Rita Haworth was just nine years old when she was lying in bed while her parents were out for the night. Her aunt was babysitting her and she felt uneasy.
Later, she woke to the noise of a bang. Her parents had been involved in a car crash. And, from then on, Rita knew she had a special gift.
As the years went on she would regularly wake up with visions in the night. She says she could speak to people who were no longer on Earth. Rita, from Bolton, even claims she would see faint figures while going about her daily business, reports the M.E.N.
But the ability to reach into another world drove her "crazy" before she could control it. She said that she went to her first meeting with a group of mediums when she was aged in her early 20s.
RIta then went on to train with some of the best mediums in the world before becoming a psychic medium herself, she told the M.E.N.
“I’ve given copious amounts of readings to people over the years,” the 63-year-old said. “In my earlier years, I did see things just randomly. But now I’m fully developed, I’ve learned how to control it.
“I have specific times when I work; I have a spiritual room in my house where I work from. It’s like a radio. When I’m ready to work, I have a ritual I go through and then I open up to the spirits. Then I close down, because I have to live in the real world. If I left myself open, I would get messages from everyone trying to get in contact with me.”
Rita, who now lives in the Ladybridge area of Bolton, lectured social politics at the University of Salford for 25 years before going on to teach a masters course at the University of Manchester. She retired early four years ago to concentrate on her spiritual work.
Recalling one of her most memorable encounters, the grandma-of-two says she once saw the spirit of her best friend in her bedroom. She added: “When I was 17, I went to a catering fair in London. When I came back that evening, my mum said, ‘Have you seen this in the paper?’
“When I looked, my best friend from school and her boyfriend had been in an accident on a motorbike. He died straight away at 17 and she died a few days later.
“A couple of weeks after that, I went to bed and I started seeing flashing lights around the room. One materialised and it was my friend. I could see her outline stood there.
“We had a conversation and she told me I was going to go on and help thousands of people. At the time I was only 16 and I was a bit sceptical. I thought, ‘Am I seeing things? How can I help people?’ I could hardly help myself at that age.”
Rita says she was also able to communicate with a troubled spirit by using a Ouija board. A friend had moved into an old farmhouse in the countryside and told Rita they could “feel something going on” inside the property.
Rita decided to visit the premises with a group of friends – immediately feeling a presence as soon as she entered the building. “I wasn’t sure what it was, but I knew it wasn’t good,” she said.
“When I went near it, I shuddered. I thought, ‘Something happened inside this barn,’ but I wasn’t sure what it was. We went back inside and I did something I never usually do – we decided to do a Ouija board.
“We made a makeshift Ouija board and I got contact pretty quickly from a guy called Bill in the spirit world. The glass was whizzing about all over the place; he was being aggressive while trying to communicate.
“I said a prayer for him to move on because he seemed to be stuck. The atmosphere felt lighter afterwards. A few years later, I was speaking to someone about it. They said they knew the home and a man called Bill lived there. He shot himself inside the barn. I got confirmation of exactly who he was and what he had done.”
Rita says she has also been able to predict futures through psychic readings. The mum-of-one remembers a time she met a young girl.
"She wanted to be a police officer and she had tried twice to get into the police force," Rita added.
"She said to me, 'Please tell me it will be third time lucky'. I did a sitting for her and I told her she would get into the police force, but she would only stay 10 years.
"She asked why, and I pretended I wasn't sure. I didn't tell her because it wasn't good. Some years later, my sister bumped into the same lady. She asked how she was doing, she was shopping at the time. She told my sister she was buying some pyjamas because she was going into a hospice; she was dying. I could see that she only had a short time."
Rita has since released a book – Ambassador For Spirit – revealing the heartbreak and trials she has faced in her life while taking the reader through her spiritualism journey.
