Encounters
with angels
Interview with Emma Heathcote by Gill Fry
Birmingham,
UK
Emma Heathcote, a 22-year-old graduate of theology from Birmingham
University, UK, is researching angel encounters and hopes to show that
people of all religions, and those of none, are having the same experiences.
After placing advertisements in newspapers and religious magazines requesting
accounts of 'angel experiences', she has collected a substantial number
of testimonies. Gill Fry interviewed her for Share International.
Share International: Have you had replies from people of all faiths?
Emma Heathcote: I now have around 450 letters, and while the majority
are from Christians, I have also heard from Jews, Muslims, Hindus and
many atheists.
SI: Is it more difficult to hear about angel experiences from non-Christians?
EH: Yes; I hadn't realized how difficult it would be to hear the
testimonies of people from other faiths. The Jewish perception of angels
is connected
with mysticism and the Kabbalah, so a lot of people who have had experiences
from the Jewish tradition do not want to come forward unless they are very
liberal in their thinking. Also, writing these accounts is a hard thing
to do, because they are so personal. Many people have written saying that
I'm the first person they've told, or it's only me and their husband they've
told. People ask me not to mention their name because if anyone found out
they'd be completely ridiculed. So its quite a big step for some people
to write them down.
SI: Do angels appear in all religions?
EH: As well as the frequent mention of angels in the New Testament,
angels are mentioned in the Koran, the Hindu scriptures, Greek mythology
and the Old Testament. The Greek word for angel is angelos, meaning messenger;
the Hebrew word is malakh, meaning divine spirit, and the Persian word is
angeros, which translates as courier. Angels are mentioned in all religions
and they always seem to play the same role.
SI: What is that role?
EH: For many people who have written to me it has given them hope,
calm and reassurance, and has often helped them out of a difficult or dangerous
situation. I heard from one man who was waiting to cross a busy road on
his way to work. Seeing a gap in the traffic he stepped out, only for an
elderly lady he'd never seen before to stretch her arm out in front of his
chest with such force it prevented him from crossing. Seconds later a sports
car sped past - which would otherwise certainly have hit him. He turned
around to thank the woman, but she was nowhere to be seen. In that kind
of life-threatening situation the angel often then disappears.
SI: Do many people experience angels that 'disappear'?
EH: Yes. From my research, angel experiences seem to fall into five
main categories. The first is visual, where the angel appears in either
traditional
winged-angel or human form, or often as a figure in white. The second experience
is an unexplained strong, sweet scent, which is very common at
the time of a death. A third category is hearing a voice or a choir of angels,
often inside a place of worship. A fourth category is an actual physical
feeling, which often happens to elderly people. The feeling of wings being
enveloped around them is a common occurrence. One elderly woman wrote to
me and described how, when her husband died, she hated going to bed because
she missed him so much, and described how she would see and feel her duvet
turn into a pair of angelic wing-like, comforting arms. Interestingly, she
was an atheist.
I've heard from several people who, at a time of needing comfort, experienced
wings enveloping them but there was no visible angel. Another kind of physical
feeling is touch. One woman wrote to me relating how, at her son's funeral,
she saw an angel and felt it touch her cheek. Countless people who have
written to me have not only seen, but have felt the touch of an angel.
The fifth category is light: either a beam or a ray of light. Often at the
time of a loved-one's death, a ray of light seems to shoot upwards. One
writer
described seeing her father slip from the bottom of the bed, stand next
to an angel, look around the room and then pass upwards into the beam of
light. The mother was also in the room, and although she didn't see this,
she sensed what was happening. Many experiences happen around death,
hence the expression the 'angel of death'.
SI: With so many experiences taking place around the time of death,
have you heard of people's experiences in hospital?
EH: Yes. A Hindu woman in her 40s, in hospital with a leg injury,
wrote to me explaining how she had seen angels waiting patiently at the
end of the bed of two patients who she knew were dying. Another woman who
wrote had spent a night in hospital and was kept awake by a dying patient
who, all night, had been sitting up trying to reach out to the end of her
bed.
