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April 14, 2024 - The Unexplained - Howard Hughes
58:50
Edition 806 - Louise Hamlin
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Across the UK, across continental North America and around the world on the internet, by webcast and by podcast, my name is Howard Hughes and this is The Unexplained.
Well, I'm hoping that everything is good with you.
The weather in London at the moment, I have to tell you, is getting brighter by the moment.
And it is quite warm here too, around about 20 degrees or thereabouts today.
So I'm going to try and forget everything for a little while later and go for a little cycle in the park.
And just try and forget everything.
Thank you very much for all of your good wishes and suggestions.
And a name check for Vince.
Now, Vince is a guy who heard about my tinnitus issue.
He works in this field and just happens to have been listening to this show for years and also watching the TV show when that was on, listening to the radio show.
And he reached out to me and he's now giving me some support in this thing, which came to me at exactly the right time.
Came to me when I just thought, I don't know what I'm going to do.
So Vince, I know that you'll be listening to this.
Thank you very much, and we will be in contact again.
Thank you very much to Webmaster Adam.
Remember the website is theunexplained.tv.
That is where all the podcasts live.
806 of them thereabouts at the moment.
Weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks of podcasts.
If you were to start playing them today, they would play for seven or eight weeks now, which is just incredible.
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And also details of the cruise happening later this year with Morella, The Unexplained Live 2024.
It will be back end of October, beginning of November.
Southern European destinations.
Lot of sunshine, lot of fun.
That's all I can tell you for now.
And with any luck, I'll be able to tell you some details quite soon about that.
The guest on this edition is a woman who wrote a book about an extraordinary period in her life, a period of upheaval and a period of sadness.
The book is called WhatsApps from Heaven.
And the title does precisely what it says on the jacket, because she says that she received precisely that.
WhatsApps from, if you believe in it, the other side.
To cut a long story short, Louise Hamlin in Dorset is a lawyer, married to a lawyer, both successful people, both lived their dream in Dorset together after getting married, and were very happy.
And then sadly, he took ill and died.
She was, of course, distraught.
And the story that you're about to hear is the story of somebody from a very rational professional background.
Somebody intelligent and articulate, having experiences that genuinely cannot be explained, communications that are beyond extraordinary.
I won't spoil the story you're about to hear by telling you any further details than that, but Louise Hamlin's story is well worth hearing.
The book is WhatsApps from Heaven, and you're about to hear that story.
I don't think I've anything else to say, really.
Thank you very much for being there every step of the way with me and for supporting me as you do.
If you'd like to make a donation to the show, then remember you can go to the website theunexplained.tv and there's a link there for that.
As there is a link for sending me emails from there at theunexplained.tv.
And remember, please check in on that Facebook page.
Okay, let's cross to beautiful Dorset today on this April spring day with the sunshine increasing as I look out of the window there and connect with Louise Hamlin.
We're going to talk about WhatsApps from Heaven.
Louise, thank you very much for coming on my show.
How are you?
Oh, I'm well.
And thank you, Howard, for having me.
I'm delighted to be here.
Well, I read about you and then I tried to seek out clips of you telling your story.
And it was one of those things that I just felt compelled to put you on my show and talk about this because I think this is a very different twist on a tale that we've perhaps heard before.
And it's certainly a modern twist on a tale that we've heard before.
Why did you write your book talking about your experiences?
Why did you want people to know?
Well, I need to start by saying that I was very happily married to my husband and he was a very vigorous man.
And then he suddenly became ill and within three months he was dead from bile duct cancer.
And I was completely shocked and devastated.
And we had talked about his dying when we knew that he was.
And neither of us really believed in life after death.
We were agnostic.
We didn't completely shut the door on the idea, but we thought it was very unlikely.
He died.
We had had a very, very loving marriage.
And he was a very alpha male sort of man.
If he wanted to do something, he would do it.
He was very determined.
He was a lawyer, as was I. And suddenly, these signs started appearing.
And to start with, I was incredibly skeptical and thought things were coincidences.
And eventually, the signs were just so extraordinary and persuasive that I realized that he was actually sending me signs saying that he was still alive in spirit and that he loved me.
And I just was completely amazed and shell-shocked.
And it completely changed my worldview.
I now know that our spirits survive death.
And I thought, well, I want to tell the world this.
I think there are a couple of questions just before we go further with this to ask around that.
Of course, the whole notion of losing somebody that we're close to, that we love, that we care about, is a difficult one.
