Will Storr vs. The Supernatural: One Man's Search for the Truth About Ghosts

by Will Storr

  More twigs snap. Laughter. It’s rogue teenagers. They’ve infiltrated the set of Most Haunted Live.

  ‘Boorrrllooooorrrkkkkksss!’ shouts one.

  ‘It’s all a load of bollocks!’ sings another.

  ‘Mary!’ shouts another joker, in a squeaky high-pitched voice. ‘Mary! Oh, Mary!’

  Yvette is visibly furious. She rams her fists on her hips.

  ‘Tony!’ she shouts to the security man who’s been hired to keep intruders off the set.

  We watch Tony lunge into the trees.

  ‘Fuck off!’ we can hear him shouting.

  ‘Bollocks!’

  They’re still going at it when we’re back on air but, luckily for the Most Haunted crew, Yvette and Derek’s microphones aren’t powerful enough to pick up their voices.

  ‘Here we are in the graveyard at Canewdon, St Nicholas’s Church,’ Yvette says, excitedly, ‘and I have to say, even while we’ve been off air we have – all of us, I can safely say – have seen what can only be described as a shadow. Also, the mobile phone that Ross has as well, his battery has completely drained. So, we’re having batteries going down on us as well. So, already, it just seems to be a really, really strange place. So Derek, things seem to be happening, and you actually sensed something over there.’

  ‘Absolutely, most definitely a female figure,’ he says, to my rising bafflement. ‘To me, it was a female that was either bent over, or she was very, very, very, very short and she seemed to be at that angle. And you know what I get with it now? I keep on getting it ringing through, psychically, here to the front of my head, coming from here, and I get “Mary, Mary, Mary, Mary” and I get … is that right, Sam? “Mary Moon”.’

  ‘Mary Moon?’ says Yvette.

  ‘Hold on!’ Derek says, his face sucked in with the concentration. ‘Mary, Mary, Mary, Mary, it sounded like, yes, it is Mary, I get Mary and I get the name Moon. Now whether the Mary is to link with the moon, or whether it’s the name Mary Moon, now I feel because I’m concentrated on that area. That’s connected with that area, so this could be the person that’s moving about here and I feel she would be quite elderly, not a young spirit person, quite elderly.’

  ‘Why is she here?’ says Yvette, mournfully. She’s hugging herself tightly in her big black puffa, as the wind plays with her hair. ‘Why do you think she’s still haunting a graveyard?’

  ‘Hold on,’ he says, as Sam feeds him the requested info. ‘Hold on. Now I’m getting Margaret. I feel as if I’m being strung with the psychic link with Margaret and after being hung, then two souls taken away and disfigured, and taken at the neck, taken the head off, and that is the one who walks around here,’ he announces finally. ‘It’s Margaret Moon.’

  Next, we are led to the side of the church where somebody has noticed that the infra-red triggered security light isn’t working properly. As Tony hurtles about in the undergrowth, trying to keep control of the mudlarks that have gathered in gobby gaggles behind hedges and fences, Yvette and Derek discuss the mis-flashing light.

  ‘When spirit activity is about,’ Derek says, ‘lights, batteries, anything electrical can be charged because what the spirit people are doing, in order to try and manifest in the atmosphere, is to take energy from the light. And so that’s why we’ve got batteries going down.’

  ‘That’s very, very common, isn’t it,’ says Yvette, ‘for people who do say they have haunted houses? It actually drains the electricity and they have very, very high bills.’

  ‘Yeah,’ says Derek, ruefully, ‘and people don’t know how much drainage they’re getting until they get the bill.’

  After we’ve handed back to the studio, the crew walk back to the outside broadcast vans. Tony, the security man, catches us up as we get there.

  ‘Those little wankers,’ he says to the producer. ‘They were going, “What you gonna do? The police are twenty minutes away.” There’s not much I can say to that, is there? Typical Essex attitude.’

  Ten minutes later, we’ve walked to the bottom of the hill to a crossroads where, legend says, a headless witch was buried with a stake through her heart. When we get there, there’s nothing to see but a traffic island, a road sign and four empty tarmac roads that fade quickly into the night.

  ‘Do they expect us to be here for five minutes?’ says Yvette, looking around crossly at the featureless scene. ‘It’s crap.’

