An introduction to religious and spiritual experience

On the Turn of the Tide 
briefly spoke to her. Penny had bought 
the book at the conference, and she read it immediately following the event. 
Her experience was so unusual, that she wrote the following to Diana:
When I first got home, I flicked through the book and looked at the 
photographs. I immediately recognized you and I also recognized the 
man in the photograph above yours on the last page – James Smeall. 
This part may sound ridiculous to you but he was at the conference. 
Before I presented my paper I saw him in front of me walking alone 
amongst other conference attendees then I saw him alone again after 
I had presented my paper and was walking to the coffee room. I looked 
at him nodded in acknowledgement, smiled at him and said ‘Hi’ and he 
smiled back and nodded. He looked quite normal and was wearing 
light coloured trousers and a white shirt and maybe a beige or white 
coloured jacket and his shoulders were hunched as in the photograph. 
I had no idea that he had died until I got to that chapter in your book. 
I looked at his photograph again to make sure I hadn’t mistaken him 
for someone else.
I discussed this with my husband who immediately thought that 
I had seen someone who looked like James at the conference and not 
James himself. Does James have a brother or maybe a son who was in 
attendance at the conference? Did you see anyone else who closely 
resembled James? I have begun to doubt myself now but I know that 
when I first saw his photograph in your book I immediately said to 
myself ‘Oh, that man was at the conference too’ and wished that I had 
spoken to him when we had acknowledged each other.
I hope you don’t mind me telling you this but nothing quite so 
unusual has happened to me before. Maybe there is a perfectly rational 
explanation for this and I merely saw someone who closely resembled 
James. I just find it mystifying as to why I immediately recognized 
James’s photograph and thought nothing unusual of it until I read the 
chapters about him in your book which told me that he died in 1999.
Diana replied, and her letter, including Penny’s experience was pub-
lished in The Christian Parapsychologist in December 2006.
Penny found my address and wrote to me that week. I phoned her to 
tell her that James had no brothers or sons, but that he had been the 

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Religious and Spiritual Experience
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Head of St Luke’s College for many years from 1945 and was deeply 
attached to the place, where there is now a building named after him. 
I was not really very surprised that that he was there and that she had 
seen him, but sad that I had not. Recently I had been aware of the fact 
that he had said at our last meeting, through a medium six years ago, 
that we would meet again, and had wondered whether I ought to 
arrange another meeting with a different medium so that he could 
come if he wished to. I am not a medium myself but have been involved 
in many meetings of this sort over the years.
Later that week I spoke to Crawford Knox who was also a speaker 
at the meeting and who knew James Smeall and also knew many of 
those who were at the meeting. I asked him if he could recall anyone 
who might have been mistaken for James, but he could not, and felt it 
was very unlikely.
It strikes me that the meeting between Penny and James was quite 
possible even though it mystified her. At the time of his death James 
appeared to another friend in a dream in a place which I recognized 
from her description as the Hospice ward in which he was dying. The 
friend did not know that he was ill or where he was, but felt she had to 
ring me to find out. As I have already mentioned above, he returned at 
a meeting I had with a medium some months after his death and spoke 
at length on matters of great interest to me, all of which I have included 
in