Troubles Communicating With Spirit Guides

For probably about three months or so I have been actively trying to contact my spirit guides through meditation. I call out to them asking to communicate but I never really get any responses. I usually fall asleep during my meditation and wake up frustrated. Then I recently read about using pendulums and I have had fairly good success with using it. I managed to contact two of my guides and at first I was getting clear and accurate answers. But just recently I have been getting inaccurate answers or none at all. I had asked my one guide if he liked answering my questions and he said no so I replied that that makes me feel bad and it replied yes and immediately following I felt an overwhelming sadness and I started to cry for several minutes before finally calming down. I then asked my other guide, I'm pretty sure his name is Gabriel, the same question and he said that he liked answering my questions and didn't mind.

Then just the other night I was contemplating what it would be like to die and later that night I felt someone whisper in my ear "eternal Hell." I'm pretty sure I wasn't dreaming, but that is always a possibility, but I could literally feel someone's breath on my ear and the experience made my heart beat extremely fast. Earlier that night before I had gone to bed I called out to them saying I wanted to communicate. So could this have been one of my guides calling out to me answering my question?

Just recently I have been feeling chills go up my arm or my leg and sometimes on my back/shoulder. A couple of weeks ago I felt a really heavy pressure on my side, around my ribs, and it felt like someone was guiding me to get to where I was going. It is kind of hard to describe so I'm sorry if it doesn't really make sense.

So I guess some of my questions would be... Are pendulums a good way to communicate with guides? And does anyone have any suggestions on how to better meditate?