EPISODE 013: Arthur And Me with Ann Treherne

This week, I have an intriguing guest on the show.  This lady comes from a corporate background in banking and finance.  She was the CEO of a subsidiary company of a large international bank.  As we entered the Millennium in the year 2000, she left the corporate world, having encountered premonitions which she describes as being ‘dramatic and traumatic’.  She is now an International Award-Winning Speaker, Tutor and Author of new book, Arthur And Me – the true story of how Sir Arthur Conan Doyle communicated from beyond the grave.  Don’t miss this episode with guest, Ann Treherne, Chair of The Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Centre, Edinburgh, Scotland!

Episode Resources

• The Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Centre Tel: 0131 625 0700
• The Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Centre Email:  [email protected]
• PURCHASE Arthur And Me by Ann Treherne

About Psychic Matters Podcasts

Ann Théato, CSNUt, Psychic, Medium and Spiritual Tutor, investigates psychic development, mediumship techniques, and paranormal science, so that you can come to understand your own innate psychic ability and expand your knowledge, whilst learning to develop a curious mind.

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PM 013

Hi everyone, my name is Ann Théato and welcome to Episode 13 of the Psychic Matters Podcast!  This week, I have an intriguing guest on the show.  This lady comes from a corporate background in banking and finance. She was the CEO of a subsidiary company of a large international bank.  As we entered the Millennium in the year 2000, she left the corporate world, having encountered premonitions which she describes as being ‘dramatic and traumatic.  She is now an International Award-Winning Speaker, Tutor and Author of a new book, which she is going to be telling you all about.  Don’t miss this episode!

Settle in, grab a coffee, and if you’re ready, let’s begin. 

You’ll Learn

• What a premonition is and what it feels like to have one

• Why premonitions tend to be about impending doom and disaster

• What the premonition process entails

• Why several people see snippets of the same premonition

• How the human mind is capable of seeing premonitions

• How a Psychic Investigator works

• Why Psychic Investigators work in pairs

• What a vigil entails during a Psychic investigation

• The importance of The Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Centre, Edinburgh

• How Sir Arthur Conan Doyle communicated from beyond the grave

• The importance of The Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Centre, Edinburgh

• How to find out more in a professional environment

• The benefits of seeking guidance for disturbing premonitions

TRANSCRIPT

Hi everyone, my name is Ann Théato and welcome to Episode 13 of the Psychic Matters Podcast!  This week, I have an intriguing guest on the show.  This lady comes from a corporate background in banking and finance. She was the CEO of a subsidiary company of a large international bank.  As we entered the Millennium in the year 2000, she left the corporate world, having encountered premonitions which she describes as being ‘dramatic and traumatic.  She is now an International Award-Winning Speaker, Tutor and Author of a new book, which she is going to be telling you all about.  Don’t miss this episode!

Settle in, grab a coffee, and if you’re ready, let’s begin.

Ann Théato
Ann Treherne, welcome to Psychic Matters.

Ann Treherne
Thank you, Ann, it’s a pleasure to be here.  Thank you for having me. 

Ann Théato
It’s great to talk to you. So, I’m going to let you introduce yourself to the listeners and let you tell them who you are and what you do.

Ann Treherne
OK, well hello everyone my name is Ann, Ann Treherne and I’m Chair of the Arthur Conan Doyle Centre in Edinburgh, Scotland. The Arthur Conan Doyle Centre is a spiritual centre for the mind body spirit, but we aim to be a resource for the whole community. So, we have yoga, tai chi, and meditation, but we also do things like art, music and things that will encourage the general public into our building.  But my background, before all of that, my background is in the corporate world, in banks and building societies, finance basically. And I was a career woman, I was a workaholic, I was very driven and determined and successful, and indeed I got right to the top in that industry. And that was unusual, a woman in a man’s world getting right to the very top but I was so driven and determined  that I crashed through many glass ceilings and I’m sure there is many listeners listening to this, identifying with that. So I was so focused and determined and driven, and there is no room in my life for anything else apart from work.  My world, however, came crashing down around me because of premonitions and so that is what changed my role in life I suppose from being the career woman onto this strange path of psychic, mediumship and the paranormal.

Ann Théato
Wow, and so tell us about these premonitions, so that’s a big thing to have happened to someone who was like you say, a career woman, workaholic and then did this suddenly happen or is this something that happened to you throughout your childhood?

