I am often asked about the symbols on graves and what they mean, here are a few of the common ones:
Anchor. Hope or at rest, an early Christian symbol.
Angel. The agent of God often pointing heavenwards also guardian of the dead. An angel has no navel. An angel holding up two fingers donates a member of the clergy buried beneath.
Bed. A deathbed sometimes only illustrated by a pillow.
Book. Symbolises faith.
Chair. Commonly known as a vacant chair left by the deceased. Usually a young woman.
Column. A broken column signifies mortality, the support of life being broken, most commonly used for a male and the death of the head of the family.
Dove. The Holy Spirit or peace.
Feather. Wings and the assent to heaven.
Gates. The entrance into heaven.
Hands. When clasped this is a symbol of farewell.
Horse. Strength, courage or the swiftness of the passage of time.
Hourglass. The traditional symbol of Father Time who also carries a scythe.
Lamb. Usually found on the grave of a child, Agnus-Dei, the lamb of God.
Laurel. Fame. Often of a literary or artistic figure.
Lion. Courage, strength and the resurrection.
Phoenix. Christ's resurrection.
Scythe. Passage of time and death.
Skull. Mortality.
Snake. With its tail in its mouth symbolises eternity.
Torch. Immortality, upturned means a life extinguished.
Urn. Draped and empty symbolises death.
Willow. Grief and mourning.
Q. When did you first realise you were psychic?
A. From an early age I spoke to nocturnal visitors and saw dead people. Until I was around 10 I assumed everyone could, it came as quite a shock when I realised they couldn’t! A few years after I left school I enrolled at the College of Psychic Studies for 3 ½ years to make more sense of it all. I seemed to excel at giving readings from photographs of both the living and the dead so that’s what I developed along with doing paranormal investigations where I am invited to check out haunted locations, I really enjoy it as I never know what I am going to find.
Q. Are you always psychically switched on?
A. Most of the time I'm switched off unless I'm doing a reading as otherwise I pick up everybody's energy, but sometimes I'll pass someone or they will be sitting nearby and their energy is so strong I'm tuned in whether I like it or not.
Q. Are there animal spirits?
A. I believe so, many people have reported seeing a much loved dog or cat and I have even heard of a horse coming back to say hello. Pets can also be psychic.
Q. Why do you do paranormal investigations?
A. I like to combine my psychic abilities with the fact that I love old buildings and beautiful architecture. I also sometimes get to see places not open to the general public if they require an investigation to be carried out. The fact that I never know who or what I might find is great too. I prefer not to do research or have any prior knowledge of a building so I won’t be influenced in anyway.
Q. What kind of places do you investigate and how can I book you?
A. I usually carry out investigations in London and the South East; anywhere that has suspected activity an interesting history or strange occurrences. Please e mail for further details.
Q. I live in the USA and I’d like a reading, is this possible?
A. Of course, I do most of my readings via photographs which can be e mailed or sent to me so it doesn’t mater where in the world you are based. See my Home page for further details.
Q. How can I book you for an interview / TV / magazine?
A. Please e mail any media enquiries and someone will get back to you as soon as possible. If the job or publication is not for charity or a nonprofit organisation fees apply.
Q. Do you ever get scared during an investigation?
A. Rarely but it has happened once or twice. I encountered a terrifying black thing that was about 7 feet high and moved from side to side during an investigation at the Drop Redout Fort in Dover Kent. It followed me and I could hear it breathing, I didn’t stick around to find out what it was and legged it back up the stairs two at a time!
Q. You are a parapsychologist, what is that?
A. Parapsychology is basically the study of paranormal phenomena. I do a lot of this type of work in old buildings including photographing or videotaping and analysing the results.
Q. You're also a Reiki therapist, how does that work?
A. Reiki is a 2500-year-old non-invasive Tibetan healing therapy based on the idea that all living things contain a universal life force. It is accessed by the practitioner and used to balance and energise the body. It can also be used to treat a variety of ailments and activate the body's ability to heal itself. Reiki can also be used on animals and also sent distantly.
Q. When you see spirits what do you see?
A. I will see outlines, shadows or maybe sense spirits. I can usually give enough information about them for them to be recognisable to others.
Q. How did your unusual cemetery photography come about?
A. It began when as a child I visited deceased family members at the local cemetery with my parents. Whilst the adults chatted and arranged flowers I would wander off and look in amazement at all the angels, doves and crosses. As I got older I began photographing them purely for my own enjoyment and when I started showing the photos to other people they said I should do a book. Far from my initial fears of people going ‘ewww cemeteries’ or how creepy or depressing the photos were, they were actually saying they were fascinating.
Q. What sort of funeral do you want and what’s your epitaph going to say?
A. I’d love a typical Victorian style funeral with a horse drawn hearse, mutes and a dog in a black ruff color - it would be snowing of course! I’d like to be buried under an angel monument. As for my epitaph hmmm……………something like ‘Sacred to the memory of Jeane, she helped preserve a little of our architecture and made us laugh along the way’!
St Pancras Old Church dates from 11/12C and stands on oldest site of Christian worship in London (3C). Poor Pancras was the orphaned Christian son of a nobleman. He was brought up at the Court of the Emperor in Rome. At the age of 14, refusing to betray his Christian faith he was executed by decapitation on 12th May, 304 A.D. Inside there is a lot of ornamentation and an amazing 4C Altar Stone, reputed to have belonged to St Augustine. The surrounding Churchyard contains the tombs of architect Sir John Soane and Mary Wollstonecraft (although hers is just a monument now as her remains were reburied in Bournemouth.) Mary’s grave was an trysting (err hum) place for her daughter, also Mary, and her future husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley, when this was a rural churchyard beside the River Fleet! It’s a very pretty churchyard and I got the feeling that I was just standing on the tip of the iceberg with so many more thousands buried below. There has been reputed grave robbing in the late 1800s, and many were disinterred and reburied during the works to the St Pancras rail extension. The tightly packed graves around the Hardy tree are very moving, like nothing I’ve ever seen anywhere else. The Hardy Tree, the plaque on the tree explains that before turning to writing full time Thomas Hardy studied architecture in London from 1862-67 under Mr. Arthur Blomfield, an architect based in Covent Garden. During the 1860s the Midland Railway line was built over part of the original St. Pancras Churchyard. Blomfield was commissioned by the Bishop of London to supervise the proper exhumation of human remains and dismantling of tombs. He passed this unenviable task to his protégé Thomas Hardy in. c.l865. Hardy would have spent many hours in St. Pancras Churchyard overseeing the careful removal of bodies and tombs from the land on which the railway was being built. The headstones around the ash tree would have been placed here about that time. A few years before Hardy's involvement, Charles Dickens made reference to Old St. Pancras Churchyard in his Tale of Two Cities (1859), as the churchyard in which Roger Cly was buried and where Gerry Cruncher was known to 'fish' (a 19C term for body snatching.)
