WHEN I first went to England, I was collected at the airport. The moment we turned on the road to the house where I was going to stay, I knew it. I knew every turn, everything. I walked straight to the door of my room, I knew exactly where I was going, and the house, the room, everything.

With my son Robert very ill when I left for the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, I was told that everything that could be done was being done in Jamaica and that I should leave him where he was comfortable. I took his medical records to England, so we could try and get him to England if anything more could be done. One night, out of the blue, I shot out of bed distressed and weeping and carrying on, and I couldn’t understand why.

Then a few weeks later I got a letter which told me that the baby was very, very ill and wouldn’t eat — just at the time I had felt distressed — so ill they didn’t think he would last the night. Aunt G told me later that that particular night she had given up hope, everybody had given up hope, though she had written to Oral Roberts.

She washed the child and put him to bed, and went to sleep herself, instead of sitting up. She thought: ‘He’s either going to live or he’s going to die,’ and really she couldn’t do anymore. That was the night when, over in London, I jumped up in distress. Aunt G went to sleep, the Oral Roberts prayers happened, and when she got up in the morning my son was standing at the foot of the crib and saying: ‘I want porridge.’

About three months before Bob Marley died in May 1981, I had a vivid dream of a very large gathering, and the predominant thing was white and the Rastafarian colours and all these very ornately dressed people on the platform. When I woke up I told my husband, Gary about it. I thought maybe he was going to take me to a Nyabinghi, and I forgot about it. Then Marley died and we were invited to the funeral service at the National Arena. Dressing for the occasion I had a head-wrap and a white caftan, and Gary gave me a little black heart that I pinned to my dress, and he was dressed similarly in white.

About half an hour after the funeral began, it suddenly hit me that this was what I had seen — Rasta colours draped around the Arena, but all the Rastas in white, and the platforms, bishops from the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. I turned to look at Gary at the same he turned to look at me. And he said: ‘Well, this is what you dreamt about.’

When my son Moyo died in London in 2007 I believe I felt him saying goodbye. In Kingston half-asleep in the wee hours of Saturday the ninth of June, I thought I was about to die. It’s like a funny feeling took over my whole body, but the focal point was the pit of my stomach, my belly bottom. You know how you hear a mother say ‘har belly bottom tek har’ when something happens to her child? When I finally picked up the phone to call for help I felt like a sort of coldness, a sort of calm, a sort of quiet passed over my whole body and the awful sinking sensation in the bottom of my tummy suddenly eased up. And I fell asleep. But when we got the terrible news that Moyo had been found dead in his apartment in London, the medical examiner estimated he had died just about the time I had been having these strange feelings in Jamaica.

These days my dreams are not as vivid as they used to be. They are like lantern slides, pictures flashing by quickly and most times in silhouette. Sometimes I can recognise a face or a figure, but most times it’s just a situation. Or I might hear a conversation in my head, as though it’s just outside my window — but there’s nobody out there. I recognise the voices, the mood, but I can’t hear the words. I know who the people are and as soon as it begins to happen I’ll remember — I dreamt that.

I’ve never felt I was meant to be like the four or five ‘gifted’ people who suggested I develop my potential to be a psychic. But I have an unusual connection with my children, family members and close friends, and I know I have had experiences and perceptions that might be considered paranormal.

Tomorrow in the Autobiography of Leonie Forbes: Uproar in the place because I was named director of JBC Radio 1 and 2.