Ann Treherne
They were dramatic but they were also traumatic when the latter came true. I have been a psychic investigator for over 20 years now, and I know now that premonitions tend to happen in your hypnagogic or hypnopopic state.  Now that’s the in between stage when you’re either falling asleep at night or waking up in the morning but that didn’t happen for me. For me, my premonitions happened when I was busy, when I was at work, when I was driving my car or sitting at my desk, so this is a new phenomenon for me. It was weird, it was frightening, and, as I say, traumatic when they eventually came true. And they started off as a flash of an image in my head, just an odd flash of an image, not a very pleasant image, it was of blood, and dead bodies. And I discounted it as soon as it flashed into my head and wondered where it had come from, because I don’t like horror films or scary movies, I hate things like that and hadn’t seen anything like that so couldn’t understand why this image would suddenly drop into my head.

Ann Théato
And where were you at the time when that image came in.  Where were you?  Were you at the photocopier?  Where were you?

Ann Treherne
It started when I was driving my car.  The first image happened when I was driving my car. And in my past life I am also a qualified driving instructor, so when I say I’m driving my car I was driving a speed on the motorway, it wasn’t as if I was daydreaming or dawdling along the road. I was focused on my driving, so it was odd that such an image should drop into my head at that time.

Ann Théato
Oh my goodness, and before we go forward and explore that was, I just want to go back. You were this corporate businesswoman very focused on your career, and you say that you’ve been a Psychic Investigator for the past 20 years, did you become a Psychic Investigator once you had premonitions or did you have premonitions and then became a Psychic Investigator because of it?

Ann Treherne
I became a Psychic Investigator because of it, simply because I was actually traumatized when this premonition came through and I didn’t know what to do about it. I had to find an authoritative source who would help me figure out what was going on in my head and why I should have this premonition of what was a national tragedy. People were dead. Children were dead. And I felt responsible for that so I had to find someone to help me and I found Professor Archie Roy of Glasgow University, Emeritus Professor of Astronomy but in his spare time he was a Psychical Investigator, a ghost buster and he was President also, of the Society for Psychical Research in London at that time and he had set up his own organisation in Scotland, the Scottish Society of Psychical Research.  So when I tracked him down so he could help me with my premonitions, he promptly recruited me to his organization and suggested that I would be a good Psychical investigator. Now I can honestly say I knew absolutely nothing about that at that time, I just thought it was strange that he should suggest this, but I later found out that he had method in his madness. The reason he wanted me was, apart from my premonitions, was the fact that I lived in Edinburgh and that organization was in Glasgow. So they needed someone in Edinburgh to assist their one and only investigator that they had in Edinburgh because they hunt in pairs. You have to undertake your cycle investigations in pairs. It is unsafe for both you and the client to go on your own, so you need a note taker. So I was recruited as the notes take her back then.

Ann Théato
What sort of things, what cases did you work on? What kind of things were you investigating?

Ann Treherne
All sorts of weird and wonderful things but I tell in the book of one of the first examples of being invited to go on a vigil. But I didn’t know what a vigil was at that time. But the vigil is basically staking out a haunted house or a haunted location where the team of cyclical investigators go en masse to a certain location and they basically stake it out. So they will be allocated different rooms to sit in. So this was one of my first experiences and I was surprised how scared I was. I’m not any longer, but as a novice investigator, going into what is reputedly a haunted house and sit with strangers in the dark throughout the night until the dawn was a scary experience for me.  But since then I have encountered many weird and wonderful experiences.

Ann Théato
Oh my goodness it sounds absolutely fascinating. Now, earlier in that piece of information you just gave us about being a psychic investigator you said, “… in the book I talk about this …”.   Tell us about this book.

Ann Treherne
Oh, well the book is called Arthur And Me and it’s about Arthur Conan Doyle and as it says on front of the book, it’s the true story of Arthur Conan Doyle communicating from beyond the grave, which culminated in the foundation of the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Centre. And so that’s basically what’s in the book. It talks about me eventually realizing that Arthur Conan Doyle was communicating with me and eventually accepting that he had a job for me.  He had a purpose, an aim, and that aim was to find a building and set it up as the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle centre and that’s what I did. So the book tells that story of me starting off in corporate life as a career woman, an executive at the top of financial services and crashing out that life because of traumatic premonitions, finding Professor Archie Roy who I’ve actually stalked until he assisted me with my visions, my premonitions that I didn’t know what to do about, recruited me and I then started to develop my own psychic mediumistic abilities by setting up at home circle. And that’s when I encountered Arthur Conan Doyle.

Ann Théato
This is incredible.  I want to unpack it a little bit if I may, Ann and just investigate myself a little bit more about the detail of this.  I think we have to go back to the premonitions that suddenly started to appear when you were driving along the motorway and you had this traumatic image of bodies and blood. You didn’t know what that was at the time, and then obviously it was a premonition, so it came true. So how did you find out that it had come true and how did that sort of  work out, that premonition, from when you first had it, to when it came true, and then the second question after that will be Ann, I can understand how you met Professor Archie Roy but I’m interested and I’m sure the listeners will be interested in how you explained to him what you experienced.

