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October 17, 2008

Susan Flynn: Church welcomes the ‘so-called dead’

Susan Flynn

Strange things started happening soon after Fatima Heath’s 22-year-old nephew died of a drug overdose.

The Gloucester family would hear footsteps going up the stairs when no one else was home. The radio in his old bedroom would turn to his favorite station. Their dog would suddenly leave the room with his tail between his legs, just as he did whenever her nephew came to visit his parents.

Heath says she was raised a devout Catholic, “100 percent Portuguese,” but the church couldn’t offer an explanation of any comfort.

A friend directed the family to a medium who told them things, Heath says, “there was no way she could possibly know.”

The experience changed Heath forever. Today, she is pastor of the Swampscott Church of Spiritualism, where members believe communication with the “so-called dead” is possible.

The membership has tripled — from 33 to 100 members — in four years. Heath, a Gloucester real estate agent, credits the increase to a widespread spiritual longing and also the popularity of TV shows like “Medium” and “Ghost Whisperer.”

All the talk about the spirit world may sound a little (perhaps a lot) out there. Heath is quick to acknowledge there are many frauds charging distraught people big bucks. She tires of all the ghost stories at Halloween.

Still, she knows many people with stories about deceased loved ones seeming to reach out to them. Not everything, she says, can be written off as coincidence.

“Everybody I know has a story — everybody,” Heath says.

I’m skeptical, but, like many families, we have a tale that cries out for an explanation.

After the death of my grandfather, who lived with us for 10 years, my mother painted his old bedroom hot pink. Soon after, a cousin stopped by and quipped, “I don’t know if Bill would like this.” Then his eyeglasses cracked.

The crack could be blamed on a sudden change in air pressure. Maybe his glasses were old. All I know is my cousin never moved so fast.

In many ways, the Spiritualist Church in Swampscott is a traditional church. There are wooden pews, stained-glass windows, amens and alleluias. The members pray to God and practice the golden rule.

They are drawn to a spiritual experience that focuses on the positive in people. There is no guilt here, Heath likes to say.

Initially, though, the draw for many is the mediumship. Near the close of every service, a medium stands on the altar to deliver messages to randomly chosen recipients.

“Someone is trying to come in to you, the woman with the pink shawl,” says church medium Jacqui Belleville.

She tells the woman the person feels like a mother figure. She is tall and elegant, in her late 60s or early 70s, with beautiful hands.

The woman in the pews nods in recognition.

The message from the spirit world: She wants you to know she hears you when you talk to her.

Church member April Codair was once a skeptic. She understands the rolling of the eyes. Then three years ago, she met a church medium who revealed that her late grandmother was a poet, something no one in the family had known. She told her aunt about her visit.

“She was flabbergasted,” Codair says.

Five years earlier, the aunt had gone to her mother’s home to clean out her things and found a stack of poems in a hope chest. She never told anyone about her discovery.

“It made me think,” Codair says, “Wow, there really is something to this.’”

¢¢¢

Staff writer Susan Flynn can be reached at sflynn@salemnews.com or by calling 978-338-2658.

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