What's The Worst That Can Happen?

By James McDonald

In 2006, I was told by a spirit guide that I would write a book. Yes, I see spirits. “That sounds good but what story had I to tell? Tell the story of how you came from the slums of Glasgow, pushed away your gifts of ‘sixth sense’ and rediscovered them as an adult.” Okay, from the slums of Glasgow to discovering that you’re a psychic in your late forties sounds good but the part in between might sound uninteresting. “Think about it,” I was told, “You will soon be given the opportunity to write.” My life was to follow two paths; communicating with spirit and learning to replace fear with love. My guidance came from two sources; spirit and dreams. My childhood had been a ‘lie’ and I came to realise that much of my adult life was a ‘lie’ also. I wasn’t quite the person that I thought I was. During my childhood I had been the victim of abuse from an adult who I trusted. Unfortunately, I continued with this habit as an adult and would have difficulty facing up to anything. I had two options: run, as I had been doing, or face the truth about myself. I opted for the latter. Today I do not acknowledge negativity. I learn from every experience and think positively. It does help somewhat when the guidance that I receive is ‘out of this world!’

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Jan 6, 2023
• ISBN: 9781398429710

Book preview

About the Author

James McDonald left school at 15 and spent most of his life working as a turner in engineering before returning to education and studying counselling. In 2010 he began working with vulnerable and often traumatised children. As well as his new-found knowledge the author used his experiences of his own childhood abuse to help guide children as well as adults. James does not acknowledge negativity but sees everything as a learning opportunity and passes this knowledge onto others at every opportunity. He believes strongly in the power of the mind and has the gift of clairvoyance as well as healing.

Dedication

I dedicate this book to my mate, Frank Cameron, the most courageous human being I ever had the privilege to know.

Copyright Information ©

James McDonald 2023

The right of James McDonald to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

All of the events in this memoir are true to the best of author’s memory. The views expressed in this memoir are solely those of the author.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781398429703 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781398429710 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2023

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

1 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5AA

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank all of the young people who I have worked with, for trusting me and for allowing me into your lives. It was a privilege.

I thank every spirit who has come to me and guided me from the other side. You were all instrumental in helping me to turn my life around.

I thank my 4 children who really are my best friends in life and my 9 grandchildren for helping to keep me young.

A special thank-you to my wife Sandie who has been with me through thick and thin and for putting up with me through it all. You really are my best friend.

I would like to thank everyone at Austin Macauley Publishers for believing in me and my work and for helping my dream to come true.

Introduction

In 2006, I was told by a spirit guide that I would write a book. Yes, I see spirits. Oh yes, I said, That sounds good, and looked forward to the day when I would write it, possibly giving me something to do in my retirement.

About three or four months before I even thought about picking up a pen to write, I was again told by spirit that not only would I write a book but that I should be thinking about ideas for it. Like what? I asked and received the following answer.

Tell the story of how you came from the slums of Glasgow, pushed away your gifts of ‘sixth sense’ and rediscovered those psychic gifts as an adult.

Okay, I thought, from the slums of Glasgow to discovering that you’re a psychic in your late 40s is quite good but the ‘bit’ in between could be quite boring to read I thought.

Think about it, I was told. You will soon be given the opportunity to write.

In January of 2007, I was made redundant from my job in engineering; an event that I had already been told by spirit was going to happen and my wife and I were offered a little flat to rent in a quiet area of Edinburgh which came to us unexpectedly. It was ideal and gave me the peace and quiet that I needed to write. The opportunity had arrived.

By this time, I had been made aware by spirit that my childhood had been a ‘lie’. I tried to remember it and was actually surprised at what I could recall. I couldn’t remember everything but spirit guided me where they could. I also received guidance through my dreams. As I began to recall more and more details about my life, I came to realise that much of my adult life was a ‘lie’ also. I wasn’t quite the person that I thought I was.

During my childhood I had been the victim of abuse from an adult who I trusted. When anything bad happened to me as a child, I would bury it away deep in my subconscious mind and pretend that it had never occurred at all. Unfortunately, I carried on with this habit as an adult and would have difficulty facing up to anything which made me feel uncomfortable. I had two options: run, as I had been doing, or face the truth about myself. I opted for the latter.

Writing this book has been part of a journey of discovery not only about myself but about other people also. I began by writing a book and in the process, I began to uncover the truth about myself. This book is the truth.

This book has been written using my real name and my wife has given permission to use her name. The names of any other people that you will read about have been changed.

