I did not have a happy childhood. My Father was a strong willed racist and atheist, and although he was a highly intelligent individual, it was marred by his nastiness. I can remember once he brought home a pet rabbit, only to let it loose in the kitchen for the dogs to chase! I had two older brothers who would torment and bully me and to my shame, I took it out on my younger sister. When grown up, I did apologise to her for my behaviour and thankfully she forgave me. Although I was brought up in an atheist’s household, I can remember being asked by my father about my beliefs, I could not bring myself to say that I believe in a God, I just answered “I do believe there is something”.
People find this hard to believe, but I can remember when I was no more than three or four years old thinking “What if everything we say and do is recorded, we must be here for a reason?” At such a young age, I have no idea where that thought came from. Was it my first communication with a spirit guide? When first able to write, I can remember putting in my first diary “When I grow up, I want to be a ghost hunter”.
At the age of eleven I went to “The Big school”. My interest in girls overrode any interest in Education, but coming from a poor family hampered any early chances of romance. I only had one pair of trousers and one shirt and jumper. There was no change of clothes, even for the weekend. I must have read somewhere about people having spirit guides because I can remember thinking “If I have Spirit guides, I must have the worst in the world?” It may have been coincidence, but for next four weeks what could go wrong in my life went wrong! I say four weeks, because it took a month for it to dawn on me what I had said about “My spirit guides”.
I made an apology and my life came back to normal. From then on, I really did believe in Spirit guides. I must have told this story to my mother because she then told me how a few years before she had been to see a healer. At that time she was suffering from a bad elbow and the doctors and specialist could offer her no easement. There was a lady where my Mother worked who did ‘Healing’. My mother’s friends egged her on to seek help from this woman. The ‘Healer’ held my Mother’s elbow and told her “Your husband is un-well, I feel that it is his chest.” My Mother confirmed that indeed my Father was unwell and at the moment he was home in bed recovering from a heart attack. “I’ll say a prayer for him tonight at 10 o’clock” the healer told my Mother. Immediately after the healing my Mother noticed a vast improvement in her elbow.
When she came home from work, she did not dare risked being ridiculed by my Father by telling him that she had sought the help of a healer. Later that evening my Mother was down stairs, when my Father bellowed down to her “Rita”. Rushing upstairs, she asked what was wrong? “I can feel what is like a burning hot hand on my chest”, he breathed. Looking at the clock, my Mother saw that it was just a couple of minutes past 10 o’clock. It was the same time that the Healer had promised to say a prayer for my Father. After that evening my Father felt better and went on to make a good recovery.
In my mid-twenties, my much-loved Grandfather died. I dreamt about him that night. In the dream I was out-side my Gran’s home looking in, thinking “poor old Gran is in there by herself”. As I went in, there was my Grandfather standing by the fireplace. I was astonished, as even in this dream I knew that he was dead. I threw my arms around him and told him that I loved him. Now, this is something that we never did in our family, we were very standoffish. He told me “You don’t need to shout, I am no longer deaf.” I looked at him and he had all the weight back in his face, just before he died he went very drawn. “I’ve just come back to tell you I’m okay” he said. That was all that I remember about that dream, how strange was that!
A few months later, I had a second dream about my Grandfather. This time, I met him at a train station. I suppose as I look back, the train station was symbolic of him moving on in the spirit world. At the same time of this dream, my sister was around three months pregnant. In the dream I had the presence of mind to ask him what she was going to have? “A girl” he replied. I did risk being ridiculed by my family, but I told everyone about my dream. When the time came, my sister did have a little girl. Okay, I accept that it was a fifty fifty chance of being right, but it was still an interesting dream.
Around twelve months later I had a third dream about my Grandfather. I dreamt that instead of him having a full head of hair, he was bald with the odd ginger tuft. When I told my Mother about this dream she started to laugh. I was embarrassed and protested against her ridiculing me. “No, I’m not laughing at you,” she said. She went on to tell me that long before I was born, my grandfather started to go grey. My Mother volunteered to dye his hair. Unfortunately she left the hair dye in for too long and my Grandfather’s hair was dyed a bright ginger colour. They had no option but to shave his head. Afterwards, he was left bald with Ginger tufts. Like I said, this all happened before I was born.
One evening my first wife and I watched a television program about the medium Doris Stokes. My wife was only a child when her Mother died and she found the program just as interesting as I did. When I mentioned the program to my parents, my Mother informed me that there was a Spiritualist church in my local town of Redruth. A few weeks later I read in the local paper an advert for this church and it told how it was open on Saturday afternoons at Two-thirty. It would be open to the public and there would be demonstrations of Medium-ship and Healing.
That following Saturday was my birthday, it was also the last Saturday before the children went back to school after the summer holidays. Our oldest daughter needed a pair of shoes. We searched our nearest town Camborne, with no luck, so we decided to go to Redruth. Walking out of one of Redruth’s shoe-shops I looked up at the town clock, it was two-thirty. “That Spiritualist church will open now,” I said to my wife. “You go and I’ll wait in the car with the children” she told me “It‘s your birthday”. Handing her the car keys, I ran down the street to the church, I could not wait! When I got there, I found that it was not a church building, but “The odd fellows hall”. “Was this an omen?” I thought as I walked in through the door.
Standing in the foyer was a sign pointing out that there was clairvoyance in one room and healing in another. I walked into the healing room and quietly sat down. I was asked to sit on a healing Stoll. This was a chair that had its back cut off. A lady put her hands on my shoulders and I felt a great warmth flow into my shoulders. This lady then proceeded to “Give me a message’. “I have an elderly gentleman here,” she said. “He is telling me that he is your grandfather and that you have seen him since he died!” “No” I replied, puzzled! “I have had some very strange dreams about him” I said. She told me that they (The spirits of the dead) communicate this way through dreams, when someone has yet to develop their psychic abilities. “He is telling me” she said, “that you could be a healer if you sat in a development circle”. This lady had my attention “What is your name?” I asked her. “Betty, Betty Timblick’ she replied. This was the same lady that gave healing to my Mother’s elbow all those years ago when I was a small child.
Robbie has now been a spiritual healer for over 20 years and still provides weekly sessions for members of his local community. He has also produced five healing meditations so that anybody can benefit from a session in the comfort of their own home whenever they want.