"As Vice-President of the Ghost Club Society for the past 25 years I have looked into many cases of ghost sightings so when I read in the Mail yesterday that an eminent psychologist, Dr Richard Wiseman, has claimed that ghosts definitely do not exist, I knew he was talking nonsense - not least because I have actually talked to a ghost, as I shall describe later.
I never cease to be amazed by the gall of scientists who declare they have now proved the non-existence of spirits or the soul or second sight or telepathy when thousands of ordinary people can contradict them from their own experience.
In the British Journal Of Psychology, Dr Wiseman and his colleagues describe how they investigated two famous haunted sites - Hampton Court Palace and the South Bridge Vaults in Edinburgh - and noted that in the most 'spooky' areas there are strong magnetic fields.
Magnetism, they say, can influence the mind into thinking it is sensing the presence of a ghost. So can such conditions as cold and damp.
Their conclusion is that ghosts are all in the mind, that what you might think is a ghost is nothing more than the brain's reaction to tiny changes in light, temperature, smell or magnetic field.
What I find incredible is that these scientists - from Edinburgh and Hertfordshire Universities - have apparently failed to take a close look at the wealth of scientific research into ghosts that has been going on since 1882.
This was the year that a group of scientists and intellectuals decided to create a society for studying ghosts and hauntings under the strictest conditions. Within a few months, they had so much proof that not one of them had the slightest doubt that ghosts were real.
One of their best documented cases is that of an old chimney sweep, Samuel Bull, who died of 'sooty cancer', leaving a bedridden widow in a tiny cottage with eight other family members.
Nine months after his death, the six children became nervous, declaring that there was someone outside the door. Then one day, Samuel Bull, looking quite solid, walked into his widow's bedroom.
Everyone was terrified, but as these appearances continued over months, even the children got used to it. Samuel would stand by his widow's bed, his hand on her forehead - she said it felt firm but cold. One visit lasted more than an hour.
The Society For Psychical Research, who investigated the case, had no doubt it was genuine.
Samuel Bull was the most common type of ghost. He looked like a real person. But another type is so common that thousands of cases have been recorded - the poltergeist, or noisy ghost.
Poltergeists throw things, cause objects to fly around, and often make such a racket that they drive people to nervous breakdowns.
I have studied many cases, and have concluded that they are basically mischievous, empty-headed spirits with nothing better to do - the football hooligans of the spirit world.
In fact, there are so many poltergeists about that there is probably one within ten miles of where you live. I once tested this by asking around my local area of Cornwall. In no time at all I had located more than a dozen.
My most striking supernatural experience came in 1978 when I was invited to our local television station in Plymouth to meet a pretty nurse named Pauline McKay.
When placed in a hypnotic trance, Pauline would talk in a strong Devon accent and declare that her name was Kitty Jay, a milkmaid who had committed suicide in the late 18th century, and whose grave on Dartmoor is a tourist attraction.
But Pauline had never heard of her, nor did she know of the existence of Jay's Grave.
As Pauline lay in the studio with closed eyes, she told me how she had gone to Canna Farm, near Chagford, the most haunted village in England, looking for the labourer who had made her pregnant, and then hanged herself in the barn. Because she was a suicide, her body was buried at a crossroads on the edge of the moor, an attempt to confuse her spirit should it walk.
Pauline pronounced Chagford in the old way - Chagiford (it was spelt Chageford) - and the detailed manner in which she described Kitty's death left us all horrified and convinced.
Later, we took Pauline along to Canna Farm. She became obviously upset but, without prompting, led us into the farmyard, and turned left into the barn. There she showed us the beam on which Kitty hanged herself, and the farmer verified that she was correct.
Yet Pauline had never visited the West Country in her life.
So what is there about the little town of Chagford that makes it one of the most haunted places in England?
After extensive research, I have come to the conclusion that Chagford does indeed have more ghosts than any small town I have visited.
And I believe Dr Wiseman is at least partly right, in that the answer lies in magnetism - the magnetism of the Earth itself.
It is often connected with granite, like that on Dartmoor. Lines of this force can be traced by good dowsers, who call them 'ley lines'. The whole area around Chagford is surrounded by them.
For some reason, these lines seem to provide the ideal environment for ghosts. Again and again, I have found that haunted houses lie on the crossing point of ley lines.
And I am certain that in some odd way, these lines can record powerful, tragic emotions, like magnetic tapes.
Chagford is plainly a place that is full of such 'recordings', echoes of the past and there are many more scattered the length of Britain. Whatever, the psychologists say, I know what I've seen and heard. Ghosts do exist.
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