Chapter 1

It was in 2007 that I wrote the aforementioned book and gave it the working title, The Message Boy. After plucking up enough courage, and it did take a lot of courage at that time, I sent it out to publishers and literary agents. I didn’t have a lot of success but one response that stuck in my mind was It’s a good story but we can’t take you on because you’re unknown.

Well, let me introduce myself. I’m the guy who endured a traumatic and abusive childhood, survived it and came out the other end well and truly screwed up.

Recognise me now? No? Take a look in the mirror. Do I remind you of anyone? Still no? Look at your mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, friends and relatives. In fact, look at everyone from colleagues to complete strangers in the street. Can you recognise me now? Yes? Maybe? I could be any one of you because, as we all know, I wasn’t the only one.

So when this work goes forward for publication, please don’t discard it with, We haven’t heard of you. You might even be ‘me’.

Of course, you being me and me being you is simply me drawing comparisons. No one will ever really know what my experiences were just as no one will ever know how you felt during any of your life experiences. We are all unique individuals. Don’t you just cringe when someone says to you, I know how you feel? No, they don’t. They know how they felt when they went through some similar episode in their lives but no one will ever know how you felt. Always remember, your experiences are completely unique to you and no one else, even if they did go through a similar or the same experience.

Reread the second paragraph above. …and came out the other end well and truly screwed up. Well, that was then and this is now. Approximately 20 years ago, I was given the opportunity to start repairing that lifelong damage and in the pages that follow, I will share with you how I did it. Repaired? Well, not completely. I’m aware that some of what happened to me has had such an effect that all I can do is improve myself. Today I’m a much stronger person than I was last week and last week I was stronger than I was the week before. Life isn’t about ticking boxes but more about learning as we go along. In fact, I no longer look upon myself as ‘screwed up’. That was me then; the victim. Thankfully, that person is no longer me. No, I am now an extremely strong human being, so strong that nothing negative ever happens to me. Everything that comes along is there to teach me something. So if I learn, how can that be negative?

However, I’m jumping ahead of myself here and so let’s go back to where it all started. But before I do, I’ll remind you that I was born with the gift of sixth sense. Sixth sense, psychic ability, clairvoyance, etc, call it what you will; I have it. Many people refer to what I experience as the paranormal but everything that I saw as a child was normal to me. It still is, it’s just that as an adult I can now differentiate as to what is and what isn’t ‘normal’. Let’s bear in mind here that what is normal to you isn’t normal to the next person. I’m afraid that we all have our own normal. For someone who just used that word five times in this paragraph isn’t ‘normal’ to me. I feel that it is one of those words that we use without really thinking about it.

Anyway, here’s a brief background introduction. As a wee boy of five years old, I used to run around the tenements of Kinning Park in Glasgow, Scotland where we lived, playing with my friends, a wee girl, whose name I can’t remember and a wee boy called Joseph. We used to run around the streets, the closes and the backcourts together and it was fantastic fun. The close was what we called the passage which led from the street to the stairs inside the building. One occasion when I was with my wee girlfriend in one of the tenement closes, we were standing together when a man came down the main stairs and stopped to look at us. We all seemed to stand still until this man unbuttoned his trousers and flashed his genitals at us! My wee pal suddenly screamed and I copied her before following her out of the close and running along to my own close and up the stairs to tell my mum. The downside was that I wasn’t allowed back out again and even worse, I never saw my little friend again.

So let’s leave that there for now while I tell you about Joseph. We used to do everything together, even inside our flat. He was always there even at night when I went to bed! I didn’t think to question that as a child. It was all ‘normal’ to me, remember? I would speak to my mum about him but she never said much. I think she knew what was going on. Anyway, my father got wind of this and one day he was coming along the street with a couple of his cronies while I was out playing with Joseph. What I didn’t know of course was that they couldn’t see Joseph. Well, I could see him so why couldn’t anyone else? When I think about it, it must have been some sight! Me playing and laughing with nobody! Anyway, the old man came after me and I ran up the stairs and into our flat. He’d obviously had a lot to drink or he would have caught me! I shut myself in a closet as he started ranting at my mother with her holding my screaming baby sister and my toddler brother crying too. Absolute pandemonium. I realised that something had to be done as there had been other incidents involving my old man, which I’ll tell you about later, and my home was not a safe place for me. That much I knew at the ripe old age of five.