And we all have to tackle it.
Even if we think we don't, however young we may be, we may be getting on with our Lives, and we may not think that we'll lose our parents, or we may not lose through accidents or illness or whatever, people who are near to us.
So, we don't really contemplate it.
Sometimes, those who are ill around us have time to talk with us about some of the things that we will be talking about here.
The idea that we may survive, will you try and contact me from beyond here?
Do you believe that you're going to be going on to somewhere else?
Do you feel comfortable with this process of transitioning, which we will all have to do?
So, I guess I'm wondering a number of things here.
You both came from a very rational perspective, both lawyers, both eminently qualified in what you do.
People who look at facts, people who look at what you can solidly prove.
This is counterintuitive, goes completely against that.
So the two things I would be asking here is, did you have time, did you have the inclination to talk about any of these matters, were they of any interest to you both in those months before his sad passing?
And also, the whole idea that subsequent to his sad passing, you had to change your way of thinking perhaps and accommodate something not as rational as the life you led before.
I know these are big subjects, but I think we need to deal with those things because they seem to go in tandem.
Yes, of course.
And yes, we spoke about his dying and death.
He said he wasn't scared of death because he said it's either nothing at all and that's then nothing to be scared of, or he said, if there is something, well, I think I've led a good enough life for it to be okay, which was true.
He was a man of huge integrity, and he certainly didn't deserve any sort of punishment at all, as some religions seem to suggest people deserve.
He said, I'm scared of dying.
He was scared of the pain, the agony of dying.
We talked about whether there was life after death.
Neither of us would completely discount it, because there is quite a lot of evidence out there, and it's never been proved that that's all rubbish and that there isn't life after death.
Being lawyers, we look at evidence.
But we thought it was unlikely.
We thought it was far more likely that death was nothing at all.
And I never asked him for signs because we thought it was unlikely, it sort of didn't seem relevant to ask for signs.
So there was no discussion of, I will try to make, you know, some people say, if I'm somewhere else, I will try and make contact with you.
And of course, we find, don't we, anecdotally, that a lot of the people who don't make contact are the ones that you would expect to.
They're the ones who said, I will reach back if I can, or they're the ones who worked in this field.
They're the mediums or researchers or people like that who you would fully expect.
And I know some allegedly have, but quite often they don't.
It's a very, very gray area, but it's, I agree with you.
It's not an area that you could ever 100% say, no, this does not happen, or yes, this does.
That's why we're talking about it.
So you're in this situation and also the issue of how it challenged your rationality, because I am presuming, but you never presume and you never assume, but I presume that you were not into these things before you faced that situation.
No, I wasn't.
I have a friend who is psychic and I have great respect for her and she's a healer and I used to see her for healing.
Patrick, my husband, was always frightfully skeptical about the healing that she produced until he was dying and she gave him some healing and he found that suddenly he felt her energies and was very surprised at things that she said and identified and he began to be a little bit more open-minded about that.
But no, I knew that we loved each other very much and that was all I knew.
So when the signs first started, and to begin with, they weren't signs directly to me.
They were signs to friends and friends would contact me and say, oh, this happened and that happened.
I'm sure it was Patrick.
And I just thought, oh, it's all coincidence.
It's all coincidence.
No, I don't really believe that that was Patrick.
I also began to feel slightly missed that he seemed to be sending signs to friends and not to me.
That's an interesting.
I've heard similar descriptions where the principals involved are not contacted.
Can I wind you back very slightly?
Because I want to really unpick this process of how these communications began.
And again, a couple of things.
You say that he passed and that he died, and that's the headline.
But the small print is obviously the grief, the coming to terms with the grief.
Now, you say that you had a psychic medium friend who helped him through that period.
He didn't expect that, but he became a little more of a believer than perhaps he was, did Patrick, which is interesting.
Of course it is, at that stage.
But when you faced parting and you were so close and you sound by your words and your tone to have been incredibly compatible, the two of you, not only lawyers, but you sound like you were two very connected human beings, which is excellent.
How were you in the days, hours, weeks after his passing?
What state were you in?
Oh, I was in the most terrible state imaginable.
I was absolutely devastated with grief and I became like a zombie.
I couldn't really do anything.
My friends and my family were wonderful and they came around and brought me meals and things because I just didn't have the energy to do anything at all.
And it took me a long time to recover.
