Steph Young joins us to share her true tales of the afterlife!

You can find her book on the subject, Proof of the Afterlife, at Amazon: https://amzn.to/40IlPHl

Thanks Steph!

This post contains Amazon affiliate links that benefit Jim Harold Media when you make a qualifying purchase. Thank you for your support!

TRANSCRIPT

[intro music]

 

This is the Paranormal Podcast with Jim Harold.

 

JIM HAROLD: Welcome to the Paranormal Podcast. I am Jim Harold. So glad to be with you once again. We have a great guest. It’s been a while since we’ve spoke to her, but she always has such compelling stories, and she has this great storytelling voice. We’re so glad to have her again. I’m talking about Steph Young.

 

She is an author who says that she is addicted to researching all supernatural, paranormal, esoteric, and enigmatic mysteries of the unexplained. She’s a very prolific author, and each book she writes seems to lead her to further questions and searches for answers as the mysteries inevitably deepen into ever more complex riddles in the spectrum of the unknown. She’s been a guest on national radio shows, including Coast to Coast AM, a regular guest on podcasts, including ours. She’s a podcaster in her own right, and we’ll ask her about that. And today we’re primarily going to be talking about her latest book, and it is called Proof of the Afterlife: The dead don’t die: True Tales of the Afterlife. We’re so glad to have her with us. Steph Young, thank you for joining us on the Paranormal Podcast.

 

STEPH YOUNG: Hi. Thanks for having me back on, Jim.

 

JIM HAROLD: This really is a passion for you, isn’t it?

 

STEPH YOUNG: Yeah, particularly with this last book because I actually joined a development circle to become a medium myself. It’s been the craziest experiences for the last couple of years. I really wanted to get experience of it myself. It’s great to research it, but to actually feel things and see things – oh my goodness, I’ve been tickled by spirits, I’ve had my hair pulled by them, I’ve felt the footsteps on the floor, I’ve seen a materialized hand with fingers, I’ve been operated on by spirits. [laughs] I know it sounds insane, but I can go into all the details.

 

I really wanted to do some on-the-ground research at the same time. It’s taken me an awful long time to get the book done.

 

JIM HAROLD: But good things come to those who wait. Now, I want to get your view on the afterlife, because to me, it is almost like the ultimate question. Some people, when we do these shows – I do these shows on a wide variety of topics: UFOs, cryptids like Bigfoot, ghosts, a very large tent. But to me, when someone says, “Jim, what is the one question you have? What do you want to know the most about?”, I always say the afterlife. We might not all see Bigfoot, we might not all see a UFO, but we are going to have to, in the words of that old spiritual, “walk that lonesome valley.” We’re all going to go through this process. Whether it’s truly the end or if it’s just, like some say, passing into another room, it to me is the ultimate universal question. What are your thoughts on the afterlife?

 

STEPH YOUNG: Funnily enough, I became very, very seriously ill about a year and a half ago, so that question popped up. I’d also heard about spiritual healing, so I went along and I was trying it. I had lots of sessions with a lot of different spiritual healers. The afterlife was very prevalent in my mind at the time.

 

But it’s funny because when I was writing my books about people going missing in the woods and whether it could be – was it aliens, was it fairies? Who of course, some people used to call the dead. Or was it portals, dimensions? I came across these accounts of these invisible, shimmering, energy predator thing in the woods. Funnily enough, I’ve come across the same sort of thing in my investigation for the afterlife, and it is an energy form. So yes, spirits exist. I’ve had conversations with them, with spirits telling me what I was doing earlier on in that day.

 

They’re energy forms, but the purpose of the book was to actually find proof of them in the form of physical manifestations. If you want to see Bigfoot, you want to see it. You want to experience it physically and see it. This was the sort of thing. I wanted proof. I wanted tangible evidence to prove that the afterlife is real, that people really do carry on. It’s a consciousness, it’s an energy form, but on occasion you see them or you feel them. It’s the most compelling field of research I’ve ever been involved in.

 

JIM HAROLD: You are a great curator of stories. When you were looking to do this book, what were the criteria of including a story in this particular book? Because I’m sure you had many, many to choose from.