  ‘It’s not crap,’ says someone from behind the camera, ‘it’s poignant.’

  A few seconds later, we’re back on air.

  ‘This is a very poignant place,’ begins Yvette, ‘and a lot of things have been seen here and people have particularly witnessed one spirit. Can you pick up on anything at all, Derek?’

  Everybody looks at Derek, expectantly. The crew, the viewers and us verifiers are all now wondering the same thing. Will we get the money shot? Will Acorah manage to sniff out the name of the main ghost that’s supposedly been kept secret from him – that of Matthew Hopkins, the Witchfinder General?

  ‘I feel as if in this area there’s a lot of misery,’ Derek begins, cautiously. ‘Feelings of misery. Feelings of hopelessness. Feelings of minds, of individual people being grouped together and they seem to be fearing that they’re going in a direction to be, I dunno, the only way I can describe is to be judged or something? They’re fearing the arrival. They know, they’re being taken.’

  ‘By who?’ says Yvette as they stroll up the hill, with the crew in front of them, walking backwards.

  ‘Who are they being judged by, please?’ Derek closes his eyes as if deep in reverent prayer. ‘OK … OK … being judged by Matth … no, no, not judged by him. Taken by him. Taken in that direction, by … ’

  ‘Who? Who? Who?’ says Yvette.

  ‘These people, it’s like they’re being taken by Matthew? To be – it’s like he’s producing these people for them to be, in some manner, judged. And in that judgement it’s like as if he supplies, and what I get with this Matthew, as well, with this supplying, it’s like, to me, it’s like, supplying an animal for the slaughter. It’s like as if a human being’s meat in his eyes, and with it I picture this, like, very strong lying, lying, making things fit, making things fit, um, and in nine times out of ten probably in situations with this, lies were told to build a picture, a false picture.’

  ‘So this is Matthew telling lies?’ says Yvette, trying to pull the full name out of him.

  ‘Matthew telling lies,’ Derek says. He looks baffled, as if his own words are mystifying him.

  Five minutes later, we still haven’t got a surname for Matthew Telling Lies.

  Eventually, Yvette asks, ‘Can you give me a surname for this man?’

  Derek addresses Sam again. ‘Can you give me a surname?’

  The medium listens to himself intently as he paces up the cold country road in his long, expensively cut black raincoat.

  ‘I feel he would have been quite happy to wear a hat and also a gown,’ Derek says, outlining a big square above his head.

  ‘You’ve done like that,’ says Yvette, ‘so I’m presuming … ’

  ‘It’s a tall hat, yes.’ Derek nods. ‘And he would wear something covering like an over-gown um … who’s that? Say it again?’

  Derek walks along for a while longer in silence. His face is intense, determined.

  ‘I’m just asking stuff from him,’ he explains.

  Suddenly, Derek stops. We all watch anxiously. Then, he closes his eyes and throws his hands up to his mouth. His psychic synapses are white hot and sizzling.

  ‘It is!’ he says. ‘It is! Is that him? It is him!’

  Everybody gazes at Derek and waits.

  ‘OK,’ he says. ‘Sam’s just confirming this.’ The medium stares at the air in front of his face as he listens to his spirit guide. And then, he’s got it and he says it. ‘This Matthew is Matthew Hopkins!’ he announces, slamming his finger down triumphantly. ‘Matthew Hopkins!’

  The crew nod at each other and smile as a satisfie
d happy-ending glow spreads through them.

  After Derek declares the year of Hopkins’ death as 1647, and comes up with some names for the witchfinder’s ‘cohorts’, Yvette asks him if he can tell us where Matthew Hopkins is ‘grounded’.

  ‘I’ll try. I’ll try,’ he says. ‘OK, help me with this Sam, please.’

  ‘All right,’ says Yvette with her finger on her earpiece, ‘join us after the break to find out where Derek thinks he could be grounded. OK, keep thinking, yeah?’

  ‘It’s a building, it’s a building. It could be the building is white. It could be that the building’s got something to do with maybe a name. White … ’

  ‘Just to let you know,’ the producer says, ‘we’re off air.’

