own daughters to be able to cope should something similar happen to them its funny how we are so influenced by our own experiences! Luckily, I dont have the same fears for my young granddaughter; the memories are now far enough away in the past that I can enjoy my life without worrying about what might happen next.

Bizarrely, the hospital visit was not the end of the trauma in my life. Years later, Dad had another car accident. This was followed by a perforated ulcer, gallstones, a brain tumour, a stroke and cancer amongst other things. It seemed like my sisters, mother and I spent our whole lives sitting by Dads hospital bedside, waiting for him to die. At one point or another he was knocking at deaths door and then hed make a dramatic recovery and go and do something life-changing like fly an aeroplane or drive from our Midlands home right down to the south coast! He never stopped amazing us. I remember one occasion in particular when Dad was in a long coma following a series of brain operations. Several family friends and even doctors had given up on Dad. I recall one person saying, Id rather remember Ron the way he was as if he was on his way out. Yet Dad always seemed to fight back.

My life, and the lives of my mother and sisters, was like a fairground ride: one minute we were up in the air and then we were pelting down a sharp curve and round a steep corner upside down. I felt as if I were always holding my breath, never knowing what was going to happen next. I thought everyone lived their life sitting by the bedside of a loved one for months at a time but, of course, not everyone does. For those of you that have, I sympathize. I can think of no worse way to live your life.

Dads life of illnesses and accidents set the course for my future career. Worrying for so many years that Dad might die meant I was left with a deep fascination about death and more importantly a fascination with the possibility of an afterlife. Was there such a thing as life after death? Could heaven be real? I spent thirty years investigating the subject and later started writing about real-life experiences of the other side, including peoples real-life encounters with the spirits of their dead relatives and life-saving experiences with angels. It helped me, and stories of the afterlife comforted me. It gave me hope, and if it did this for me I knew it would help others too.

Strangely, my sisters and I all began having experiences of our own after Dads brother passed away in his early sixties. Eric was an amazing character: funny, cheeky and much loved. He died way too soon but, strangely, almost right away he started coming back to visit from the other side. Eric, or at least his spirit, was often invited to Sunday tea, a family ritual and an occasion when all the family got together at Mum and Dads bungalow in a pretty English village. After Dad had been so ill, all he wanted was his family gathered around him. Nothing made that man happier than when his girls, and later his grandchildren, came to visit.

Did someone invite Eric? was a regular question. We always knew he was there as the lights flickered in response, right on cue!

Several months after the light-flickering began, the doorbell used to ring; it always happened on a Sunday teatime and no matter how many times wed rush to the door, there was never anyone there. Eventually we resorted to all sorts of tricks: one person would rush to the door whilst another would run to the large window, watching in case any of the local children were playing a trick, messing with the doorbell in some way. There was never anyone there. Erics ring was always a single dingdong , the usual doorbell tone when a living person was at the door, there was a double dingdong . He even had his own chime! We never doubted this bizarre ringing was a message from the afterlife.