And one of the reasons why I wrote the book was because I wanted to explain to people how devastating my grief was, how long it lasted, and what I found helpful and what I didn't find helpful.
And also that after, say, two years after he died, I began to realize that actually I had happiness in my life, which I had not expected.
In the depths of my grief, I never thought that I would be happy again.
So that was another reason to write the book.
But I was just a zombie, a zombie for weeks and months.
I suppose it was a little bit like post-traumatic stress syndrome.
Of course.
You know, I was just empty, totally empty.
Why this?
Why me?
You know, they're the questions that we all ask.
Did you turn to your psychic friend?
Not particularly, but she did turn to me because she was the person who had the very first sign.
And just five days after Patrick had died, she sent me a WhatsApp and she sent me a photograph of a flame from her neighbor's garden.
And she said, oh, Louise, you know, I don't know whether I ought to tell you this or not, but I'm going to.
And I was thinking about Patrick this morning and I was meditating on him.
And I asked him for a sign to let me know that he was okay.
And I asked for a flame.
I then went about my day.
I completely forgot about it.
Then this evening, when I went to draw my curtains, I looked out of my window and there was this strange, tall, single flame in the neighbour's garden.
I ran and I took a photograph of it.
Here's the photo.
And then it disappeared.
And I don't believe in coincidences.
I think it was Patrick.
And I got that.
And of course, I thought to myself, yeah, yeah, I believe in coincidences.
But what I did do was I went to consult mediums because I was so worried about Patrick, you know, in case there was life after death.
And I wanted to know he was okay.
And you say, I'm sorry to jump in.
You said you went to mediums in the plural.
Yes.
Well, the first medium I went to, and I went sort of quite soon after Patrick had died.
And I've looked up, you know, on the internet and found there was a medium nearby.
And I went to see her.
And it was a disaster.
She didn't seem to connect to Patrick at all.
And I kept on saying, no, that's not right.
No, no.
And then she became rather ratty with me because I kept on saying no.
And she became rather cross.
And then she discovered that I was a lawyer and said, oh, well, no wonder.
No wonder I can't get through to you.
You're a lawyer.
You're very closed.
So that was not a happy meeting at all.
And I'm saying this because I want people to know that if they do have an unsuccessful or unhappy meeting with a medium, it might be worth trying somebody else.
Because I was just so desperate that a few weeks later, I did try somebody else.
And that was extraordinary, quite extraordinary.
And I really felt that she was in touch with Patrick.
So, I mean, I was in this state of total cognitive dissonance.
On the one hand, I went to see a medium and believed the extraordinary things she said about my husband.
On the other hand, I didn't really believe in life after death.
You know, we humans, we're able to accommodate.
We're all conflicted in many ways.
That's part of the human condition of what makes us so wonderful, I think.
So you found somebody you believed was convincing.
How did she convince you?
Well, very easily.
So I went onto the internet and I found this woman who lived about one and a half hours away.
And I phoned her up and I said, my name's Louise and my husband died in February.
I'd like to come to see you to see if we can make contact.
And that was all I said.
She didn't know my surname.
She didn't know where I lived or anything.
And she said, okay.
She said, February might be a bit early.
She said, oh, he died in the middle of February, didn't he?
And I said, yes.
And she said, oh, oh, he died on the 16th of February.
And I said, no.
I said, he lost consciousness on the 16th, but he actually died on the 18th.
And she said, with huge assurance, no, no, he's telling me he died on the 16th, and that's what I'm writing down.
And I thought, well, that's extraordinary.
I mean, A, that she was so close to his actual death, but B, he could well have thought that he did die on the 16th, because that's when he did lose consciousness.
And I mean, there was a terrible 48 Hours and he was lying in bed, struggling for breath.
And I was lying beside him, saying, You know, darling, it's okay.
You can let go.
Just let yourself slip away.
And they were a terrible 48 hours.
So I can quite see that he thought he had died on the 16th.
But in my mind, he died on the 18th.
And so it wasn't even telepathy that she picked up on.
If she'd somehow read my mind, that's extraordinary anyway, she would have said the 18th.
18th.
But if she was perceiving what he was perceiving, she might have said the 16th.
But even to get it within two days is pretty good.
Well, I think that Patrick quite thought he had died on the 16th.
So I thought that was extraordinary.
And I went to see her the following week and she described him absolutely perfectly, really.
And she described him and what he would look like, what he was wearing and his character.
And there were things like, she said, why is he giving me a cornflower?
