What's Happening in Sweden with Medium Pierre Hesselbrandt

 At Eternal Spirit we thought it would be interesting to try to find out what’s going on in the rest of the world when it comes to Spiritual work. So, in the absence of a budget for international travel, we connected via the Internet with upcoming Swedish Medium Pierre Hesselbrandt; a Harley Davidson riding Medium with a deep connection to the Spirit World and a real passion for the work. More about our informant later on.

Briefly the pioneer of Spiritualism in Sweden was the scientist Emmanuel Swedenborg (1688 – 1672), who was born in Stockholm. He devoted his career to science and invention until approximately 1743 when he had a visionary experience which led him to devote the rest of his life to prophecy and Spiritual investigations.

This means that Sweden actually pre-empted the UK by some years when it comes to public awareness of the Spirit World. However, Sweden does not have the network of Spiritualist churches that we have in the UK, instead the work takes place within Spiritual communities and societies.

These societies have a long history and work on similar principals to the Christian church. As with the UK many modern people are finding that the thinking inside these societies and communities is becoming dated and many people are seeking a more modern approach and interest in the work is growing and Demonstrations are drawing more newbies through the door at each event.

Unlike the UK training isn’t widely available and Pierre himself received his initial training from UK Medium, the late Iris Hall. In the last two years training organisations have started to spring up, but as with us the quality of the training is variable and many UK Mediums still go over to provide training, not the least of which is our own Colin Fry.

Sweden has one television channel that is willing to support the work of Mediums and another considering covering Mediumship, which should help generate more interest for the work. When Pierre took part in their version of the Psychic Challenge television programmes there were initially 200 applicants to take part, so like the UK more and more people are turning to the Psychic field as a way of work as well as a way of life.

Pierre feels that Sweden is some way behind us in accepting Spiritualism and Mediumship as part of its culture, and that the interest only really began to expand in the 1980s. The first television programme was only produced in 1997.

However, it would be fair to say that prior to the two Doris’s (Stokes and Collins) in the late 1970’s Mediumship and Psychic work was something only really known within Spiritual circles. So although Psychics and Mediums may have appeared on television 20 years earlier than in Sweden their introduction to the work seems to have followed a broadly similar pattern to our own.

One of Sweden’s better known Mediums is the former UK resident Terry Evans, but there aren’t nearly as many well known Swedish Mediums as there are in the UK at this time.

Saying that, let’s talk about our informant who is becoming rather well known in that cold but beautiful country a little nearer to the Arctic Circle, where they can cope with snow and ice without having a nervous collapse and ruining their fancy shoes.

Pierre Hesselbrandt has been a professional working Medium for 3 years, although has had the gift since he was 5 or 6 but in his family no one believed him so he closed it down.

His parents divorced when he was 5 years old and his Mother remarried quite quickly, but sadly his stepfather was quite unkind to the young Pierre. However, he has seen last 4 of Pierre’s demonstrations which he said he thought were very good, so after 30 years some respect has developed within the relationship.

Because he was unhappy at home he lived with his maternal grandmother, which was very difficult for them both. She found it hard to be both mother and father to him and he was teased mercilessly at school for living with his grandma.

Things became even more difficult for their relationship when, at the age of 12 he saw his neighbour was going to die. He told his grandmother who said that the neighbour was too healthy to die, but the neighbour died of a heart attack 3 days later and his grandmother was somewhat freaked out by the whole thing.

It was a big shock to Pierre too and because his grandmother didn’t like to talk about such he again closed down his abilities until he was 17 when he met his first real love.

At the time Pierre was frequently found to be working out at a gym “building physical rather than emotional confidence” and he hurt himself quite badly. The mother of his girlfriend at the time was a Spiritual healer and Pierre went to see her. He thought she was using an infrared lamp to heal his injuries but when he looked he realised that she was channelling the heat through her hands. That was his first contact with healing which he describes as “fantastic”, and represented another step on his dawning Spiritual path.

