The Cassandra Syndrome, Colin Brookfield, Colin Brookfield [i like reading books .txt] 📗

big old iron pot sat on this into which, I poured the earth/lead mixture. I kept stirring, until the heavy lead melted to the bottom and then disposed of the earth floating on top of it. I then scooped the hot lead out with an old soup ladle into the hollow sides of dry, house bricks. Staying as low key as possible – it became quite profitable!

The Explorer

For the sake of adventure, a friend and I used to make occasional appearances into the local army camps by worming our way through their barbed wire entanglements that were designed to keep the dreaded enemy out. We used to do the same at the local fighter aerodrome, so that we could chat to the pilots who were seated ad-hock outside, close to their fighter aircraft.

In case the airfield was attacked, some Spitfires and Hurricanes were dispersed away from the airfield in small asbestos-walled hangers that were disguised to look like domestic properties and fool the enemy, therefore avoiding the bombers. Nevertheless, my friend and I (the dreaded enemy) occasionally discovered a hole through which to creep.

Not many young boys could truthfully say they had actually sat in a Hurricane or Spitfire. All the same, we were always seriously mindful never to tamper or remove anything from these revered craft.

 

The Demolitionist

In the same way that adults influence children into smoking, adults blowing things up, encouraged young boys to do the same. I am sure that was our excuse!

This activity did cause a few problems, to the extent, that our local paper issued a warning to parents to keep a watch on the antics of their young boys, because too many experimenting boys were being blown out of garden sheds. I remember reading it and thinking that they must be amateurs. After all, my friend and I had been making bombs for ages. We used the thin spaghetti-like contents out of 303 tracer bullets (that always seemed freely available) to make our bombs.

My friend Trevor (now Trevor Baylis CBE), made a cannon in his garden shed and loaded it. It worked perfectly, except for that slight miscalculation that blew the neighbours chimney pot off. We were all playing the same games!

 

Time moves on and we must follow

Nineteen forty-seven was the worst winter in living memory and building workers had to be laid off. I was fourteen and had just left school, so my father put me to work on his building site in the middle of a wide-open field to paint window frames.

I only had summer clothes on and day after day, the biting wind kept reducing me to tears. What kept me going was the thought of the promised one pound a week wage from which, I might start buying something warm to wear but when I was finally paid, my mother took it, giving me only two shillings and sixpence back. “You must buy your own clothes with that from now on,” she instructed and, that was how it remained.

Once again, I had beaten the odds. I was obviously too fit to be finished off through exposure to the elements.

The infernal, was not short of imagination

There was a roof slate and a gutter to repair on a three-storey high structure opposite the Southall Town Hall in Middlesex and, my father said he was allergic to heights. Therefore, with the ladder in place, I was sent up. Having reached the top I then had to crawl up a sloping slate roof without any further ladder.

Scarcely had I begun when I was halted by voices from far below.

“Get that boy off that roof!” screamed the people. It seemed that most of the Town Hall employees were out to castigate my father and get me out of danger.

Wrong footed

I once made the big mistake of joining my father’s business partner in a moment of fun. My father had just decorated a house wall and said it was finished. His partner said that it needed another coat of paint because he could still see the wall through it. I then added with a smile, “You can see the house next door through it!”

My father exploded like a wild creature and kicked me so viciously that it lifted me off my feet and into a nearby corner. His partner took no notice.

I did not feel safe there, so I walked the twelve miles back home.

Comment

It is always with reluctance that I have to raise these domestic matters but do so, because they carry such a degree of unnaturalness that I am again, forced to recognise the hand of infernal influence in these events.

 

Battle of opposites, Angel wins

I escaped that family house eventually at the age of sixteen, after pestering the P&O shipping line Head Office in Leadenhall Street, until in probable desperation, they allowed me a place in their mercantile training school at Gravesend. My parental agreement signature was obtained by a ‘little sleight of hand’.

I became part of the ship’s company in time and went off to Hong Kong on the SS Corfu – but that is another story.

National service claimed me at the age of eighteen and eventually, to another near death experience.

Our regiment had arrived at a simulated battlefield training ground. During that exercise, I was given a message to deliver to our Commanding Officer and directed with my vehicle, along a dirt track to a high hilltop point, where his tank had been positioned.

On arrival, there was no tank crew, which seemed rather strange, so I parked my vehicle to one side of the tank – the lucky side as it turned out! Army engineers had mined the other side and had neither set guards nor informed anyone. The mine detonated as I was getting out of my vehicle.

