Nicky Smith is an ordinary man. Or rather he was an ordinary man…. On the 5^th December 1990, at the age of twenty four, something happened to Nick which defies belief. While cleaning the windows on the fifth floor of Richmond House on Chapel Street, Liverpool, a window hinge gave way causing Nick to spiral backwards out of the window. As he somersaulted through the air he heard a voice, which he describes as belonging to an old woman, telling him to, “Fall feet first Nicky, fall feet first.” At the same time he was acutely aware of watching himself cart wheeling through the air from several feet behind his body. The last thing he remembers is placing his left hand behind his head, an action which  almost certainly saved his life, before he crashed into the courtyard below. As luck would have it, Nick was coming out of a somersault when the back of his feet smashed into the floor shattering the bones. Other injuries sustained when he landed in the courtyard included  a broken pelvis, the three bottom vertebrae of his spine were fractured, his left wrist was shattered and had to be rebuilt, the ribs on the right hand side of his body were broken and he received a severe concussion. Although he kept his eyes tightly shut as he heard screams of horror echoing around the courtyard, he felt detached and distant as if it was happening to someone else. Then, with a rush, he was thrown back into his body. As pain tore through his torso he managed to turn his head to the right where he saw a police motorcyclist looking away in horror at the sight of his disjointed body. Then silence descended.

Nicky was rushed by ambulance to The Royal Liverpool Hospital where Doctors began to treat his many injuries. When they asked whether he could hear them Nicky responded in a broad Irish accent which shocked everyone present although his scouse accent soon returned. It was to be two long  painful years  before he was truly back on his feet again. There were many setbacks along the way…

At one stage he died twice due to eight blood clots which settled in his lungs and at one point one of his feet had to be rebuilt due to gangrene. It’s a credit to the man that  barely two years after surviving the horrific fall he was out of hospital and back at home with his family. Although still in constant pain he could see light at the end of the tunnel. However, as his health began to improve he became aware that not everything was  as it should be.

It began two years later, on a Christmas Eve, at the Taxi Club on Cherry Lane, Liverpool, where Nicky, his friends and family had gathered to celebrate the festive season.  While the club throbbed to the sound of laughter and music Nick could see his father up at the bar screaming and shouting for everybody to shut up, yet when he brought this to the attention of his family they looked at him with bewilderment. “Look!,” he said pointing back to the bar, “I think Dad’s having a nervous breakdown. When he slowly turned around it was his turn to be bewildered…His father was now quietly standing at the bar enjoying a pint and keeping himself to himself. What had caused the vision is not known but a similar event happened later that same night in the clubs washrooms.

The next day his father had a nervous breakdown and a slight stroke which temporarily paralysed him down his right hand side…

While his father recovered in hospital some of his friends and family began to look at Nick in a different light. Some, to this very day, won’t have anything to do with him. It scared some while others politely distanced themselves from him. For Nicky, worse was to follow…

Five weeks later Nick’s father was released from hospital and allowed home. The perfect time, so Nick thought, to get away for a while on his own  and reflect on what had happened and the change that seemed to be going on within himself. After a brief phone call to his girlfriend he set off for Lime Street where he was due to catch a train to the Lake District. At Preston he had to change trains but he had hardly ever traveled by rail before so it wasn’t long before he became hopelessly lost. People rushed past him seemingly ignoring his pleas for help, when suddenly a young thin man dressed in a T-shirt pushed his way through the crowd and offered to show him the way to his train. Nicky thought it was funny that while everyone else was wearing heavy coats in an effort to keep the February chill at bay the man now leading him to his train only wore a thin summer shirt. “He must be freezing,” he thought to himself.

Finally, after thanking the young man,  he boarded his train and walked quietly through the carriage until he took a seat opposite a middle aged man who rested his head against the window pane. The rocking motion of the train soon had its passengers yawning loudly . The man sitting opposite Nick had soon fallen to sleep and he feared that he would soon follow and miss his stop. Then the door at the far end of the carriage opened and the same young man who had earlier helped him find the train walked down the aisle and sat down next to the sleeping middle aged man opposite him. Nick was astounded when the man then leant over and began to go through the sleeping gentlemans pockets. Nick reacted like anyone would and reached over in an effort to grab the young man but somehow he slipped through his grasp and stood up. “Grab him,” Nick shouted as the man walked back through the carriage, “he’s just been going through this mans pockets. Stop him.”  Some of the other passengers looked about confused while the sleeping man sat bolt upright and asked Nick what was going on.. “That lad was going through your pockets,” he said, pointing down the carriage where the young man looked back at him briefly.

