The Baby Mind Reader: Amazing Psychic Stories from the Man Who Can Read Babies’ Minds. Derek Ogilvie
also very easy to understand, much easier than the messages I’d sometimes get from the spirit world. I could feel the build-up of this information in the centre of my brain and I just couldn’t hold back the words. I opened up and started telling her mum lots of details about her life.
‘Your daughter’s telling me that she loves Jaffa Cakes. She wants you to get her one from the kitchen.’
‘Yes, she seems to like them. She cries for them all the time,’ said the now bewildered mum. ‘How on earth did you know that?’
‘She also tells me that her daddy is a taxi driver and has been separated from you since your daughter was a baby.’
The little girl went on to tell me that her tummy had been sore for a few days and that she liked to go driving with her granny in the red car, although her granny smoked and always kept the front passenger window open. ‘Your daughter loves the bucket and spade that her granny just bought her. She’s looking forward to going to the seaside and playing with it.’ All these details rolled off my tongue, just as if a spirit had told me. It was like a normal conversation, although this wasn’t normal at all. No-one had uttered a word. The information had all come from this young child to me through our minds. Nothing else!
I recall the mum’s reaction as if it were yesterday. She freaked! I remember having to think on my feet and panicking inside about what to do as I wanted to appear in control of the situation. I just stayed as cool as I could and quickly tried to calm her down and appease her by telling her that her child was obviously very clever. Inside, however, I was praying that this was a one-off and that this young girl was just special in some way and had a gift like mine. I knew I had to carry on with the reading in order to bring some normality back to the proceedings so I tried to contact the spirits she had initially wanted to receive messages from. Spirits did come through, thankfully, and the rest of the evening went without a hitch.
My experience with this mum and her child left a bad taste in my mouth. The last thing I wanted was to upset anyone through my work. On the way home in the car I was still pretty shocked. Was this occurrence really a one-off? Maybe I had some amazing gift that had been lying dormant for years, or perhaps I’d been ignoring another aspect of my psychic abilities. Were most babies and toddlers psychic, and if they were could they all communicate fairly easily with me?
When I think about my childhood, my mum was always around. There doesn’t seem to have been a moment when she wasn’t cuddling me or reassuring me that things would be all right. My mum really loved me, and I was a very lucky little boy to have someone who cared so much about my wellbeing. I love my mum and suppose I’ve always been a bit of a mummy’s boy. Mum’s been a tower of strength when I’ve needed her and an adviser when I sometimes didn’t, but she’s always been there through thick and thin, and that’s been a blessing to me.
It hasn’t all been a bed of roses though. Mum’s been great – don’t get me wrong – but she and I have had the strangest relationship over the years. Like many mothers and sons, we know how to hurt each other and how to wind each other up. Mum and I now seem to have an understanding. I think we are just beginning to come to terms with our differing personalities. It’s a pity it’s taken all this time.
In some ways I’ve always felt a disappointment to my mum. When I was a child, she’d tell me I was going to make a fine husband and dad. This made me feel bitter because I knew, even from a very early age, that this would never happen. I think that’s why I’d get so angry with mum when she’d say something that upset me. I just wanted her to love me and not the person she thought I was. I felt awful about that.
I was also highly sensitive and a bit of a loner as a child. I would love just being at home, and would disappear into my own little world with my Lego set or watch Blue Peter on television. Mum would always get upset with me because I wasn’t out playing and getting into mischief with the other boys on our street. I guess it was around that time when I started to get a bit of a chip on my shoulder about life. My attitude was ‘I’m going to show everyone when I’m older that I’m as good as them.’
I was born in Paisley, Scotland, in 1965, the younger of two children. My loving sister Elaine was four years older, and very protective of me. Like any brother and sister, though, we fought like cat and dog when we were young. Elaine used to pull my hair whenever we had a fallout. To this day I blame her for my lack of thatch on top!
My dad was a heating engineer who worked for British Airways at Glasgow Airport. He has always had a wonderful work ethic and I have learnt a great deal from him. When I was a youngster, however, there were times when I didn’t see dad for days or even weeks. He would come home from work, have dinner and then disappear into the night in order to plumb in someone’s washing machine or sort out some problem with their central heating. Dad tells me that he never let anyone down and always turned up for a job, no matter what. If only today’s workmen lived by those rules.
It would be really interesting at this point to mention that I was the son of the seventh son of a seventh son, but I wasn’t. My dad did have five other brothers but he was his parent’s sixth son and that, I’m afraid, is that. My dad had an Aunt Minnie, though, who was a fortune-teller. Minnie seemingly used to hold psychic nights in her house in St James’s Street in Paisley and read people’s tea leaves. I never met Aunt Minnie but my father assures me that she was the real deal. He told me that Aunt Minnie met with him one night when he was still courting my mum and, after the obligatory cup of tea, read his leaves. She told him that within two or three years he’d be working at Glasgow Airport and would fly all over the world with an airline. True to form she was right. I don’t think I’ve inherited any of Aunt Minnie’s gifts, though, since I’m not a fortune-teller, but I would like to have met her. I’m sure there’s always a chance that she’ll come through to visit me when she has the time.
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