When all the dust and downward falling lumps had subsided, I found a crater big enough to hide a tank’s profile from attack (in a real war) which of course, was the purpose of the exercise, whilst also allowing a tank’s armaments to pick off distant targets. However, I would not be writing this had I parked on the other side of the tank.

 

Angelic wins, the Dark loses,

The years moved on into a life of my own management, though still in the sights of something dark. It revealed itself again at a time when I was driving a car along a narrow road with a deep, tree-bordered ditch to my left. As I approached a blind corner, two racing vehicles, one trying to overtake the other, appeared right in front of me. Blindly, I threw my vehicle hard to the left and found myself mysteriously unscathed in a cornfield, having passed over a narrow, unseen concrete ditch lid and through a heavy wooden farm gateway that had been left open. It was almost as though I had been expected!

 

I begin Psychic investigations

I was fortunate in finding a psychic medium, Ann Martin, who ran an effective psychic circle. She proved to be a very pleasant and patient lady, which was probably just as well because I soon became a rather disturbing influence to the former tranquillity of the circle. Well, it was not completely my fault! Figures of people that only I could see, kept entering my vision and I did like to share the experience with others in the room.

On one occasion in September 1997, I described an unusual looking man, in fine detail. “Is there a light behind him?” enquired the medium, which I affirmed. “Then ask him to walk into it,” she replied. I did and, the vision obeyed then disappeared.

On disclosing this, I was told I had just done my first ‘spirit rescue’.

The following day, the detailed description of the man I had seen in circle was pictured in our daily national newspaper, amongst the people killed in the Southall train crash.

Another, rather startling experience occurred when the medium asked two of us within the circle to stand facing one another. For a second or so nothing happened, then I began to feel something trickling up the inside of my legs as though they were hollow; it began to grow in force, flowing up through my body and out through the hands which had now elevated inadvertently until pointing at the face of the person in front. The bigger surprise came when I noticed something developing some six inches in front of the face before me. Instead of being frightened, I felt quite excited about the experience. Eventually the development began to take on the features of a disembodied face, which still retained my fascination, until its fluttering eyelids revealed eyes that were trying to obtain focus on mine. I felt that was going a bit too far, which changed my mood, dissipating the energies, until everything returned to normal.

Another interesting experiment conducted, was that of sitting behind another person who was standing within the circle and then, through force of mind, cause that person to move off balance in the direction that you wanted it to. The purpose of this exercise was to show that thoughts always get to where they are sent and, in some circumstances, can achieve a physical effect.

It was due to all the evidence gathered in that circle that enabled me to have deeper understandings of other psychic events in later life.

 

Reality opens its door a little wider

The healing dream, (Dream 19, Chapter 2) also produced another interesting encounter some years later, whilst my wife and I were living in Dorset. It proceeded from a visit by a lady one Friday evening, enquiring as to whether I did remote healing. I told her that I did and, requested a photograph or personal object of the person if possible.

The following day, she produced a distant photograph of a man and woman in front of their house in South America. She told me it was her ex-husband, now remarried but that they remained the best of friends. However, he was now very ill. She then handed me an old hunting knife, telling me that he used to be a professional hunter.

Later that evening, in my study, I commenced the remote healing process to a man living seven and half thousand miles away. In my right hand, I held the knife, which links me to the man in picture form; with the left hand, I direct healing and can feel its activity.

By the end of the week, I had a phone call from the lady informing me that the man had suddenly made a great improvement.

“Was that on Wednesday?” I asked.

“Goodness! How did you know that?”

I knew much more!

On that Wednesday when the man’s state of health had suddenly improved, I also had a surprise visit from a spirit in limbo; it came in the form of a deep, dark shadow in front of me with a bleached, white human skull centred within it. It was a very clear message. A dark deed had been committed and a body left, lost and unclaimed. I was not frightened by this experience, because I already had a fundamental grasp on such phenomena, having dealt with it previously in circle work – rather like the previously mentioned spirit rescue phenomenon in the Southall train crash. For some silly reason, on that Wednesday night, I had declined intervention but it would return to haunt me. On the following Friday evening, the healing took a dramatic turn.

My wife had been quietly sewing in the room next to mine when I interrupted her as I rushed noisily out of my room. The sudden smell of a rotting corpse had made me take flight. This was a spirit in limbo, bringing more evidence to support its case. Holding our noses, we then opened the patio doors to the fresh night air and put the suspect hunting knife outside.

The next morning before the lady arrived for her items, I placed the knife and picture on my desk; the air bore no trace of