And she was very specific.
She said a cornflower, not flowers, but a cornflower.
And ours had been a second marriage and we'd been married, what, eight years before he died.
And our sort of wedding flower had been a cornflower.
And he had worn a cornflower in his buttonhole.
And we had had lots of cornflowers.
So I knew exactly why he had given me a cornflower.
And when did you get married?
Because I'm asking this for a reason.
The cornflower thing I associate with the 1970s.
Now, you didn't get married, did you?
No, we got married in 2012.
Exactly.
So it's not something that you'd automatically jump on.
I think that's very interesting and potentially very evidential.
You know, why cornflowers?
Sorry.
No, I thought that as well.
And the reason that we had cornflowers was because my grandfather had been a bit of a dandy and he'd grown cornflowers.
He was born in the 1890s, so we're going back a long way.
But he always used to wear a cornflower in his buttonhole during the season.
And so it had some sort of family resonance.
And that was why I suggested that we should have cornflowers when we got married.
But it was quite extraordinary when you think of all the flowers that there are in the world that she actually described the correct flower.
Did she pass on any information from him or was she just telling you things about him?
She was basically telling me things about him.
I mean, she said that he looked very happy.
He was smiling, which cheered me up.
He said, oh, he was pointing at his feet and laughing.
And she said, why is he pointing at his feet and laughing?
And he's wearing slippers.
And this made sense to me as well, because when the undertaker wanted clothes for the body and the coffin, I sent his sort of country gear, his outside gear, because I thought that was when he was happiest, when he was, you know, I don't know, mending fences and doing stuff like that.
But I looked at his boots and I thought they would be very uncomfortable for all eternity.
So I sent his outside gear, but his slippers, which was an odd combination.
And he would have found it funny.
And so, again, it made sense to me that he was looking at his slippers and pointing to them and laughing.
There was a lot like that.
And again, she didn't know that I was a lawyer or that he was a lawyer.
But she said, she could see him surrounded by lots of books and there were law books.
She got him to a T. And describe the effect then.
Imagine yourself, think yourself back to that face-to-face consultation that you had.
You're walking out of there.
What do you believe that it had done for you?
Oh, I found it immensely consoling because she said that he seemed very happy.
He was smiling.
You know, he was okay.
So hugely consoling.
But on the other hand, not all of me believed that it could be true.
I wasn't totally convinced.
But were you clear in your own mind why you were doing this?
I know that you wanted to know that he was happy, that he was settled wherever he was.
And I can get that.
So many people need that kind of reassurance.
But was that all you wanted from it?
No, I think I wanted my relationship with him to continue.
And at the time, I didn't know that it could.
I know now, and now I feel very loved by him still and still love him.
But at the time, I thought that I was bereft of a relationship, and I just couldn't bear not to be in touch with him.
So you came away from that.
What did you tell your friends, your family, people close to you?
What were you telling them?
Were you sharing this with them?
Well, I was, yes.
And obviously there were some people who absolutely embraced it wholeheartedly and other people who sort of suggested things like, oh, she must have done a lot of research on you and so must have discovered lots of things about you, which I thought was a nonsense as she never knew my surname.
And, you know, how would she have known about cornflowers and no, she didn't.
She absolutely didn't.
And thereafter, I saw, oh, I suppose in total, I saw about five mediums over two years.
That's awesome.
And yeah, dead right, it's a lot.
But, you know, I was desperate to just have contact with Patrick.
And of those five, I think that two were sort of non-starters.
And I just was very unconvinced by them.
And I think that three were extraordinary, quite inexplicably extraordinary.
Were you worried about yourself?
Because I went through a period when I was much younger.
I wasn't looking for information about those who'd passed.
I was looking, I think, for other validations.
But I went through a period in my 20s of psychic shopping, medium shopping, going to various people, comparing and contrasting, seeing who said what, seeing who got closest to whatever it was that I wanted.
And I always advise people against medium or psychic shopping because sometimes it's a lonely, expensive, and sometimes hurtful road.
Were you concerned that you might have been getting into that?
I mean, it sounds like it brought you benefits, but were you concerned for yourself?
Were others concerned for you?
No, I don't think so.
I mean, I was lucky enough that I was able to afford it.
And I can quite see that if you can't afford it, then that's very tricky.
But no, no, that didn't worry me at all.
I mean, I was very unhappy.
I was very unhappy.
I felt as though I'd lost half of myself.
