In the 1950s, in Bristol, England, Dennis Barrett stood on the platform at his local

spiritualist church. He was giving a demonstration of

mediumship, and he pointed to a woman in the audience, telling her that her deceased mother was

with him. He began to describe in detail a necklace her mother was wearing, saying, she tells me

she's proud of her beauties. After the demonstration was over, the daughter came up to speak to him,

and she told him she was certain it had been her mother,

because her mother had a particular habit of standing in front of the mirror

adjusting her clothes, especially around her bust.

The daughter said she would tell her mother to stop being so vain, and her mother would reply,

What's the matter with you?

I'm proud of these beauties.

The daughter then explained that these were the exact words she'd heard her mother say so many times.

The daughter said, I could see her there pulling at her dress so it showed the shape of

her boobs. Dennis had thought her mother had been referring to a necklace, not her breasts.

Dennis was an ordinary working-class man. He'd worked on the railways and as a fireman in his hometown of Bristol, England, in the

1950s and 60s. Little could he have known then that soon he would become the most extraordinary

physical medium and spiritual healer. Up until then, he'd led a very simple happy life, but when

his wife asked him for a divorce,

he found himself living in a tiny bed sit with only a one-bar heater. The winter was bitterly cold,

and he was understandably miserable and very lonely, and he found himself going to spiritualist

churches in the evenings, but not for the usual reasons.

He admits he went there to stave off the crippling loneliness he felt and to keep warm.

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