Heaven!

160 Pages·2013·0.73 MB·English

by  Newcomb

JACKY NEWCOMB
Heaven
Incredible true stories of the afterlife
PENGUIN BOOKS
Contents
Prologue
To Heaven and Back …
Visiting Heaven
Day Trip to Heaven
One Foot in the Door
Call Me When You Get to Heaven
More Messages From Heaven
Animals and the Afterlife
Life, But Not as We Know it
A Worldwide View of Heaven
Questions About the Afterlife
Conclusion
Further Reading and More Information
PENGUIN BOOKS
HEAVEN
Jacky Newcomb is known the world over as ‘The Angel Lady’. She is a multi-
award winning, Sunday Times bestselling author and regular columnist for Take
a Break’s Fate & Fortune magazine. Jacky has published literally hundreds of
articles, including real-life experiences of angels, afterlife, life between lives and
life after death. She has been studying the phenomena of paranormal experiences
for thirty-five years and is one of the UK’s leading experts.
She regularly appears in the national press (Daily Mirror, Daily Mail, Daily
Express) and is frequently featured in magazines such as Real, Chat, Woman,
Bella, Woman & Home, Spirit & Destiny, and many others.
Jacky often appears on radio as a paranormal experiences expert and her
expertise is also sought for television programmes such as ITV’s This Morning
and Channel 5’s Live with Gabby Logan.
Jacky gives talks and runs workshops all over the country. She has worked
with many famous names and has several celebrity clients.
For more information about Jacky and her work visit
www.JackyNewcomb.com and follow her on Facebook and Twitter.
The English word heaven is derived from the spelling heven …
and before that heofon. The dictionary describes heaven as
the home of God, angels and the spirits of the good or
righteous, after death.
This book explores heaven as the realms of the
souls of the deceased.
Prologue
When I was a little girl, my father was involved in a horrific car accident. Mum
was a non-driver and it was difficult for her to get to the hospital with her three
young daughters. Occasionally friends would drive her to the hospital and we’d
have a babysitter for the few hours she was away. I recall the fear she used to
carry on her face, and I was old enough that I understood her difficulties, even
though I was just a young girl.
After a few weeks Mum asked if she could bring her little daughters in to visit
Dad. ‘Yes, of course, young children don’t really notice the machines and
wires,’ she was told by the nursing staff. As we walked into the hospital the full
horror hit me. Dad had lost his kneecap; his leg was plastered and hung up in the
air from a pulley system attached to the ceiling. He had tubes up his nose, tubes
in his arms, wires attached to his chest and sixty stitches in his face. He looked
less like my lovely dad and more like a monster from a horror film.
From that night onwards the nightmares began. I regularly woke up in the
night, screaming in terror. I was terrified of what had happened and what was to
come. My biggest fear was that Dad would die. How would Mum, a non-driver,
cope? How would we buy shopping? How would she be able to work? What if
we were ill and she had to take us to the hospital?
I was scared and vulnerable. Our relatives lived a long way away – there was
no one to help. In the hospital I sat at the end of the bed, facing away from Dad,
too shocked to do anything else, too dismayed to stare into his bloodied face. I
daren’t kiss him, daren’t tell him I loved him; I was too scared to hug him; it
took all of my strength not to cry. Dad didn’t need me to cry. I wondered, did he
himself know he might die? Did he realize how ill he was and how bad he
looked? Had they shown him a mirror? Apparently they hadn’t …
This single experience left me traumatized for all of my childhood and right
through my early and middle adulthood. It wasn’t until I’d married, had my own
children and they were grown enough to live in their own homes that the
nightmares that had plagued me for most of my life began to subside. My own
children had passed that vulnerable age where, had the same happened to me,
they were not old enough to manage. We spent every spare penny on driving
lessons and helping them to buy cars. I wanted my own daughters to be able to
cope should something similar happen to them … it’s funny how we are so
cope should something similar happen to them … it’s funny how we are so
influenced by our own experiences! Luckily, I don’t have the same fears for my
young granddaughter; the memories are now far enough away in the past that I
can enjoy my life without worrying about what might happen next.
Bizarrely, the hospital visit was not the end of the trauma in my life. Years later,
Dad had another car accident. This was followed by a perforated ulcer,
gallstones, a brain tumour, a stroke and cancer … amongst other things. It
seemed like my sisters, mother and I spent our whole lives sitting by Dad’s
hospital bedside, waiting for him to die. At one point or another he was knocking
at death’s door and then he’d make a dramatic recovery and go and do
something life-changing like fly an aeroplane or drive from our Midlands home
right down to the south coast! He never stopped amazing us. I remember one
occasion in particular when Dad was in a long coma following a series of brain
operations. Several family friends and even doctors had given up on Dad. I recall
one person saying, ‘I’d rather remember Ron the way he was …’ as if he was on
his way out. Yet Dad always seemed to fight back.
My life, and the lives of my mother and sisters, was like a fairground ride: one
minute we were up in the air and then we were pelting down a sharp curve and
round a steep corner upside down. I felt as if I were always holding my breath,
never knowing what was going to happen next. I thought everyone lived their
life sitting by the bedside of a loved one for months at a time … but, of course,
not everyone does. For those of you that have, I sympathize. I can think of no
worse way to live your life.
Dad’s life of illnesses and accidents set the course for my future career.
