|
|
 |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
|
|
Ghost Busters
|
![]() |
|
Bridwater's ghostbuster
TERRY O'Sullivan earns his living as a ghost hunter. He prefers to say he's a soul rescuer, but it's all the same line of business.
It sounds a medieval style of job at the beginning of the 21st century, but he's been at it for some 27 years now, the past 11 as a full-time professional, and the work just keeps rolling in.
There's nothing fey or other-worldly about his clients, either.
Typically, they're
thirtysomethings and fortysomethings from London's chattering classes - arts and media people doing well in music, film, radio and the press.
He's the one they turn to when all does not seem well with their living space. If the jacuzzi fails to bubble they call the plumber, if the digital TV's on the blink they ring an electrician - and if all is not harmonious in the vibes they are getting from their home, they turn to somebody like Terry O'Sullivan.
As there are not in fact too many somebodies like Terry O'Sullivan, it makes for a busy life for this 52-year-old family man from Combwich, near Bridgwater.
He lives there in a rambling 1830s house with his 37-year-old wife Natalia and their three young children - not to mention, it need hardly be added, a friendly resident ghost whom he has not the slightest intention of capturing and helping on her way to the spirit world.
Natalia is just as psychic as he is, and specialises in spiritual teaching and healing. Together the couple run healing workshops and retreats and their new book Soul Rescuers - A 21st Century Guide To The Spirit World (Thorsons, £14.99) - aims to give us a new understanding of life after death in a way that reaches beyond culture and religion.
It is Terry, though, who is at the sharp end of the house visits. "A lot of my business comes from word of mouth in London, but people like me are quite accessible if you know where to look," he says.
"When I started, a lot of the referrals came from the Spiritualist Association of Great Britain and the Spiritualist Church. A current organisation is the British Association of Spirit Release, while the College of Psychic Studies gets 100 inquiries a week. We're not as remote as you might think."
Put simply, Terry says that there are two root causes of "hauntings" in the home - the troubled spirits of people from its past or the disturbed energies of the building through the land beneath it.
"Some people have spirit possession of the person," he says. "This could be identified with someone who died with no spiritual belief, so that after death they ended up wandering around the family home as they had always done, but without the physical body any more.
"When someone they loved is still around they can become physically connected, because we human beings are electro-magnetic, and the spirit gets drawn in. Anyone could be open to this, but sometimes pubescence sends out all the right signals into the atmosphere.
"You may have a child with no sleeping problems who suddenly starts getting them, with bad dreams. It's not always the case that this is the result of a disembodied spirit, but it can be.
"Some cultures have a ritual to release people completely from the physical world, but of course that isn't the Western way.
Deceased people can be drawn back to a partner through passion or love, and be unable to let go. They could even be drawn back by money, or simply by love of their old homes. They say an Englishman's home is his castle, and that sentiment applies equally in most other Western nations.
"I look at a house from an angle very different from an estate agent's. I wonder what sort of land it has been built on, and do my best to discover the answer. It's important. Just outside Bridgwater there was the Battle of Sedgemoor, and if dwellings are built on that land, the echoes of conflict can be transported through time.
"After the battle, all captives were taken to Bridgwater and mutilated, and you can still feel it in certain parts of the old town. The echoes are still there, and you feel very uncomfortable.
"My work in properties is very different from that of the Church of England. They do house blessings and exorcise the forces of evil, but their brief is that there is no such thing as an earthbound spirit. If they exorcise they're addressing the devil, something dark and terrifying.
"They're looking at principles of life as purely black or white, with no grey. I work very much in that grey area. My concern is for the people who have died, and don't have anywhere to go so that they become troubled.
"Some die and don't initially become troubled, and then later they do. For instance, someone will die in love with his wife, and believe he should stay with her. He sees her, but she doesn't see him, and eventually starts a new relationship with a man.
"We've got a difficult situation there, and there are various ways in which it could be resolved.
The spirit could cause trouble or, if it's a humble soul, just feel sad and want to get out. In either case I can go in, offer a hand of comfort, take them from the place and have them relocated with their ancestors."
Terry says very few psychics work at his level: "There may be people who go into a house to see if there's a ghost, but whether or not they can take it away is a different matter. A lot of clairvoyants can communicate with ghosts, but they don't have the ability to take them away.
"I have the ability to take ghosts away, but there is again the question of the land on which the house has been built. The ghost may not be connected with any human who lives there, but rather with the house's past history; and because of the magnetic pull of the land, it can't move on by itself. It needs someone like me to come along and give it a leg up.
"I do it magnetically. I draw ghosts into myself and take them away. Normally a clairvoyant would say: 'I'll communicate with you but I don't want you to come near me. I'm frightened you'll possess me'.
"My attitude is: 'Please come close, be drawn in, let me haul in the line so you can be made safe. I'll take you away from this place you don't like, I'll take you home with me, then pass you over to the network of spirits who can connect you with your ancestors'.
"This is what the ghosts want. They want to be with Mother or Uncle Tom. Not being able to get there has made them lonely, sad, disembodied spirits."
Terry O'Sullivan, the son of an Irish Catholic father and Anglican mother, has plied his trade as far afield as California, South Africa and several European countries. He says he picks up on echoes, rather than voices, and his equipment does not extend much beyond a quartz pendulum for picking up the energies of the earth.
Exhausting
He expects to take on some 60 jobs a year, with a minimum starting fee of £250 for a small flat which rises up into four figures for more extensive work.
"It's a hard, exhausting, debilitating job," he says. "Some houses have lightweight problems, others less so. Imagine a plumber who visits two houses, each with a puddle on the kitchen floor. He might solve the first problem in 30 seconds, with a twist of a nut with a spanner, while the same amount of water on another floor can be a nightmare to him; the same symptoms, but deeper problems.
"You don't know, when you go on a job, what you're going to meet; but from time to time I get a really bad feeling about what's ahead, even before I've arrived, and my fears are always justified."
There's been a piece of equipment invented in Denmark that can do a similar job to his pendulum work on the land; it can even pick up on ghosts and transfer its findings to video tape, Terry says in his characteristic matter-of-fact tones.
This sounds pretty sensational news. So doesn't he fear for his job over the next few years?
"Not at all," he replies. "Like the clairvoyants I've talked about, a machine like this might be able to home in on a problem, but it can't remedy it. I can."
And he smiles the contented smile of a man who knows, whatever scorn the sceptics might pour on him, that there will never be any slackening of demand for his ancient and mysterious craft.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