Ann Treherne
Okay, so the images started, the first one, when I was driving the car and it was this image of blood and bodies.  And the images continued over the following weeks and they became more detailed and more frequent and as well as the images, there was this overwhelming desire, this urge that just could not be satisfied, to do something or tell someone. And it was driving me mad. It was just driving me nuts because it kept going on and on and on and each time I would get the premonition and of course I didn’t know what it was at the time, but each time I would get these visions, I got a bit more information and a bit more information, along with this urge to do something or tell someone.  And so one morning, as I drove into work, into our head office building at that time, which was a large building, a large open plan building, and of course being the workaholic I was always there for anyone else and I walked through this sea of desks one morning, no one else there, but I passed through the training department on route to my office which was at the far end of the building and there sitting at her desk, was the Head of Training and Development. She was obviously in early too.  And on a whim, I just asked her if she was free at lunchtime because I just wanted to talk to someone. Now I think she thought there was something wrong, there was something uncharacteristic of me to say to anyone that I needed to talk to someone, but she took me at my word, and we met in the pub.  So I told her that I had seen these visions in my head and I just needed to tell someone about it. So I told her I could see a gunman and he was walking through a building shooting people and when I think back now, if someone had told me that in the pub I think I would’ve called the men in white coats to come and take her away.

Ann Théato
Yes, you’ve been working too hard,

Ann Treherne
Exactly, she must’ve thought I’d lost my mind or yes, work had got to me eventually.  But she took me at my word, and I swore her to secrecy. At that point she wants to tell the police, but I said I couldn’t tell the police because I didn’t know where it was. I did know that it was going to happen in Scotland and not England. But I didn’t know where it was going to be. She decided that she thought she knew why I was getting this information and that it was our building, our head office building, and that a gunman was going to come and shoot everybody in our building. But, of course, I knew it wasn’t that, I would have recognized our building. I didn’t recognize where this was.  I just knew that a gunman was going to come and shoot people in a building whilst they were sitting at their desks.

Ann Théato
Oh my goodness, so what did you do then?  She said go to the police and you said no and then you went to Professor Archie Roy?

Ann Treherne
No, not at that point because it hadn’t happened then.  So, after I told her and I swore her to secrecy because one of her other solutions was, I think because she was so convinced that it was our building that was going to be the subject of attack, she, her solution was that we should go and tell the executive management, the Board of Directors. Now that really freaked me out because, of course I had this very successful career, I had got right to the top and suddenly it was about to be diminished.

Ann Théato
It was about to crumble.

Ann Treherne
Exactly. By her deciding that she should tell our executive management that one of their senior managers was having these visions and I could just see myself being dismissed on the spot or burned at the stake as a witch, so my reputation, and indeed the reputation of the organization of which I worked, would have been ridiculed somewhat, to think that a senior manager was having these thoughts, these premonitions.

Ann Théato
I think especially at that time, because OK it’s a lot more talked about now, but this was how many years ago Ann?

Ann Treherne
Yes this was more than 20 years ago

Ann Théato
Yes exactly so all of those things, I mean I can’t imagine the pressure you are under at the time

Ann Treherne
Well that’s right, and as I’ve mentioned before, a woman in a man’s world getting right to the top and being a senior manager and being very successful in that industry, took a lot of doing and so my position would have become completely untenable had any suggestion that this career woman was suddenly having these visions, these premonitions.

Ann Théato
Yes because you also stand for other women don’t you and you don’t want to be seen as the hysteria.  Other women that will come after you to take those positions.

Ann Treherne
Exactly.  And I’m pleased to see that there are more women in senior positions now. Still not enough. But it’s becoming much more acceptable now than it certainly was then.

Ann Théato
And so I interrupted you a little earlier when you were going to say what you did then so what happen next?

Ann Treherne
After I told her, and swore her to secrecy, and convinced her not to tell our Board of Directors, the urge to do something and tell someone was gone and so were the premonitions, so were the visions, and I went back to normal and it was almost as if it hadn’t happened and it just completely disappeared and I suppose I forgot about it and I just went back to work as normal. Until a few days later. And I was working in Glasgow at that time, and my car had been parked in one of the multi-story car parks and as I walked back to it later that evening, put my key in the ignition, and the radio busted to life, and that’s when I heard it.  There had been a shooting.  In a school in Scotland. And people were dead.  Children were dead.  And I felt it was all my fault.  So I was completely traumatised by that experience.  As you might imagine.