 

STEPH YOUNG: The biggest problem with proving the afterlife is the fakery. I’ll give you an example. There was a medium – I won’t give his name, but he was a medium in England about two or three years ago, and funnily enough, my development circle, which is where you go to train to become a medium – the husband and wife who run it were actually at this séance. It was in the dark, and he was caught out because somebody sneaked in with a video recorder and they captured the medium; he’d freed himself from the ties binding him to the chair, and he was walking around the room, blowing on people and tickling them, pretending to be a spirit that had come back to life. But he was caught out.

 

So the problem with why it took me so long to write is because you have to weed out – people do it for the money. In every walk of life, you’re going to have people that are con artists. So my criteria was to rule out the fakery, and that takes a long time because there was a lot of it. Going back to the Victorian era, they would take photographs of the so-called dead, but they would be photos taken from newspapers. So the criteria for me was tangible, hard proof, whether it’s seeing spirits and as many witness accounts as I could get. I had to go back historically, but I also wanted to find contemporary accounts because witnesses or mediums are still alive.

 

JIM HAROLD: Yes. The thing is to me, I must say – for example, near-death experiences. The scientists say those are just the throes of a dying brain, just trying to ease the individual into the dying process, and it’s all physiological. But then I’m like, how does that work? Because people – and this has been confirmed – have described things they shouldn’t be able to describe when they were unconscious or clinically dead. They describe floating and they describe things that you couldn’t see at eye level, even if they could see. It seems to me there’s something else at play, and I’ve never heard the skeptics come up with a reasonable explanation for that.

 

So for example, near-death experiences alone – I’m not saying every reported one is true, but it seems like there’s definitely something there, from what we’re hearing.

 

STEPH YOUNG: There’s a famous account that was researched by quite a well-known NDE writer and a patient who’d been unconscious. When they came back around, they were talking about an old shoe that they’d seen up on the roof of the hospital, but they were brought in on a stretcher; there was no way they could’ve gone up to the roof. That’s similar to the sort of proof that I was looking for in the afterlife.

 

I’ve had so much proof in my development circle. I’ll give you a really silly example. It was every Tuesday night, so I was going to it that night, but during the daytime I was going on a very long drive to interview somebody. Because I’d left early, I hadn’t had breakfast, I stopped off at a motorway service station. Most people stop there, they buy petrol, they buy lots of things. All I bought was a bunch of bananas, and I ate them on the way there, on the way back. I didn’t have time to eat all day. Drove straight to the development circle.

 

We were working in pairs that night, and the task was “give a reading to your partner.” Now, none of us know anything about each other, and we keep it that way so we can’t do cold readings. The girl working with me started telling me about this bunch of bananas and the service station and where I’d been that day. I hadn’t spoken to anybody. I’d just about arrived in time.

 

When you give examples of what you’ve been doing – and another time, I was in the park with a friend. It was during the summer. We were talking for some reason about freemasonry, and I said my dad had been a Freemason for a couple of years when he was young, and then he had football and cricket and had too much on, so he left. We were doing pair work again, and I’m being told about my conversation in the park talking to my friend about freemasonry, and to go and look for a book in a room in my house which would tell me about – and I did when I got home. It was a Freemason handbook. I had no idea it was there.

 

How could you explain that, other than that’s someone giving that message from the afterlife? Because nobody had known where I’d been, what I’d been doing that day.

 

JIM HAROLD: I was looking a little bit at the book before we got started today, and one chapter caught my eye. I don’t know if you’re willing to share a story with us, but: “How would you like to feel the hand of a man who’s been dead for 100 years?” What in the world was that story about?

 

STEPH YOUNG: To be honest, there’s so many stories in the book I struggle to remember them all, but this one comes from – there’s a man called Stewart Alexander, and actually he’s still alive. He has retired, but he’s what’s called one of the only few physical mediums. Physical mediumship is where you produce evidence, whether it’s – well, in his case, he had a spirit who would appear at his séances. He lived in the North of England, and there’s many, many witness statements.

 

This spirit that would appear would materialize on a round table in front of everybody, in light, a hand. The hand would start off – they described it as a morphing mass, almost like a doughy sort of substance, would appear on the table. And from this substance, a hand, the fingers would appear. Then the hand would go round and shake people’s hands. The spirit guide was saying, “This is the hand of a man who has been dead for 100 years.” But it gets even crazier than that.