Worrying for so many years that Dad might die meant I was left with a deep
fascination about death and – more importantly – a fascination with the
possibility of an afterlife. Was there such a thing as life after death? Could
heaven be real? I spent thirty years investigating the subject and later started
writing about real-life experiences of the other side, including people’s real-life
encounters with the spirits of their dead relatives and life-saving experiences
with angels. It helped me, and stories of the afterlife comforted me. It gave me
hope, and if it did this for me I knew it would help others too.
Strangely, my sisters and I all began having experiences of our own after
Dad’s brother passed away in his early sixties. Eric was an amazing character:
funny, cheeky and much loved. He died way too soon but, strangely, almost
right away he started coming back to visit … from the other side. Eric, or at least
his spirit, was often invited to ‘Sunday tea’, a family ritual and an occasion when
all the family got together at Mum and Dad’s bungalow in a pretty English
village. After Dad had been so ill, all he wanted was his family gathered around
village. After Dad had been so ill, all he wanted was his family gathered around
him. Nothing made that man happier than when his girls, and later his
grandchildren, came to visit.
‘Did someone invite Eric?’ was a regular question. We always knew he was
there as the lights flickered in response, right on cue!
Several months after the light-flickering began, the doorbell used to ring; it
always happened on a Sunday teatime and no matter how many times we’d rush
to the door, there was never anyone there. Eventually we resorted to all sorts of
tricks: one person would rush to the door whilst another would run to the large
window, watching in case any of the local children were playing a trick, messing
with the doorbell in some way. There was never anyone there. Eric’s ring was
always a single dingdong, the usual doorbell tone … when a living person was at
the door, there was a double dingdong. He even had his own chime! We never
doubted this bizarre ringing was a message from the afterlife.
Eric made great material for my books and when I started writing about our
family afterlife experiences and miracle-type afterlife contact stories sent to me
from the readers of my magazine column, Eric was often the star. I recall one
day chatting to Dad about the subject of my books and explaining that afterlife
communication was real. ‘In fact,’ I suggested brazenly, ‘I bet Eric is here right
now, listening in on our conversation … and probably when I leave he’ll make a
sign to let us know he is listening.’ We both laughed as I leant down to pick up
my bag and we stood up as I went to leave. Exactly at that moment, the smoke
alarm gave a single bleep and we both burst out laughing once more. In our
family, there was no doubt that the afterlife was real, and our relatives who had
passed over couldn’t wait to rush back and tell us all about it!
So the scene had been set. I wrote book after book that contained real-life angel
and afterlife experiences from normal folk living all around the world. After
reading thousands of accounts of their experiences I began to notice patterns in
their communications and started to learn a little bit about how the whole thing
worked. Heaven was real and I felt I was now beginning to prove it!
Ironically, after years of worrying about Dad passing away, he managed to
make it to the age of seventy-seven. I know that if I’d had any idea that his well-
worn body would have survived that long I could have lived a life without worry
… but then, would I have written the books I have? Would my interest in the
afterlife phenomenon have been there at all? Probably not!
Some part of me knows that my life was pre-planned to a certain extent; all of
our lives are. Dad agreed to play his part and I had agreed mine. I felt sure that
writing about afterlife communication was my life mission. I had gained such
comfort from the amazing afterlife experiences our family had lived through and
comfort from the amazing afterlife experiences our family had lived through and
almost as much again by reading about others’ stories of deceased loved ones
reaching out from heaven-side. You can read about my personal story, shared bit
by bit, in my many books (turn to the back for a full list), if you want to know
more.
After Dad eventually passed away he took over from Eric. Dad appeared in
dream visitations to each of his four daughters the night he passed away. It was
the start of a catalogue of experiences … enough to fill a book, in fact. Many
years later he still visits, and one of my sisters, Madeline Richardson, and I
finally wrote a book about what happened to our family, friends and extended
contacts after Dad passed on. At the point of writing this book he has now been
gone for four whole years … yet his most recent ‘visit’ was just this week!
Dad too flickered lights and set the doorbell ringing, but his repertoire was
more sophisticated than his brother Eric before him. Dad set off alarms, yes, but
he also turned over the television channel and even messed around with the
computers and telephones. Maybe the afterlife tricks were performed by both
brothers together – I can imagine Eric acting as Dad’s ‘wingman’, pumping up
the energy so they could create types of miracle encounters, experiences and
visitations for the family to enjoy and share.
Dad worked hard, and still works hard, to show us that life doesn’t end at
physical death. Dad had died … but he wasn’t ‘dead’! (You can read about his
story in our book Call Me When You Get to Heaven.)
And so we come full circle. I wanted to write a book where I gave the answers to
the questions that I’d wanted to know myself when I first started out. What
happens when we die? What is heaven? Is it a real place? Does it exist? I know
you’ll be blown away by the many real-life stories I have collected for this book.
Do you want to know what happens when you pass on? And more to the point,
you say, Jacky, how do you know? Let’s find out!