Ann Théato
I can hear it in your voice I can still hear the emotion in your voice as you speak.

Ann Treherne
And yes, you are correct, you will still hear the emotion in my voice because I get emotional each time I talk about it because it still affects me even now, even to  this day so I cannot even imagine what the parents of those children have been going through all of this time.

Ann Théato
Thank you for sharing that with us Ann and being so candid about it. What have you learned about the premonition process where we can suddenly get this kind of chink of light into the future when we catch a glimpse, but we can’t pin down what it is?  Has that happened to you since or what do you think that is?   How do we do that?  How is the human mind capable of seeing those premonitions?

Ann Treherne
So the book tells of further premonitions and some of my thinking on it. Now I have to put the disclaimer upfront here to say no one actually knows, so there are various theories on this and so as you might imagine, I’ve analysed my own experience back to front, inside out, to try and figure out what happened, what was I supposed to do about it, can you change it, can you interfere with the future as they say.  So I speak about some of my theories in the book and indeed, when I tracked down Professor Archie Roy and he helped me with the trauma that I was going through at that time and he said, you know it wasn’t your fault, nothing you could’ve done about it and that there were others who had received snippets of the same premonition. He said I had more than most because I had most of the detail. But crucially, the detail that I didn’t have, was that it was a school.  Had I known that it was a school then perhaps I could’ve done something about it, so that crucial bit of evidence I didn’t have. But he explained to me that, he said that no one knows why premonitions happen. And he also said that time is not linear, it is almost modular, so it doesn’t appear as a line that says to the left-hand side was yesterday to the right-hand side is tomorrow and in the centre is currently today the present. Time is not like that, but if you take that analogy he said it’s almost as if people get transported up the line and you get a quick flash of an image of something that’s about to happen and you are transported back down to the present. Now that doesn’t physically happen but that’s how he explained it, as if you are allowed to see this flash of something that’s further up the line. Now he also said that premonitions tend to be about pending doom and disaster. He said they are never about happy things and he said it’s almost as if an early warning signal goes out and people that are sensitive enough can pick it up or they can pick up elements of it and he said if we were able to piece together all the different elements that everyone picks up you could perhaps make up the full picture, but of course what normally happens is that people dismiss it and it’s only after the event that we come forward and say oh actually I knew that was going to happen and of course that’s no use in evidential terms for psychical research.  My story was more unique to him, more interesting to him because, I had confided in someone beforehand. And that wasn’t a friend, it was a work colleague, who I knew but there was no suggestion of collusion, we weren’t that friendly, so he had independent corroboration of the premonition in my case.

Ann Théato
Wow, I can’t wait to read the book it’s fascinating the concept of time and why we are able to just get a piece of it and like you say, often they are about doom or something traumatic and, I do understand that. I remember in January, saying to my daughter something has happened. It feels like a tsunami but it’s not a tsunami, something in the world has happened and it feels terrible and she was like, oh you’re nuts, just pour me some cornflakes.  And then of course, what was happening was the whole virus was coming through the world, and so on some level I could pick it up energetically that something huge of big importance had happened somewhere, which was going to affect people. But not like yours where you see these visions and it must’ve been very traumatic but you know, listening to what you say, you took all the responsibility you could with the information you had at the time, to try to find out what that was, share it with a colleague, even though you were putting your career on the line and you own reputation on the line by sharing that, so it feels like you did everything you could within your power to try and get some advice.

Ann Treherne
Yes, I did, and the logical brain says that. And it says that to me today. Analytically there was nothing more I could’ve done, I wish I could have, but nevertheless the emotion of the case, the incident, stays with me and, strangely enough, only in writing the book did I realize that I had made a colleague complicit in this scenario by confiding in her. So, I realized in writing the book that she must’ve felt just as guilty as I did because I had given her all the information beforehand to. It’s an intriguing set of circumstances and perhaps in the future, as we develop our sixth sense, our psychic, mediumistic, our  intuitive ability, whatever you want to call it, if we develop that further, perhaps in future people will be able to have more practical interventions, will have this early warning signal that they know exactly what’s going to happen and be able to stop it.

Ann Théato
Exactly, and it’s only by you being brave enough to talk about that experience and share it with us here on this podcast and talk about it in your book, it’s only by you going through that can we teach other people that it’s OK these things do happen. This is real, this is not imagined stuff, this is not us making it up.

Ann Treherne
Yes that’s correct.