 

That’s Stewart Alexander, but I found so many cases of these sorts of things happening. Sorry, I’ve completely forgotten what I was going to say. I’ve got so many cases of hands materializing. Oh, that’s it, yeah. Not only hands, but spirit doctors. I’ll tell you the lineage of how this happened. There was a healer called Jessie Thomas. He lived in the 1950s in Brighton, which is by the sea in England. He was an ordinary fireman, I believe. He started going to spiritualist churches, joined a development circle, because people kept saying to him, “I think you’re a healer,” and he had no idea what they were talking about.

 

Well, he soon began to be able to develop an ability to heal. Ordinarily, quite often what most mediums will do, they’ll just put one hand on you and that’s it. They’re channeling the spirits. He would give healings, and he didn’t know who the so-called spirit doctor was, but he would go through in this room above – he ran a garage in the end, so he became a mechanic. He had a room above his garage where he would carry out operations on people. He would go through all the motions of cutting somebody open, putting his hands inside them.

 

Now, it turned out when a journalist went to interview him in the ’70s that this spirit doctor was doing all this work for him, and he was healing people of ulcers, of tumors. They would have x-rays; the x-rays would show the tumors had gone. He didn’t know who this spirit was, but the journalist, when she was interviewing him, the spirit doctor appeared in the room and said, “I’m happy to answer any questions.” It turns out his name was Dr. Robert Koch. He gave all these details – where he was born, in Baden-Baden in Germany. Turns out he won the Nobel Prize for Medicine for discovering the cause of – now what was it? There were three infectious diseases that he discovered the cause for.

 

Not only that, but a man called Tom Pilgrim, who also lived in Brighton – he was interested in spiritualism, and he developed an ulcer. He’d heard that Jessie Thomas was a healer, so he went along to see him. The ulcer was completely removed. He went to the doctor; the doctor said, “How on earth has that happened?” He explained where he’d been, and the doctor said, “Okay, good for you,” thinking “what the heck?” His experience started – he had an ordinary job in an office. He was walking along a road in Brighton one day, and he heard a voice calling his name. He looked up at all the windows in the houses and he thought, “I can’t see anyone.” Then he looked up in the sky and he saw this huge gold cross. He said, “It looked so real, it was almost like I could reach out and touch it.”

 

JIM HAROLD: Wow.

 

STEPH YOUNG: A few nights later, he’s reading in bed when this man appears at the end of his bed and says, “I’m Dr. Robert Koch and I will be working with you when the time is right.” He’s thinking, “What?” [laughs] It turns out that when Jessie Thomas died, Tom Pilgrim began to work with him, too.

 

But it doesn’t end there because there’s a man called Steven Upton. He was a tutor at the Arthur Findlay College, which is a little like a Harry Potter school where people go to learn mediumship in England. He came to my house in the summer, and I was talking to him. I was mentioning Jessie Thomas and Tom Pilgrim and said I was writing this book. He goes, “Well, while I was giving a healing demonstration in the Arthur Findlay College one day, this woman who was in the audience, one of the students, was an artist. She started drawing this portrait of a man.” Afterwards, when the demonstration was over, she came up to Steven and said, “Look, I’ve drawn this picture. This man was standing behind you on the stage.” Steven goes, “I didn’t know. I couldn’t see him.”

 

At the same time, another lady in the audience who was a retired nurse had an impression that she could see this man standing behind Steven. When the nurse went to a medical library – because she thought, “I wonder who this man is. Maybe he’s a famous man” – she found a picture, and the name was Dr. Robert Koch.

 

JIM HAROLD: Oh my.

 

STEPH YOUNG: Yeah. And now it seems that he’s working through him. Steven is being studied by universities and medical colleges. He’s got a lot of testimonies. A woman had only 30% vision in one eye and he gave her some healing, and the eye is now perfect. A woman that was at the college one day – she was from Holland and she her left foot was growing outwards, so it was twice the size it should be. He gave her healing, and now her foot is completely normal. These kinds of things, you just can’t explain. [laughs]

 

JIM HAROLD: It is amazing. That’s the kind of thing you always hear from Steph Young. Amazing stories, amazing tales. We’re going to talk about more right after this on the Paranormal Podcast.

