SIMON PETERS -"An Evening of Clairvoyance"     by S.C.

November 29th 2005

“If you go – ‘it were me Dad, he died of a heart attack, he died on a Tuesday, it were raining outside, the funeral were on a Thursday’ – I will come and slap you, ‘cos they’re all the questions that I’m gonna ask”.

Hold on a moment. Back up a bit. What was that last sentence again? “…they’re all the questions that I’m gonna ask”. He’s not supposed to ask any questions at all, is he? Was that a slip?

Itch.

Towards the end of this preamble, it becomes clear to us that something significant is happening – Simon’s speech is peppered with asides directed at, we all assume, ‘spirit’ – “Hold on a minute fella’, I’ll be right with you…”

And so the messages begin.
 

Spirit 1

His first communication is, he tells us, coming from a gentleman who ‘shows me fatherly energy. He died from emphysema’. This is directed towards somebody in the front-right quarter of the audience. The message is not accepted. Simon suggests that it might actually be asthma? Asbestosis?

Cough! “Please excuse me coughing, won’t you? I want to come to this area of the room. The girl with blond hair – I want to sit on her knee for some reason. The girl with the red hat – I’m in this area”

“This gentleman did have lung failure. He says multiple organ failure. My organs shut-down but it was my lungs that went first. Now… do you understand?”

A lady, sitting a few rows from the front, accepts this message. Unfortunately she tells Simon, and the rest of us, her entire family history the moment that she’s handed the microphone. The reading flounders immediately although, in fairness, Simon can’t be blamed for this. Things seem to have gotten off to a false-start.
 

Spirit 2

Simon brings his next message to the opposite side of the audience; again looking for somebody in the front few rows – “this lady went into spirit in her late-forties, I think it’s …late…forties. She’s showing me stomach cancer“ Simon comments on the age – “Now I think that’s ridiculously young.”

“This lady is showing me ‘Mum’ – motherly energy…”

The message is readily accepted and Simon goes on to tell the woman that her mother didn’t want to go to hospital, but eventually succumbed to her illness. Would that be an unusual scenario in a person afflicted by stomach cancer? The statement is accepted.

Simon offers Thursday as “day of last communication.” The recipient seems uncertain, but accepts the information.

The next few comments are along the lines of “she was a gentle soul” and “she had so much love for her family”.

I’m sure she was a delightful lady - many, perhaps most, people think that of their own mother.

“One, one, two, three – time of last communication” Simon clarifies this; “11.23… pm, I think.”

“Is that right?”

“Erm…maybe…a quarter of an hour…”

“11.23 – time of last communication.”  

The lady isn’t sure – “I…think so, yeah.”

Simon insists “That right?”

“Yeah..”

This spirit wants to “give love to five”.

The recipient doesn’t recognize this.

The lady in spirit hung on for as long as she could until somebody gave her the most wonderful message – ‘if you need to go, it’s alright.’ The recipient doesn’t know. Simon explains that it was a lady, earlier on the Thursday that ‘gave permission’, and the woman says that she might know who the message refers to.

Simon - “Wednesday, half past one, the funeral – it drizzled.”

“Yeah.”

“A dozen red roses to mark an anniversary” seems to confuse the recipient. “Perhaps it was a memorial? The dozen roses are important to this spirit“ still fails to resonate with the lady.

Three unspecified individuals laid “three deep, red roses on the coffin – one, two, three“ ( Simon mimes the laying of flowers ).

Yes, this is accepted although the recipient is becoming upset and it’s difficult to hear her responses clearly.

Simon - “You understand the five, don’t you, because they divide two and three?

“…er…yeah.”

Simon – “ Can I tell you one thing? She just…went…to…sleep. But I’ve got a man here who’s saying ‘when I went it hurt like Hell’…”

Simon moves to his next reading, and to the opposite side of the stage – “There is a much younger gentleman – now we’ve already had a younger person…”

He turns back to the lady he’s just been speaking to, sounding surprised – “Was she 47?”

The girl, quietly “Yeah.”

“Was she 47? She just said ‘I were 47’ “
 

This results in a very uncomfortable moment – Simon has (if we accept that he is genuinely talking to spirit ) just scolded this lady’s mother like a naughty child. The lady is clearly offended, and her friend turns to her, apparently shocked. Simon returns to the lady, makes an obsequious bow, and offers “Ah, bless her…”

Simon has, on face value, achieved a very precise ‘hit’ by giving the deceased lady’s exact age. It is a ‘hit’, undoubtedly, but didn’t he begin the reading by stipulating “…in her late-forties, I think it’s …late…forties.”?

Surely that narrows the possibilities to three, perhaps four, years? It’s a ‘hit’, but the odds against it aren’t quite as staggering as they initially seem.

There is a moment of acknowledgement here – Simon has given a correct age of death, very suddenly and spontaneously.