Ann Théato
Yeah, and so people like Professor Archie Roy who are working so hard on all this phenomena and trying to work out how do we handle that, what is the best for the future, so I think it is bringing it into the light isn’t it  for everybody and saying you know, it’s okay premonitions do actually happen  they are real, they are not made up fiction.

Ann Treherne
Absolutely, and I have the accolade of having my forward written by Professor Chris Rowe of Northampton University but he is also currently the President of the Society for Psychical Research and in his Forward, he talks about the fact that there is many more people than we actually realize that have these experiences and so one of the purposes of setting up the Arthur Conan Doyle Centre was to create a large institution, a beacon of shining light, which I hope it is, somewhere, some sanctuary for people to go to, people like me.  And as I said there are more of us than we actually realise that have these experiences and don’t know what to do about it.  So I hope that the in setting up the Arthur Conan Doyle Centre, if nothing else, it provides that purpose, that sanctuary, that place of knowledge and understanding and resource for people who have these premonitions, to find out more about it in a professional environment.

Ann Théato
Fantastic, see, so it was all meant to be is that you could help so many people through the centre. Are you able to tell us a little bit, without giving away too much in the book, are you able to tell us a little bit about how the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Centre became established or, you said that he appeared to you, can you talk about that without giving too much away?

Ann Treherne
Yes of course, so as well as becoming a Psychical Investigator to research and find out more about this premonitions, I also set up my own home circle for mediumistic development because it was excellent sitting with the lecturers, the academics, the scientists, in The Scottish Society of Psychical Research and I remain a member, and that gave me an excellent background and grounding into some of the theories of how these things come about, but it wasn’t helping me with the premonition I had received and what practically I could do about it and what should I do if it happens again.  And into each professor Archie Roy warned me that it was likely to happen again and that was a frightening thought at that time.  So I wanted to be more prepared, I wanted to get a better handle on what was happening in my head, so I decided to join various classes and workshops around the country when I could find them, and again, as is my want, nothing was happening fast enough for me, so I set up my own home circle just with a few friends, to sit and develop our own psychic, mediumistic intuitiveness, whatever you want to call it, and  see if anything would happen. 

Now, I set up one after the other in my home and each one descended into talking shops and they were just not as focused as I wanted them to be. So, I was about to give up and think this is a pointless exercise when, I heard in my head, try, try, try again. And third time lucky, and this time we will tell you who to get in your circle and they did.  Started flashing up information, now in my head, telling me who the people were that I was to recruit for my circle. So I did that, and we began sitting. And we also hired a space so that it wasn’t at home and it didn’t have the interruptions that home life does and so we hired a space in the building to sit, the six of us. And so it was as we were sitting that this man appeared to me and I just described him as an elderly man, he was a large man, he had nice, kind, friendly eyes.  He felt like a grandfather to me and so in my mediumship, I was trying to give him away as a message to one of the sitters in my circle and none of my circle recognized him and that’s how it started. And that’s how I later realized that this was Arthur Conan Doyle, but he came across, and I’m hesitating to say, as a very insignificant character to start off with. But over the weeks he dripped in clue after clue after clue, over several weeks, eventually revealing his character. And it was only when we pieced together each piece of evidence that he left us with, that we realized this is Arthur Conan Doyle. And of course then there is the questioning, certainly in my mind you know. Throughout the book you will find that I am a very logical, practical person so, I wanted the evidence, I wanted the confirmation. Was this really Arthur Conan Doyle?  And so I get it, the book tells how I look for confirmation all the way through the evidence and I get that, so that’s how he revealed himself to us.

And I would add one other thing. If, I feel that was a clever way of him introducing himself to me and to the circle because if he had turned up in a our circle in my visions and said hello, I am sir Arthur Conan Doyle, my immediate reaction would’ve been, no you’re not, I’ve just made that up in my head from somewhere.  So I think I would’ve dismissed him if he has suddenly turned up and revealed himself as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I would’ve thought that that was incredulous.

Ann Théato
It’s very interesting that he came, as you say, and presented himself as so insignificant in the initial stages, for a man who was so significant and who had achieved so much in his life, I find that fascinating.

