Cemetery Sunday #4 — Annabell: The Little Girl Who Came Home With Me

Some encounters don't end when you leave a place. During my visit to Stanmer Church, I became aware of children playing on the green. One little girl stood out to me. She felt around five to seven years old. It was only after the visit, as I sat with the experience, that another name came through: Annabell. And then, in a way I hadn't anticipated, the encounter continued beyond the churchyard.

The little girl who came home

I felt that Annabell had come home with me. The following morning, I became aware that she needed help to pass over. This has happened many times, Spirits attach and come back to the house.

My sense was that she had been unwell, and I felt drawn to offer her healing for that illness. As I worked, I experienced the presence of her family coming to meet her, ready to take her with them.

It was a deeply moving experience, as it always is with this work and one that brought me back to the heart of my psychopomp work: supporting spirits who, for whatever reason, may need help finding their way onwards.

I believe Annabell may not have realised she had died until perhaps seeing me, or had not realised for a long time. Children can be so open to the spirit world and in my understanding and experience, that openness can sometimes make the boundaries between what we experience as ordinary life and what we might call the spirit world less clear. If a child has passed away, I wonder whether it might be confusing for them to understand what has happened, particularly if their experience of the world still feels familiar to them, because they were already seeing Spirit.

I can't tell you who Annabell was in life, or exactly what happened to her. I can only share what I experienced, what I sensed, and how I understood the encounter. But I felt that she needed help, and I responded to that.

The work of a psychopomp

Psychopomp is a word rooted in the ancient idea of a guide of souls, someone who accompanies the dead through a transition.

It is a part of my work that can be difficult to explain, because it doesn't always look like the stories we hear about ghosts or hauntings. For me, it is less about seeking out the dead and more about responding when I sense that a spirit may need support.

That support might involve holding space, offering healing, or helping a spirit reconnect with those who can accompany them onwards. It requires compassion, discernment and respect. I don't believe every unexplained feeling or presence means a spirit is lost, nor do I believe this work is about forcing anything to happen.

With Annabell, my experience was of a little girl who needed help and of a family who came to meet her when she was ready. There was something particularly tender about that.

Returning to Stanmer

I still find myself wondering about Annabell's story.

Was that her name in life? Did she die young, as I sensed? Is there a record of a child whose story belongs to Stanmer, its village or the surrounding area? Is this why I was drawn to go there in the first place.

I haven't yet found the answers. I don't want to attach her to a historical person simply because a name or detail seems to fit. The research matters, even when it leaves us with more questions than answers and that is what Cemetery Sunday is about for me.

I visit these places, pay attention to what I experience, and then turn to their histories, their people and their stories. Sometimes research offers an unexpected connection. Sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes the experience remains something I cannot verify, but still feel moved to reflect upon.

Annabell's story reminds me that my relationship with these places doesn't necessarily end at the churchyard gate. Sometimes, the encounter continues and the work begins somewhere I never expected.

I don't know the whole story of the little girl I came to know as Annabell. But I hope that, wherever her story began, she found peace.