“What man?” came the reply.

Even though Nicky could see the skinny youth opening the door at the end of the carriage it appeared that to everyone else he was invisible. Now he began to feel foolish. Slumping down in his seat he felt the hard glare of the people sitting around him. He never lifted his gaze again until he reached his destination.

Once out on the platform he quickly found the ticket office and retold his story to the two rail staff who offered little help. In the end, after Nick had begged them to help him find the young man, the two staff wandered up and down the platforms with Nicky scrutinising those commuters who gathered waiting for their trains. Just as they were about to give up he spotted the man standing on the opposite platform amongst a group of people who where gathered together in a waiting room. Although the young man wearing the flimsy T-shirt stood head and shoulders above the other travelers, a mere twenty to thirty feet away, neither of the rail staff could see him. And when Nick looked back again neither could he.

That night in his hotel room shadows moved about the bottom of his bed and along the walls.  When the morning eventually came he left the hotel and wandered down to a newsagent where he bought a paper and struck up a conversation with the owner and her husband. Nicky was invited out that evening to a local pub and not wishing to be on his own he gratefully accepted.

That night in the bar Nicky noticed  how some of the other drinkers and revelers were giving him a funny look. After awhile the constant staring  and whispering behind his back got to much and saying his goodnights he returned back to his hotel believing that the good people of the Lake District had a dislike for Liverpudlians.

The next day Nick decided enough was enough and set off for home. The train journey to Preston was uneventful but while he sat on the railway platform waiting for the Liverpool connection something happened which caused him to realise for the first time what was actually going on. After several travelers had stopped and stared at him as they left the station Nicky heard a voice way off in the distance shouting and laughing As it grew nearer he could make out an American accent and finally he could hear exactly what the person was saying.

“Hi everybody, I’m from Texas, how are you?” the American said over and over again until it became repetitive and caused Nick to look up. Walking down the platform towards him was a man dressed in clothes from the 40s era who was patting people on the back and generally making a nuisance of himself. The people who were being patted on the back appeared to be ignoring him while those wandering back and forth along the platform didn’t appear to be able to see him at all. No sooner had the thought entered his head than the American stopped and stared at him with a puzzled look on his face. “Was this a ghost?” Nick asked himself as the American slowly walked back the way he had came in total silence finally vanishing from view near the end of the platform.

Since then Nicky Smith has met a clairvoyant named David Moran  who claims that Nick is a receiver who has something described as, “not bad”,  attached to him. As well as the many sightings of apparitions and the balls of light he often sees playfully flying about his home, he also had the enviable talent of writing poetry and painting pictures of stairways which reached for the sky surrounded by balls of glowing light. One of his more profound and emotional poems is called, Nation In Grief, which is a tribute to Jamie Bulger. From shortly after his accident in 1990 to 1993 Nicky wrote well over one hundred and fifty poems yet when he now thinks about it he cannot consciously remember  writing the words. When, in 1993, Nicky’s health improved drastically the ability to paint and write poetry vanished just as mysteriously as it had emerged. In 1994 he had his last sighting of a ghost in Chester  when he was searching for the local Spiritualist Church. A figure rushed through the crowd and told  him he would find the church on  Chapel Street. Coincidence?

The only gift he still appears to exhibit is the ability to pick up on peoples pain. When he first met me, he knew all about my spine injury, pointed to the part of my back where I broke a bone and disc and even told me that it affected my right leg, all of which is absolutely correct.

I’ve read about people before who have had a brush with death and end up developing paranormal abilities. Even some abductees  show signs of  gaining talents and abilities which they never had before their experiences began. Maybe the parts of the brain which have to cope with the pressures of normal living switch off when they believe death is a certainty, allowing new regions of the brain to step forward and take control when the percipient somehow cheats death. Of course, when normality returns the whole process is switched back disconnecting the person, sometimes cruelly, from his or her paranormal abilities, leaving them and the people they have touched confused and bewildered.

Nicky Smiths story is a triumph for dogged  self belief over pain and adversity as he now leads a relatively normal life. When he’s not fishing he  spends his time with his beautiful three year old daughter who has yet  to learn about the strange events which haunted her father after that near fatal fall from the fifth floor of Richmond House.