Ann Treherne
Yes so do I.  And I feel obviously, I never met the man, he was born 100 years almost exactly before me, but I feel I know his character. But that’s from a sensory perception. And so I know he’s pretty arrogant, so it must’ve taken a lot for him to appear just as if he was an ordinary man, which is why I, wrongly, came to the conclusion that oh he must’ve been somebody’s grandfather because that’s how he appeared to me, but as he stop dripping in the clues, his character, his, well let’s just say he’s not particularly a modest man, so that eventually came through his clues and the evidence that he started feeding in through the circle. And at one point, my group were absolutely concerned that this man was here to communicate with me and not with them, even though I kept trying to give him away.  Every week I was trying to give him away to someone who would except information and every week they didn’t. But one week he told me that “I am a Knight of the Realm”.  And I thought that clinches it for me, I certainly don’t know anyone who was a Knight of the Realm and so he is indeed of course, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and when we eventually pieced together all the clues that he had given me over several weeks, it was one of the members of my group is a librarian, and it was she who pieced all the clues together and said, I think this is Arthur Conan Doyle. What I don’t know is whether he was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle or not so strangely enough that was the only piece of evidence that, none of us, I’m embarrassed to say, knew whether he was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle or not at the time.

Ann Théato
Yes. Wow. Are you able to tell us anything about, I don’t want you to give anything away about the book, but, when you are saying he is leaving clues, was that about the things that he had done in his life? I know that he was once an ophthalmologist, or he was a physician, a surgeon was it clues like that?

Ann Treherne
Absolutely correct yes. As I say he started as an ordinary man which no one recognized, so I sent him away. And then next week he came back and he showed me Surgeon’s Hall in Edinburgh. Now, I live in Edinburgh, so I recognised Surgeon’s Hall so knew it when he showed me this vision of Surgeons Hall, and along with that he gave me this impression that he was a doctor and I knew that he was a doctor.  Now again, my logical brain stepped in all the time, and that’s one of the obstacles I would say to mediumship, is, you need to switch the brain off and not analyse too much and just accept what you get. I still have difficulty with that. So, when he showed me Surgeons Hall and I had two people in my circle with National Health Service backgrounds – one was a Psychiatric Nurse and the other one was a Social Worker and I felt sure that Jim, who was the Psychiatric Nurse must have worked at some point in Surgeon’s Hall, he would have worked alongside various doctors and I felt sure therefore, that this message, this man must have been for Jim because he was showing me Surgeon’s Hall.  Now Jim didn’t know him from Adam, and obviously hadn’t met him, wrong time for him again, but that was some of the clues that he dropped in.  Other times he showed me Edinburgh University, which of course he attended Edinburgh University, and I should say also that in Surgeon’s Hall, he served there, he served as Professor Joe Bell, Dr. Joe Bell’s Assistant in the College of Surgeon’s in Surgeon’s Hall and of course Sherlock Holmes is based on Joe Bell’s character.  So, you know, when you piece together all the information, all the clues, it all added up.  But of course each piece of information that came each week, no-one would accept it from me because I was trying to give this as a message and so it was dismissed. Each week the piece of evidence that he gave was dismissed.  And so another example was when he showed me Edinburgh University.  Again, I recognised that building and along with that, he showed me a shelf of books, just a bookcase with a shelf of books and I knew also it came with the information that he was an author and he was an author of not just one book but several books. So again, my logic kicks in, because we had a librarian sitting in my circle and would you believe a librarian from one of the universities in Edinburgh. So again, I thought well this man is obviously an author and he is known to the librarian because he’s written several books, so she must’ve met him she must know who this was. But again, that was dismissed because she didn’t recognize him.  She didn’t know who he was. So these clues all added up before eventually he showed me Sherlock Holmes and I have to say by that time I thought I was going really mad because I couldn’t understand why I would suddenly start seeing fictitious characters in my mediumship. But that amongst other things eventually clinched it. But all these clues add up to, this could possibly be Arthur Conan Doyle.

Ann Théato
It’s incredible isn’t it so incredible?

Ann Treherne
It is, it is and even although the library and added all these clues together for me and said, I think you could be communicating with Arthur Conan Doyle.  I’m not sure I totally believed it at that point.  The clues did add up, that was true, it did make sense, but as I’ve mentioned before, throughout this book, I don’t take anything at face value. I always look for the confirmation, for the evidence and so I got it and eventually accepted that indeed it was Arthur Conan Doyle Centre that was communicating.

Ann Théato
And Ann does he still communicate with you?

Ann Treherne
Yes, he does. He doesn’t have to prove who he is any more and he was, I believe he was communicating for a purpose, and indeed that purpose was to set up the Arthur Conan Doyle Centre and that has been achieved.  That process took between five and six years of communication from him before we eventually set up the Arthur Conan Doyle Centre so that was that aim. However, his aim in life, in his life I mean, was to promote spiritualism and to get his message across to the general public, in fact to the world, that there was life after death. And I believe he is still doing that. And I don’t believe I am unique in that he is only communicating with me. I don’t think that at all. I think he will use any vehicle that will get his message across. But I believe he is still doing that. Yes so, he is still around very much around.

