'Oprah'-fame Irishwoman Lorna Byrne 'talks to angels'

Mystic in blockbuster deal for self-help angel book

For as long as she can remember, Lorna Byrne, 56, has been talking to angels. As a child she assumed that everyone could see them, but her parents soon became worried by her constant staring into space.

In 1960s Ireland, when every kind of mental and physical disability was shrouded in shame, Byrne’s parents took her staring spells as a sign of mild mental retardation.

But in conversation with the youthful looking author you’ll discover she’s a perfectly normal woman, with one remarkable exception. To her, invisible angels are as real as your own family members.

Although to anyone else that’s an extraordinary claim, Byrne, a native of Co. Dublin balances it out by saying that she also has to deal with the challenges and setbacks of everyday life just like everyone else. What’s hard to take in is that although she doesn’t look or sound odd, her claims are completely amazing.

“The angles told me to call the book 'Angels In My Hair,'” she says, in her matter of fact voice. “They didn’t mean it literally, they just wanted people to know how present they are in our everyday lives. They’re communicating with us all the time, even if we don’t realize it. They never give up on us.”

Nowadays Byrne is overwhelmed with letters asking for help, and her debut book, which is already on top of the bestseller list in Ireland, goes on sale in the U.S. on April 28 and is certain to keep all those letters coming. The growing numbers can only encourage her publishers Doubleday, which brought the world 'The Da Vinci Code' and bought the rights to Byrne’s book for a six-figure sum.

“What I see now is the same thing I did when I was a child. Every single second of the day, whatever people are doing, I always see the beam of light three steps behind every person. But it’s not every time that each and every guardian angel would open up, because that would be too much for me,” she says.

Her own family was the first to be concerned by her unusual behavior when she was a girl, and some of their responses still rankle her. Her parents, and in particular her father, often treated her like she wasn’t worth his time.

“I used to feel hurt and sad about that because I couldn’t tell anyone my secret. I couldn’t tell them why I often stayed silent. I would see their angels, and that kept me separate.”

There were other good reasons to keep what she was seeing to herself, she recalls.

“It was the angels who told me when I was very young that I must keep it a secret and tell nobody. As I got a little older I realized why -- because I was being considered retarded,” Byrne says.

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Nster.com