 

The Paranormal Podcast is brought to you by Grammarly and their Advanced Tone Suggestions. Boy, I can tell you, they are a great help when you need to have written communication. I’ve got to tell you, tone is tough to get, particularly in emails. I don’t know how many of you have had this experience – I bet most of you: you send an email off to someone, and they take it totally the wrong way. [laughs] Maybe they think you’re coming off snarky or whatever it might be. And you didn’t mean it that way at all, but you read it back and you’re like, “Yeah, I could see where they’d say that.”

 

That’s why you need Grammarly Premium’s Advanced Tone Suggestions. I know they help me, and they help you communicate confidently and reframe your words to be more positive and productive so your team gets on the same page and projects get done on time. I absolutely love Grammarly. I have been using it literally for years, way before they ever approached me about doing an ad. And when they did, I’m like, this is awesome because I’ve used and paid for this product for years, and I renew year after year after year because it is so good. And I do enjoy these Advanced Tone Suggestions. I run my column I do for my newsletter through Grammarly, and it says, “You could be a little more confident here,” “You could be a little more friendly here,” and it does help. I think I’m a pretty good writer, but Grammarly makes me better.

 

When it comes to work, communication is key even if you don’t have a writing job – because let’s face it, today, they’re pretty much all writing jobs, aren’t they? Grammarly works where you do so every important project gets done on time. Grammarly’s Premium Tone Suggestions, as we said, take your writing to the next level, keeping you professional as you balance being direct and friendly while finding solutions with your team. Plus, Grammarly has a ton of other great features: advanced spelling, grammar, punctuation, and conciseness suggestions to ensure your writing is professional, mistake-free, and clear.

 

The right tone can move any project forward when you get it just right with Grammarly. Go to grammarly.com/tone to download and learn more about Grammarly Premium’s Advanced Tone Suggestions. That’s g-r-a-m-m-a-r-l-y dot com slash tone, and we thank Grammarly for their support of the Paranormal Podcast.

 

If you love the Paranormal Podcast, be sure to check out Jim Harold’s Campfire, where ordinary people share their extraordinary stories of ghosts, UFOs, cryptids, and terrifying encounters. Find it for free wherever you listen to this podcast. Tune in to Jim Harold’s Campfire today. Now, we return to the Paranormal Podcast.

 

JIM HAROLD: We’re back on the Paranormal Podcast. Our guest is author and spooky story curator, and podcaster, Steph Young. We’re so glad to have her on the show today. She has this new book out, Proof of the Afterlife: The dead don’t die: True Tales of the Afterlife.

 

Steph, I know when people write books and when they have multiple stories like this, the question comes: “What is my favorite story? What is the best story? What is the story I’m most excited about?” I guess I would ask you this. It’s like asking you which child is your favorite child, but can you share with us at least one of your favorite stories from the book?

 

STEPH YOUNG: I think that would be the experiments of a Robert Gambier. He was the photographer for Queen Victoria’s animals, and he was a naturalist and conservationist, but he also wrote a book called Ghosts in Solid Form in the 1800s. He spent seven yeras conductig experiments to get manifestations of physical appearances of spirits.it’s quite comical, some of the experiments he carried out. He was so determined to make sure there was no fraud involved, no fakery, because he didn’t want people dressing up as spirits and fooling him.

 

The first experiment he did, he took a blind medium to the middle of a forest in the South of England. Prior to taking the medium there, he’d bought a caravan from a builder, so he parked the caravan in the middle of the forest. He goes there in the middle of the night with the blind medium and he’s locked up the caravan so nobody could get in. He’s got a friend with him, and he writes in the note, “This is just not going to work. There’s nothing compatible. There’s no soft music to encourage the spirits.” Anyway, suddenly, this tall figure of a man appears in the caravan. It’s not the medium because the medium is standing there at the same time, and the figure is much taller than the medium.