I felt as though I had no boundaries at all.
I was just like a lake of an amorphous blob inside.
And this was a way that I could find some sort of consolation.
Some solace.
Did you seek grief counselling?
Yes.
Oh, yes.
I mean, I thought, right, well, you know, I've got to work with this bereavement.
And for me, it did not work to try and just sort of carry on with life.
It absolutely didn't.
So I had bereavement counselling.
And again, I tried about four or five different bereavement counsellors until I found one whom I liked and who was helpful.
I should say that I had done a counselling course in the past.
I'd done one at Cambridge University.
And I didn't know how a lot of counsellors are trained these days.
And so when I went to bereavement counselors and they just mirrored back to me what I was saying, I knew exactly what they were doing.
And I thought, no, this isn't what I want.
This is not helpful.
And so I carried on looking and I found somebody who was brilliant.
And she didn't just mirror back to me what I was saying.
We had a dialogue.
We had a conversation.
And I saw her for about a year.
And I found her very, very helpful because I was able to repeat to her week after week how miserable I was, all the feelings of loss, etc.
And however good your friends are or your family, you can't keep on burdening them with your misery week after week after week.
Whereas with a counsellor, you can.
And I think that just talking about it over and over again gradually helps you make sense of it and begin to sort of incorporate it into who you are.
I remember being 23 and going to Nottingham University.
Trepidaciously, I hadn't done a lot of interviews then, certainly not longer ones.
And I was interested in these topics even in that era.
And I went to meet Professor Alan Gould, who is now getting up in years, an amazingly intelligent man and a seeker after truth in this field, a very erudite man with a wonderful speaking voice.
I remember sitting in his office.
But I remember us discussing that which would be evidential in terms of what mediums would deliver.
And in his wonderful, lugubrious voice, he told me a story about a piece of information that could only have been known by the deceased and somebody else beyond the sitter that had to be confirmed separately beyond the sitter.
And that's interesting.
But even pieces of information that are only shared between you and the medium and the departed, even that, that's interesting.
I wonder if there are any pieces of information that you got in that year of sittings or sessions.
Any things that really spoke to you, things that only the two of you shared, only the two of you could have known.
I mean, the slippers, definitely.
The cornflowers, certainly.
were there any things that absolutely left you open-jawed?
Um, hmm.
No, I haven't actually thought about that.
I think there probably were.
And at the moment, they're not leaping to my mind.
But cumulatively then, the drip, drip, drip of information, the reassurance that you felt, that was the key part of this year's engagement.
Totally, totally.
And I'll tell you one little funny story about another medium whom I saw who, again, was brilliant and she absolutely Described Patrick and his personality.
And he was an unusual man.
And she described all his funny foibles as well.
But then she said, Oh, somebody else has come in.
A woman.
Oh, it's she's quite short.
She's dark.
She's rather smartly dressed.
Oh, she's your mother-in-law.
And I absolutely denied this because I'd known my mother-in-law very well.
And she'd been quite tall and blonde and wasn't at all like the personality that this medium described.
This medium described a very feisty and quite difficult woman, which wasn't at all like my mother-in-law.
And so the medium kept on persisting.
And I kept on saying, no, no, no, absolutely not.
No, I don't know anyone like that.
And eventually the medium says, okay, we'll park it.
And I suddenly had a flash of inspiration.
And I said, oh, but actually, that sounds just like Patrick's mother.
And of course, I had had two mother-in-laws, but because I'd never known Patrick's mother, it hadn't occurred to me to think of her.
And I was staggered that somebody whom I had never met could come in, but the description of this woman fitted to a T everything that Patrick had said about his mother.
And she then was talking about a family wedding, which was going to happen.
And suddenly it all made sense.
And I was very impressed that despite my denying that she was my mother-in-law, the medium said, yes, she is, she is, she's telling me she is.
And I thought that showed great confidence on the part of the medium.
Because let's face it, most people would know who their mother-in-law or mother-in-laws were.
I was being particularly clottish that I just didn't think of Patrick's mother.
So did you have to ring her up afterwards, phone her up afterwards, and say, or did the realization dawn in the session?
The realisation dawned in the session.
Well, that's...
You know, I can remember being told the names of various people from my family.
We were not very well genealogically, if that is the word, researched my family.
I've been doing more of that recently, but I got a couple of names that didn't compute, and it's only later when I did the genealogy that I realized, yes, those names were correct, and they did appear to have some bearing on it.
