It’s here at last — my latest book, Spirits of Tasmania, with seventy-two illustrated stories.

Tasmania’s rich and often grim history has peopled the island with ghosts — all of them with tales to tell.

Many of the stories are of sadness, ruin, despair and brutality; but there are many cheerful spirits who lived contented lives and revisit out of a pleasant nostalgia.

Some were masters, some were servants, and Tasmania’s convict past created a legacy of melancholy spirits. I’ve written their stories with the help of my numerous guides.

Whether you’re a believer or not, they have a ring of authenticity that brings the past alive.

You can buy it here for $34.95 including postage anywhere in Australia.

Spirits of Tasmania Book — $34.95

My reason for writing Celebrity Past Lives was to show how reincarnation and karma work by looking at the past lives of famous people. Like the rest of us, celebrities such as Madonna and Tom Cruise have been here many times before.

And also like the rest of us, they have many lessons to learn, such as patience and tolerance, and will have to keep coming back until they get things right.

Most of us are reincarnated with people from our past lives, but not always in the same relationships. For example, our husband, brother or son could previously have been our wife, sister or daughter, and so on.

Either way, we keep coming back to work out problems in our relationships or to pay off karmic debts. We are not forced to come back – we freely chose to do so.

The memories of our past lives are erased when we are reborn, but some things can linger. If you ever take an instant dislike to someone, or feel an instant attraction, then you probably knew that person in a past life.

Reincarnation explains why some people feel a sense of déjà vu when they go somewhere for the first time, or they have an affinity with a certain country or period of history. It also explains how child prodigies such as Mozart can be so remarkably talented at a very young age.

By the way, humans to not reincarnate as animals so don’t fear that you will come back as a cockroach if you do something wicked.

Writing Celebrity Past Lives has been a great learning experience for me. I have been doing past life readings for many years, but never on such a large scale.

Buy it here for $29.95 including postage anywhere in Australia.

Celebrity Past Lives Book — $29.95

Here’s a gift for you: my eBook, Teabag Reading.

It shows how the humble teabag can act as a guide through life’s journey — and it has lots of offbeat and interesting facts about tea, dowsing and how pendulums have been used down the ages.

You can download it here free. Read it on screen or on a portable device, or print out just the sections you want.

Jeanette Kumara’s Celebrity Past Lives is now a four-part eBook series: Famous Couples, Famous People, Screen Stars andPop Idols.

Interactive links make the fascinating stories of these personalities much more accessible: features such as being able to zoom in on a page make eBooks easy to read for people whose eyesight isn’t what it used to be — or you can even have your computer read them out loud to you.

And you can have them right now: no weeks of waiting for the mail to arrive!

Jeanette decided to follow the trend to eBooks mainly out of concern for the environment. As a clairvoyant familiar with animal spirits, she wants her books to reach her audience with less damage to our shrinking forests and to the wild things living in them.

If you buy all four eBooks in the Celebrity Past Lives series, you’ll only pay for three.

Celebrity Past Lives eBook: Famous Couples — $8.95

Celebrity Past Lives eBook: Famous People — $8.95

Celebrity Past Lives eBook: Screen Stars — $8.95

Celebrity Past Lives eBook: Pop Idols — $8.95

YES. I would like all four eBooks Only $26.95 [normally $35.80]

Jeanette lives at Oatlands in the Tasmanian midlands where she does private readings which cost $90 for a one-hour session.

If readings are done at other locations there is an extra fee to cover travel expenses.

Email Jeanette with your request.

Readings can also be done from colour photographs which should be recent and clearly show your face, especially your eyes.

Photos, with personal information (including your birth date), can be emailed to Jeanette here and the results of your reading will be emailed as soon as your payment has been processed.

You can request a past life reading, get information about your spirit guides, or ask specific questions.

Convict gravedigger Mark Jeffrey was, and still is, a very unpleasant character though his comments about the worms were 
unintentionally funny. Mark spent most of his days alone among the headstones on the horrific Isle of the Dead off Port Arthur. After claiming he saw the Devil one night, Mark was relieved of his caretaking duties.

So you think my face is grim? So would yours be if you had the life I had. Being the gravedigger on the Isle of Dead was no picnic.