Ann Théato
My goodness, so, please tell everybody how and where they can buy this incredible book that you’ve just written about this whole experience.

Ann Treherne
Yes of course. well it’s available on Amazon, it’s easier to find on www.amazon.co.uk but it’s called Arthur and Me by me, Ann Treherne, so you will find it there, but you will also find it at the Arthur Conan Doyle Centre.com and go on line and have a look at our marvellous building because that was his purpose in revealing himself and then starting to tell us that we were to find a building, so if you go online you will find the building that he led us to and wanted it named after him the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Centre.

Ann Théato
And I know that you do a lot of workshops there, I mean you’ve already said at the beginning of this interview it’s a very accessible centre for people, it’s not an exclusive, it’s very all-inclusive your centre for people and affordable.

Ann Treherne
Yes that’s right. I found that when I started my development and went to various workshops and classes and circles, and I joined the spiritualist church, and I found and still do that spiritualism generally and mediumship all of this stuff generally it gets bad press.  So people think that Mediums are charlatans, or they are there to con you or they are there to raise the dead, all of these things. And so, I believe I was chosen to complete this task for him, to set up his building because of my corporate background. And so, I set up this large building in the West End of Edinburgh and wanted to ensure that it had a more professional image let’s say than most churches and mediumship outlets and psychics generally had had up until that point.  So I wanted it to be a professional place, but I wanted it to be welcoming to the general public and not just the segment of the market that looks at psychic and mediumistic things. So there is a spiritualist church in the building and yes, we do workshops and classes and mediumistic development but, we also do art and music and of course we do creative writing. The Arthur Conan Doyle Centre must obviously offer creative writing, so we do that in the centre as well. But I wanted it to be a place, but people are not afraid to walk into. where, they didn’t think oh the people there were fluffy bunny or wired to the moon but they were ordinary, everyday people who had had experiences similar to many in the community and it would provide a welcoming space for all and I think that’s what I have achieved.

Ann Théato
You really, really have achieved that and you have done some amazing work in your lifetime and so many people are benefiting from everything that you have done on their behalf.

Ann Treherne
Thank you, that’s lovely of you to say so.

Ann Théato
Well, it’s absolutely true.  So what are you doing next because I know you are looking to retire perhaps a little? But what are your plans for the next decade?

Ann Treherne
Yes well, I am looking to retire, I should’ve been retired by now because as I mentioned, I think I was given the task by Arthur Conan Doyle. I’ve completed that task. I want to hand it on now for others to run it. I don’t have to be there to run it. And I will be handing over to Professor Lance Butler who is Chairman Designate, he is going to take over from me as Chair of the centre. The only reason we haven’t handed over at the moment is because of the corona pandemic and I agreed to stay until the year end to assist getting the centre back up and running again because of course we’ve been close for some time, because of the pandemic. What am I going to do when I retire? Well I’ve got to write the second book, because in writing the book, I realized that it was going to be a trilogy. And so the book does standalone. It does come to a conclusion, so it covers the five years, the five or six years in setting up the circle, in realizing eventually tha Arthur Conan Doyle was communicating with us, and then following his lead to find a building and set it up. And so the book covers those years up until the set-up of the Arthur Conan Doyle Centre. It’s also covers the fact that it was a physical circle, so there was many physical phenomena that happened in that circle. Incredible things that happened in that circle that I’ve detailed in the book. But I finished the book by saying he led us to a building, we found the building, and if you think some of what’s in the book is incredible, wait for the next book and find out what happened once we got into that centre. So that’s the next book that I have to write is the first five years of being in the centre.

Ann Théato
I’m absolutely grinning for ear to ear, it sounds so exciting a second book!

Ann Treherne
Yes and of course the third book, I have, when I retire at the end of this year, it will be almost exactly ten years, it will be exactly ten years in December, from when I first stepped into that building and realized, this is the building that Arthur Conan Doyle has been telling me about all this time, this is the building I was supposed to find, and this is the building I have to make into the centre in his name. So I will be retiring then. So as I say, that’s 10 years since finding the building, the second book will cover the first five years of being in the building and the third book will cover the five years up until now when I am retiring, so ten years in the centre, I don’t know what he will have in store for me after that.  I just wait and do as I am told.

Ann Théato
How about he has in store for you, for all the Sherlock Holmes fans and all the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle fans out there, some channeling, where you can channel some writing of his and he can channel some more books through you, wouldn’t that be amazing?

