Derek Acorah to appear on stage
Psychic medium Derek Acorah says he never wanted to get in touch with spirits.
The Liverpudlian returns to Hanley’s Victoria Hall on Saturday to invite audience members to contact loved ones and receive messages through him in a two-hour show.
But Acorah, whose television career began in 1996, says his life’s ambition was to be a footballer, which he was achieving in the 1970s as part of Bill Shankly’s famous Liverpool side.
Acorah, then known by his birth name of Derek Johnson, only managed a handful of appearances for the club before his career was ended prematurely by a knee injury while playing for Australian team USC Lion.
He says: “I never actually wanted to be a medium, I wanted to be a footballer. When I finished in football at the age of 26 with a knee injury I wondered what I could do.
“I remembered my grandmother who was a medium telling me I would play football but would eventually ‘come over’.
“It was only a month after I finished playing that I placed an advert in the Echo and got a response off seven different people whose houses I went to, then I got an office and then everything just happened from there.”
Despite being adamant his career lay elsewhere, Acorah says he always knew he had a spiritual gift.
“When I was a boy my Gran told me I had a spiritual guide,” he says.
“She wouldn’t tell me his name but I had to get to know him. It was just occasionally when in football I’d got insights from him, and the moment I started doing my work he started talking and showing himself to me.
“When I saw him he wasn’t what I expected him to look like. He spoke to me in English language but he said his name was Sam and he was Ethiopian, as I was in my previous lifetime. For about six months I was afraid to go to sleep because I would go into this dream state where I would see the village and family I belonged to.”
Granada Television signed up Acorah as a contributor on the Livetime show in 1996 and, after stints doing the show both home and abroad, he was signed up to feature in Living TV’s Most Haunted programme, arguably where he made his name, before leaving after six series in 2005, then starting up a new show Ghost Towns.
He says: “With Most Haunted it wasn’t that I was fed up but I’d had enough of being stuck in castles and I wanted something new.”
After his departure, sceptics attempted to ‘out’ Acorah as a fraud, claiming many of the contacts he made with the spirit world were set up using prior research into the history of the places he visited.
But Acorah says he doesn’t begrudge people who don’t believe.
“I’ve not got a bitter view toward sceptics,” he says. “There’s a place for every way of thinking in life and it does not matter one iota that someone doesn’t believe.
“It won’t stop me working with spirits and I only bring good news, and if sceptics can’t accept it I can’t do much about it. I would say to them they should come to a show and see if I can change their mind.”
He hopes South Cheshire believers will benefit greatly from his Victoria Hall show.
He adds: “This will be a conscious link with the spirit world where those who have moved on will hopefully come through and pass on loving messages. It could be a husband, grandfather, sister, brother. It’s very emotional at times and there’s never one show the same. It’s not scripted and there’s nothing morbid about the show.”
The show starts at 7.30pm on Saturday. Tickets are £18.50. To book, phone the box office on 0870 060 6649 or visit www.ambassadortickets.com/Victoria-Hall