For reasons known only to himself, he then immediately chides the ‘spirit’ that has just interrupted – “Well go away, I’m talking to him now”, turning back to his next recipient.

Spirit 3

Simon returns to his next reading.

“There is an impact.” Simon claps his hands together to illustrate the point – “This gentleman had just got off his motorbike, got a car…”

Simon chooses a man sitting in the front-quarter of the audience “I think I want to be with you…”

He describes a car accident, which happened 10 years ago, does this mean anything to the man?

“Erm…yeah…” The man seems hesitant and uncertain throughout the reading.

‘D’ is where ‘spirit’ wants the message to go – no response from the sitter.

The message is to ‘go to 7’. Again, no response.

The victim of this accident was ‘dead on arrival’, ‘suffered horrible head injuries’ and ‘viewing before the funeral was discouraged’. The recipient isn’t at all sure.

“Have you got a white van?” Simon enquires.

“Yeah”

“Yeah, you wanna get it cleaned-out or else he’ll come an’ haunt you. He’s told me it’s dirty…”

“Yeah, it is.” The man agrees, laughing.

“ ‘Bloody white vans’, that’s what he’s just said. Did he hit a white van?”

The man doesn’t know.

‘A sixteen year-old in spirit with this person, the funeral was on Tuesday, a small silver cross placed around his neck, two white roses in the coffin.’ – all are met with either “don’t know” or “can’t remember”.

Simon coughs extravagantly “Scared me more than you!”

Spirit 4

 He takes water and then moves on to his next communication,

This reading lasts no more than a minute, and is offered to a man at the front of the audience. “A lady and gentleman reunited in spirit, and something about a grave – you going to find a grave…”

The man shows no recognition whatsoever, and Simon says “I’m going to leave this with you.”
 

Spirit 5

Simon begins the next message “Jim…father…Jim…”

He then makes perhaps the biggest mistake ( no, not the biggest mistake – that’s to come in the second half ) of the night by placing the reading with a large lady, sitting in the row ahead of me. She is what one might call, a ‘robust, no-nonsense Norfolk lady’.

“ He says don’t call me James. Call me Jim. If you call me James I’ll ‘ave you. “

“Please give love to five of ‘em…five…one’s a bit different to four, apparently. D’you understand?”

“ No! “

Simon tries variations on this numerical theme – one lad and four lasses.

“ No! “

Resistance is futile here, Simon – this is my part of the world and I can see what you’re up against - I’d cut your losses now, if I were you.

Cancer of the oesophagus is accepted, but then Simon develops his theme – “ Why have I got Jim Reeves in my head?” He begins to croon – ‘Oh Danny boy…’

“I have no idea! “

The lady in the seat directly behind has her hand up.

Simon tries again with the five, but now it’s three with another two ‘in spirit’ making up the fifth. The lady is having none of it.

Simon explains that this gentleman is doing his utmost to get through to her, but there’s another spirit coming and “he’s nicking the energy from someone behind him.”

“That’ll be him!!” the lady responds, and gets a big laugh. It’s a lot funnier than the ‘microphone’ jokes.

The lady sitting behind is becoming emotional at all of this, it seems that Simon is about to go to her, but then he momentarily stays with the woman in the row ahead of me ( ‘spirit’ seems to be gaining strength ) - “Oh, he says he’s gonna kick my arse later…”

“That’s definitely him!!”

Simon develops his theme – “Oh he’s absolutely delighted - he’s a man after my own heart – he’s just lifted up a glass, and a big cigar…”

“I can’t relate to that at all!”

Simon realizes it’s time to quit ( Did ‘spirit’ suddenly fade-out again? ) – “Oh… go to the lady behind now”

Simon asks which bits of the previous message she understood, and she responds that she understood all of it. How can the same message apply to two people sitting just two or three feet apart? I don’t know…

Itch.

Simon then offers a slight return of the man who was with the lady in front, and this time he gives ’three’ – both recipients respond ‘yes’ and Simon explains that the ‘spirits’ are “coming through together” – he then struggles to untangle ‘four and one’ and ‘three’ and nobody has much of a clue what this is all about.

The Jim Reeves was for the woman behind, and was played at the funeral. Who’s funeral? We don’t know yet, although the recipient seems to. She accepts that this man was ‘tactile’, ‘loved his kids’ and that he sees ‘two little ones’. We assume that this may be the woman’s father, but this has gone unstated.

‘Tuesday at half past ten’ for the funeral and ‘it was very windy’ receive vague acknowledgements from the lady, but she’s sobbing and it’s becoming hard to interpret her responses.

Again, Simon offers an inappropriately ‘funny’ comment – pantomime-clutching his stomach he says “Oh, they make me feel a bit windy, that’s how…that’s how they get me to say that”.

