‘I fell asleep holding his hand’: Orla Harte on mediumship, motherhood and missing her dad

A conversation about the hospital experience that changed her life, learning to trust what she hears, and why believing in an afterlife doesn’t take grief away.

By Anthony Larkin

Orla Harte fell asleep holding her son’s hand while he lay in a coma in a Dublin hospital. He had been in a near-fatal accident just a couple of doors from their home. He had been resuscitated, and she was terrified.

‘I prayed and prayed and prayed and prayed,’ she told me.

Then she experienced something she still remembers clearly: a green field, a blue sky, and her son running towards her with his arms outstretched. She reached towards him. As their hands met, she woke in the hospital room.

His hand was moving.

Orla says he came out of the coma a few hours later, with no brain damage or physical problems. For her, what happened while she slept was an out-of-body experience. She believes she met her son somewhere beyond that room and helped guide him back.

There is an important detail, though. When I asked whether he remembered meeting her, she said he had no memory of any of it, from the accident through to his recovery.

‘Only mummy has.’

Her son had received emergency medical care and was being treated in hospital. Orla’s account of meeting him is her experience and her interpretation of it; it cannot tell us what caused him to regain consciousness. But it helps explain why her life took the direction it did afterwards.

Orla is a spiritual medium from Dublin, behind Heaven’s Healing Holistics. I wanted to hear about that hospital experience, but also what followed: how she developed her mediumship and what the work actually feels like. I’ve always wanted to understand how people describe hearing or seeing spirit when I don’t experience it in the same way.

And, as we talked, we came to something that matters whether you share her beliefs or not: what happens when the person who offers comfort to others loses someone she loves herself.

Before the hospital room

Orla doesn’t describe her son’s accident as the first time she became aware of anything spiritual. She calls it a reawakening.

Growing up in a Catholic environment in Dublin, she remembers feeling a close connection with Our Lady, the Virgin Mary, when she was only three or four. She didn’t see spirit as a small child, she said, but felt certain there was something there.

One memory has stayed with her. It was around Easter, and she had been watching The Ten Commandments. Afterwards, she went into the hallway of her parents’ house and looked out through a window. She remembers having to stand on tiptoe to see out, which is part of how she places herself at such a young age.

‘There’s something different about me, there’s something special, but I don’t know what it is,’ she remembers thinking.

Looking back, she understands that as an early sense of purpose. At the time, she couldn’t have explained it that way. She went on with what she called a normal life — ‘whatever normal is’ — grew up and had children.

After her son’s recovery, she began reading, watching how different mediums worked and attending a spiritual centre in Dublin. There were development sessions, meditation and practice readings. Eventually, she was practising online too: ‘Hundreds, hundreds, hundreds of readings.’

Orla believes mediumship is a calling that someone is born with. That is her view, rather than something we can establish simply through an interview. But even in her account, feeling called didn’t mean she could skip the work. She spoke about time, dedication and learning from other mediums without trying to become a copy of them.

Sitting in silence remains part of her daily routine. She feels it quietens her mind and helps her listen when she works.

I admitted that I’ve sometimes looked at people who describe seeing and hearing spirit and thought, ‘Why not me? Why am I not the lucky one?’ Part of doing these interviews is wanting to learn from people who experience things differently. As I put it to Orla, I feel as though I can ‘suck all that knowledge out of your brains’.

That probably explains my approach better than anything more elegant would.

‘Tell her I know she has the tissue’

When I asked Orla for the first moment she felt she had evidence of her mediumship, she couldn’t remember it.

She explained that she goes into what she describes as an altered state of consciousness during readings, and often doesn’t retain the details afterwards. There wasn’t a neatly remembered first reading she could offer me. But she did recall a recent moment because of how personal it had been.

‘Tell her I know she has the tissue.’

That was the message she says she heard. According to Orla, the woman receiving the reading had kept a tissue associated with her loved one, with which tears had been dried, as a precious reminder of them.

Orla understood that detail as evidence of a connection. We were hearing her account of the reading, rather than examining it independently, but it was a specific example of the kind of information she finds meaningful in her work.

She describes hearing, seeing and feeling things. Hearing spirit is often called clairaudience; in her case, she says she can hear inwardly and outwardly. She also reports physical sensations which she associates with how someone died.

That brought up a question for me. Why would someone communicating with a loved one bring back the symptoms of their death? Were they supposed to be suffering still?

Orla said no. In her understanding, those sensations are a way of identifying the person. She interprets them as a remembered detail being communicated, rather than pain continuing after death.

I also wanted to know how she distinguishes a message from her own thoughts. Her answer was that the thoughts and images feel different and unusually clear. Psychic work, as she describes it, involves reading the living person’s energy; mediumship involves communicating with someone who has died.

‘When I’m communicating with spirit, it’s like I’m dreaming.’

I told her that if I stood in front of an audience trying to do that, ‘Mr Ego’ would probably step in and wipe the floor with me. I’d be wondering whether I was making it up. Orla’s answer was practice: she says her trust has grown through the readings and the responses she receives.

