Recently, an opportunity presented itself to do some healing on someone who was in pain.

And as usual, when I finished “doing my thing’” a few minutes later, she felt much better.

The first time I did it was in the mid-1990s. I didn’t have a clue what I was doing. The Universe was about to reveal an ability I didn’t know I had.

I was sitting next to a man who was in significant pain with a chronic knee problem. Suddenly, I “heard” some quiet words deep inside me. It was almost like a “knowing” rather than a “hearing.”

I had no idea what I was doing but I closed my eyes, followed the whispers in my soul and did it anyway.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“I have no idea but I think it’s supposed to help.”

“What? You have no idea?”

“Please be quiet. I’m concentrating.”

“On what? How can you concentrate if you don’t know what you’re doing?”

I shot a slightly stern glance in his direction. “Shhh!”

Closing my eyes again, I continued with this bit of weirdness that had just dropped itself into my life.

After about two or three minutes, I had a sense that I was finished. Again, it was a “knowing” rather than a clear-cut notification. No bells or announcements. No fanfare. It just felt like that was it.

I opened my eyes. Hesitantly, I looked at my friend. He was staring at me with his mouth hanging open.

“Well?” I asked. “What happened on your side of that?”

“It’s gone. The pain is gone.” He stared back and forth between his knee and me.

Needless to say, we were both shocked.

“What the hell did you do?”

I shrugged. I was nothing short of dumbfounded.

I began to experiment on friends and family who had a variety of aches and pains or even anxiety and depression. I understood that I was working with energy in some way — I suppose like Reiki only more directly and much more quickly. Because of that, I jokingly referred to it as “zapping” them.

Over the decades since that incredible night, I’ve seen some astonishing results after doing this healing on people. Or as I like to call it, “my zappy thing.”

Occasionally, I see people who received this “treatment” many years ago and am told that they’re still pain-free after I “zapped” away even long-term suffering.

That blows my doors off.

The first time I ever did this publicly, I was astounded by the crowd that showed up. I was going to do some healing in the back room of a little village pub. I arrived to find that the whole bar was packed, standing room only.

I figured it was just an unusually busy week night at the pub. Till the landlady said, “So how do you want to organise this? Absolutely everyone out there is here to see you.”

Huh?? They were all there to see me? Here? In the ultra-conservative Midlands? In a very rural little village??

Go figure.

I set to work. One at a time, I’d “tune in” and feel drawn to someone. The two of us would retreat to the back room where I did my zappy thing.

One after another, they emerged from that room and announced to a room full of the curious, the doubtful, the hopeful, and all the others who waited to see what would happen and if they might be chosen.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t get to everyone that night but I did 6 hours of back-to-back “zapping” on about 30 people until 1.30 a.m. I shocked and converted the hecklers who could not believe the troubles and ailments I “knew” without them telling me. They were amazed that I could determine exactly where they hurt and how it felt.

They were even more surprised that they felt better in minutes.

Just. Like. Magic.

As a psychic and a medium, I did readings for years before taking to the stage to connect audience members with loved ones in spirit. I’ve seen the powerful healing and comfort that come from being able to link energies here with energies “On the other side.”

I see myself like Mrs. Olson plugging things into the switchboard, connecting people on the phone on Little House on the Prairie (or Little Prairie Under The House, as I like to call it) and listening in on the conversations.

It’s always been so moving to see the bittersweet tears that come from someone who is in communication with a loved one in spirit. I pass along information I wouldn’t otherwise know, things that make no sense to me, but they recognise it and understand.

It makes me so happy to know that they’re comforted by the messages given to them. Sometimes there is laughter, an apology or forgiveness…or permission to move on with their lives. But always, that connection is very healing and powerful.

Just like magic.

I’ve been asked many times throughout my life about my abilities as a psychic, a medium and a healer. How do I know this, how do I do that, how does this work?

The truth is, I don’t know. And I don’t want to know.

I know only one thing about it for sure: It does work.

It’s no different from wondering how you get flowers or vegetables or mighty oak trees by planting something in the ground. Or how you start with two tiny cells and end up with an actual living, breathing person.

Or how your body knows how to do this or that, creating chemicals and hormones that do certain jobs. Or how all those systems work, or how organs know what to do.

Scientists cannot explain any of that. They like to think they can because they tell you what happens. But they don’t — can’t — tell you how it happens.

Whatever that “thing” is that makes an actual person appear with all the right parts in the right places, doing what they’re meant to do, whatever it is that makes that little seed start to grow and sprout and produce big juicy strawberries — we do not know how this happens.

But if we understood the incredible spark that makes those seeds grow, if we knew how those little cells become an actual person, if we understood a healer’s seemingly miraculous ability to cure or the link between the Spirit and Earthly realms, it would be like watching David Copperfield’s “magic acts” and having the answers to “How the hell did he do that?”

Do you really want to know?

I wish guys like that hadn’t started calling themselves “illusionists.” I liked it better when they were “magicians.”

Hearing that it’s an illusion feels like an admission that what I’m seeing isn’t real. It’s like acknowledging it’s all just an act, a trick to fake me out.

Miracles, the unexplained, the great mysteries of life…they add a magnificent sense of wonder to our lives. Just look at the delight and sense of awe on the face of a child who sees presents that Santa Claus left under the tree! Wow, he was actually there??

And look! The milk and cookies that were left for him are gone!

And when you leave a tooth under your pillow, oh, my goodness! In the morning, it’s gone! And there’s actual money there! The Tooth Fairy really did come!

Just watch little kids at an amateur “magic show” seeing simple tricks that as adults, we understand. Their eyes as big as saucers, their jaws in their little laps, their astonishment and amazement are truly wonderful.

But when we grow up, we know the truth about Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. And we know about all the stuff that’s up that magician’s sleeve, if not specifically at least generally.

We lose that sense of wonder as we grow and learn about the world and the magic disappears.

As for the great “illusionists” of our time, we have absolutely no freakin’ clue how they do what they do. But would you really want to know? Do you really want to have it explained to you and lose that incredible feeling of magnificent wonder?

Not understanding how plants grow or how healers heal or how a medium links us to spirit is just the way it should be. It’s like a gift from the Universe, a gift that allows us to retain a sense of childlike wonder about the great mysteries of life. The older I get, the more important it becomes.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to know the answers.

I’d rather believe in magic.