Vanessa Gates (35) from Fareham in Hampshire was shocked when she spoke to her brother's spirit at a trance séance.

I heard about Craig and visited his psychic development group in Eastleigh. I was keen to get in touch with my brother, Brian Price, who had died 13 years ago.

Sitting in a nearby pitch dark room waiting to hear the voice of spirit people was a bit like the Séances you see in the movies. Soon Craig started speaking to people. His knowledge, he explained, was passed to him by his spirit guide. Eventually I had the courage to ask: 'If someone is murdered, can they tell you who killed them?'

Craig paused, then said, 'You are asking because of your brother Brian who is with me now. He was murdered in London. They cut his head off.'

The whole room was stunned. Craig did not know my name and, apart from greeting me when I arrived had not spoken to me before. What he was saying was shocking- and true. My brother Brian had been murdered. Brian who was 38 and his girlfriend had been stabbed repeatedly and then had their heads chopped off. 'He'd been mixing with the wrong types, and the police considered it to be a gangland murder, with drugs involved. The murder has remained unsolved for 13 years.

Through the spirit guide, Brian made contact. He told how the murderer had continued to stab his body after he was dead. He mentioned names that I knew had been connected with the inquiry. Brian described how he had died in a dirty flat in a near derelict block. There was rubbish and broken glass around the room. He said that there was not one murderer but three people present. They came from Bristol, which makes sense as Brian had lived there. I thought about passing the names he had given to the police, but Brian didn't think his murderers would be punished for what they did to him.

They will be convicted for other crimes, though, he said. But he made a point of saying he'd died with the first stab to his chest and hadn't suffered. He had watched the events unfold from out of his body. For a long time, I'd been haunted by the thought of him suffering. This put my mind at rest - as did realising that everyone gets a second chance in the afterlife.

Some Q&A about murders from my columns

HORROR IN THE MIRROR

I am worried for myself and my friends as an experiment we did with the ouija board has gone badly wrong. At first we were in contact with a nice old lady called Nessie but after a few sessions she gradually started to spell out a load of nonsense. Later a man calling himself Paul started to communicate. He said that he was a murderer and had been hung for his crimes. His messages were full of hate and to our horror his distorted face appeared in the mirror and the candles flared up.

All of us are terrified as we now see and feel him following us to our homes. This letter is not a joke, we are really very worried.

Alan D.

The ouija board can be extremely dangerous in untrained hands and you must urge your friends to stop at once. Meanwhile protect yourselves by visualising a bright loving light around your aura as darkness cannot penetrate light. I will be getting in touch with you directly to see if I can sort the problem out.

MURDER AT THE PSYCHIC FAIR

My wife and I visited a clairvoyant at a Psychic Fair at our local hall. The psychic told me nothing of interest but was able to say many true things about my wife including the obscure fact that she hid an envelope under her pillow containing her weekly insurance payment.

That night I had a dreadful nightmare about the Psychic Fair. I was watching it through a window and saw a young woman being murdered under the hall's stairs. Do you believe my dream was about real events that may have taken place?

Mr F F-

I don't rule out any possibility but suspect that your dream is symbolic. To dream of murder is often a sign of secret resentment and to witness the dream through the window shows how you feel that you are excluded. And who was the young lady in the dream? Was she symbolic of your wife? One interpretation of the dream could be: You resented the fact that the psychic said lots to your wife but nothing to you and you were worried that some of the things he was telling her may be harmful.