Southend U3A

November 2022

Spooky - Avril McOwens

It was the church hall where I met her. We were all there to learn how to use herbs medicinally when this well-dressed petite elderly lady sat down next to me. She had short salt and pepper hair beautifully styled, wore glasses and had the most animated and beautiful face I had ever seen. We followed the usual ritual of introducing ourselves to each other and then she said, ‘You have a light above your head, you are a healer.’ My mind froze, a healer? What absolute nonsense, who was this woman? She looked harmless but appearances can be deceptive and we have all had our fair share of being deceived by people. This occurred 30 years ago and at the time it was definitely spooky, now it is definitely not spooky. The Oxford Dictionary’s three definitions of Spooky are: (1) strange and frightening and gives three examples; ‘I was just thinking about her when she rang’ (2) a spooky old house (3) a spooky atmosphere or feeling. Take your pick. 30 years later I can definitely say she was not spooky but a loving, compassionate lady who became my great friend; who showed a very anxious and lonely woman how to rely on something far more reliable and secure than the thought process she had always used to get through her daily life.

It’s time I introduced myself. I am Margaret Donaldson, now in my 60’s with a lovely husband and son. Then I was experiencing a totally different life. I was single with a long-standing partner, but we were not married and had no children. That’s what we both wanted. I had an interesting job at the local solicitor’s office and had inherited the family bungalow when my parents passed on. We had a great social life so all was good but what I didn’t know was that he had been seeing someone else and without any warning he left to marry her. My distress was enormous, I made myself ill emotionally and mentally, lost weight etc. etc. It took me a year to put my life back into some sort of order and to pick myself up, dust myself off and see what life now had in store for me. Then I saw the advert for the herbal classes at the church hall and that’s where I met her, Gillian Robertson.

She invited me to her beautiful house for tea and a chat about being a healer, a spiritual healer. It was all so very new and I knew absolutely nothing about it. I felt so unsure about what was involved but she was so very calm, spoke quietly and didn’t wear some of the crazy outfits seen on tv dramas associated with healers. Just ordinary day clothes, same as mine. But the same question kept on coming up, how did she know? Who told her? How did she know to be there and sit next to me and not someone else in the church hall? Now that was definitely Spooky. There is a very old saying: ‘When a door closes, a window opens somewhere’. This was my window and Gill was answering all my questions patiently and quietly and put me very much at my ease. The Spooky idea was diminishing by the second. She never preached about spiritual matters but recounted a World War 2 story that happened to her. During World War 2 Gill was walking home with her shopping when suddenly a German Messerschmidt plane dived towards her with its guns blazing. She fell face down on the ground as the bullets ricocheted either side of her, then it flew away. She stood up, totally unharmed, with her shopping intact and carried on walking home. Now that is definitely Spooky. It increased her faith in something much bigger than herself that surrounded and protected her. Some people would say that God protected her, others would call that Spooky, the choice is yours.

I developed my healing ability and had great pleasure and satisfaction using this gift to help others, all the time learning to heal myself. My interest in herbs grew stronger over the years and they were used when the need arose. But I met a lady who, when I spoke about my interest in the curative powers of herbs, became very angry and said it was the work of the devil. Now that is not only medieval but Spooky. So, I say again, it’s a person’s perspective of life that decides what is and is not Spooky.

Gill and I stayed in close contact until she passed on, but her legacy to me was to teach me how to use my intuitive ability which enabled me to be calm within myself regardless of the chaos and turmoil in the outside world. Using it daily is central to my daily life, but to many people using their own intuition throughout their lives to enable them to walk through difficult events calmly is unacceptable. To them it is spooky and they prefer to go through daily events being continually anxious, tense and frightened. To me that is spooky but to them it is the normal way of life so it is a personal choice. The Oxford Dictionary’s definition of Intuitive is – using your feelings rather than by thinking and considering the facts e.g. intuitive judgement – ‘Intuitively she knew that he was lying’.

Thank you for listening to my story and hope that those of you who have not yet tried to develop and strengthen and use their own unused inner intuitive gifts might like to consider using them when the next difficult event occurs. So, you decide was my story Spooky or not to you?