Joseph, who you won’t be surprised to hear, was in that closet with me! I turned to him, put my finger to my lips and said, Shhhh! It’s all your fault that this is happening. Go away, Joseph. I didn’t really understand how it could be Joseph’s fault but I knew that it had something to do with him being there. And, unknown to me at that time, that was the moment when I pushed away my gift of sixth sense. However, every cloud has a silver lining. Through an awful lot of hard work, spirit eventually got back through to me but by then I was well into my 40s. They helped me to remember much of my childhood. Not the most pleasant of experiences as you’ll discover.

I lived in the old tenements that had long outgrown their use but were still needed to house the workforce of an industrial and grimy Glasgow. We couldn’t play in them without getting dirty, even rubbing up against the walls. When I was older, spirit asked me what my little girlfriend was wearing back then and I remembered, it was a white dress. Spotlessly clean. No way could that happen in that environment at that time. She had been sent from spirit to keep me safe from the flashing pervert. She was not the last spirit who was sent to help me. Why didn’t I scream? Maybe that was my ‘normal’. And Joseph? I was assured, around about 2009 that he was still around. A few days after that assurance, I was lying in bed and became aware that my bedroom door burst open but clairvoyantly, and into my room stormed Joseph full of life and full of fun, just as he had back in that old tenement in 1959. I had pushed him away but he hadn’t pushed me away.

So that is a brief introduction as to what happened in the beginning and as we go along, I’ll hopefully fill in the 40 odd years between these times.

Chapter 2

I came into this world at 10:40 pm on Monday the 14th of March 1955 at my Nana’s house in Penilee, Glasgow. Nana’s house was to play an important part in my childhood as my happiest memories were always from there. It always seemed to be sunny to me, even when it was raining. In years to come, I would forget about my younger brother and sister and run amok with my older cousins, Sean and Rab at Nana’s house. I realise now that it was my ‘safe place’.

My earliest memories of us living in our own place are from Kinning Park in Glasgow. We lived in a tenement in Portman Street near the Paisley Road Toll. It was a room and kitchen on the top floor or landing as we called it, and a room and kitchen were exactly that. We lived in the kitchen which doubled as a living room and I slept in the bedroom. I think that my parents slept in the living room.

I remember looking along our street to the hustle and bustle of the main road at the end of it, Paisley Road West, and thinking that it was another world away as I was only allowed to play just outside the close at the bottom of our stairs. Don’t go away from the close, my mum would say and as a child, I always did what I was told. Today, I still question myself as to why a boy at four or five years of age was allowed to play outside unsupervised. It’s certainly not something that I would have allowed my own children to do. But that was then and this is now.

It seemed to me that there were many others sharing our home. As well as Joseph, we had plenty of mice! We didn’t have a bath in our home but I remember Mum putting me in the kitchen sink once a week and scrubbing me spotless. That was my bath! At the back of the tenement was the backcourt, where the washing was hung out to dry. I wasn’t allowed in the backcourt, I don’t know why, I just wasn’t. I could go in with Mum if she was hanging washing out but not at any other time. Some of the women would leave their babies in prams there but my mum didn’t, she used the front street to let my baby brother or sister get some air and I would ‘check’ on them at regular intervals. I didn’t particularly notice the arrival of my younger brother into my world but I knew that he was there. I don’t think that we noticed or bothered about each other. The main kids in my life were my cousins, Sean and Rab who were both about two years older than me.

I can remember Mum bumping the big pram up all the stairs one at a time while I followed behind on foot. She must have been really fit because prams weren’t the lightweight vehicles back then that they are now! At the bottom of the stairs near the back of the close was the ‘dunny’. The dunny was a definite no-go area! If you went into the dunny, then the ‘Bogey-Man’ would get you! I’m not sure who told me that but every child in Glasgow knew it as a fact! I do, however, remember my mum telling me that, there’s no such thing as the Bogey-Man, so that rules her out. What was the dunny for? Winchin’! Many a Glasgow romance was kindled in the dunny! Well, I suppose that you had to go somewhere! I don’t know what dunnies were officially used for. Storing coal? Maybe.

The one thing that I can remember which caused me great excitement was the arrival of the ragman. As I grew up, many of the people that I met from out with Glasgow called them rag and bone men but to us, he was the ragman. You knew that he was in your street because he announced his arrival by blowing on an old bugle and then he’d shout, Any old rags! He would push his wooden cart laden with the rags that he had collected into the street as I watched from the window high above him. You would take any old clothes that your mother gave you and exchange them for a balloon, a mask or some kind of small, cheap toy. I would beg my mum for some old clothes to take down the stairs to him and could only look down from our window in disappointment if we had none to give that day. If we did have some old clothes to get rid of, then I’d be bursting with excitement as I hurried down the stairs to see what he would give me in exchange. I remember getting a balloon and a mask in one go! I don’t think that we were poor or deprived, apart from maybe deprived of proper housing. I wasn’t a spoiled child and therefore, I could enjoy the small trinkets that I got from the ragman.

