Clare Finn
A scheming medium is targeting funeral wakes with a £25 pledge to speak to the dead.
Dubbed The Witch, she is preying on grieving relatives with a promise that she can put them in touch with their loved ones from beyond the grave.
Desperate mourners are quick to part with the cash in the hope of one last contact with lost loved ones.
Clare Finn told the Sunday World she handed over £900 in the forlorn hope she could contact her dead boyfriend who she lost to suicide two years ago.
There were also other empty promises to contact a deceased friend who died three years earlier.
The 27-year-old from North Belfast, said she began going to a well-known medium known as The Witch five years ago.
A tearful Clare told the Sunday World she started using the medium after 17 of her friends across the north and west of the city took their own lives.
Significanlty, she also revealed the medium who first approached her when she arrived at the wake of a close friend to give out business cards.
The medium told Clare that she could contact her close friend, and later, her deceased boyfriend, from beyond the grave – for £25 a time.
The Sunday World tried to contact The Witch at her home this week – even speaking with a member of her family, but were unsuccessful in talking to the woman herself.
Clare told us this week: “I was at the wake of a good friend in West Belfast who had been murdered when I first met this woman.
“She approached me and handed me her card and said that I would be able to speak to them in the afterlife.”
She described how the medium would invite her into a darkened room at her home, always ensuring Clare was on her own.
“She would surround me with black candles. Everything in the room was dark and black and she would wear a long dark cape,” said Clare.
What started out as a unique experience to Clare and her mates, quickly turned into a ‘nightmare’ when The Witch began tightening her grip on the vulnerable young women.
“Things in the room would start moving and she would speak in ‘tongues’. She said she had the gift to speak to the dead.
“There was a glove that she would hold in her hand and she told me that it was the glove of Padre Pio (a sainted 19th century priest).
“She told me she gets her power from the glove so she can speak to people in the afterlife.”
In order to lure Clare in, the medium and her husband told Clare to stop attending church because it was evil.
“I stopped going to church and just kept paying her because I was desperate.,” she said.
Two years ago, Clare’s boyfriend, and the father of her two children, took his own life.
Clare explained how the medium twisted her broken heart to glean every penny out of her, preying on the young woman as she pined for her late partner.
“When the father of my two kids took his own life two years ago I hit rock bottom. The Witch would say that she was speaking to my boyfriend, saying that he wanted to give me a message but the rope was tightening around his neck.
“She would shake and her husband would bring her a glass of water.
“Then she would say that I would have to pay her more money for another session in order to find out what he was trying to say to me. I was desperate and lonely.”
The cost of the medium’s ‘sessions’ reached almost £1,000 over the course of the five years Clare visited her.
Now, having gone back to church, Clare has said that she has turned her back on what she calls “nonsense”.
“This woman takes advantage of the fact that people are vulnerable and in mourning.
“She targets the wakes of victims of suicide as some of those have had trouble with drugs and alcohol, and some of those at the wake are addicted and desperate.”
She added: “Seventeen of my friends and two members of my family have died as a result of suicide, and it’s a huge problem where I live in Ardoyne. My plea others is: ‘Don’t fall into the trap that I did.’
“All of this psychic stuff is nonsense. I’ve gone back to church since where I feel safe and loved.”
If you are affected by any issues in this report you can phone the Samaritans on: 08457 90 90 90