 

He carries on with the experiments. On one occasion, he goes to some political offices in Whitehall. Whitehall is the heart of our government in London. Two politicians wanted him to come and do an experiment but didn’t want it known because they’d lose their jobs. So Gambier sneaks in there, and they do it in one of the offices, but all the paperwork is still over the desk. A little creature suddenly appears in the room, and Gambier is begging the spirits not to let the creature run around because it’s going to cause mayhem, but the spirits – they have a good sense of humor, so they say, “No, sorry, we can’t stop it.” So this little creature just goes wild, gets all the paperwork scattered everywhere, and nobody can control it.

 

At the same meeting, some Parsi spirits, which is Indian, apparently started an argument between themselves about whether their bodies should be cremated or buried. He said the noise was deafening, of their voices. It’s just so comical, some of these experiments they carried out. [laughs]

 

JIM HAROLD: Yeah, it is interesting. I know there was one famous one – I don’t know that you covered it in the book, but supposedly one where someone tried to weigh the soul at the time of death.

 

STEPH YOUNG: Gambier was weighing them. He was weighing spirits as well.

 

JIM HAROLD: Oh, okay.

 

STEPH YOUNG: In fact – was it Gambier or a different one? But there was somebody, because Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle, got involved as well. The medium would lose weight when a spirit appeared, so they were using weighing scales to get the spirits to stand on them to weigh them. In fact, yes, Mrs. Elizabeth Bullock was a medium, and Sir Henry Steel Olcott, who was a colonel in the army. Elizabeth Bullock was born in Manchester, and she was the medium that was a transfiguration medium, so her face would change and other faces would appear on hers. Sir Henry Olcott, when a spirit materialized in the room, he’d get them to stand on a weighing platform and said the spirit girl in one instance weighs 52 pounds, but the medium, Mrs. Bullock, weighs 121. So they were doing that as well.

 

JIM HAROLD: Interesting. I think I heard the number “21 grams” thrown out at one point. But I know there was also a movie of that name about 20 years ago, so maybe I’m getting the two things confused. Anyhow, it is fascinating.

 

What about ghosts? You talked about some of the other stories, the hand appearing and so forth, but any ghost stories?

 

STEPH YOUNG: The funny thing is that my development group about a month ago went on a ghost hunt in an old-fashioned building, and I refused to go along. [laughs] They said, “Why won’t you come?” I said, “I’m really scared of ghosts.” They said, “What do you think you do every Tuesday night when you’re talking to them?” I said, “No, hold on, that’s spirits, not ghosts.” So I’ve stayed well away from it.

 

But I did come back home from my circle one night a few weeks ago and I know somebody was in my room. Wasn’t a bad spirit, but I know they were there. I also couldn’t get this vision of a man in a bowler hat standing in my room. But at the same time, I was thinking – and I explained this to my tutors, and they said, “Hold on a second. I think the man in the bowler hat was your imagination, but the spirit that you sensed and you felt” – because you can feel, or I can, a physical reaction. When a spirit is close to me, I feel it. I literally get goosebumps. My heart rate goes up, and I get hot. So I can feel physiologically when I know a spirit has come.

 

I was meditating – that’s how you get spirit contact, so I’ve learnt how to do that. I was meditating at home one day. It was the afternoon. Closed my eyes, and all of a sudden there’s a huge face. I’ve got my eyes closed, but you see with your mind’s eye – a huge face in front of me. I knew instantly that this man – it was a man’s face; it actually looked a bit like Tom Selleck, so he was quite handsome. [laughs] Also, this had never happened to me before, so I didn’t know, “What shall I do?” I didn’t know what to do. I instantly knew that he was related to a lady in my development group. Because they tell you these things. You see the man, or they show you scenes of action and things. So you see it all happen, or you see words in front of you.

 

So I knew it was that, and when I went to see her the next week, I said, “Do you know a man that looks like so-and-so? I feel like it was your dad.” She goes, “No, no, no, that’s my dad’s cousin, but they were like brothers. They were inseparable.” And then he came in the development circle – I don’t mean physically appeared, but he appeared so that I could see him, and I started seeing – he was a traveler. He lived in a caravan. He was showing me the caravan, he was showing me the horses, showing me driving on a motorway. I could see his life. I could see his children. So, no, that’s not ghosts, but it’s kind of the same thing.

