'I left my job to work with the dead - I've been seeing spirits since childhood'

Rita Haworth was just nine-years-old when she felt it for the first time. Her parents had gone out for the night and her aunt was babysitting. Lying in bed, the young girl was uneasy. She knew something bad was about to happen.

Later that evening, she woke to an almighty bang. Her mum and dad had been involved in a car crash across from where she lived in the Tonge Moor area of Bolton. From that moment on, Rita knew she had a gift like no other.

As she grew older, Rita would regularly wake to visions in the night. She was able to speak to those no longer on this earth, she says. She would even see faint figures while going about her daily errands.

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Being able to tap into another world drove her 'crazy' until she was able to control it, she says. In her early 20s, she attended her first meeting with a group of mediums. She 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 learnt 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