By Jonathan Petre Electronic Telegraph
MOST people
regard them as little more than Christmas card adornments, but
at least 800 Britons claim to have had encounters with angels,
the first academic research into the subject has found.
Not only
Christians have had these experiences; atheists, agnostics, Muslims
and Jews have also claimed similar visitations, according to Emma
Heathcote, a Birmingham University researcher who has studied
the phenomenon for two years. Miss Heathcote, whose findings are
the subject of the Everyman programme on BBC 1 on December 12,
said she appealed for reports of experiences from Britons to include
in a doctorate on the subject and was astonished by the level
of interest.
According
to her findings, angels tend to "appear" either to impart
a message or to provide comfort or reassurance. They have also
"intervened" to save people from fatal accidents. Almost
a third of those who contacted Miss Heathcote reported seeing
a traditional angel with a white gown and wings. Another 21 per
cent saw angels in human form. Others felt a force or presence
and some detected a distinctive scent or were engulfed in light.
One of the
most striking reports came from a woman doctor who was doing her
training at Guy's Hospital, London, when a three-year-old girl
was brought in after falling under the wheels of a juggernaut.
She wrote: "When they whipped her clothes off, there wasn't
a mark on her. The girl came round and immediately asked, 'Where
is the man in white?' A male doctor stepped forward and said,
'I'm here', but the girl said, 'No, the man in the shiny white
suit who picked me up when the lorry went over me'."
Dena Bryant
from Gloucestershire, described how she was frozen to the spot
when two cars collided and one was hurtling towards her. She claimed
to have felt feathers behind her legs and a force lift her out
of danger. David Barber from Worcestershire almost drowned at
his local swimming pool before his late grandmother appeared in
angelic form and carried him to the surface.
More than
half a church congregation said it saw an angel during a baptism.
Miss Heathcote said: "I interviewed the vicar, the curate,
the organist and a large number of the congregation and they all
came up with the same story. They were embarrassed and asked me
not to disclose their names."
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