 

JIM HAROLD: Yeah, very similar. You talk about your work in the development group and so forth, and you’ve been writing on this for years now, you’ve been podcasting for four years. How would you say – or have your beliefs and thoughts on all of this evolved over the years? Has it changed at all?

 

STEPH YOUNG: I always believed in the afterlife when I was a child. I don’t know why. I had no proof at all. But my beliefs now, going through the experiences myself has given me the proof and the confirmation because you just can’t make some of these things up. You simply can’t. So that has changed from “maybe there is” to knowing there is.

 

The thing about “you said you saw a hand” – yeah, I did. An elderly couple lived in the heart of the countryside. I went to see them one day. They’re mediums. They’ve been healers for decades. I drove up, I was in the middle of nowhere, and I parked my car in their big driveway and I thought, “What should I do? I haven’t told anyone I’m coming here. I don’t even know them. What if I don’t come back?” Anyway, the door opened and this lovely, charming lady came out. I’ve got to know them really, really well over the last year, and he does spiritual healing, which I needed because I was very seriously ill.

 

So I’m lying there on a treatment, like a massage table in their lounge, surrounded by ancient artifacts, and I’m thinking, “This is ridiculous. What am I going to do when I get home? I’ve got so much work to do. Which way shall I drive home?” I’m just thinking how ludicrous this is. I’ve been to so many spiritual healers and never felt a thing, never saw a thing. Never believed in it. Just thought, “I’m going to try it.” So the lights are on, and I’ve got my eyes closed, and suddenly, after about 20 minutes of lying there, I feel the sharpest of sensations in an area where I need the healing.

 

I open my eyes because I think, “Christ, is this person using some kind of instrument on me? This is really hurting!” I look up – neither of them have got their hands anywhere near that area. But what I can see instead – now, this is so strange. It was like I was looking at an x-ray. I could see bone of an arm and bone of fingers. Nothing else of the person. Nothing else. And the sharpest sensation inside of me. It was like a scalpel, or it was like nails, fingernails. Something was gripping me inside. Actually, subsequently, as I was editing and writing up the book, I found other cases of descriptions of nails, fingernails, things like that.

 

But I’d gone there, I thought, “How ludicrous is this,” and the reason I hadn’t told anyone was because who the heck would believe you? Who would think you would even go for such a ridiculous treatment? But I cannot take away what happened. And I am a skeptic. Being a researcher, you don’t want to look stupid and you don’t want to be accused of making things up or writing false information, so I’m very scrupulous – that’s why it’s taken me so long – to make sure I’m including things that really can – well, I know it’s only me saying it, but you can’t say “fraudulent.”

 

JIM HAROLD: Right. I appreciate that honesty. I think that’s very, very important in this kind of work. I do have to ask you about another story in your book, though. I do want to ask you about it because it really caught my eye. It was Chapter 13. It’s entitled “Father Gemelli was astonished to hear the voice of his dead father saying, ‘Of course I shall help you. I’m always with you.’” That maps to the stories we hear on Campfire. So many people call in and report that either they’ve heard a voice, they’ve seen something, they’ve had various signs or synchronicities of loved ones who are still there for them and still help them out in various ways. What do you think of that? Can you tell us a little bit about this story?

 

STEPH YOUNG: It was two Vatican-related priests, and they actually were trying to record Gregorian chants, so they weren’t experimenting at all. When they listened back to the recordings of the chants, that’s when he heard this voice on the recording. He thought, “That’s my father’s voice.” It set off a chain of them experimenting, and they got quite a lot of people involved in it. They did get the Vatican approval to do it, and in fact, the Vatican was saying, “We no longer” – they used to condemn investigation into this, but they said, “No, we wholeheartedly approve of it because it can give people comfort.”

 

So a lot of people were involved in it and books were written about it. It definitely seems to have happened. Hearing the voices is a tangible form of proof, like the physical manifestations, or like the healings where you’ve got the x-rays, or the tumors have disappeared.

