Some British authorities will not even take notes on missing persons before 48 hours has elapsed, and serious enquiries do not get under way in under seven days.

Be sceptical of many of the claims made in the press by such like as remote viewers and psychics who claim they work for the police, as the first thing the authorities do is to get you to sign the official secrets act, and they do enforce this with back up threats of harassment and/or prosecution.

One of the most amazing psychics I know who did many years of police work, was what police call a "finder." The story of how I met this man is many years old, but began when a distraught husband came to our little spiritualist church desperate to find his missing wife. He had heard that a "finder" could possibly help him.

"Tom the finder" was brought in. I was curious to meet a man I had heard so many rumours about, and admit I was very sceptical of his abilities. Although this man specialised in missing children from cases such as the awful Moors child murders. He asked the distraught husband for an article of clothing and a photograph, and squeezed a silk head scarf in his hands while concentrating, then rubbed it on his face and smelt it all over, and put it out on a map of Britain.

He spent some time dowsing with a pendulum over the photograph of the woman and the map, before saying; "she is alive and in the county of Dorset."

I kept quiet about my scepticism here, because most missing people stay local, but this was right across Britain. I enquired if she had taken any belongings, and was suspicious that she had left without her much loved shoe collection.

Typical British Caravan Park

Under pressure from the husband, as soon as our "Finder" had finished making his copious notes, we set off in the husband's car for Dorset. The drive was tiring and uncomfortable and on arrival at the county borders, the map and the photo were again dowsed for some time and the head scarf sniffed. I remember thinking that the crackpot sceptics would have a field day watching this, when he said; "got it."

He then indicated the way to go and after a couple of false starts, when he lost his bearings, told us we were near now and the winding road through the fields would soon reveal the missing woman!

As we then turned a bend in the road we saw a small caravan park of about fifteen caravans andthis is where she was he said. I was still quite unbelieving, when he, looking confused said: "the green and white one." And we strode over and banged on the caravan, I was as shocked as the woman who opened the door, her eyes bulged and she grabbed her mouth in horror as she saw her husband, "How, how did you find me she gasped."

The husband had not told us they had been arguing and that he had hit her and that she ran away to make some decisions on the marriage.

The use of the pendulum is very popular just now. It was used extensively in W.W.II and war documents refer to it as Radiesthesia. The Third Reich had ship finding experts, whose work was copied by the British and then the Americans in 1952. Did you know that Winston Churchill was a 33rd Degree Mason, and a long term druid and occult student. He was well aware of the possibilities of dowsing, and collected together a team of experts known as the "Black team" which was used to help win the war.