Unsuccessfully, she had shrugged her shoulders, muttered something, and
gone back to sleep. Patients on the ward were aware that she was talking
to 'someone' and the writer saw an angel at the bottom of the patient's
bed. The next morning the restless woman had died.
SI: Do you think that interest in angels is higher than it has ever
been?
EH: Yes. The American magazine The Skeptic reported that the greatest
growth area in belief is angels, with a poll finding that seven out of 10
people believe in angels, and one in three have witnessed the presence of
a 'celestial being'.
SI: It might be even higher if you consider that many angel experiences
took place with angels that looked like ordinary men and women?
EH: There are many sorts of angels. Some people imagine just the
traditional image: halo, wings etc. But some angels appear as a figure in
white, or as a normal human being - but there is always something different
about them.
SI: What distinguishes them, so that people think of them as angels?
EH: The 'angel' is usually a person not known to the individual.
They turn up, often with split-second timing, at a time of immediate danger.
They perform their deed, often do not speak and then disappear. Several
newspapers have quoted me as saying that they 'go up in a puff of smoke'.
That is not the case - but they do often disappear. In one letter I received,
a family were touring Wales when their car became stuck in a muddy lane.
Out of nowhere four hikers came to help them, and lifted the car out of
the mud and onto dry land. When the family turned round to thank them, they
had disappeared. There were fields surrounding them on all sides - there
was nowhere the four men could have gone. I am particularly interested to
hear about such group experiences because it refutes the sceptical psychologists
who put such events down to being 'all in the mind'.
SI: Have you also found journalists to be sceptical?
EH: Yes, it is very unfortunate that the media need to search for
a logical explanation for everything. Some letters I receive, however, have
several witnesses to the event, which cannot therefore be easily dismissed.
One man wrote to me about an incident in hospital when his wife was seriously
ill on a ventilator in the intensive care ward. He was visiting her with
his two sons and his parents. Her condition became critical - she had a
50-50 chance of survival. Suddenly her husband saw an angel standing at
the end of the bed behind the metal bars. While he wondered whether this
was simply the result of being stressed and upset, his son turned to him
and asked: "Dad, can you see that figure behind the bed?" The
younger son then replied: "It's an angel!" and his parents exclaimed
that they "had never seen anything like it." When a nurse came
over, they asked her if she could see anything unusual, and she replied:
"Oh my goodness - there is an angel!" The angel then disappeared,
and from that moment the woman made a full recovery.
There was another case in a small parish church near London. A young couple
had moved to the area and the wife asked to be confirmed. She was
at the font waiting to be confirmed and the vicar felt a strange sensation
of warm oil all over his body. He noticed all the congregation were looking
intently at the woman and when he turned, there was an angel standing next
to her with its hand on her shoulder. One witness fainted - she was Catholic
and later asked to be confirmed Anglican because of the miracle she had
seen. All the people near the font of the church saw the angel. The
vicar gathered these people together the next day and found that they had
all had the same experience.
SI: Did you hear of any accounts relating to the time of Princess
Diana's death?
EH: An Anglican and a Sikh woman described in separate letters seeing
a host of angels in the room with them as they watched the funeral of Princess
Diana.
SI: Have you heard from any other categories of people about their
experiences with angels?
EH: Yes, I have heard from about five blind people and from their
accounts it seems they experience the same as sighted people. It is an interesting
area which I hope to research more.
SI: Have you heard from younger people?
EH: I have heard from many people aged between 20 and 40 about experiences
they had as children. The first letter I received was from a Justice of
the Peace in her 60s relating an experience that happened when she was 22
years old. She was working in the casualty department at Guy's Hospital
in London. A three-year-old girl was rushed into casualty followed by her
hysterical mother, a policeman, a witness and a distraught juggernaut driver.
