Caressing a tombstone with the back of her hand, Ann Ann says she feels at peace. Sitting in the quiet shade of a gothic cemetery not far from her Brisbane home, the Woman’s Day psychic chats away to the dead with an energy most wouldn’t waste on the living.

“Whenever I feel anxious or uptight, I come here,” she says. “I come here to gather my thoughts and I always walk away feeling loved and with my problems solved.”

The day we visit Ann, she hears a mother repeating the words, “Nobody cried for me.”

With a bit of research, Ann discovers the mother was the last to die in her family and had no relatives to grieve her passing. Ann whispers soothing words to put the mother at peace.

The scene seems perfectly normal to Ann, who then spies a young nurse walking among the graves. She sees a man following the nurse, wanting to be near her. He turns to face Ann.

“Oh, that’s Garry Lynch,” she says casually. “The father of Anita Cobby.” When Woman’s Day informs Ann that Anita, who was murdered in Sydney in 1986 aged 26, was a nurse, she gets a shiver.

“That must have been Anita, then. She was beautiful and wearing a nurse’s uniform.”

There is no explanation as to why the ghosts of Anita and her father would be in a Brisbane graveyard – but then, who really can explain the paranormal and the spiritual world?

Ann believes her psychic gift has been with her from birth. “I’ve never tried to restrict it,” she says. “Growing up I’ve used it in most areas of my life. I see it as like having an extra arm.”

This “extra arm” means it isn’t unusual for her to hear voices of the dead or have her sleep interrupted by messages from the other side. “That’s why I keep a notebook by my bed,” she explains. “I jot down what comes to me. Often these messages can be clues to a crime.

“I seem to pick up on children a lot as I was in an orphanage until the age of four-and-a-half.”

Ann’s childhood was tough. When she was finally adopted, her adoptive mother, an alcoholic, would hit her with frying pans.

“That just made me determined to never do that with my children,” says Ann, a loving mum of five and doting grandmother of five. But does she get spooked by the array of spirits that drop by unannounced?

For the full story see this week's Woman's Day, on sale March 22, 2010.