John Routley is your everyday kind of guy. Middle aged, slightly balding and dressed in T-shirt and trousers, he is not a man you would give a second glance in the street. By day he has a full-time and responsible job working as a trainer with West Midlands Fire Service, he lives with his partner Maureen Hughes and he cares about cats. But he also has a hobby which is rather out of the ordinary - when he has a moment, he talks to dead people.
 John (pictured) believes he has what we call the Sixth Sense - the ability to see and talk to people who have died, or as spiritualists term it passed over to the other side. Many people would immediately scoff. But John, who is quietly spoken and sincere, is in no doubt. He believes he has seen dead people since he was a child and he uses this gift to put other people in touch with loved ones they have lost. John has turned the garage of his home in Yardley into a sanctuary where he can gain a bit of peace and quiet and will invite visitors here so they can communicate with the dead. It is usually friends of friends, or people who have heard about me, he says, and it has to be when people are ready. Very often people will want to talk to their loved ones as soon as they have passed over but at that point it is still too painful for them. They need time before they are ready. And John never quite knows who will come to talk to them. If someone comes to me and wants to connect with a spirit I never ask them who they want to speak to. It is up to the spirits to communicate if they want to. John has taken his skills to Spiritualist churches around the UK and is now embarking on theatre shows. But he stresses it is not about entertainment, but connecting people. Johns story reads like a Birmingham version of the hit movie The Sixth Sense. He grew up in a house is Billesley which, for him, was peopled with strange characters. When I was a child I had a friend, he says. It was an old man who would play games with me. We would throw a ball or play hide and seek. This started when I was about five or six and it just didnt seem strange to me. He never spoke to me and I never talked about him to other people - to me he seemed like an imaginary friend. About ten years later I was looking through a family album and saw him again - it was my grandfather on my mums side who had passed over about seven years before I was born and had died in that very house. As he grew older, John frequently saw strangers in the house. But as he grew older, John realised that what was happening was out of the ordinary. His mother had a belief in the spirit world and accepted what he was seeing but he was nervous of telling other people for fear of ridicule. When I left school I got a job as an a p p r e n t i c e electrician in Kings Norton, he says, and I started seeing spirits there. I kept seeing two people in old dress. When I tried to dis-cover who they were I found out that a bomb had dropped on the site in the Second World War and these two people had been killed. I would often hear voices in my head, people trying to talk to me, but I didnt want to listen. It didnt really worry me but I didnt understand it. I got married and my wife at the time didnt really appreciate it so I just tried to block it all out. John continued with his daytime job, moving to Birmingham-based Lucas Aerospace. When orders in the defence industry began to dry up for Lucas, John was part of the group identifying non-defence uses for its products. He was so successful he was offered a job working with design students at Coventry Polytechnic. Once he was involved in training, he felt he had found his vocation. John travelled all over Europe and set up as a management consultant. He then took his current job creating development programmes with the Fire Service. In the meantime, in his mid 40s, he suddenly found a way through the fog of his spirit visits. I heard about a course for pyschic awareness with a guy called Philip Solomon and thought I would go along, he recalls. Sud-denly everything that had happened before made sense. I understood all about how it worked, the different ways spirits can communicate and how you can act as a medium for them. I also met my spirit guide - White Feather, an Apache Indian. John joined a group of mediums who work together to develop their skills, and finally felt strong enough to come out. I think I had always been afraid that people would think I was a freak but being with other people who understood made it all make sense. If you give people a communication it can be very emotional for them, he says. I believe very much in giving exactly what I get. You have a responsibility to be honest and truthful, but you also need to understand that people are feeling grief. John, now 52, is aware that many people fear or suspect spirit mediums. John and Willenhall-based Philip Solomon this month made the decision to demonstrate their skills in theatres - they held a show in Sedgley earlier this month and have two more planned for the Connaught Hotel in Wolver-hampton on October 29 and the Prince of Wales Theatre in Cannock on November 11. Mediums such as Colin Fry and Derek Acorah have today made psychic television and live shows big business. I have a full time job - I dont need to do this to make money, he says. I do it because I feel called to it. Many people misunder-stand Spiritualism. It is a church, it is a religion just like any other. So where does John see his own future? I enjoy my job and doing this. Both are about helping people to develop and move forward. If I am destined to do more of this, then it will happen. If you want to speak to John, he can be contacted on 07837 557829. | 
