BELFAST woman, Amanda Large, has ended her marriage to a dead pirate…and she reckons she’ll need an exorcism to rid herself of the troublesome ghost husband.
Amanda – formerly Amanda Sparrow Large Teague – married the spirit of Jack Robert Teague, who had the nickname, according to the 46-year-old, Captain Jack Sparrow.
But a year later Amanda is suffering from the consequences of marrying the ghost.
“I don’t think I’ll ever get over the negative effects of this,” said Amanda. “The damage to my health seems irreversible. I now have to live with the consequences of my actions.”
She married her ghost husband on a boat in the Atlantic Ocean, with a medium speaking on behalf the dead pirate.
Teague was among the notorious pirates that plagued the Caribbean and trade routes, stealing and plundering their way into infamy.
And, Amanda – originally from County Louth – says she should have known that marrying a renowned rogue.
“Looking back now out of all the people I discussed my relationship with only one suggested that what I was doing could potentially be dangerous,” she said. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, he was a pirate!”
However, Amanda thought it would be a fairytale romance as she was exploring her own ‘talents’ as a medium – and working as an impersonator of the Johnny Depp character from Pirates of the Caribbean film series.
“One day a spirit that identified as Captain Jack Sparrow came through, I didn’t believe it at first, I thought he was just a movie character – I actually thought someone in the spirit world was on a wind up.
“But that wasn’t the case, after a lot of research I confirmed that Captain Jack Sparrow was a real person in history, it wasn’t the Jack Sparrow we know from the movies and not the one I had been impersonating.”
Teague was executed in 1752 with a prolific pirate reputation on the high seas.
“I communicated regularly with Jack, he was easy to communicate with and I enjoyed his company,” the author and activist said. “In fact, after a while I just opened myself up to allowing him to come and go in my life whenever he pleased. I liked having him around, I felt at ease with him and I didn’t feel any negativity at all.
“But my journey into spirituality was in its infancy and I feel that many of the people I had surrounded myself were happy to encourage my growing relationship with him, but no one warned me of the dangers of letting a spirit into my life in the way I let Jack in.
“Eventually I decided that Jack was the person I wanted to spend the rest of my life, and afterlife with. I connected with him on so many levels, I thought at the time he made me happy. I even wrote a book ‘A Time You Will Remember’ which was a fictionalised account of our relationship.”
Amanda began her journey in spirituality in 2010, five years before she encountered Teague, around the same time as many people were identifying as ‘pirate’ aided by the launch of International Talk Like A Pirate Day (September 19th) in 1995 by John Baur (Ol’ Chumbucket) and Mark Summers (Cap ‘n’ Slappy).
“I had discovered that there were a number of people across the globe who identified as “pirate” as their chosen lifestyle,” said Amanda. “I found it freeing and was able to express myself in ways that I hadn’t been comfortable with in the past.
“Ironically, around this time I also became a Jack Sparrow impersonator after a couple of people told me I resembled the movie character.
“What I didn’t know at the time was that I was being attracted to anything linked with pirates and the pirate lifestyle for a reason, through my exploration of mediumship I had been connecting with a number of spirits.
“Most of whom came across as positive energies and I was delighted at the progress I was making. I became so comfortable that eventually I began doing mediumship for friends and family and others.”
Her relationship with Teague blossomed and soon plans were laid for the marriage – conducted in international waters as there only a few countries have laws for marrying a dead person. The UK and Ireland are not among them.
“After a lot of thought and planning, we married, and I should have known that day that things weren’t going to go smoothly,” said Amanda. “It seemed there was omen after omen.
“Things kept going wrong on the wedding day, like someone was telling me not to do it – but I did, I persevered because I believed I was in love, I believed I had made a connection with Jack that no one else understood.
“Shortly after the wedding things started going wrong in my life. Things that I’m not quite ready to talk about. I never once connected what seemed like the worst run of luck to my involvement with a spirit.
“I didn’t consider the negative effect it was having on my energy and my life.
I genuinely felt I had something, I wanted to make it work, I tried hard but eventually I realised that I had to admit that Jack was having a seriously detrimental effect on my life. I found out the hard way how not to interact with the spirit world.”
Pic: Serina Harvey
However, Amanda is suffering and needs help to shed herself from the dead pirate.
“Sadly, breaking up with a spirit isn’t as easy as it might sound.
“When you open yourself to that kind of energy there is much work to be done to remove that entity and to protect yourself.
“I have discovered that earth bound spirits or spirits that do not move on need energy and jack was stealing mine causing me a lot of pain and heartache in this world.
“I now need a soul extraction or probably more commonly understood as an exorcism to free myself of this.
“I want to warn people that dabbling in the occult can be dangerous and they need to be very careful of who they connect with. There is a lot of misinformation out there. I intend to get the marriage annulled on the basis that I entered into it without full knowledge of the implications of what I was doing.
“I wish I could just pretend it never happened, but it did and I have to live with that.
“I’m sure there are plenty of people out there who think I’m mad and there were times when I would have agreed with them, but I’m not asking for their approval, understanding or even their kindness – I just want to make sure no one else ends up in the same position I was in and have their lives ruined the way I did.
“I still hold my core spiritual beliefs, I haven’t turned my back on my faith in something greater. I’m simply more informed and more educated than I was before and looking forward to moving on with my life without my husband.”
Amanda’s book A Life You Will Remember, which is a fictionalised story based on her real experiences, is available from Amazon, Kindle, Kobo and direct from the publisher at Excalibur Press.
You must be logged in to post a comment.