'Evil spirits used to terrorise me. I know what Halloween is really all about'

As a child, the supernatural interested me. My mother was a medium and was very much into spiritualism, new age and seeking after spirits. I was attracted simply because of the media and a lot of children’s books and TV programmes to do with ghost stories. If Harry Potter had been around then, I would have loved that type of book too.

We would go to a spiritualist church and there would be séances. The mediums would go into trances and say they had dead relatives with them they’d managed to bring through. They were supposed to be our dead relatives and they would give messages to the audience.

I don’t think any mediums are charlatans or are using guesswork. It’s extremely accurate. Spirits do know a lot of information.

Every now and then I thought it may be dangerous and I’d get a bit frightened but the mediums would brush it off by saying, 'It’s a hazard of the job, sometimes mischievous spirits will come through, but most of the time good spirits will come through.'

Things seemed to go alright for years but eventually we started to hear rumours from the various spiritualist churches that mediums would run into difficulties and would no longer be able to control their spirits. The spirits would come through against their will, they would start to control them and put them into trance at any time.

What Hollywood would describe as ‘poltergeist experiences’ began to happen in the home. Furniture was moving and my mother and I were being terrorised. My mother was thrown about - we went shopping and I literally saw her being picked up and being thrown onto the bonnet of a car. One day she was cooking in the kitchen and the spirits took her over against her will, forced her into a trance and the whole kitchen went up into flames. It was becoming a horrendous nightmare for us.

We called out to Hindu and Buddhist gods to try and help us, but it actually got worse. We were at our wits end. Very tragically my mother went to the doctor and asked for sleeping pills because the spirits were keeping her up at night. The doctor didn’t believe my mother’s story, said she was schizophrenic and admitted her to a psychological ward.

I met a Christian lady at university and we became friends. I shared what had happened. She told me about Jesus and the Bible. I didn’t believe her at first because we were taught to believe Jesus was just a psychic and healer. We were told the Bible was fraudulent.

She told me a Christian prophet was coming to a church she knew. That was the hook the Holy Spirit used to draw me along. I was fascinated by prophecies and predictions so that was what attracted me along. During the meeting people were being healed and speaking in tongues. I loved the thought of speaking in tongues and wondered what it was all about. So I went home with a lot of questions.

When I got home that night, the spirits I knew were furious I had been to the Christian church. It was a nasty night. I prayed 'if Jesus is real will you please show me? I don’t know what to do.' I kept thinking about a Romani gypsy and couldn’t get her out of my head.

The next morning the doorbell rang and lo and behold it was the Romani gypsy! Rather than wanting to read my palms or my fortunes like she normally would do, she surprised me by saying ‘I’ve become born again, I’m not using psychic powers anymore and the Lord has sent me to tell you where you were last night was the right place.’

In the 1800s there was a very famous medium Madame Helena Blavatsky who was termed the mother of the new age movement. She was a self-confessed Luciferian which means a medium who believes Lucifer is God and all the physic powers come from Lucifer. She was a medium promoting spiritualism for the general public and it was her dream and desire it would be come mainstream, which is what we’re seeing now.

I know that many Christians will think it’s too dogmatic to be against Halloween but the Bible does warn about the occult all the way from the Old Testament to the New. I happen to know quite a few people who are ex-occultist. I know five ex-Satanists, I know ex-witches, ex-demon worshippers and ex-pagans. Most of them avoid Halloween and teach the dangers of Halloween because they know from personal experience what Halloween is really all about.

Laura Maxwell was speaking to Maria Rodrigues on Premier Christian Radio’s Woman to Woman. Click here to listen to the show.