Apparently the child had been playing in the road when the juggernaut had
driven over her. The driver felt the wheels go over her and was extremely
distressed. All four people had seen the accident. The doctor examined the
child and there was nothing wrong. X-rays were taken and everything was
normal except that she was unconscious.
Eventually she came round, looked up to her mother and said: "Where's
the man in the long white coat?" The doctor stepped forward but the
child said: "No, there is a man in a long white coat and he picked
me up when the wheels went over."
SI: Do you think your work could have a synthesizing effect on the
religious communities if it shows that angels are appearing to all the different
groups?
EH: If everyone is having the same experience in all the religions,
then this is very exciting. The reason the media have shown an interest
in my work is that I am the first person in the UK to research this area.
There have been many books about angels, but on the whole from a Christian
or New Age point of view.
SI: What do people from different religions experience?
EH: Exactly the same, often seeing the human form of angels. A couple
of Muslims who wrote had smelled a strong perfume at the time of a death,
and a Hindu woman smelt the perfume of her father's favourite flowers when
he died.
SI: You have had around 450 letters. People must feel very strongly
about their experience, to make the effort to write. Does this show in their
letters?
EH: Yes, their experiences were very vivid and thought-provoking.
One woman wrote to say that when her husband died the undertakers came and
dealt with his body while she waited in the garden. When she came back to
the bedroom to make the bed she noticed an intense smell of flowers. She
thought it must be an air-freshener the men had used, but when she read
an article about my work she realized it must have been an 'experience'
and it gave her great reassurance.
SI: What do angels look like when they appear to people?
EH: I think people see different kinds of angels. Some people see
the traditional eight-foot angel. I heard from one man who was walking his
dog on the canal towpath. He was a scientist with three degrees - an intelligent,
logical person, and a Christian. He felt an eerie atmosphere and sensed
danger so he prayed, and immediately a six-foot angel appeared in front
of him like his protector. Other people have seen fuzzy balls of light,
smelt a strong scent or heard a voice. Some sceptics ask me why angels don't
appear in the one form. To my mind, if your husband had just died you would
not want an eight-foot angel suddenly appearing. It would frighten you.
I think the experience is given in a guise that you can cope with, to suit
the individual.
SI: Do you think humanity is moving into a more spiritual time?
EH: I think it has to. Religion is in such decline, we have to find
something else. The majority of my generation has grown up without any kind
of religion, and man needs something.
SI: Do you, personally, believe that angels exist?
EH: Before I embarked on this research I approached the subject with
a certain scepticism. As more and more letters came in with such amazing
stories, I came to believe that people really believed they had seen angels.
Now I genuinely feel there are angels out there and that, whenever and
wherever they appear, they are a comforting presence.
For more information or to report an angel experience (from all faiths and
belief systems)
contact: Emma Heathcote, PO Box 7459, Birmingham, B32 2TQ, UK or <www.cherubim.freeserve.co.uk>
For further reading about angels see Benjamin Creme's books The Reappearance
of the Christ and the Masters of Wisdom and Maitreya's
Mission Volume Three.
IN BOXES:
Categories of different experiences
(1) Strength to cope with/accept terminal illness
(2) Bedroom visitations
(3) Helping out in a practical hour of need
(4) Prevention of fatal accident
(5) Companionship when afraid
(6) Help to reassess life - see things from a different angle
(7) Guardian angels
(8) Angel experiences around a church
(9) No reason/explanation for experience
(10) Those who see angels all the time
Types of angel manifestions
Traditional-style angel with wings: 26 per cent
Human form which disappeared: 21 per cent
A force/presence: 15 per cent
Figure in white: 11 per cent
Scent: 7 per cent
Engulfed by light: 6 per cent
Voice: 6 per cent
Enveloping wings: 4 per cent
Other: 4 per cent
Respondents' age at time of experience
Under 18 years: 15 per cent
18-35: 25 per cent
36-55: 44 per cent
56-75: 7 per cent
76 plus: 9 per cent
from: Share International July/August 1999
Reprinted courtesy of © Share
International
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