  With that, Derek snaps out of his trance, digs into his coat pocket for a packet of fags and lights one up. He smokes it sullenly, looking out across the silent fields. After a couple of minutes, the programme begins again from the studio. Yvette listens in with her earpiece and gives us a running commentary.

  ‘They’re saying you got the date right,’ she says.

  ‘You got the name wrong, though,’ the producer jokes. ‘It was Bob!’

  They both snigger.

  I decide to take this opportunity to sneak away and climb back onto the coach. I tip-toe over to Judy’s seat and shove her schedule down my trousers before creeping into the toilet to fish it out. Cramped in the plastic capsule and bathed in slimy yellow light, I scan down the crumpled page. With a start, I notice that Derek has ‘happenings’ scheduled in advance: ‘Yvette and Derek explain local folklore and have a happening’; ‘Yvette and Derek at St Nicholas Church – further happenings’.

  Conscious of the time, and the wrath of Judy, I shove the schedule back down my trousers and sneak out again.

  ‘Can I just ask our journalists,’ says Yvette just before the credits finally roll, ‘how did you feel that tonight went?’

  ‘I think it went really well,’ I say. ‘I definitely saw some strange activity.’

  ‘And are you impressed with tonight?’

  ‘Very much so,’ I say.

  ‘Well, back to David,’ Yvette says. ‘We’re all very impressed here.’

  TO: Pastor James Worth

  FROM: Will Storr

  SUBJECT: Interview request

  Dear Pastor Worth

  I am currently doing some research into ghosts and the afterlife. I found a webpage that refers to you as an exorcist. In the UK, it is very difficult to get clergy to speak openly about this important subject. I was wondering if it would be possible for me to travel to the US to speak to you.

  Many thanks.

  Will

  TO: Will Storr

  FROM: Pastor James Worth

  SUBJECT: RE: Interview request

  Exorcism is not for entertainment or for gain. This is not a toy.

  Read Matthew Chapter 10.

  In His grace,

  James <

  TO: Pastor James Worth

  FROM: Will Storr

  SUBJECT: RE RE: Interview request

  Dear Pastor Worth

  My aim is to show how dangerous divination can be, and impress on people the risks they are taking when they use Ouija boards etc. I would have thought you would have been willing to help me in this.

  Will Storr

  TO: Will Storr

  FROM: Pastor James Worth

  SUBJECT: RE RE RE: Interview request

  You are playing with fire.

  In His grace,

  James <

  7

  ‘All I ask is that you put your life in my hands’

  I’M A TONGUE-TWISTER away from breaking someone’s jaw. It’s just past four in the morning and I’m sitting, cross-legged, on the floor of a cold Welsh museum. There are twelve of us, holding hands in a circle, uncomfortable and awkward like a human crown of thorns. In the middle, a man called Tim is sitting on a small wooden chair, reading out tongue-twisters in a squeaky voice. We’ve been told by the enigmatic leader of the group, who likes to be known as ‘the Founder’, to concentrate on the chair and to try and make it levitate with the power of our thoughts.

  ‘Six sick slick slim sycamore saplings,’ says Tim.

  I’m not sure what the rest of these people are thinking …

  ‘What time does the wristwatch strap shop shut?’

  … but I’m thinking that I’m freezing and exhausted and I’ve been sitting on my legs for twenty-five minutes now …

  ‘Vincent vowed vengeance very vehemently.’

  … and if this so-called ‘Tongue-Twisting Magic Chair Experiment’ doesn’t end in a minute …

  ‘Chris Cringle carefully crunched on candy canes.’

  … I’m going to levitate that chair out of the window with the power of my fucking foot.

  Just as my anger is peaking, the strip light on the far wall, which throws its clinical white light over a mural of a Spitfire that commemorates this place’s role as a wartime RAF base, flickers off. There’s nobody by the switch and we’ve been in and out of this room for hours – the light has been fine. We sit for a few seconds in frightened darkness. The strip light flickers on again.

  ‘Just think, that sphinx has a sphincter that stinks.’

