'I'm just a channel to the spirit world'

MAGGIE Lambert was lying in her hospital bed, unable to sleep. She had just had an operation and the pain was still raw. Time passed slowly as she watched the hands on her bedside clock, still lodged stubbornly in the small hours.

Then, in the doorway to her room, three white-clad figures appeared. She paid them little heed, assuming they were doctors, as they slowly came towards her. The one in the centre raised his hands in a strange gesture, and at that moment, Maggie drifted into a restful sleep. She woke the next morning to find her pain had gone.

When, casually over breakfast, she asked a nurse about the visit, her reaction was puzzled - no doctors had entered the ward that night. Maggie merely nodded, saying nothing. It seemed her spirit friends had called again.

The incident, at Scorton Hospital, North Yorkshire, in 1995, is one of many otherworldly encounters Maggie claims to have experienced. For as long as she can remember, the 62-year-old has been in touch with the spirit world.

Born to a working class family in Gateshead, her first home was a pre-war flat. It had a toilet in the yard and, she says, an abundance of ghosts. "I used to see people walking through the wall. It just seemed natural to me."

Her mother was a "true spiritualist" who lived to the age of 94, and Maggie remembers going along with her to meetings when she was a small child. "I used to go to a lady called Mrs Shepherd's house in Gateshead. My mother went there every week and took me with her. We'd open with a hymn, say a prayer, and then there would be a little philosophy and then into the evidence of receiving and giving spirit messages," she says.

When she was about 12, a spiritualist she recalls as a "tall, thin gentleman" told her mother she was capable of receiving her own messages. To Maggie, by now immersed in the culture, this seemed the next logical step. "As I got older, I always remember going to spiritualist meetings. I wouldn't ever want to do anything else," she says.

Her marriage at 21 and the subsequent bearing of five children put a temporary end to Maggie's interest. "I was so busy it drifted into the background," she says. But a few years later, by which time spiritualism had become more mainstream, it resurfaced. "It never really goes away. One day I realised there was something missing and I had to get it back again. I was 27-ish when I started going to spiritualist churches," she says.

Just like at the early meetings, Maggie found like-minded people with whom she felt comfortable sharing her experiences. While not acknowledged by the established church, she says spiritualism complements, rather than conflicts with, religious faith. "In spiritualist churches we welcome everyone. You don't have to leave your own religion to join - you can have both. I've got a strong religious faith and I wouldn't give it up for the world," she says.

To Maggie, her connection with spirits and her belief in God are inseparable. Eleven years ago, she became a medium, giving church presentations and private readings. Her sole aim, she says, is to do good.

"I'm a spiritual counsellor and I help people through bereavements, marriage break-ups, depression and all sorts of things. When someone's lost a loved one and they come to me, and I can bring concrete evidence that their loved one has survived after physical death, they leave me a lot happier. This is what I do. I bring life after death. It's what the Lord has asked me to do," says Maggie.

Her book gives many examples of when she has done this. Among the most dramatic was on the night of August 31, 1997. She claims that, following the fatal car crash involving Princess Diana, Dodi al Fayed, in transition to the spirit world, appeared at her bedside. "His face had a look of surprise and bewilderment. He just stood there in deep shock looking down at me, holding out his hands. I knew instinctively that I had been asked for help from this disorientated spirit and as a medium, knew that it was my responsibility to send him on into the light, which I did," writes Maggie.

While this may seem a little far-fetched, she insists that everything she says has happened to her is true. She's not surprised by people's scepticism, but claims it doesn't last long. "I do lots of services in spiritualist churches all over the country and we do get sceptics, but everyone does eventually get their individual proof," she says.

To illustrate this, Maggie need look no further than Derek, her husband of 18 years. He attended his first spiritualist church service reluctantly, but claims he was converted by the experience. "I got a couple of messages. I wasn't sure - I didn't believe. I'll be honest, I was sceptical," he says. "After a couple more times, I'd received more and more evidence of loved ones in spirit - my family mainly."

Derek became a spiritual healer, and now shares his wife's vocation.

Wherever they go, the couple take their work with them and when they moved to Spain three years ago, the first thing Maggie did was to set up a spiritualist group, Angels Eleven Circle of Light. "On Wednesday evenings, we held a service or an open circle, which is where people can get up and give their messages. It was packed out - we had to extend our home to accommodate everybody," she says.

Now back living in Birtley, Gateshead, Maggie has left her legacy. The group is "still going strong" and she often gets phone calls from those in Spain whose lives she touched.

IN addition to sharing her compassion, spiritualism has led her to discover an unlikely talent. In 1997, she received a message from a fellow spiritualist telling her to take up a pencil and paper and draw. Knowing she couldn't, she laughed it off, but his persistence paid off. To her amazement, she found herself drawing and painting skilfully - but not, she claims, alone. "I can't see anything on the paper - I'm just aware of my hand going round it," she says. "The gentleman who inspires me is Monsieur Claude Dupr'e. He was on the earth plane in 1772. He came from Lille, in France, and he was 29 when he passed into the spirit world."

Another of Maggie's spirit guides, who she says is her mediator with the other realm, is Junor Jashpal, an Indian man who lived around 1700. "Junor has a huge smile when he talks to me. He has a tiger called Jahaz who lolls about my lap," she says.

While she's never entirely inhabited by a spirit, her native Geordie accent sometimes changes - for example to Indian under Junor's influence. She says she also feels spirits' pain physically, as if it were her own.

Yet she's never had what she would term a bad experience, and says that for her, the spirit world holds no fear.

"My guides would never hurt me. They want me to tell people on the earth plane that they survive. I'm only a telephone, I'm just a channel," she says.

* Maggie holds classes in spiritualism in the Gateshead and Ashington areas. For details, ring 07900 460590.

Her book, The Happy Medium, is available from the author on the same number or from book shops, ISBN 1-9004 56-22-2.