She's medium rare...

Moments earlier the bubbly 38-year-old had been sitting with her toddler daughter on her lap, chatting away and giggling nervously as she explained how she discovered her special psychic abilities.

Speaking with a slight but noticeable lisp, Nicola told me it was after her father died two years ago that she first started receiving messages from the other side, entirely without trying.

Although her father Don Spencer was a spiritual healer, she had never been aware of her own abilities before and - unlike her father and stepmother Rosemary - had never read books about spiritualism.

Nicola was at Don and Rosemary's home just after he died at 64 from acute diabetes, when she says she saw the words "God bless" written on the wall in his handwriting.

"I got a cloth and I was rubbing it frantically but it was just getting worse and worse. I was panicking and thinking, 'Oh gosh, what am I going to do', and then it just disappeared.

"I realised it was just something I'd been seeing, and yet it had looked so real. It was strange."

Then a few days later Nicola says she came down with the most terrible headache, "like a migraine".

She found herself going into a trance, and felt compelled to grab a piece of paper and a pen. When she came out of the trance, she realised she had written a letter from her dead father to his family, explaining precisely how he passed over and what it was like on the "other side".

Since that day, Nicola claims she has written some 250 letters while in a trance-like state, mostly from Don but also from other spirits. Some of the letters are love letters to Rosemary.

She and Rosemary now plan to put the letters into a book, which they hope will bring comfort and reassurance to others that there is life after death.

Although Nicola's whole story sounds hard to believe, after talking to her for some time at Rosemary's flat in Gorlestonf Road, Branksome, I found I did believe her.

Her natural manner and the innocent way she spoke convinced me she wasn't making this story up - after all, she had no need to.

She doesn't make any money out of her psychic powers, nor has she tried to develop them. She doesn't work in a spiritualist church, nor does she offer readings at home or clairvoyance.

As Nicola sees it, she is simply a single mum, struggling on her own to bring up her three daughters - Janine, six, Emma Louise, four, and Tamzin, two - in a flat in Norwich Avenue, Bournemouth.

She just seems to have reluctantly accepted that her children aren't the only ones who constantly demand her time and attention.

When Nicola offered to show me what happens when she goes into a trance, it was an unusual step because she doesn't normally "call up the spirits to order" - they come through to her when they choose.

Rosemary, who is a medium herself, shut the windows and drew the curtains before saying a short prayer as Nicola sat in the armchair with her hands in her lap and her eyes closed.

Gradually her hands started to rise up as if on strings, and then make circular movements just in front of her body, as though there was some kind of magnetic force at play.

From the back of her throat came a deep, heavy breathing, and her head rolled and then dropped down, resting on her chest.

Eventually she spoke, but it wasn't Nicola's voice.

Gone were the lisp and the girlish giggles. This voice had a slightly haunting tone, a slow and deliberate speech pattern - and it really did appear as if Nicola had been possessed.

The spirit identified himself as "Rainbow Cloud", Nicola's Indian spirit guide, who helps her from the other side by bringing the other spirits through.

He told us that many, many years ago, in another life, Nicola was his daughter, before ending with "I am only introducing myself as Nicola's guide, for other spirits will not come in at this time present".

I must admit I was rather disappointed she hadn't been able to "bring anyone else through", but I still felt I really had witnessed a spirit using her as a medium to communicate a message.

And if Nicola had been putting it all on, she's an extremely good actress who ought to win an Oscar.

It took her a little while to come back from her trance-like state and she looked completely drained.

"I feel very light-headed now, a bit sick," said Nicola, using her own voice again, with a rather half-hearted giggle. "My throat feels really dry. I need a glass of water."

When I asked Nicola what she thought about the things she'd just said, she couldn't tell me. Apparently a lot of people go into a light trance, but I go into such a deep one that I can never remember anything about it."

Fortunately though, Nicola doesn't normally need to remember the spirits' messages, because at the end of a trance she finds she has written them down in the form of a letter.

And she's often astonished to see the result of her scribbling.

"Even I'm amazed at myself because some of the words in the letters are words I just wouldn't ever dream of using - I have to look them up in the dictionary because I don't understand them.

"My handwriting is different each time too, and at the end I often sign the letters with a signature which I don't recognise, because it's not my own."

About three times a day Nicola says she finds herself being pressed upon by the spirits to write - although it used to happen seven times a day.

"When I feel a bad headache coming on I have to find a piece of paper - an envelope, anything to write on. I feel one hand is resting on top of the other and my hand starts to shake and then my eyes get heavy and I go into a light trance.

"The headache is always in one place and it doesn't ever go away until I've done my writing.

"I even have to do it in the bath - they don't leave me alone," she says with a laugh.

"When I'm having a bath, I'm on the toilet or on the bus, or I'm with someone and I get this raging headache, I have to say, 'No, go away'. I have to be firm with them.

"I'm trying to control it because they do take your energy away from you and when you've got three children to cope with as well it's really hard."

Nicola seems remarkably upbeat about something that sounds like a relentless intrusion on her private life, and a pretty unpleasant experience.

Even strange happenings in her home - like the bread bin and dustbin opening involuntarily, doors opening, or a spoon automatically lifting off the table and landing inside a jar - don't freak her.

While it may sound like anyone's worst nightmare, Nicola, who was extremely close to her father, sees it as his way of showing he's still around for her.

"All this has really helped me to get over Dad's death. It's really been a comfort to understand that he's still around. It makes me feel good and I hope it will bring comfort to others when they hear about me. I want to give people the evidence and tell them that life exists beyond here," says Nicola. "I don't feel ashamed. Some people may be sceptical about my letters, but I don't care what they think - it's just what comes out of me. I can understand why some people are sceptical because they've had bad experiences with mediums.

"I've never had time to sit down and read spiritual books because of the children. I didn't know anything about the spirit world until I started to write these letters.

"Why it should happen to me I shall never know. I just can't believe what's happening."