  I try to distract myself from the unpleasant present by mulling over my night at Most Haunted. I suppose the reality is that TV shows are expensive to make and complicated to organise and their makers are likely to leave as little to chance as possible. But, that said, leaving Derek Acorah’s crazy displays aside, I don’t think there was anything scripted about the batteries on the crew’s lights suddenly draining. But is it really possible that spirits are somehow using the electricity? Could there have been invisible ghosts in St Nicholas’s graveyard, sucking like feeder fish from high-powered lamps?

  ‘Don’t pamper damp scamp tramps that camp under ramp lamps.’

  It was on the set of Most Haunted that I first heard about the Founder, who also goes by the name of Dave Vee. There was a rumour that he caused a small sensation by walking off the set of I’m Famous and Frightened, another Living TV ghost show – this one featuring various down-on-their-luck celebrities locked inside Chillingham Castle in Northumberland. Vee was hired as the resident paranormal expert and fled the show in a rage, fearing for his paranormal reputation. He was appalled, I heard, by its flippant treatment of a serious subject. Vee had the courage to resist the many and magnificent seductions of television and so, when I found out that he ran his own research organisation, Ghosts-UK, I was happy to pay the £35 joining fee and sign up for the next investigation.

  I was picked up yesterday morning outside London Bridge station by a forty-two-year-old ex-soldier called George. He was wearing a black shirt that had been ironed with military precision and had the group’s logo stitched into its chest and sleeves. George is a ‘five star’ member of Ghosts-UK. He is the Associate Member Investigation Co-ordinator and, if you access his details on the site, you’ll find out that ‘Big G’, as he is known, is also a Chat-Room Administrator and that his stars are coloured gold. This sort of information, I quickly discovered, is of considerable importance to Ghost-UK personnel.

  On our way to Wales, we picked up George’s friend Sarah. For the next six hours I tried to get some pre-vigil sleep and, as we motored along, was spinning in and out of consciousness. During periods of lucidity, as we bombed up the motorway, I heard snatches of complex tales of internecine fighting, some remarkable free-form bitching, endless debate about the worthiness or otherwise (it was mostly otherwise) of various members’ star-ratings and much discussion of regular inhabitants of the chat-room. At one point, I even heard a white witch’s whiteness being called into question.

  Eventually, though, I’m roused from my nauseous, disturbed and bumpy sleep by the squeak and sit of the car pulling up, and by George saying, ‘I said to him, “Change the fucking job title on the fucking site or I’m fucking out of here for good.”’

 
We have arrived at Maes Artro, an ex-RAF camp in Gwynedd, North Wales. It’s a low huddle of corrugated roofs, mossy bunkers and concrete walled huts that was used in the Second World War as a base-camp for pilots. It’s now a museum and every few weeks a ‘forties ball’ is held in the old bar. People come from all over North Wales to dress up in period costumes, drink heavily and jive to Glenn Miller. During these events, strange anomalies have started to show up in photographs: people in perfect forties outfits and hair-dos. People who nobody knows. Could these mysterious strangers be the spirits of dead dancers, reappearing for post-mortal fun and flirting? G-UK are here to find out.

  By early evening, twenty-five members of varying rank have arrived and are sitting in the large, warmly lit canteen. We’ve all been served a small bowl of thin turkey stew, which proprietor Shirley proudly informed me was ‘free’, coming, as it did, as part of the £25 fee we’ve all paid to be here tonight. I eat my dinner alone, George having deserted me to sit with other senior members, all of whom are turned out in packet-fresh G-UK branded shirts, fleeces and raincoats. They eat their meal noisily and discuss an absentee member.

  ‘And she reckons she’s a psychic?’

  ‘Bethany’s not a bloody psychic.’

  ‘Bethany’s about as bloody psychic as this bloody stew.’

  Everybody George is talking to is called Steve – there’s Margate Steve, Steve PM and Big S Steve. Each Steve is in his late thirties and significantly out of shape, and one of them has upsetting, medieval teeth.

  Earlier, when I asked George if the Founder would be joining us, he just laughed at me, as if I were indulging in crazy talk. But, during dinner, a rumour started floating through the group’s chatter like a spectral orb – Ghost-UK’s celebrated leader, they said, is on his way.

  Once we’ve finished dinner, Big S – a loud Northern Irishman with tattoos on his forearms and a large rectangular head – stands at the end of the hall and shushes the gabbling crowd. It’s time for our pre-vigil talk.