Derek Ogilvie - The Baby Mind Reader - Amazing Psychic Stories from the Man Who Can Read Babies’ Minds

I believe we are all born psychic, and we either choose to use our gifts or we don’t. It’s as simple as that. From day one, I always felt different from everyone else, although until I was much older I couldn’t put my finger on what that difference was and what it would mean to me. When I was around nine or ten, I knew that I definitely had a sixth sense. I remember sensing things that my friends or family couldn’t. Although I couldn’t tell the future or what a baby or young child was thinking, I did have something. I just didn’t know what my abilities were or what they really meant to me, and I never paid that much attention to them.

Around that time our elderly next-door neighbour passed away. For months afterwards I could feel his presence in my bedroom. It was then that I realized what I could sense. I could see dead people! His ghost, or what I now know to be his spirit, used to come and stand at my bedroom door when I was tucked up in bed, and he would stare at me for hours! The funny thing is that I didn’t find this in the least bit scary. I just went along with it and it didn’t really bother me at all. I would try to force myself not to go to sleep, just in case I missed out on getting a message from him or – more importantly for me, being someone who believed in God – instructions from what I understood to be heaven. That battle was seldom won, though, and I’d always fall asleep before anything was said! Strangely, over those few months as I fought back the tiredness, he never uttered a word to me and he never changed his expression. He just looked and smiled and that was it. He seemed to be content, though, which pleased me greatly, and no longer in any of the pain he’d experienced before he died.

My ghostly visitor left me with mixed feelings at the time. Although I was pleased that he was okay, this was tinged with a little disappointment since I felt that without some form of communication between us, no-one would believe my story. I decided not to give my parents or his family any information about him as I had no means of providing proof that he was coming through to visit me from the other side. I was also reluctant to tell people because I didn’t want to appear strange or, God forbid, different. I just put this down to being me and kept my mouth shut.

Over the years my sixth sense has never left me. I’ve always known it was there, although I chose to ignore it many times in my life when I felt I had other, more important issues to deal with. If only I’d paid it a little more attention!

I had a fairly normal childhood. I say ‘fairly’ because if I am honest – which for the first time is probably now as I write this – I was never 100-per-cent happy. I always felt that I never really fitted in. I always felt different.

I didn’t have a lot of friends as I never wanted to do what other boys did. Because I didn’t like rough-and-tumble games I was thought of as a bit of a sissy. I was awful at football and as this was the benchmark for how cool you were, I would always be looking over my shoulder, especially at school, in case someone wanted to pick on me and have a fight.

I hated school. I just didn’t want to be there, although my primary school days weren’t that bad. I think this was because I felt special then. I was very clever and always excelled in maths and anything associated with music. I started playing the accordion and singing when I was eight, and from then on wanted to be on the stage or television. I believed that this was my calling. I remember making up my mind from that early age that music would be my way out of the humdrum life that everyone around me seemed to be living.

From the age of nine or ten, I began to tell anyone who asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up that I was going to be a millionaire and would make my money from being in the music business. How strange, then, that this was to be exactly what would happen. I must have been giving out psychic messages when I was a child, even though I didn’t realize it at the time!

My gran has undoubtedly been the most influential person in my life. I was always very close to her. She was, and still is, a wonderful woman. Kind, considerate and the perfect hostess, she was always happy to see me or anyone who came to visit her. Since she crossed over into the spirit world six years ago, my gran has been my guiding light, and I see it as no coincidence that my talents as a psychic have soared since she passed away. I don’t think that my gran is necessarily my spirit guide, though. She is watching over me and does give me advice when I need it (and sometimes when I think I don’t!) but it’s a common misconception that when a close relative passes away they immediately become our guide in the afterlife. Relatives and friends may come through with messages for us and be looking out for us, but that doesn’t mean they are our guides or guardian angels.

When I was a youngster, my gran was very supportive and always encouraged me in whatever I did. This is still happening even now but it’s being shown in a different way. It seems significant that my gran was taken from me when I most needed her to be by my side and yet she has helped me more than I could ever have dreamed of now she is in spirit. When I was a youngster, I thought I loved her, but over the years I’ve grown to understand that our relationship is much stronger than that. It’s a bond that will never be broken.

I can now see how after-death communication is so precious to those who seek it. The connection I have with my gran is so important to me and something I really treasure.

I remember Christmas Day 1976 as clearly as if it were yesterday. Sitting at the dining table with mum and dad and the rest of the family, I started feeling very, very strange. Something inside my head just clicked and I became fully aware of everyone and everything around me. I could feel other people’s pain. I could feel lots of energy, more than I’d ever been conscious of before. I became more vibrant, alert and complete. My brain seemed to have exploded and expanded, and I was suddenly aware of more than I had ever known previously. These few seconds of time were to change my life forever.

Everyone who was sitting around the table with me on that eventful Christmas Day was totally oblivious to this. They carried on eating and having a chat. However, experiencing this totally crazy event had changed me. I now felt that I was a piece of the people around me and in them. I was a piece of everything and in everything. I was still me, Derek, but I was also aware of this something else. This was something I wouldn’t get to grips with for another 20 years, something I would put to sleep in my head and try to ignore until it resurfaced at the most unlikely time in my life.

During my final couple of years at primary school I became very friendly with my classmate Susan Lee and her younger brother Graeme. Graeme was eighteen months younger than me but we were around the same height and build and looked to be the same age. Graeme and I got on well and never fought or fell out. There was another boy who played in the street whose name was Eamonn and he was a year older than me. Graeme and I were inseparable during the long summer holidays. Things changed, though, when I went to secondary school and we didn’t see each other much after that. Eventually we lost contact. I regret that because I really loved him.

Graeme died on 28 March 1984, when he was 17. I was 19 at the time and had just come home from college when mum gave me the news. My gran had been to visit us the previous day and had mentioned that the bus she’d been on had driven past a car accident. I hadn’t given this a second thought, and would never have dreamt for one second that Graeme would be the only passenger fatally injured in that crash. His death really affected me, though I kept those feelings close to my chest. Graeme was my first love and I’ve never told anyone until this moment. I couldn’t even tell him. I was too scared to do something like that. It was the 1970s, and being gay wasn’t as accepted as it is now. I was just an 11-year-old boy confused about my feelings for my closest friend, and that was that. I kept it quiet and tried to deal with it in the best way I could. I was glad that Graeme stopped calling me when I went to high school, and we didn’t see each other as often. It hurt me just to be around him because I loved him so much. I did see Graeme when it was his turn to come up to the big school. I kept my distance from him, though, because I still had feelings for him and didn’t want to be friends for all the wrong reasons. I respected him too much for that.