Bethany Kilner on Haunted Houses, Mediumship and Finally Finding Her Place

Bethany grew up frightened by what her family called “Auntie” in a house she still wouldn’t willingly spend the night in. Years later, the Barnsley medium found herself describing her own work in a way that brought the whole story unexpectedly full circle.

“Do you know what you are?” I said to Bethany.

She looked at me.

“You’re Auntie.”

“Chuffin’ don’t say that!”

We both burst out laughing, but the reason I’d said it was actually rather strange.

Bethany Kilner had just explained how she describes mediumship to the people who come to see her.

“Think of me as a telephone,” she tells them. She sees herself as the person in the middle, receiving something from spirit and passing the message on.

The thing is, Bethany’s spiritual story began in a building that she says was once Penistone’s telephone exchange.

And the presence that terrified her there as a child?

Her family called her Auntie.

I hadn’t made the connection until that exact moment.

Neither had Bethany.

Suddenly this woman who had spent part of her childhood frightened by “Auntie” at the old telephone exchange was sitting opposite me, years later, describing herself as a telephone between this world and the next.

“No,” she laughed. “Why if I’m Auntie? Why if I’m the bad egg?”

It was funny in the room. But it also summed up much of Bethany’s story rather well.

Something she once feared and couldn't understand eventually became part of a world in which she now feels completely at home. 

The house the family simply called “3A”

Bethany is a spiritual medium and Reiki practitioner from Barnsley, South Yorkshire. She runs development circles, teaches mediumship and has created her own spiritual centre, Mystical Magpie.

She also describes herself as a “proper Barnsley lass”.

Within about thirty seconds of meeting her, I knew exactly what she meant.

We share the accent, the humour and apparently an inability to get through a serious spiritual conversation without at least occasionally saying “cocker”.

But Bethany’s earliest experiences were anything but funny.

Her first home was a property in Penistone that the family still refers to simply as 3A. Today, according to Bethany, the building is the Art House Cafe on Church Street.

Ask whether she'd spend a night upstairs now and the answer is immediate.

“You couldn't pay me enough money.”

Bethany says her mother, auntie and grandmother had already experienced strange things in the property before she was born. They spoke about oppressive feelings and seeing things moving along the corridor.

Then there were physical events the family attributed to whatever was in the house.

Bethany recalls a heavy stained-glass mirror apparently coming off the wall, doors opening, lights switching on, the gas on the cooker being turned on and even a hairdryer catching fire inside a drawer while unplugged.

These are Bethany and her family’s recollections of the house; I obviously can't independently tell you what caused them.

But for six-year-old Bethany, the most frightening incident was something she says she saw herself.

She was lying in bed when she became aware of something in the room.

When she opened her eyes, she describes seeing what looked like a three-dimensional black shadow directly in front of her face.

No features. No face that she could identify.

Just a human-like shadow.

She screamed and ran downstairs.

“I tell you, my hands are sweating thinking about it.”

The family eventually called the presence Auntie. Bethany later learned that the property had apparently been connected with Penistone's old telephone exchange, and she wonders whether a woman associated with the building may somehow have been involved.

But even now, as a working medium, she doesn't think what she felt there was the sort of energy she normally communicates with.

“Absolutely flipping not,” was essentially her answer when I suggested she might like to go back upstairs and investigate it. 

The experience has stayed with her.

Even as an adult, she sometimes dreams that she's trapped back inside the house. 

“I think I’m going mad”

What makes Bethany's childhood interesting is that she didn't grow up in a family where everything spiritual was automatically dismissed.

Her grandmother Liz practised Wicca, used tarot and was open to ideas about spirit and energy. Her grandad Brian was much more sceptical.

Bethany remembers telling him that she thought she was going mad because she kept seeing the shadow woman.

The family deliberately called it the “G-word” rather than ghost, partly to make it seem less frightening to a child.

Liz told her that one day she might hear or see things other people didn't.

And importantly, if Bethany didn't like whatever she experienced, she could tell it to go away.

Unlike quite a few mediums I've interviewed, Bethany says she never had a period when she consciously shut everything down.

She remained fascinated by it.

She was the child waiting impatiently until she was old enough to have a psychic reading. She wanted Liz to teach her tarot. She moved through school, college and early adulthood without really knowing what to do with any of it, but the curiosity remained. 

Then life became considerably harder.

Around 18 or 19, Bethany moved away from home while working at Leeds Bradford Airport. She'd imagined a future travelling the world as cabin crew.

Instead, living alone became a particularly difficult period.

“I didn't really know me.”

She struggled with eating, with her mental health and with what she describes as dark thoughts. There were times, she says openly, when she didn't want to be here.

She also began hearing voices.

That frightened her.

Was this spirit?

Was something wrong with her mental health?

Was she losing her mind?

She genuinely didn't know.

And I think that's an important part of her story. Looking back through the lens of the spiritual life she lives now, Bethany has an interpretation for those experiences. But the young woman actually living through them didn't have that certainty.

