I'm regularly visited by my dad who gives me life advice - but he's been dead for 40 years

EXCLUSIVE I'm regularly visited by my dad who gives me life advice - but he's been dead for 40 years READ MORE: Scientists in Switzerland create 'GHOSTS' in the lab By Rob Waugh For Dailymail.Com Published: 18:46 EDT, 27 October 2024 | Updated: 18:46 EDT, 27 October 2024 e-mail 9 shares View comments Like any good father and son, Philip Smith is frequently visited by his dad and gets life advice from him. But there's a catch — his father has been dead since 1981.

Lew Smith was an 'interior designer to the stars' in Miami, with clients including silent era comedy icon Charlie Chaplin, Walt Disney and former Cuban president Carlos Prío Socarrás, before becoming a psychic medium. Philip, 72, believes Lew visits him in times of need, signaling his presence to his son via a tickling feeling in his ear. Philip will then say, 'Is that you? What do you want to tell me?' 'The trick is to have faith that it's not your own mind talking to yourself,' as he explained his process, 'that you're actually receiving information.



' Philip Smith (above), now 72, says he is visited by his father who died in the 80s. He told DailyMail.com that his father is helping write a book Lew Smith died in 1981, but claimed to have been a healer and medium.

He believed he could see dead people and predict the future Medical experts have suggested that such claims could be a result of grief, strong emotional attachments to the deceased or a need for closure during a difficult grieving period. But Philip has never waivered in the story about speaking to his deceased father. Lew's 'powers' had first begun to manifest themselves 60 years prior when he worked designing film sets for Charlie Chaplin.

Philip described his father's transformation from interior decorator to 'supernatural' healer as being very strange, with his father waking at 4am to 'take dictation' from the dead. 'In 1921, he was recording his dreams and noticed he was having premonitions,' Philip told DailyMail.com.

'He would talk about picking up the newspaper the next day and reading about events from his dreams. 'For example, one entry describes a dream about a train accident in the desert, with children screaming and fire. 'The next day, the front page reported a train crash in the Nevada desert where 13 children had died in the fire.

' Then in 1968, Philip claimed his father discovered he could talk to the dead and health the sick. His father was well known as a medium and healer in the 60s, with his story published in newspapers Philip's mother (center) supported her husband's shift towards healing 'And then our lives changed,' he said. 'Our house became like Lourdes, with people coming in the middle of the night, banging on the door, crying, you know, their husband had a heart attack.

Their sister has leukemia.' 'When you're 14 years old. It was a little difficult,' as Philip summed it up, 'because he had this active relationship with dead people — and had psychic powers.

' The family went from having wealthy clients like Walt Disney and the president of Cuba to having nothing at all, as Philip recalled 'He never charged a penny for his healings,' he said. 'So our lifestyle changed: my mom would go to Havana on the weekends to gamble, all that came to a screeching halt.' Psychologists have suggested that people believe they are healers because they have a strong desire to help others or believe in their own intuition or spiritual abilities.

There is also the aspect that this person thrives on power or control of others, but then there are 'wounded healers' who have dealt with trauma and hope to find comfort in helping others. Philip said his father continued to work as a healer until his death. Then, sometime after his father's death, Philip noticed something strange.

'One winter day, I noticed something buzzing around my ear. Assuming it was a mosquito, I kept swatting at it, but we don't have mosquitoes in winter,' he said. The first sense of his father's psychic powers came when he worked for Charlie Chaplin - when he took what is believed to be the first picture of Chaplin outside the studio After his father's death, Philip noticed something strange and wrote a book about the experience 'Finally, I realized it was him, I started asking questions, and that's how I began receiving messages.

' Philip has used a medium to speak to his father and each time the message was always the same: Lew wanted his son to write a book about the healing methods he had developed when he was alive. 'Recently, I said, 'It would be nice if you could visit me.' He [Lew] replied, 'I'm always with you; you just have to talk to me.

' That was a revelation,' Philip said. Read More Do ghosts really exist? 5 possible scientific explanations for paranormal activity REVEALED - from sleep paralysis to exploding head syndrome 'I had thought I needed to wait for him to appear.' Philip explained that he feels like his father is 'always present' and that this phenomenon has corresponded to some of his father's ideas about the afterlife.

He aims to start work on the book next summer, based on 'five or six hundred' audio tapes left behind by his father. Philip said Lew is like a co-author, and he will turn to him for advice on what to do with all the information — and said he believes it's important to highlight the work of such healers. 'What we do in medicine, we poison the body with medicines, or we cut it open,' according to Philip.

'Doctors have their place,' he admitted, 'but I think there are more subtle energies at work in the body [and] we have no idea how they work.' Nevada Share or comment on this article: I'm regularly visited by my dad who gives me life advice - but he's been dead for 40 years e-mail 9 shares Add comment.