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

I miss Graeme to this day and think about him. What would he be like now? Would he and I have kept in touch? Would he have a wife and family and have reached his full potential in life?

When I think about Graeme it just makes the pain of his loss all the harder to bear. Graeme’s spirit has been to visit me on a few occasions, and as I write this he is by my side. He usually turns up when Eamonn and I are together, when I’m least expecting it, and sends us both messages. He loves to talk about the countless games of football and badminton we played when we were just boys. He misses those days and us as much as we miss him. He now realizes I had feelings for him and laughs about it with me, which is amazing. I loved Graeme, and although it’s taken me 30 years to say it, I’m glad that I have. Those were great days and he was the best friend I ever had.

During my first couple of years at secondary school I found it very difficult to fit in. My cheery demeanour was just a front. Deep down, I hated just about every second of school life. I didn’t want to tell my mum and dad or let on to anyone about my problems because I was worried what their reaction would be. I couldn’t let anyone into my real world. How could I tell friends I could sense things I thought they couldn’t? And, more importantly, how could I tell them I was gay? I just kept my head down and tried to get through those horrid days as quickly as possible.

No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t change how I felt about boys, and this was beginning to prove embarrassing for me at school. I would get flustered when I saw boys I liked, and found it difficult to hide these emotions. Inside, I became very angry about my situation. From this point in my life, I became determined to be a successful person. I wanted to hit back at the world for inflicting me with this ‘gay disease’ and giving me a sixth sense.

Around this time I stopped sensing the spirit world. Almost immediately, I became very insecure about myself and started to worry about what people thought of me. It was difficult enough knowing I was different because I was gay, but this was exacerbated by my ability to tune in to classmates and feel their energy. By my third or fourth year, I started finding it difficult to sit in class without having panic attacks, so I started sitting at the back whenever I could to hide away from everyone. I’d got it into my head that because I could feel energy, everyone else could as well. I thought that they just dealt with it better than me, which was why they hadn’t mentioned it! Looking back, all of this seems crazy, but it was my way of dealing with my issues. Deep down I knew I was on my way to having an emotional breakdown.

I was clever at school but in no way reached my full potential. I struggled through my final years of schooling, sat my exams and ended up with enough qualifications to go to the local technical college. In many ways it was decided for me that I should do an engineering degree, so in order not to upset the apple cart I applied, signed the forms and was accepted.

I hated my course. I just didn’t want to be an engineer. I wanted to be a pop star and on television. The problem was that I didn’t know how to go about doing this so I forced myself to go to college and get a qualification, just in case my pop career didn’t take off. It wasn’t to be one of my better decisions.

I didn’t fit in at college from day one. I wasn’t the engineering type and had no real aptitude for or interest in it. In my second year, I had what I thought was a nervous breakdown. When I initially went to the doctor and told him I was having panic attacks on the bus and hot flushes in lectures, he told me I was just going through an awkward stage in my life. He suggested I might subconsciously be finding the pressures of college life a little difficult, and struggling to come to terms with the possibility that my childhood dreams weren’t going to become reality. It was all very man-to-man, ‘it’s time to grow up’ stuff but I knew there was more to it than that. I understood the reasons better than anyone but didn’t want to share them in case I was ridiculed.

I went along with the doctor’s theory that the pressures of college had made me unwell. This was not a total lie because I did hate every second of it. However, the truth was that I was finding it really difficult to cope with being gay and couldn’t handle lying about my sexuality any longer. Additionally, I was even more conscious of energy at that time, and could ‘feel’ things from people, especially my fellow students. I could sense their health problems and personal issues which, quite honestly, were sometimes a great deal more than I needed to know. I really thought I was going mad. I knew I had some sort of sixth sense but hadn’t realized why I had it or, more importantly, how I should use this ability. At that time it was more of a hindrance than a blessing, and I thought I needed some professional help in order to get these crazy thoughts out of my head.

I was never honest with the psychologist who was assigned to look after me. Within the first few minutes of meeting her I realized that all she understood had been programmed into her by her profession, a profession that had a total disregard for all things psychic. I had to face reality – what I thought I needed wasn’t going to come from her.

What I’d been trying to cope with was draining me every day. I was exhausted, both mentally and psychically. My nervous breakdown took its toll, and I was forced to repeat my second year at college. When I went back to college after the summer break I felt slightly better about myself. I was more confident and was beginning to come to terms with my situation, albeit in a rather weird way. I had made some decisions during the holidays. I was going to put my worries about being gay and psychic in a little box, lock it and throw away the key. I decided that the more I ignored my issues, the less they would worry me and the happier I would become. I didn’t even stop to contemplate what this decision could do to me psychologically. I would pretend I was just a normal, straight guy, and this was the image I would portray to my new college buddies.

My new fellow students were very different to the ones I’d been with in my previous years. They were friendlier and more socially aware, and I quickly made friends with a group of boys who would become a great influence in my life, although I didn’t know it at the time.

One summer, I was looking to make some money, and one of my college pals, John, offered to go busking with me in Glasgow. John played guitar and I accompanied him on my accordion. We both had a go at singing but after a few hours it started to rain and we tried to find somewhere to shelter. John noticed that there was a music shop nearby so we went along to have a look as he was thinking about getting a new guitar.

I hit it off immediately with the music shop owner, Peter Bryce. I suddenly realized that if I bought a few guitars out of local papers or from students at college I could clean them up and sell them on in my new-found friend’s music shop, hopefully making a profit. Within a few months, after much negotiation and wheeling and dealing, The Guitar Store in Glasgow was born. I had new dreams now and knew that I had to follow them or I would be miserable for the rest of my life, so I left college during my finals, much to mum and dad’s annoyance, and set my sights on being a businessman.

Doing the business

The success of my new business was astounding. I was now running The Guitar Store on a full-time basis. Within a year I’d bought out my business partner, Peter, the owner of the original shop. I put every hour God sent into making that shop work. I needed something to concentrate on so I would forget about my sexuality and dim my sixth sense. The Guitar Store flourished and I moved to new premises in Hope Street in Glasgow in 1988.