So it transcends mind over matter, I think, just as the experiences that you have, you will believe that they transcend mind over matter.
You were, yes, you were there to be persuaded, but you were not there to be easily persuaded.
So, Louise, I think we need to be talking about the signs and the symbols and ultimately the WhatsApp messages.
And I think I've done enough talking and interrupting for now.
So I'm going to let you talk about this, about the fact that people around you, people close to you, started to get signs.
And there were these WhatsApp messages, which is very much of the modern era, that were part of this.
Now, you'd already had, or you were in the process of having these consultations with five mediums, three of them good, you say, two of them very good, you say.
There was the flame symbol that you talked about.
So talk to me about all of this symbology and about the discovery of messages on WhatsApp, which is utterly unique and is one of the main reasons why we're talking.
I will say no more for now.
Okay.
Well, after Patrick died, my friend who is psychic, Jenny, she sent me this WhatsApp with the photograph of the flame that she said she thought came from Patrick.
And in fact, a few days later, she came to his funeral.
And when she was driving home from his funeral, she asked for another sign.
And she got the radio on as she drove.
And she asked to hear, I Need You to Need Me by Cheap Trick, which apparently had been a popular song in the 1980s.
I'd never heard of it.
And she'd never heard it on the radio.
And anyway, she got home and she hadn't heard this.
But the next morning, she went to the railway station to collect her parents who were coming to stay.
And as she was standing on the platform, that song was played on the Tanoy.
And again, she sort of let me know and she was sure it was Patrick and she felt he was sort of laughing at her.
And again, you know, I thought, yeah, it's a coincidence, it's a coincidence.
And another friend told me that she'd been thinking of Patrick and suddenly three fat white feathers had floated down in front of her and she couldn't see any source for them at all.
Another friend told me that she'd been thinking of Patrick and lights had turned on and there was absolutely no explanation as to how these lights had been turned on and she again was sure it was Patrick.
And I was hearing all of this thinking, okay, well, maybe, maybe, who knows?
I doubt it, but it'd be nice if something happened to me.
In retrospect, I think that probably I was just so deeply immersed in my grief that I wasn't open to seeing anything or receiving anything.
Who knows?
Anyway, eventually, Somebody suggested that I should ask for a sign.
And I asked for a feather on a train because I was getting a couple of trains the next day.
And I sort of knew from my reading and from people talking that feathers are quite a common sign from people who have passed.
Anyway, the next day I got on the train and it was quite crowded, but I could see a couple of vacant seats at the far end of the carriage.
So I sort of rushed and sat down there.
And then I glanced at the seat next to me and there was a feather.
And it was very hard to see where it could possibly have come from.
So I sort of took it as a sign, but didn't.
You know, I was still very sceptical.
And so it carried on.
Then one day I left the house and the house was in silence and it was locked.
And I'd left my phone in the kitchen.
When I got back about half an hour or so later, I found that my phone had opened itself onto the WhatsApp app, had opened itself to the communications with Maria, and there were a whole lot of words in the message box ready to send to Maria.
Now, I ought to explain that I had been in touch with Maria and had seen her because she was the third medium whom I saw over that two years who was really, really good.
And she's a housewife.
She has had extraordinary powers since childhood, but denied them and denied them for years.
And eventually, comparatively recently, she decided that she would actually do readings for people, but she doesn't do it for money.
She just does it as a service, really.
And she's very low-key about it.
She doesn't advertise or anything like that.
So it's all been done by word of mouth.
Anyway, I saw all this gobbledygook, really, on my phone.
It went on and on and on.
Some of the words were proper words, others weren't, and it didn't really make any sense to me at all.
I couldn't understand how it had possibly got onto my phone.
There had been complete silence in the house.
Nobody would have been able to get into the house.
It seemed really bizarre.
And I was about to just delete it all.
And then I thought, I don't know.
I'll just send it to Maria and tell her what's happened and ask her what she thinks.
So I did that.
And Maria replied saying, I don't know, Louise, no idea.
Anyway, the next day, I had a WhatsApp from Maria.
And Maria said, I just went to my phone and I found this ready to send to you.
And I have no idea how it got there.
I didn't type it.
And it was a shorter paragraph.
It was hard to make sense of all of it, but it made more sense than what I had received.
And three times it repeated, darling, it's me.
And I thought, golly, golly.
And it also said, Valentine's Day, 2019, which, you know, had been our last Valentine's Day.