The only thing I ever received for such a rotten job was the odd shot of rum and no-one knew I had an extra bottle hidden amongst the graves.

This I did to keep out the chills as it could be dastardly cold on the isle.

Try digging a grave when the ground is frozen and you will soon see what I mean.

You say I claimed to have seen the Devil. Well, there was no claim about it­—I did see him.There was a time I saw his very likeness staring at me through a window, but that wasn’t the only time I saw him.

One evening I had a grave to dig for a burial next morning, and up and out of the ground rose the Devil himself as I was halfway through digging.

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My new book, Spirits of Tasmania, is coming along well and will be released before Christmas. Here’s another tale to whet your appetite.

The Lisping Colonel

Sitting on a park bench outside Anglesea Barracks one evening, I met a handsome man in an officer’s uniform dating from the late 1800s. Colonel Edward spoke perfectly in a beautiful accent, which proves that physical handicaps disappear in the spirit world.

My name really is Edward but my friends called me Ted. I was sent out in the very first days of establishing an army quarters in Hobart. Which year it was befuddles me and perchance you may be able to check the records; what I do recall is that the town was in its infancy and very small compared to now.

When I arrived from England the amount of organising and work was daunting. The soldiers who were sent out from England were a smart bunch, but the ones recruited here were an unruly mob with no discipline. My job was to whip them into shape and get some organisation into the regiment.

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Here’s another story from my forthcoming book, Spirits of Tasmania, which will soon be going to press. Famous bushranger Martin Cash tells his story.

During a chase through Hobart Town, bushranger Martin Cash mistakenly ran into a dead-end street then shot a policeman near the hotel at the bottom of Brisbane Street. Amazingly, Martin wasn’t hanged and died of old age in his apple orchard in Glenorchy.

I hear you ask about Port Arthur but my memory of that terrible place has dulled, I am pleased to say. You are right, I did escape on a number of occasions and I did swim the dreaded shark-infested waters at Eaglehawk Neck. Only a fool would have believed whole-heartedly the story of the sharks.

Bessie was the love of my life and without her life would have been very empty. I have been with Bessie on the astral planes, but for now she has gone onto a higher learning. I will also reach this point very soon and I strive towards this as I wish to be with my Bessie again.

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Here’s another tale from my book Spirits of Tasmania, which is well on the way to completion ready for a Halloween launch. It’s the story of Minnie, a jovial fat lady.

Opposite Narryna in Battery Point, Hobart, is the old Queen Alexandra Hospital, birthplace of Hollywood film star Errol Flynn on June 20, 1909. My spirit Errol, who has a lot in common with his famous namesake, offered to check out the old hospital before the existing apartments were built. Especially memorable is the image of Minnie stuck in the doorway.

The first story concerns a young lady who was rushed here on a dark wintry night back in the 1930s. The child she produced was a boy but unfortunately he died not long after birth and the young mother died shortly after.

Her name was Anna and she frequents these hallowed halls in search of her dead child. She wanders about sobbing, enough to send a chill down even my spine.

After she wanders about a bit, a guide will come and gently remove her and take her away. They say she does this to herself as a form of self punishment because, rumour has it, she was an unmarried mother and suffered the shame she brought upon herself and family.

This was all very heart-wrenching, so I looked for a happier story and found a rotund cheerful soul called Minnie. She was assistant cook and a funnier soul I have yet to find.

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Work on my next book, Spirits of Tasmania, is going well and I plan to release it in time for Halloween. Meet one of the many ghosts I have contacted and whose stories are told in the book.

Every small town has a busybody like Mrs Buscombe. Since channelling her story, I have learned that her husband owned the Richmond store and post office, plus many other buildings, in the 1830s. Mrs Buscombe has been seen many times at Prospect House, which is now a hotel, and she still travels far and wide in the town listening to gossip.

I like to be called Mrs Buscombe, as I am not a believer in being called by one’s first name. It shows no respect for one’s elders and is not considered to be good manners.

My fondest memories of Prospect House, and Richmond in general, was the mail, with letters and cards of all description arriving from locally and overseas. There would be an air of excitement when the coach pulled into our store with a lovely bag of mail and goods sent from Hobart Town.

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