TONY Stockwell is no heavy-handed quack, spewing out wild homilies on the spirit world or ranting about his psychic connection to the departed on street corners. In fact, far from waxing lyrical about his ‘gift’, or the various unsettling encounters he claims to have had, he plays them down.

Talking of his first run-in with a spirit at the age of seven, he is matter-of-fact, painting an endearing picture of his sense of wonder and childlike naiveté, even making light of the experience at my tone of alarm picturing a vengeful ghoul straight out of The Sixth Sense luring a terrified child out of bed.

Far from it, he reassures me warmly. He simply heard a little boy’s voice calling from the cavernous depths under his bed, he says, then wriggled out and scooched right up close to the apparition for a chat, utterly unfazed. When he spoke of the child to his mother the next day, she humoured him. And that was that.

“When I was a child I was seeing and hearing things sometimes but in such a way that it was very normal to me,” he says. “When you’re seven years old it’s all make–believe anyway. I had no fear. When you have a connection with spirits, it’s not just about seeing or hearing, it’s about a feeling. And this was accompanied with an absolute feeling of trust.

“But I was not being disturbed by the dead nightly,” he hastens to add. “When I told my mum she would just say, ‘Oh yes it’s lovely dear’. I think that was a blessing. I could have had someone who pried and made it very intense or thought I was the devil’s spawn.”

Throughout his childhood, he says he continued to see and sense spirits others were completely unaware of. But questions began rushing through his mind as he reached adolescence. He had no frame of reference for these benevolent manifestations, drifting voices or visions until, at 16, he attended a meeting at a spiritualist church and everything finally fell into place.

“That was a huge day for me. These people were describing all the kinds of things I had been experiencing for years. It wasn’t just me. I went along most Sunday evenings, sitting at the back on my own, just watching the people demonstrating in the hall.”

Two years later, a member of the congregation took him under her wing, encouraging Tony to practice and delve deeper into his apparent connection with the after-life. By the age of 19, he was demonstrating, standing in front of audiences of 30 people delivering messages from their late relatives.

“I let my mind go still, let thoughts and feelings tumble out of my mind and I started talking to people I was conscious of standing next to me, who were long dead, and people in the audience responded to the information. I felt that I knew what was expected of me. I takes a long time, confidence and a tremendous amount of dedication. But it’s no stranger than someone who has a calling to become the leader of a Buddhist monastery.”

Since then, he says, he has communicated with thousands of deceased people, demonstrated mediumship all over the world, lectured at the College of Psychic Studies in London and founded his own school in Essex, Tony Stockwell’s Psychic Studio.

Thirty years down the line, he is not immune to surprise or shock. Some encounters are more startling than others. Just a few days ago, Tony was on stage in New York with a fellow medium when a nun materialised at his side.

“It was the strangest thing. It was a lady in the audience’s auntie.

“Before that we were near Boston and I was describing a gentleman I could feel. I knew he was Jewish Polish and I knew he had lost all his family at Auschwitz. And that was a woman in the audience’s Polish grandfather.

“When you come out with details that defy logic that’s when it becomes very exciting for the audience.”

Spirits drifting in and out, cropping up to deliver a message or just drop in for a quick hello to their offspring, would likely reduce your everyman to a trembling wreck. But Tony insists he has never felt frightened or burdened by his connection with “heaven”, as he refers to the after-life – though not in the strict biblical sense.

“The only thing I’ve been worried about is the living,” he pauses, chuckling to himself before adding: “The dead come from a space of heaven that’s a blessing to work with them. The sensation of bringing people together and be aware of that other world, there’s nothing like it. It feels like you’re touching heaven every time your work.”

He pre-empts any suggestion that his speaking to the dead business is nonsense or that he’s truly off his rocker (perhaps anticipating an impending ambush), by bringing up the subject of lunacy – his word – himself.

“If the shoe was on the other foot I’d probably think ‘this girl needs therapy’. I would,” he volunteers.

“So much of popular culture sees it as lunacy. But it’s my experience, I know it’s real.

“There’s a very real phenomena in that it’s impossible to be dead. Science agrees now that it’s not possible to be nothing. I was at a lecture in America and this man concluded that ‘science recognises that we are energy as human beings and energy cannot become non-energy’. You have to be something after you’re dead.”

Not only has his uncanny ability to reveal spot-on details about the deceased won over legions of sceptics, but he has been called upon to solve high profile missing person and murder cases. This work, he admits, often dredges up sinister “memories”.

“It’s very draining and disturbing but it has nothing to do with the spirits, all to do with this world. I have worked with cases where I’ve given information that appeared to be correct. You look very much in the physical; sometimes you have the spirit with you telling you information but a lot of cases are old and spirits don’t have a need to connect to our world, so you get information touching the murder weapon, going to their home, touching their clothes and you pick up a memory.”

Circumspect and carefully measuring his words, he is no manic preacher baiting for converts. And his demonstration at the Wyvern will be just that, a demonstration. “For me it’s been a 30-year endeavour trying to work this way. I feel the need to share. There’s no conversion, people walk away and make their own mind up, that’s all you can do.

“I’m not the first or the last medium to work hard. I do my best.”

Tony Stockwell will be at the Wyvern on Friday, June 17, at 7.30pm. To book visit swindontheatres.co.uk or call 01793 524481.