I love doing shows in the home counties – for one thing, it means I get a relatively early night! So I was in good spirits when we pulled up to the Central Theatre in Chatham, Kent, for a show in 2009. The drive had been short and I was rested and relaxed, ready for whatever spirit deemed to throw at me that night.
After the usual preparations, I stepped out to deafening applause and said a big ‘hello’ to the audience. I always start the evening with a trademark ‘psychic wave’, where the audience all wave in unison. It looks funny so it’s a good ice-breaker, and it also helps raise the energy levels in the room. Everyone laughing and doing something together has the effect of harmonizing the energy in the auditorium. Don’t ask me how, it just seems to work, and if it helps with the messages, who am I to argue?
He was one of the first spirits to come through, and his energy was strong and purposeful. He was polite, and I could tell straight away he was a teenager. The energy of a spirit feels different from spirit to spirit and I can tell which belongs to a child, which to a teenager, which to an adult and which to a senior citizen. This was definitely a very young man. And along with it I felt that twinge of sadness I always get when I realize it must have been a life snatched short.
I saw him in my mind’s eye. He was around eighteen years old, stocky, and had short curly brown hair and expressive blue eyes. He was whispering to me and, as I focused my mind into the thought patterns that were playing through it, I picked up the words ‘Rob’ and ‘hill’.
‘I have a young man here,’ I told the audience. ‘He says, “You can call me Rob,” and I am getting the word “hill”. Does that mean anything to anyone?’
I looked up out into the auditorium and, in the middle of the audience, a hand went up. The lady it belonged to took the microphone from one of my helpers and stood up with two other young women. They all looked similar, all dressed for a night out, and they radiated a very positive, fun energy. There was an older lady – the one who had raised her hand – and two younger ones who I presumed were her daughters.
‘You look like the Nolans,’ I laughed.
The young man in spirit recognized them; I felt that familiar warm glow as the energy between them joined. Then the images started. I felt slightly wobbly as I was shown chaotic scenes. I saw blood on a pavement, I heard shouting and crying, I saw a face screwed into a violent grimace and I felt a feeling of fear, adrenaline and terrified confusion.
‘This one is going to make me sad,’ I explained, and tears sprang to my eyes. I knew I had the spirit of a murder victim with me. I asked the women who this Rob who had come through to me was.
They explained that he was a childhood friend of theirs, and he had been killed in a fight the previous year.
‘What’s the relevance of the word “hill”?’ I asked.
‘That’s our surname,’ the women answered.
The audience gasped.
I was now being the shown the last moments of Rob’s life. The scene was a bar. Rob was trying to protect someone.
‘He put up a fight,’ I said as the images and feelings flashed into my mind. I felt a surge of pain going through my body – hot, like a knife.
‘I feel it on the right-hand side,’ I explained. ‘Someone got hold of him from behind. I can see it as if it was happening in front of me.’
The older woman of the three explained that Rob was an actor who had been stabbed and killed on a night out. I later learned that his full name was Robert Knox. He had overcome the adversity of being bullied as a young teenager to begin a career in films and, until May 2008, it seemed he had a glittering future ahead of him. At the age of twelve he was subjected to a three-year campaign of bullying over his weight, finally forcing his parents to move him to a new school. But rather than let this episode ruin his life, Rob chose to draw strength from it and to follow his acting dreams. He had been acting since the age of eleven and had appeared in the 2004 film King Arthur, the BBC comedy After You’ve Gone, The Bill and Tonight with Trevor McDonald, as well as the Channel 4 reality show Trust Me, I’m a Teenager. But his big break came when he won a part in the hugely popular Harry Potter films. He played the Hogwarts student Marcus Belby in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and was signed to appear in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Rob had a wonderful life stretching before him. However, just a few weeks after completing filming for the movie Rob was out in a bar in Sidcup, Kent, when a man started a fight with his brother. Rob tried to defend him, but the man was a knife-carrying maniac and he stabbed Rob and several other people. Rob died on the pavement outside the bar.
Now his childhood friends had come to my show, and Rob was there with them.
‘Tell him we love him,’ the older woman said, blinking back tears.
In my mind another name came to me.
‘Who is Zoe? Is that his mum?’ I asked.
‘No, I’m Zoe,’ she answered.
Then he whispered something in my head and started to giggle.
‘Amy, where is my ball?’ he said.
It was another one of those occasions where the message doesn’t seem to fit the tone of the reading. I had been shown a scene of devastation and a talented young life cut down on the cusp of a bright future, but now there was a mischievous voice whispering about a ball. As ever, I put my faith in spirit and repeated to the women what I was picking up.
One of the girls – she must have been in her late teens or early twenties – drew a sharp breath in. She was dressed in a beige jacket with a rose-print T-shirt on underneath. Her hair was cut into a shiny auburn bob.
‘He’s saying, “Amy, what have you done with my ball? Where is it?” ’ I said.
‘I’m Amy,’ she told me. ‘Rob and I used to play together when we were little. He used to come to my house and we’d play in the garden with a ball. I still have it at home somewhere.’
Then Rob’s attention must have turned to something else. An image of a backpack slotted into my head like a slide into a projector, and he was showing me a young man, someone travelling or leaving home.
I asked the women what this meant, and they explained that Rob’s brother had just got a contract to go and work in Spain and that he would soon be leaving the country.
It was an amazing reading. I didn’t know the full details of the case or of Rob’s passing until after the show, when someone in my office explained who he was. That he appeared to the audience that night to connect with his friends and gently have a laugh with them shows that even the worst wounds, physical or emotional, do not linger after death.