She especially enjoys platform mediumship, giving messages in front of an audience. In her view, a message received by one person can also bring comfort to others watching. Before a demonstration, she spends time talking to her guides and asking for help with the work — including asking them to take their time.

But she doesn’t want to be working constantly. I asked what happened when she was simply out shopping. Could she switch it off?

‘When I finish it’s total shut off. It’s family time.’

She said those boundaries took years to develop. Occasionally something still comes through, but she is clear about wanting time with her family, friends and partner that belongs to her.

A medium still misses her dad

Many people who come to Orla are grieving. That might be a recent loss or one they have been living with for years. We talked about wanting to help someone through a difficult day, and I explained that my background is nursing. I know how much it means to finish work feeling you have made someone’s experience a little better, whether that person is a patient or a relative.

Orla described feeling love and peace after her readings. But I wanted to know how that translated into her own bereavement.

‘Do you still grieve as a human,’ I asked, ‘or do you take it on the chin as a medium?’

‘Absolutely,’ she said of grieving.

Her dad had died about a year and a half before we spoke. He was her best friend.

‘We miss the physical presence of that beautiful person that was so important to us,’ she said. ‘Of course, we miss that person ringing us, guiding us, knocking on the door, having that cup of tea.’

She was clear that her faith had helped her through grief. She was equally clear that she missed him.

When I asked whether she had experienced anything herself involving her dad, she described a morning roughly six or seven weeks after his death. She had been asleep, felt sad and was thinking about staying in bed for another hour.

Then, she says, she heard his voice say her name, as clearly as she could hear me speaking.

‘Orla.’

She jumped out of bed and answered, ‘Yes, Dad.’

She recognised in that moment the dad she knew: a strong man who, she felt, would want her up and facing the day. The instruction to get on with life was her understanding of the encounter; the word she reported hearing was her name.

‘He came to give you that kick up the bottom,’ I said.

‘He definitely did.’

Her account of continuing contact sat alongside the ordinary things she missed about him. A belief that he was still present didn’t replace his phone calls or having him knock on the door.

‘Your luxury is peace’

When we turned to what she thinks the afterlife is like, Orla described somewhere similar to Earth but with much more vibrant colours. She believes it is a place where loved ones reunite, where animals belong too, and where pain is left behind. She also believes people must acknowledge the good and harm they have done.

I wanted to understand what she meant in terms I could picture. When I meditate, I have a little countryside cottage beside a stream. I can see the mountains in the distance and even know which way the water flows. I wondered aloud whether somewhere like that could be my place of respite when I’ve ‘physically trotted off’.

That led us into dreams. Orla believes some vivid dreams involve visiting the spirit world, becoming familiar with a place before we eventually go there. I told her about my flying dreams: swooping down, feeling butterflies in my belly and enjoying the colours going past.

But I also said something I want to keep clear here: ‘I call those dreams my out of bodies, but I don’t know whether they are.’

I shared one particularly personal experience involving my grandma. During what I experienced as being out of my body, I had the thought that I might be able to speak to her. Then I did something very ordinary in a very unusual setting: I reached for a phone.

In the experience, I heard her voice and we had a conversation. I could also see a simple room with a wooden bed. It looked like a normal home, rather than anything grand.

I joked that if it were heaven, ‘you’d have a bit of luxury’.

Orla’s reply was immediate: ‘Your luxury is peace, your luxury is joy.’ She went on to describe happiness and being reunited with those who had gone before us.

‘I love that,’ I told her.

We were sharing personal experiences and interpretations, not establishing what happens after death. Even so, her response caught what she had been trying to explain about her idea of that place. The room’s furnishings weren’t what mattered to her.

She also made a distinction about signs from loved ones. Although she believes they can be present and offer reassurance, she said, ‘I don’t believe everything is a sign either.’

When I asked whether spirit had ever frightened her, she said no. For Orla, frightening people would go against the purpose of the work.

‘The purpose of mediumship is never to instil fear. It’s to bring peace, healing, comfort and love. Always.’

Something she does here, too

Towards the end, Orla mentioned another part of her life: she is a trained victim support worker and gives her time voluntarily to support victims of crime in Dublin’s criminal courts.

She described that as important work, another way of helping people. It deserves a place in her story alongside the readings. It tells us something about how she spends her time beyond the spiritual experiences we had been discussing.

When I asked what she felt people in spirit had taught her about living, her answer was practical. Notice what is around you. Go to the sea. Hug someone you love. She wasn’t suggesting that people suddenly become perfect.

‘We’re human and we’re always gonna argue and we’re always not gonna agree.’

Then we reached the question I ask every guest: if you could leave the world with one message from everything you’ve experienced spiritually, what would it be?

‘Do what makes you happy.’

I told her that this — having these conversations — makes me happy.

‘Do what makes you happy. What brings you happiness. Do it. Don’t procrastinate. Do it.’

Watch the full conversation

This article is based on my interview with Orla Harte on the Anthony Larkin Podcast. You can watch our full conversation here: