The Column of Light: A 3am Spiritual Visitation

About 18 years ago, I had an unusual experience. I woke up around 3am and saw a soft, misty column of light at the bottom of my bed. It wasn’t something you’d expect to see in the middle of the night, yet it felt completely calm and non-threatening. I simply accepted it, rolled over, and went back to sleep.

I didn’t mention it to my wife until about six weeks later. When I finally did, she told me she’d seen something similar—a white, shimmering light by her side of the bed about two weeks previously, so our shared encounters happened four weeks apart. We compared notes, realised how closely the timings matched, and then quietly filed it away as “one of those things.”

At that time, I didn’t know what spirituality was. I wasn’t aware that I was spiritual, and I knew nothing about Reiki, mysticism, psychic awareness, or mediumship. I simply took the experience at face value — something that had happened, nothing more.

A few weeks after that conversation, we took our children to a Halloween event at Marwell Zoo in Hampshire. The day included a free tour of some of the buildings on the estate, centred around Marwell Hall — a Grade I listed manor house whose origins go back to around 1320. The hall has deep roots in English, local tradition says Henry VIII courted Jane Seymour there.

As we walked through the grounds, the guide explained that the hall and its surroundings had seen centuries of life, secrets, and stories. There are even tales of ghostly Tudor figures said to drift around the hall and its ancient yew trees, including apparitions linked to Jane Seymour, Anne Boleyn, and a “mistletoe bride” legend woven into local folklore.

At one point on the tour, the guide asked, “Has anyone here ever seen a ghost?” We said, “Yes, actually — we did, a few months ago.” People looked at us, not in disbelief, but with genuine curiosity. We shared what happened, simply and honestly, without trying to explain or dramatise it. There we were, standing in a place layered with hundreds of years of history and ghost stories, talking calmly about the column of light in our bedroom as if it were the most normal thing in the world.

Later, we discovered that the original owner of our house had passed away in what was now our bedroom. It didn’t feel frightening, just a normal thing to occur.

Years later, as my spirituality and sensitivity began to re-emerge — I learned to tune into the subtle “radio” of intuition and energy, that early experience began to make more sense to me.

Before I became Reiki attuned — even before I fully understood energy work — I sensed the same gentle presence again. I had what I can only describe as a one-sided conversation, telling the spirit about the changes we’d made to the home and acknowledging that it might feel stuck. I offered the energy that I could dial into at the time, to the entity — it felt as though something shifted and it it drifted away, since then I’ve never felt it return.

This experience was part of my spiritual reboot — the time I started listening, not ignoring. Standing years earlier in at Marwell Hall, surrounded by centuries of stories about spirits and lingering energies, I had no idea that my own story with the unseen was only just beginning.

If this story resonates with you and you’d like a safe space to explore your own energy, emotions, or curiosity about the unseen, a Reiki session can be a beautiful place to start. Reiki is a gentle, hands-on (or hands-off) energy therapy that supports deep relaxation, helps calm the nervous system, and may ease stress and anxiety by encouraging your body’s natural self-healing response. Many people leave a session feeling lighter, clearer, and more connected to themselves. If you feel that quiet nudge to listen a little more closely to your own inner “radio,” you’re very welcome to book a session with me and see where the energy wants to take you.