I certainly didn’t feel deprived of anything at that age and always had good toys for birthdays and Christmas such as an electric train set which was built up by adding to it every week. I remember a wooden toy yacht that I had. It was red with white canvass sails. My dad took me to a pond once to sail it. I remember being worried that it would sail out to the middle of the pond and I wouldn’t get it back. That worry spoiled my enjoyment. There was a small metal ring on the front of it to feed the string through with which you could pull it back to you but he didn’t show me this at first. Why? I don’t know except to say that he probably enjoyed watching me worry. He had some strange ways of enjoying himself at my expense. I didn’t go near the edge of the pond as I was afraid of water. I grew up with fears of water and of heights.

As a man in my early 50s, I remember walking along the cliffs at Arbroath on the North East coast of Scotland. I was alone and it was a very windy day. As I looked down over the edge at the waves crashing against the cliffs, I suddenly froze. I was absolutely terrified and felt rooted to the spot. As I composed myself and took a step back, my immediate thoughts were What the hell just happened there?

Chapter 3

So what did happen there? Let’s return to my childhood. One of the earliest memories that I have is being held over the edge of a bridge with a river flowing below me; a long way below me. It was my old man who was doing the holding. He had picked me up and held me over the edge of the bridge high above this river and I screamed for all I was worth. I was absolutely terrified, to say the least. As I screamed in panic, he would laugh out loud hysterically and this amused him so much that he kept repeating the process. As I sit typing this, I can still hear his maniacal laughter even above my terrified screams. Even today my heart beats faster as I recall the whole horrific episode. I must have been aged around two or three at the time and I vividly remember what I was wearing; short trousers, a little coat and sandals. Now, one might think that I could remember the clothing from old photographs but I have no photographs from my childhood. In fact, I have no photographs with any of my birth family.

Years later, when I reported all of the abuse to the police, who treated it seriously, the old man still denied all of it. I haven’t quite told it all yet, and I will in these pages but after reading that episode, I’m sure you’ll agree that not only was the man insane but he was a coward. It takes a lot of courage to admit to such behaviour but he didn’t possess any.

But let’s stick with these water issues of mine for a little bit longer. Some years ago, I took my two oldest grandchildren to the cinema to see the movie, Madagascar, a very funny (In my opinion!) cartoon, in which animals were put on a ship that eventually ran aground in Madagascar. As the ship grounded on the beach, the view for us was of the hull of the ship running aground where the viewer was on the ground at the bottom of the hull. I instantly recoiled in terror and was left breathless by this scene while my grandsons sat there happily munching their popcorn! By this time in my life, I was beginning to question everything that I didn’t understand, with the help of spirit guides. Once I was alone, I thought about the movie and also remembered being slightly afraid during my mid-20s while working abroad at the Messerschmitt aircraft factory in Hamburg, West Germany, as the country was known at that time. Part of our commute to work was to cross the River Elbe in a small ferry and I remember the big ships coming in and out of the port of Hamburg. Being in a small boat and passing these huge ships at water level was, for some inexplicable reason, quite scary for me. I left that memory where it was at the time, 1981–82 and got on with my life. However, going even further back, to around the time where I was held over that bridge by my old man, I can also remember being afraid of crossing the River Clyde in Glasgow on the Govan Ferry.

A quick think about it and the fears I had might coincide with being held over the edge of a bridge by a deranged lunatic, however, my gut feeling was that something wasn’t right about that so I did what I did quite a lot back then when I had rediscovered my gift; I asked spirit for an explanation thinking that this fear was probably from something so horrific that I had buried the memory away. Believe me when I say that I know there are episodes from my childhood that I can’t remember, no matter how hard I try. My feeling is that if I can’t recall a specific episode of abuse, then it must have been pretty horrendous. So ask I did and was very surprised at the answer spirit gave to me.

Not only was this fear of ship’s hulls, not from the old man’s antics but they were from a different time. A previous life no less! Our lives are guided, to an extent, from what I call ‘the spirit world’. I believe that we are all spirits living lives as humans on this planet in order to learn and experience things that we can’t as spirits in our own environment, however, more of that later. Apparently, I was living a life as a female