She was frightened and struggling. 

The horse-riding accident that changed everything

Bethany describes the next part of her life as one of those moments where the path was suddenly and dramatically interrupted.

She had planned a big night out during a period when she was already in a very bad place.

Looking back now, she says she genuinely believes the choices she had planned for that night could have ended with her not being here.

Before the night happened, somebody asked whether she'd like to exercise a horse.

She went riding.

And had a serious accident.

Her helmet came off and she was taken to Sheffield by ambulance with concerns that she may have fractured her spine or pelvis.

She hadn't.

But during the medical investigations, doctors noticed something else.

Bethany was pregnant.

Her daughter Anya was on the way.

Everything changed.

“I knew that night I weren't gonna be here,” Bethany told me, looking back at the night out she'd planned. “The horse-riding accident happened… and then I found out I was pregnant.”

Bethany interprets that sequence spiritually. To her, something derailed the direction she had been heading in.

Whatever somebody else makes of that interpretation, the impact on her life is clear.

She stopped smoking. The party lifestyle stopped. Her priorities changed.

Anya arrived. 

And not long afterwards came another major change.

“When the time’s right, I’ll teach you”

Bethany's grandad Brian was diagnosed with bowel cancer.

During the upheaval around his illness and home renovations, Brian and Liz stayed with Bethany.

Then, in 2018, Liz died.

Bethany talks about her with enormous affection and, very Bethany-like, manages to make you laugh even while she's getting emotional.

Before her death, Liz knew Bethany was feeling increasingly drawn towards spiritual development.

Bethany kept asking her to teach her.

Liz's answer was always:

“When the time's right.”

Eventually, Liz gave Bethany money to enrol on a spiritual awareness course.

Bethany booked it.

Three days later, Liz died.

“And she's now my spirit guide,” Bethany said. “So she does teach me. But it's from the other side.”

For Bethany, that promise was kept — just not in the way she expected. 

Interestingly, she says she doesn't communicate with Liz and Brian in quite the same way that she experiences other people's relatives during readings.

She spent a long time wondering why.

Eventually she came to her own explanation.

If she could speak to them whenever she wanted, would she ever make a decision without asking them first?

Would she actually live her own life?

That resonated with me.

We joked that it would be like still having your mum or grandparents permanently on the telephone.

Sometimes, Bethany believes, guidance has to remain guidance.

You still have to live.

The message that made her trust herself

Bethany's mediumship didn't suddenly arrive one morning fully formed.

She developed it.

She doubted herself.

She practised.

And one particular experience helped change her confidence.

Bethany had gone with her mum to watch another medium. During the break she became aware of what she believed was a man in spirit standing around a gentleman sitting nearby.

She felt that he'd died following a motorcycle accident.

Her mum encouraged her to go and tell him.

Bethany was terrified.

Eventually she approached the stranger, explained that she wasn't a practising medium, but told him what she was receiving.

He recognised it.

Bethany retreated back to her seat.

The professional medium returned for the second half — and went straight to the same gentleman.

She then gave him essentially the same information about a man connected with a motorcycle accident.

Bethany remembers looking at her mum.

Her mum's reaction?

“You're weird.”

For Bethany, it was a turning point.

Later she attended an open circle run by medium Debbie Askew. Debbie encouraged her, then apparently decided Bethany needed something considerably less subtle than encouragement.

She booked her for platform work.

Bethany was horrified.

She did it anyway.

“I can't even tell you what I'd said,” she admitted.

But she got through it.

Today, Bethany says something I really liked: the day she stops getting nervous before a reading or platform is the day she'll stop doing it.

For her, the nerves mean she still cares. 

Derek Pakora and a one-legged blind chicken

If you've read some of my other articles, you'll know I enjoy hearing about moments mediums regard as evidence — especially when the information is so ridiculous that you couldn't have deliberately made it sound impressive.

Bethany gave me two.

During one reading, she was sitting with a man who clearly wasn't convinced by any of it.

His father came through, according to Bethany, and then she started receiving images connected with curry.

So far, so ordinary.

Then she was shown the late TV medium Derek Acorah.

Then chicken pakora.

Bethany couldn't make sense of it.

“Derek Acorah… chicken pakora…”

Then, she says, she heard:

“Derek Pakora.”

The man suddenly changed.

It turned out he loved curry and chicken pakora, didn't believe in mediumship — and Derek Pakora was his nickname.

That did it.

“I believe it! I believe it!” was apparently his reaction.

Even telling me the story had us laughing.

Another spirit communicator, according to Bethany, wanted somebody to know he'd got their one-legged blind chickenwith him.

Again, hardly the sort of profound spiritual statement you'd put on an inspirational poster.

The recipient apparently knew exactly which chicken she meant.

That's the side of these conversations I enjoy — not every supposed communication from spirit is a solemn declaration about the meaning of existence.

Sometimes it's chicken pakora. 