Ann Treherne
That would be amazing, but I hesitate on that and I do not claim whatsoever that I’m channeling him in the book. I was simply following his instruction. And his instruction was that I was to record all the meetings that I had in my circle which I did.  Let me I had to do this because I would like to need to write a book about it. So I’m not claiming at all I’m channeling him in the book, I merely doing as he instructed. Many people have tried to emulate his style of writing but I’m not one of them. I don’t have those skills. Not to his standard.

Ann Théato
No, absolutely I was just playing thinking, wouldn’t it be great if, after you’ve written all the books that he’s instructed you to write, then you could sit down with him and he could channel through you maybe, but …

Ann Treherne
You are absolutely right; wouldn’t that be great?

Ann Théato
Ah, well, you can experiment with that in your own good time.  Ann, listen it’s been so interesting talking to you. Just before we finish, there is one thing I know that we haven’t mentioned through this interview and that is that you, five times you have had a sell-out show at the Edinburgh International Fringe Festival.

Ann Treherne
Yes that’s right.

Ann Théato
Do you want to just mention that as well, because I think that’s fascinating too?

Ann Treherne
That came about through Arthur’s conniving again, so I had no intention of running a show in the fringe but through his intervention I ended up running this show which was not intended at all and I ended up speaking about him and I didn’t think anyone would come because we didn’t have any money to promote it or advertise it, but since it was his plan and something he wanted me to do, I did it because I followed his instructions all the way along the line and it ended up being a sell-out show I think about four or five times over I can’t remember now, which again surprised me but I believe that was again his intention to promote his centre. And to get people to come to it and have it promoted. The Edinburgh Festival Fringe is the biggest arts festival in the world and so I think this was his plan to get his Centre known and advertised throughout the world and that’s how the sell-out shows came to be. It was all Arthur, not really me, I just did what I was told.

Ann Théato
Fantastic and that’s the title of your book, isn’t it?  Arthur And Me.

Ann Treherne
Arthur And Me, yes.

Ann Théato
Ann Treherne, thank you so much for coming on and sharing all of this with us, I know this is a fascinating podcast.  Thank you so much again for your time.

Ann Treherne
You are very welcome and thank you too. 

Ann Théato
Well, that was Ann Treherne, Chair & Founder of the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Centre in Edinburgh, Scotland and author of her brand-new book Arthur And Me, available on Amazon and directly from the Arthur Conan Doyle Centre website. 

Meanwhile, exciting news hot off the press… Ann Treherne has invited me once again to teach at the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Centre in Edinburgh.  if you would like to come and take a workshop with me in person, I will be there on the weekend of Saturday 3^rd and Sunday 4^th April 2021.  I’ll be teaching a workshop called The Psychic Treasure Chest, where we will be looking at modern divination using ancient tools, such as Hag Stones – I’ve done a Psychic Matters podcast episode on those, The Crystal Ball and Tarot and we will be exploring all things scrying, divining and prophesying. It’s going to be so, so brilliant.  I’d love for you all to join me. To book your slot, please do email the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Centre [email protected] or telephone them on 0131 625 0700.  Places are limited so don’t leave it too long to book.  All the links and resources mentioned in this episode plus a full transcript, can be found in the show notes – and those are over on my website www.annthéato.com so head over there to the podcast section and you can pick everything up.

Just to let you all know, I’ve been busy making some audio meditations, for both psychic and mediumship development and also a beautiful one for mindfulness – called Forest Bathing – it’s based on the Japanese art of Shinrin Yoku – where by spending time in nature, it can help relieve stress & anxiety, improve your mood and boost happy feelings  – for those of you can’t get to a forest -I call this 15 minutes of medicine for your mental health – so check those out also over on my website.

A very big thank you to all of you, Psychic Matters Listeners, as ever, I really appreciate you and thank you much for listening and subscribing and a huge thank you to everyone who has taken the time to write a reviews for this podcast.  I so appreciate you.  If you haven’t done so yet, please can I ask you, nay, beg you, to go over to Apple podcasts and write an honest review that would really help so much with algorithms and ratings and so on and so forth.

Have a fantastic couple of weeks everybody, remember to pop over to Amazon or to The Arthur Conan Doyle website https://www.arthurconandoylecentre.com and purchase a copy of Ann Treherne’s book, Arthur and Me, which tells the story of how, over the course of 6 years, Ann found herself in communication with none other than Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who guided her to set up Scotland’s premier centre for spirituality – The Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Centre in Edinburgh. Ann’s book is a journey of self-discovery, investigation and exploration and it is an in-depth dive into the strange world of the paranormal.  We will be discussing it over the next few weeks on the Psychic Matters! Podcast Facebook Group page – so do head over there and join in the discussion.

Until next time… my name is Ann Théato and thank you for listening to PSYCHIC MATTERS!