 

There was a lady called Iza Northridge who lived in the North of England. This was during the Second World War. She became a medium because, first of all, she had a vision of her fiancé. She was walking in the woods one day; her fiancé was off at war, and she saw the scene of her fiancé being shot by a German sniper, and it turned out to be true. She created an orchestra to give comfort to people at home in England. During the performances, spirits would appear. They would stand in front of her and ask her to play certain music or to give messages to the audience. She went on to have physical materializations occurring as well, where spirits would actually appear in front of people.

 

JIM HAROLD: Wow. That to me has always been fascinating, this idea that people – because I’ve had things like synchronicities that I think have a communicative aspect to them. Maybe a loved one trying to communicate and those kinds of things. But it amazes me when people actually see full-bodied apparitions. That’s really got to be something.

 

STEPH YOUNG: I know. We haven’t had that in our development circle, although we’re not necessarily trying for that. But we were meditating one day – obviously you’ve got music on – and I’m hearing and feeling these footsteps coming towards me. I’m thinking, “Any second they’re going to come into contact with my body,” but they don’t, and I think, “I can’t hear footsteps coming from the music, but I must be imagining it.”

 

Well, after we finish the meditation, then we all give feedback about what happened. But before I got the chance to give my feedback, one of my tutors said, “Did anybody feel and hear those footsteps?” Somebody else said, “No, I couldn’t hear them, but my hair was being pulled.”

 

We were doing a table tipping evening where you just sit around, you’ve got your fingers really lightly on a table, and I was actually quite cheesed off during it because there were a couple of people – in the evenings, you’re allowed to have people that aren’t members of your circle. So a couple of people came who belonged to a spiritualist church. I spent the whole evening watching this lady because I was convinced that she was pushing the table. And I still think she was because also, we had a trumpet – they trumpets in séances. They’re like a big plastic cone-shaped object. You have them there because sometimes voices come through them, or they get moved. Well, the trumpet moved, shot across the table. It turned out she’d pushed it.

 

So you’ve still got people cheating. But at the same evening, that was when – you could see, it was visible. I could see everybody. I could see everybody’s hands. And that’s when my hair was suddenly being pulled, and I was being poked, prodded, and tickled. I was actually in hysterics because I couldn’t see the tickle coming, you know? I didn’t know where or what part of my body it was going to happen to next, so I was in hysterics laughing. I know that I didn’t imagine that. But in the same evening, there was also cheating. It’s very difficult to get the proof and to rule out when it’s not happening.

 

JIM HAROLD: Well, again, thank you so, so much for joining us to talk about this new book. I think it’s very, very cool, and so good to talk to you again after all of this time. One thing I want to make sure that we talk about before we leave is over the last few years, you’ve become a podcaster. Tell folks a little bit about that.

 

STEPH YOUNG: Well, my podcast is Unexplained: Tales of Mystery. I’ve been doing it for about four years, and usually I’m really just retelling cases from my books, whether it’s – not really the afterlife, because it’s new, but normally it’s been about the cases in the woods or really mysterious, strange disappearances and what could be causing it, whether it’s fairies, portals, whatever. That’s what I’ve been doing for ages. I’m probably going to have some guests on as well. Actually, probably you’re coming on, Jim, I think.

 

JIM HAROLD: [laughs] Yes, yes, that’s great.

 

STEPH YOUNG: Which will be a real pleasure.

 

JIM HAROLD: It’s always a pleasure to speak with you. I hope everybody checks out your podcast. Give them the name of the podcast again.

 

STEPH YOUNG: It’s called Unexplained: Tales of Mystery.

 

JIM HAROLD: Yes. You can find that wherever you find fine podcasts. And also, be sure to check out this new book, Proof of the Afterlife: The dead don’t die: True Tales of the Afterlife. I know that’s available on Amazon, correct?

 

STEPH YOUNG: Yes.

 

JIM HAROLD: Very good, very good. Our guest has been Steph Young, and we’ve talked about proof of the afterlife. Steph, thank you for joining us today on the program.

 

STEPH YOUNG: Thank you so much for having me

JIM HAROLD: Thank you for joining us. We appreciate it. Please follow wherever you listen to your podcasts, and put in a review if you would. We would appreciate it very much. And tell a friend today. We’ll talk to you next time. Have a great week, everybody, and of course, stay spooky. Bye-bye.

[outro music]

—

For more information on our podcast data policy CLICK HERE