And it said meant to be.
So I was and memories.
So I thought, golly.
That's astonishing.
Yeah.
And I didn't really know what to think.
I thought that Maria is a very sensible, trustworthy woman, and I couldn't believe that she just sort of made it all up.
But on the other hand, the alternative explanation that Patrick had somehow learnt to manipulate WhatsApp seemed even more unlikely.
So I think that I had an open mind.
Over the next months, there were more of these WhatsApps that came and they were very persuasive and they sort of mentioned things that made sense to me but wouldn't have made any sense to Maria.
And I was increasingly thinking, I think that Patrick is sending this stuff and he is somehow, I don't know, managing to use the electronic energies or whatever.
But there was obviously still a little bit of doubt in my mind.
Then on the 6th of August, which happened to be Patrick's daughter's birthday, I was staying in London with my son and I took the dog for a walk on Tooting Common and the phone was in my jacket pocket.
When I got back, I pulled the phone out of my pocket and I had this notification on it that I had created two WhatsApp groups, one called Hamlin's, which was consisting of Patrick, Patrick's daughter and me, and the other Hamlin family, consisting of Patrick and me.
And I stared at the phone, and apparently I'd created these two groups at six minutes past 11 that morning.
And I knew that at six minutes past 11, I'd been walking on the common with the phone in my pocket.
And I knew that it couldn't have been an accidental jiggling that had caused this.
At the time, I didn't even know how to create a WhatsApp group.
And I might add that Patrick wouldn't have known either when he was alive.
But I looked at it and there was no explanation other than that Patrick had done it somehow on my phone.
And I felt that he'd included his daughter as a birthday present to let her know that his spirit was still around.
And it was that that finally convinced me that, yes, he had somehow learned to manipulate WhatsApp and he was getting better at it.
And that he wanted me to know that he was still around.
Did the messages continue?
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And they continued for about two years.
And his very last message was, darling, I can hear you.
Please hear me.
And they came spasmodically.
And I loved it.
I absolutely loved it.
And I obviously did a lot of research.
I read a lot of books.
And I discovered that there's quite a lot of evidence out there for email and telephone communication.
I didn't find anybody else who'd had WhatsApps.
But, you know, maybe by now people are getting them.
Well, I would be keen to hear from them if they have.
Were the messages, and apologies for just interrupting the story for half a second, but were the messages coming directly to you?
Were they coming to you and Maria, you and the family?
Who were they coming to?
They were mostly coming via Maria.
And Maria did seem to be some sort of portal for Patrick.
I don't know why, but she did.
However, there were a few that came directly to my phone.
Well, they were usually sort of very, very lovely messages.
I've got them all detailed in my book, WhatsApps from Heaven.
But his darling, C trying one, Hamelin, family, that was when he was sort of creating the group.
They were affectionate when I went to Cyprus.
He was saying, he said, darling, sort of Cyprus, the boat, me.
So, yeah, they were just little messages of love and reassurance and just mentioning things that made sense and that I was doing.
So I was thrilled and I was totally convinced.
And then a few months later, something else happened, which again sort of staggered my friends.
I was playing Bridge here in my house with three friends and neighbours.
And I don't know whether you play Bridge or not, but you have two packs of cards when you play Bridge and you use each pack alternatively.
So we used the red cards for the first hand.
So we knew that all the cards were there.
We had a successful hand.
Then we used the blue cards.
And then my friend dealt the red cards again.
And she was a card short.
So, you know, we counted our cards because we assumed she'd misdealt.
But no, there was still a card missing.
So we looked on the floor to see if it had somehow fallen off the card table and it hadn't.
So we stood up and sort of dusted our laps and looked on our chairs.
We could not find this card.
And we began to search quite frantically because we knew it had been there seven or eight minutes ago.
Couldn't find it.
So then another of my friends said, oh, I bet it's Patrick.
Let's see what card it is.
I bet it's a heart.
And so we looked and it was the nine of hearts.
And they said to me, does that mean anything to you?
And I said, no.
If it had been the Queen of Hearts or indeed the Ace of Hearts, then yeah, I'd have taken that.
But the Nine of Hearts seems quite random.
Anyway, we had to go and get another pack of cards to carry on playing.
And a few days later, I was telling another friend about this.
And this friend knows about Tarot, which I don't know about and which Patrick wouldn't have known about.
And she said, oh, the Nine of Hearts is like the Nine of Cups.
