Connected Through Spirit

Most people would deem it strange to have a medium in their family, but for Anji Wylde and Jo Allen, cousins from the West Midlands, it must be doubly strange for their family members to register as both women work as mediums; demonstrating their gifts in Spiritualist churches and halls to prove the survival of the human spirit.

Anji, the elder of the two, told me that from the age of seven she began to see spirit people that no one else in her family could see. Brought up in a Roman Catholic family she was often told off for being naughty and wicked when she reported such phenomena to her parents and grandparents. At the age of ten Anji had an experience shortly after her Irish grandmother passed away in which the elderly lady came to her and took her in a vision to meet her grandfather who had subsequently died five years previous and showed her that they were happy and reunited in the spirit world. This was a joy for the young medium as she had been praying that they would be together and happy again.

At the age of eighteen Anji joined a development circle, but found that she wasn't really getting what was being taught to her and other than experiencing herself floating out of her body on occasion not much else happened to further her gift so her development was put on hold.

Jo Allen, Gordon Smith and Anji Wylde

At the age of 32 her father passed to the spirit world and soon after came back to his daughter to reassure her that he was safe and at peace. This gave Anji the encouragement she needed to return to a circle and learn to further her gift to give people who had lost a loved-one the comfort she had got from knowing her father was safe and still connected to her. For a further seven years she honed her gift before sharing it with those who sought comfort through mediumship.

When I asked Anji how she developed her gift she simply said that she always knew that she had someone guiding her from her early childhood and that during her development she asked that force or guide to come and help her to make her gift stronger. She said "The most important thing a student can do in development is to make a link with their spirit guide. It is the guide who teaches us and if you know that at the beginning then all you have to do is build the trust between you."

During this time Anji's younger cousin Jo was going through a very troubled time after the loss of her beloved father just two days short of her twenty second birthday. The loss caused Jo to question everything about her life, especially her Catholic faith which she had been taught from childhood. This questioning lead her on a journey through other religions to try to find answers as to why she became angry with her father after his death, but it was only in a wander through the Buddhist religion that she found any peace and took the first footstep to understanding spirituality.

Even though she had begun to find more spiritual understanding she was no further forward in the search for her father; other than that she knew that his essence was close to her. Like her older cousin she had had experiences as a child with the spirit world, but in the same way had no one close to advise her. Something in her search had caused Jo to open up and she began to have prophetic dreams of such disasters as the Swiss air crash and the terrible tsunami that swept through South Asia devastating hundreds of thousands of people, but Jo had no one to help her understand these occurrences.

Anji Wylde had an impression to speak to her cousin around this time, knowing that Jo had been on a spiritual quest and sensing that she needed help dealing with her father's death so invited her to accompany her to the local Spiritualist church, and even though she had some misgivings about churches agreed to go with her cousin. When they met Anji told Jo that she had been waiting for her, but that she first had to allow her cousin to go on her own journey and experience all the different emotions she had encountered thus far.

Although no message came through from her father, Jo began to sense his presence and one night when she was alone in her home feeling very frightened; out of nowhere she felt the essence of her father in the spirit world wrap his arms around her in the most amazing comforting way which wiped away all the fear.

From then on Jo has spent years in development with Anji and built her own gift as a medium often sharing the platform with her cousin and giving demonstrations of mediumship together. Although Anji told me that each has their own individual style of delivering their work, both agree that when they work together the energy of spirit becomes much stronger and often they will get evidence which confirms the other's message and even when one is asked to give a talk or say a prayer, the other is in complete harmony with the chosen words.

I asked both ladies what the greatest reward they got from their work was and both said that they only wanted others to feel the contentment they both got when they experienced messages from their fathers, both in the spirit world; also that it was important to take this truth to as many people as they can during their life. Anji said. "I would just love to be able to share what I have with as many people and allow what we have to relieve as many people as possible of their sadness at losing a loved-one, this is what I would like to build into my future." Naturally when asked, Jo said the exact same thing.

Both ladies have given messages of comfort to many people in their work as mediums, but when asked about the most important message that spirit had showed Anji she told me this. "During a reading I was giving to a young man who had recently lost his mother after a long battle with cancer and wasn't coping very well with the loss; I described a ring his mother wanted him to have. He appeared baffled and told me that there was no such ring that belonged to his mother. On hearing this I told him I was positive in what I was getting and carried on with the rest of the reading. Two days later he called me to tell me that when clearing his mother's clothes he came across a coat of hers that he wanted to keep and when going through the pockets found the ring I had described in the reading." It is this type of evidence that really supports survival.

These ladies of spirit are working in Spiritualist churches around the UK and giving demonstrations and workshops on a much larger scale. Anji believes that it is time to take their work to a higher level and venture further afield now, but whereever she travels to demonstrate she will always have the comfort in knowing that her cousin is right by her side.

There is something very authentic about Anji and Jo, both are very grounded in reality and compassionate when it comes to helping people in need. I believe that much of the good work they do comes from overcoming their own hurdles in life and for most true mediums that is a very good place to work from. Now days the families who thought they had strange naughty psychic children are proud to watch them work because they now know that both are intent on bringing back hope to the hopeless and healing broken hearts with their spirit messages and down to earth kindness.