A few people laugh, but it’s muted and uncomfortable in light of the emotional state of the recipient. I have to assume that Simon was trying to help by lightening the moment, but I don’t sense that it works well.

He tells the woman that ‘he is proud of her’, and ‘she was strong and dealt with everything’. She continues to weep. Simon tells her that ‘she was brave – she kissed him on the lips’. I think she accepts this, but her hands are over her face.

Simon says that “When my dad died, I wasn’t that brave…”

This appears to confirm that it is the lady’s father with whom he is communicating; she seems to accept the compliment, anyway.

“You know when he comes around you because there is only one man in the world who could possibly smell like that, and it’s him.”

“You’ve smelled that awful smell…well, it’s his smell…well, oh I’m sorry, it’s… it’s a bit stifling, isn’t it?”

“Yes”, she agrees.

He ‘tries to avoid aunty, on the other side’ and ‘a lot of them are with him now’. Simon passes on this man’s love and points out that “there’s no way on this planet that I could have guessed all that”.

I’m not sure whether the lady’s father was Jim, or whether it was simply that Jim Reeves was played at the funeral. It’s only by the lady’s reaction to Simon’s self-deprecating comment that we assume it was her father. Perhaps it wasn’t necessary for Simon to confirm this – if he knew, and the lady knew, perhaps that’s all that matters?

Time to take ‘a wee-wee break’ as Simon quaintly puts it. I interpret this as ‘head for the bar and get to work with rolling- paper, tobacco and fire’.

I need to think.

Something has been niggling at the back of my mind, and now I have a moment to let this thought define itself. When Simon introduces each of his messages he usually begins by stating ‘fatherly energy’ and ‘died of throat cancer’, or other combinations of familial relationship and cause of death. As soon as somebody claims the message, the audience accepts this as a ‘hit’.

I can’t see, though, how it would be so very different if I stood on the stage and simply asked – “Did anyone here lose their father to throat cancer?”. Admittedly, Simon selects a relatively small area of the room to place his message, and he sticks within this choice. Wouldn’t it be stronger if he picked an individual first, then gave all the relevant details? Isn’t he beginning each message with a question?

The ‘names’ issue is also troubling me. On at least two occasions ‘spirit’ has very clearly, and literally, spoken to Simon -

“Was she 47? She just said ‘I were 47’ “

“ ‘Bloody white vans’, that’s what he’s just said. Did he hit a white van?”

Why wouldn’t a person in spirit, who is able to communicate this strongly, take the opportunity to give their own name?

Then there are the dates that Simon offers. No – not dates – days. Why does he not offer a month ‘of last communication’, or the precise date of the funeral? What do people remember more clearly – the day of the week that they last spoke to a loved one, or the month in which it happened?

Questions of a more philosophical nature are bothering me - Why do all of these communications seem to be so devoid of personality? I ask myself what kind of message I would expect from my maternal grandfather, for example, if he were able to pass one to me? Would he tell me ‘time of last communication’? Or ‘the funeral was on a particular day’? He died a decade ago, and I don’t remember either of these details, so wouldn’t be able to identify him from the message.

He died peacefully in hospital, in his sleep – what was the precise, biological cause of his death? I don’t know.

I imagine he would talk about the swing-chair at the end of his garden, or the silver Gaffa tape my uncle brought back from the States with which my grandfather enthusiastically repaired everything in the house, or the shed that he kept so immaculately well-ordered with his prized tool-set in the cupboards that he made himself, or…any of a million details that defined him as the man that he was, and the man I remember. His personality, in other words.

It’s impossible to understand – none of it is consistent. Perhaps one has to experience mediumship first-hand to put these issues into context.

Itch.

Back into the room for more Enya.

Note:  The second part of the show was not fully analysed by S.C., but a description of one reading was given.

During the second-half, Simon began to talk about someone who had 'died from gas poisoning'. After a lot of theatrical miming of someone with their head in an oven, and a lot of asking for anyone to accept the message, he found a lady whose friend had committed suicide by using a hosepipe from the exhaust of their car and asphyxiating themselves.

Simon built the theme about how this woman had sat in the car, choking on the fumes, then talked about how the person 'hadn't really wanted to die', and was waiting for someone, and expecting they would be found before being killed by the fumes.

The woman receiving the message then revealed that it was actually her who had found her friend, dead in the car.

Simon had, in effect, just told this woman that as her friend was suffocating in the car, it was her that was supposed to turn up and save her.

There was one of those 'Oh my God' moments as everyone realised what Simon had just told the woman.  He had just effectively handed her the responsibility for her friend's death.

Simon's face dropped, then he went off on an awkward spiel about 'how everyone's time of death is pre-arranged and you can't do anything about it'...

He never really recovered from that blunder, and the second-half was a complete shambles.

Read the response by 'Simon Peters'

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