That's a lovely card.
And it means sort of fallen eternal and undying love.
And so I thought, oh, She said, that's the nicest card he could have sent you.
So I thought, wow, that's extraordinary.
And what's really bizarre is two years later, the card suddenly turned up.
I mean, it was just amazing.
Where was it?
Well, it was under an Ottoman in the room where we'd been playing cards.
And we had moved that Ottoman many times in the intervening two years, you know, and who would under it and everything.
I mean, the room had been cleaned very thoroughly just a day or two after the bridge game because we wanted to find the card and we hadn't been able to.
And so it was quite extraordinary how it suddenly turned up.
And in fact, it was my cleaner who found it.
And she said, you know, I moved this autumn only last week and it wasn't there.
It had suddenly turned up.
It is inexplicable, I think.
Yeah, well, I found it totally inexplicable.
And, you know, there were three witnesses to the fact that the card did totally and utterly disappear.
And funnily enough, this isn't so persuasive if you're a sceptic, but I took it.
Just quite recently, somebody had asked me if I was still getting signs.
And I said, well, no, no, I'm not.
And I thought, oh, it would be nice to have another sign.
And I'd been playing bridge again and the cards were still on the table.
And so I just spread out one of the packs of cards and took a card at random.
And before I took it, I said, Patrick, can you send me a sign?
And I took the card at random and it was Queen of Hearts.
And I took that.
As I say, that's not going to persuade a sceptic, but it persuaded me.
It is interesting.
It persuaded me.
And I said, thank you, darling.
And I find it quite persuasive, too.
You know, I interviewed somebody once who had her own system of cards, beautifully illustrated.
And I kept the cards.
And every so often I draw a card.
And whatever I draw is appropriate always to the situation that I'm in.
So, you know, you're partly speaking and preaching to the converted Louise here.
What about the WhatsApp messages?
Did they continue?
Did they stop abruptly?
Did you do any further research on them?
Where have you left it?
I think the last one I had came after the book was published, so it's not in the book.
And that's the one that said, darling, I can hear you.
Please hear me.
They slowed down and they stopped, I suppose, a little over two years after Patrick had died.
And my explanation for this is that he had totally convinced me that his spirit is still around and he didn't need to reassure me anymore because I felt totally reassured that he was with me.
And so I think and hope that he's using his energies now in other more productive ways.
That makes sense to me.
Makes a lot of sense to me.
It's a lovely story, Louise, and I'm so pleased that you told it.
Your biography says that you're now living happily where you were in Dorset with your Spaniel.
Are you and your Spaniel happy?
Yes, I am happy now, Howard.
My Spaniel has sadly died.
In fact, my Spaniel was actually really Patrick's dog.
And so I like to think that Phoebe is now with Patrick.
I never ever thought that I would be happy again after Patrick died.
I never thought that I would enjoy life again.
And it takes time.
It takes quite a lot of time.
And I think you do have to really, really experience the devastation of grief before you can begin to just slowly, slowly climb out of the valley of grief.
But do you know what?
I love my life now.
I'm very happy.
I still think of Patrick every day.
I still love him and I feel loved by him.
So I think that that relationship carries on.
And yes, I think that it is possible to be happy again after a bereavement, but you can't rush it.
And you have to open yourself to all the possibilities of communication, which you did, even though you came from that rational background.
You were keen to explore.
You were keen to find out more.
And that's the very interesting thing about you, apart from the fact that it's the first known case that I'm aware of of WhatsApps being used.
But it's the modern method of communication and the modern idiom.
So I'm guessing that we'll hear more of these.
And if any of my listeners have stories like this, I would love to hear them.
Thank you for sharing it with me, Louise.
And where would we get the book if we were trying to find it?
I think Amazon or any other internet bookseller.
And it's called WhatsApps from Heaven by Louise Hamlin.
And it's meant to be a book that is comforting for people who are bereaved and also interesting and maybe mind-opening for people who do wonder whether there is life after death.
It's a wonderful story.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Howard.
It's been a great pleasure to talk to you.
Well, I found that a very moving and very insightful conversation with Louise Hamlin.
Your thoughts welcome.
More great guests in the pipeline here at the Home of the Unexplained, so until we meet again.
My name is Howard Hughes.
This has been the Unexplained Online.
Please, whatever you do, please stay safe.
Please stay calm, and please stay in touch.
Thank you very much.
Take care.
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