The Love Heart that said “Granny P”

One of Bethany's favourite experiences wasn't something that happened during a reading at all.

Her great-grandmother Hilda — known as Granny P — had died.

Bethany was still at secondary school.

On the Monday afterwards, she happened to be sitting in an RE lesson discussing life after death.

She was upset and didn't particularly want anyone to know it.

Her grandparents had recently returned from a cruise and brought her one of those little packets of Love Hearts sweets.

Bethany started eating them quietly in class.

Then she opened the last one.

It said:

Granny P.

Bethany still has it.

She wrapped it carefully in tissue, took it home and showed her mum.

Could there be an ordinary explanation for how those words ended up on the sweet? Possibly.

Bethany couldn't explain it then and still can't.

For her, it remains one of the most physical signs she's ever received. 

Mystical Magpie

The spiritual awareness course Liz helped pay for eventually led to something much bigger.

After COVID, Bethany initially retrained as a florist.

Then she reached another crossroads.

She was doing readings in evenings and travelling to people's homes while also working with flowers. Eventually she decided to commit fully to her spiritual work.

Her first premises began with one room.

Then she took more space.

Then the whole top floor.

Eventually she needed somewhere bigger.

Her centre is called Mystical Magpie.

The name is for Liz, who used to call herself Lizzie Magpie.

What started as a few crystals, bracelets, tumblestones, incense and a salt lamp in her memory has developed into Bethany's spiritual community.

At the time of our conversation, she'd recently moved into larger premises near Junction 38, with space for readings, healing, open circles, closed development circles and teaching.

When I asked whether she finally felt she was on the right path, I expected a straightforward yes.

Bethany surprised me.

“I don't know.”

Not because she wants to leave it.

Quite the opposite.

“I've never felt more at home.”

She simply doesn't assume that where she is now has to be the end of the journey.

“I just trust the process.” 

“Scepticism is healthy”

For all Bethany's certainty about her own experiences, she doesn't think people should simply believe every medium they come across.

I asked her directly.

Should we question mediumship rather than automatically accepting everything we're told?

“Absolutely.”

She doesn't automatically believe every person she sees presenting themselves as a medium online either.

“Scepticism, I think, is healthy.”

I agree with her on that.

My interest in these subjects has never required me to stop asking questions. If anything, the questions are the interesting bit.

Bethany believes spirit communication is real because of what she has personally experienced. She also believes in reincarnation, soul contracts, angels and the possibility of extraterrestrial or non-physical life.

She connects some of those ideas to the fact that physical energy changes form and asks whether consciousness might somehow exist on frequencies we do not normally perceive.

That is Bethany's spiritual interpretation; the physical conservation of energy by itself doesn't establish what happens to human consciousness after death.

But Bethany isn't asking people to believe simply because she does.

She thinks curiosity, doubt and learning should remain part of the process.

“It's not just a journey that you reach a certain point — well done, you've reached level eight and now you're done.”

For her, there is no level eight.

She is still learning. 

From wondering whether she was mad to being completely herself

Near the end, I took Bethany back to the young woman we'd talked about earlier.

The Bethany who was frightened by what she experienced.

The Bethany who couldn't find where she fitted.

The Bethany who at one stage wondered whether hearing things meant she was going mad.

What would that young woman think if she could see Bethany now?

Running Mystical Magpie.

Teaching.

Giving readings.

Raising her children.

Talking publicly about the very things she once struggled to understand.

“I think she'd think it's magical,” Bethany said.

“And I think she'd be really proud.”

Then I asked her something simpler.

Are you finally comfortable being completely yourself?

“Yeah. Absolutely.”

She doesn't think a medium has to look a certain way. No compulsory dreadlocks. No mandatory hippie beads.

Bethany likes sparkle.

And being a Barnsley lass.

And having a brew.

And talking for England.

And that's rather the point.

The thing driving her now, she says, isn't simply her client base or even spirit.

It's her children.

She wants them to see their mum being herself, being kind and trying to help people. 

Before we finished, I asked my regular final question.

If she could eventually leave one message behind — a bit of Bethany — what would it be?

Her answer fitted her perfectly.

“Just be your true authentic self. And no matter how long or hard that journey is to get to that point, keep fighting the good fight.”

Then came the Bethany bit.

“Leave a bit of sparkle everywhere you go.”

She said she'd like people to remember her as genuine, kind and, in the most Barnsley conclusion I could have hoped for:

“Just a good egg.”

I don't think I need to improve on that. 

Watch the full conversation

This article is based on my full conversation with Bethany Kilner on the Anthony Larkin Podcast. We go much further into her childhood experiences, mediumship, Reiki, grief, past lives, spirit communication, Mystical Magpie and some wonderfully strange stories that are much better heard in Bethany's own voice.

If you enjoy conversations like this, you can subscribe for future interviews and articles exploring spirituality, consciousness, the afterlife and the unusual experiences that leave us asking what else might be going on.

— Anthony