Sadly though he was hanging around with the wrong crowd so he did nothing about it. A year later he met another girlfriend and moved to a new town. Tragically, shortly after the move his older brother committed suicide and this sent Pierre into a spiral of depression that he feels he didn’t handle well. His then girlfriend told him to stop crying but he didn’t find that easy.

In 1996 the Spirit World started to make itself known to Pierre. Over three nights the lamp in his hall kept turning on and off. On the fourth night he felt what seemed to be a cat on his stomach; he didn’t have a cat but his dog was growling as he would if he saw a cat.

Looking across the room he saw his brother wearing a shirt that his mother later confirmed was his favourite. His brother was smiling at him but Pierre found it very frightening and was unable to speak. Pierre’s girlfriend also saw him and thought it was a burglar. So Pierre went to see a Medium who told him that his brother had been preparing him for his visit by turning the light on and off.

These events started Pierre thinking about the Spirit World and why he could see people that had passed. However, he was still running with a gang who were into minor criminal activity and Pierre admits to being involved sometimes but never seriously because he was “too nice”.

In 2003 he found himself praying to God to help him to become a better person and be able to earn money in an honest way that helped others. As a result of those heartfelt prayers he straightened himself out and pursued various different careers including working as what we would call a teaching insistent.

He decided he had to do something when on two consecutive nights he dreamed that someone told him that he would be channelling the Spirit World. Not knowing where else to start he went out to buy himself some Tarot cards, whilst standing at the stall in the market he bumped into an old friend who told him that the English Medium Iris Hall was coming to Sweden shortly. He took the telephone number and called Iris who told him that the course was fully booked, but after a short discussion she told him that he must attend.

There were 28 people in the class and to his surprise he was singled out with another student for having excellent mediumistic ability and the first time he tried Mediumship he actually felt a Spirit person tap him on the shoulder, which really surprised him. As did the fact that the message was so emotional it actually made him cry.

People find it very surprising that a biker should be drawn to the work and experience it on such an emotional level, but Pierre doesn’t see a conflict between the love of the open road and fresh air and the love of working with the Spirit World.

However, the contact with the Spirit World led him to realise that he was carrying emotional baggage that prevented his gift from being a pure channel. He concluded that the anger he carried from his childhood and youth was preventing him feeling the pure love that he needed to feel in order to become a good Spiritual Worker.

Through another girlfriend’s encouragement he went to see a therapist and worked through his anger and other emotional issues. Now he feels stronger and more confident and also more able to feel pure love, which he believes improves his abilities.

He says that “a Medium needs to be able to feel other people’s emotions in order to convey them, but if that Medium is blocking their own emotions and refusing to acknowledge them they won’t be able to bring through the truth of the Spirit communicator”.

Once Pierre finished his training he went to circle and practised meditation. He was then fortunate enough to be invited onto the Swedish version of the “British Psychic Challenge”. He didn’t win, but he did come 11th out of 220, which is pretty impressive.

In October a television producer saw him demonstrate his Mediumship, and she told him that in 22 years it was the best demonstration she had ever seen. However, he believes that the work is a precious gift not to be taken lightly, and is consequently still working in his own way and at his own speed, and keeping his feet very firmly on the ground.

Talking to Pierre it was interesting to see how Spiritual thinking breaks down national barriers, because his attitude and the attitude he describes amongst Spiritual workers in Sweden is almost identical to that of the UK, and we’re sure to many other countries in the world.

Pierre has always felt drawn to the United Kingdom and recently connected with the subject of our other article – Mandy Jooste. He hopes to visit the UK one day with his work, and we’re sure that he will bring a breath of fresh Swedish air with him.

We thank him for taking the time to tell us about Spiritualism in Sweden and his own work, and we hope to bring you further international insights as we can connect virtually with people working in other areas of the world.

Wouldn’t it be nice to think that we will find the same similarities no matter what corner of the planet we manage to reach?

© Deb Hawken - First published in