THE mums at the school gates always look forward to seeing Charlotte Harding.
Not because she’s got the latest gossip, or has baked the tastiest brownies – it’s because she might have an urgent message from beyond the grave.
“I don’t know where it comes from, but I’ve always had it,” Charlotte says of her ability to communicate with the other side. “I see spirits and help other mums contact relatives who have passed away.”
Charlotte, 39, says she is assisted in her work by Patricia, the ghost of an elderly former resident of the miners’ cottage where she lives with her husband, university lecturer Richard, 42, and their two sons, 13 and 11, in the Rhondda Valley, South Wales.
Charlotte’s spooky skills are now a talking point at her son’s school, and fellow mums were soon approaching her to request readings.
“Some of the mums are wildly fascinated, some think I’m crazy,” she laughs.
Perhaps surprisingly, Charlotte doesn’t charge for her psychic services.
“I don’t like to attach a monetary value to what I do,” she says.
“I might receive a little gift though. One of the mums gave me honey, another gave flowers.”
Sometimes, Charlotte will even do a reading at a cafe or the local pub.
“I don’t do theatrics, like dimming the lights – I look like a regular mum,” she explains.
“Patricia helps me, but I also contact relatives who’ve passed.
“My nana Glo and my nana Mary – Glo’s mother – are my usual go-tos.
“Readings can be quite fast, sometimes as little as 15 minutes.
“And I always bring tissues. Although I don’t want people to get upset and cry, it often happens.
“They want to know if those that have passed are OK. That’s the big question.”
Sometimes Charlotte’s sitters tell her who they’re hoping will make contact, sometimes they don’t.
I’m very good at picking up when someone’s unwell – even when they don’t know it.
“When I make contact, it’s like I’m seeing a video of them,” she says.
“That’s the only way I can describe it.
“I will pick up a rough age, but I’m not very good with names.
“I’ve made contact with a parent for one of the mums and a grandparent for another.
“Once a spirit kept showing me an image of a Welsh cake and I said to the sitter: ‘Why do they keep showing me this Welsh cake?’
“And they said: ‘My grandmother died from choking on a Welsh cake’.”
“I was shocked, because I was actually having difficulty breathing and felt I needed to cough.”
Charlotte, who is hoping to study for a parapsychology degree – the scientific study of alleged psychic phenomena – at the University of Edinburgh, says she is also adept at sensing illnesses.
“I’m very good at picking up when someone’s unwell – even when they don’t know it,” she says.
“I pick up on cholesterol a lot, blockages of arteries. I feel it myself. I’ll get a feeling in my kidneys or a pain in my chest.
“At the moment, I have a feeling someone I know has a heart problem and I haven’t said this to the person because I don’t want to worry them.”
Charlotte first started to notice her special gift as a child.
“When I was five, I saw an old lady sitting on the windowsill at the bottom of my bed at our house in Cardiff,” she says.
“I was so scared, I ran straight to my mum and dad’s bedroom. ‘It’s Mrs Salter,’ I said, convinced that was her name.
“They later found out a Mrs Salter had lived in our house – and died there at 100 years old.
“My mum was worried and took me to see a psychiatrist, who said it was ADHD, but I wasn’t imagining things.”
SECRET SKILLS
As a teen, Charlotte also had a vision of going up a tall staircase, only to be told halfway up by a mysterious figure: “You can’t come up yet.”
She says: “They were steps leading up to heaven, or the afterlife, and the figure was a man with one arm behind his back.
“I told my mum, and she said, ‘Oh, that’s Big Bill’, who was my uncle’s father.
“He lost one of his hands in an accident.”
For most of her life, Charlotte has kept her psychic skills secret, but decided to ‘come out’ three years ago.
“Close family knew, but I mostly kept it a secret, assuming people would think I’m crazy,” she says.
“But three years ago, something stirred inside me, and I set up a Facebook page called Witchywales and put some of my ghost stories on it. I now call myself Lady Paranormal.”
One of those stories involved husband Richard, who she admits is sceptical of her skills, and her two sons.
During a family outing to St Fagans National Museum of History near Cardiff, Charlotte took a photo of one of her boys.
But when she looked at the snap later, she spotted two ghostly figures – both with a blue hue – crouching in the undergrowth behind her son.
“I didn’t see them at the time, but I had this strange feeling of being watched,” says Charlotte.
Spook cynics may suggest it was a trick of the light, but Charlotte discovered they were on the site of the 1648 Battle of St Fagans, in which some 200 men were killed.
And the uniforms of Parliamentary soldiers at this time were… blue.
Charlotte is certain the two figures are ghosts of lost soldiers.
She says: “I looked it up and was stunned. But spirits just follow me around. I don’t know why.”
More recently, Charlotte had her own ghostly experience, involving her stepfather who passed away last June.
“About two months ago, I got tingles, and I sensed him behind me,” she says.
“I knew then he was OK, so it was reassuring.”
Up to the age of 30, I was afraid of my gift, but now I’ve learned to embrace it.
But for Charlotte, channelling the dead can be exhausting, as whether she’s popping to the supermarket or picking up her sons from school, she says she is often aware of another ‘plane’ existing outside of our own earthly realm.
“I’ll sometimes hear children laughing, or the sound of a cat,” she explains.
“Or I’ll pick up the odd word that’s vocalised.
“So I only do readings when I have an urge to help, because the spirits can make me feel very drained.
“Afterwards, I usually have a cup of hot chocolate to ground myself, or I’ll have a shower to cleanse myself of unwanted energy.
“And I’ll sage the house – burning a bunch of sage leaves to let out negative energy – once a month.
“Luckily, my husband and sons are very supportive. I’ve never had any psychic experiences about them, and I’m thankful for that.
“Up to the age of 30, I was afraid of my gift, but now I’ve learned to embrace it.
“My witchy ways are part of who I am.”
