Gareth Roberts, from Birchwood, writes about events off the beaten track in Warrington. This month he talks about his experiences with spiritualist David Traynor

A DAVID Traynor performance goes like this.

He enters the stage theatrically, wearing a smile so huge it almost obscures his eyes.

He engages in a little Butlins style patter with the audience, as if he is compere at a talent show, except all the guest performers are dead.

He explains the rules: “I am a medium who comes at you direct,” he says, by which he means he will select those in the audience he wants to speak to, rather than solicit volunteers.

This, he will later tell me, is to prove his authenticity.

He also tells the audience that they may only respond with a yes or no to anything he says to them. This is also to prove his authenticity.

And then he’s off. Standing stage left he begins to speak with ghosts/spirits who are generally stage right.

It is a strange sight because we cannot see or hear the ghosts: they have chosen David Traynor as their only conduit to the living and subsequently it looks a lot like a man stood on a stage talking to no one.

After a brief chat with an invisible (to us, not to David) ghost, David casts an arm out to the audience and says: “I want to go over there.”

One of David’s assistants will trot over with a radio mic and instruct the person being pointed at to hold and to speak clearly into it.

The exchange between David and a typical punter might go like this:

David: “If I were to say I have someone with a motherly, or grandmotherly shape would that mean anything to you, yes or no?”

Audience member: “Yes.”

David: “And that person was taken to the other side quite sudden?”

Audience member: “Yes.”

David: “And you’ve been a bit under the weather?”

Audience member: “Yes.”

David: “And you’ve got a party or a holiday coming up?”

Audience member: “Yes.”

David: “And you’ve done some redecorating recently?”

Audience member: “Yes.”

David: “Well she just wants to say she misses you tonnes, but it’s great here on the other side and she’s dead proud of you, thanks very much, god bless.”

To be perfectly honest, I am quite surprised by the content of these interactions.

When I’m dead, if I’m given the chance to communicate with my bereaved family, I hope I’ll be able to think of something more interesting to say than: “I have noticed that you have redecorated.”

I raise this with David when we have a quick chat after the evening is complete, and it turns out that the reason the dead are so banal, is to prove David Traynor’s authenticity.

Given that David’s audience is well on side from the start, I think both he and the dead could afford to cut loose a bit and instead of telling the audience things they already know about themselves, tell them things they don’t know....the meaning of life, whether there is a heaven or a hell, where exactly you left the instructions to the microwave before you popped off.

Also, the dead let David down a bit at times. Sometimes the answer is ‘no’.

And suddenly David looks very unhappy.

“Thank you, and I believe you too” he says before going to confer with the ghost again that he has: a) got the right person and b) is telling them something pertinent to them.

When the dead are capable of speaking with such clarity in one instance (‘I have noticed that you are currently having car trouble – the clutch’) I don’t know why they are sometimes so vague (‘I want you to talk to a woman over there, certainly at that table, possibly the one with glasses, possibly the one in yellow’).

It must be very frustrating for David.

Towards the end of the evening David says he wants to talk to the man with dark hair and glasses scribbling in his notebook.

I am handed a microphone. David then tells me my grandad is here (not my very recently deceased one, that would have been incredibly upsetting, but the one who died before I was born).

And my grandad tells David several things about me which I have not posted on social media, nor disclosed to any wide group of people.

They are quite vague things, and sometimes I want to say ‘nearly’ and ‘sort of’ instead of ‘yes’ but ultimately they are correct.

A cynic might say they are just the educated guesses and deductions of a man who is very good at reading people and very good at working a room.

But I like to think it was my granddad, who I have never met, and who has waited three decades to deliver a touching message from the afterlife: “I died suddenly and you have more than one job.”

“Yes.”

Well, sort of.

  • Gareth was watching David Traynor at Burtonwood Community Centre. David’s Earth Angel tour continues throughout the month, for details visit davidtraynor.com/index.php/davids-tour