World of the Unknown: Ghosts: 1 (The World of the Unknown)

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The assaults become increasingly violent and are witnessed by the Maynards and acquaintances, forcing Sally’s parents to finally seek help from a local priest. And the way to check that you’re being followed by a Behinder… when that happens, whip around really fast. We sat in the darkness and looked out onto the landing in silence, waiting for any signs of the netherworld to be walking among us. I was looking through the pictures and listening to videos to see if I could hear anything, then I saw the top of the stairs and thought 'that didn't look right'. To my young father, though, Maynard seemed like he was more alive, like he existed somewhere closer to the truth than anyone else they really knew.

We did read in the Period Homes magazine that some people are worried about moving the objects or cat bones they find, because they were put there to keep bad vibes away. During this process, we uncovered the original cruck frame, and in my daughter’s bedroom in one of the cross members there was a knothole stuffed with what appeared to be rubbish. Dust appeared to fall from mid-air and puddles of water appeared on the floor with no apparent source.In fact, many of Fred’s antics were both amazing and often highly amusing, like when he calmly poured an entire jug of milk he removed from the fridge over a sceptical aunt, leaving the kids in stitches. The young girl's spirit appears and confronts the evil monk's spirit, which is driven from the house. Maynard’s House is the story that takes place in the snowy mountains, the story that deconstructs a man – inside a cabin! And then we decamped, en masse, to a darkened, upstairs function suite, where a random word generator on a laptop brought traditional table-rapping firmly into the 21st century, with requests for communications from beyond the veil being met with responses that included ‘PSYCHIC’, ‘CONTACT’, and – intriguingly – ‘KEITH’. There was no A/C, but two industrial fans ran up in that room around the clock to keep its guests from passing out.

This was important…” (We have a copy of the book on the table, open at the Pluckley double spread, and Chris is pointing proudly at one particular illustration.I found myself sitting with SFX magazine stalwart turned novelist Nick Setchfield for most of the evening, as we discussed (of course) the nature of the 1970s haunted childhood, the oddly beautiful photographs of mushroom-coated graves that he’d taken in the hotel grounds, the lost 1984 single ‘ London Story‘, and his new supernaturally-tinged Cold War novel The Spider Dance. Maynard introduced them to the forefathers of hip-hop, blasting the Last Poets from that hot guest room.

I did not feel particularly scared in the house, irrespective of the things that were experienced and the earie feel it has, as there is something quite comforting there also. The ghoulish apparition appears in the same spot that the Black Monk, also known as Mr Nobody or ‘Fred’, was said to regularly stand and was where 14-year-old Diane Pritchard was dragged by an invisible hand. Beth only spotted the 'encounter' when she got home the next day but admits if she'd seen it while still in the house she'd have insisted on leaving. A lovely guy from Exeter…” muses Chris, “who had in his school library a copy of the book that he took out regularly, and it lasted and stayed with him. I wondered if it was the doll, but my sister removed the doll from the pram earlier that night to entice a spirit.The specialist is able to make contact with the spirit but during the session, the group is attacked by it, and the specialist is unable to remove the spirits from their house. I can see the nostrils open, I can see eyes, really chiselled cheekbones, and if you zoom in closer you can see pupils. We use your sign-up to provide content in ways you’ve consented to and improve our understanding of you. The décor is very much in the style of the 1970s, with posters of the Osmonds still hanging on some of the walls, but the house is seemingly unchanged since the apparent poltergeist activity. Ghosts was only one of “about 80” non-fiction books that Chris wrote in a twenty-year period from the mid 1970s onwards, and was published at a time that he now considers to be a halcyon era for the industry (“It was like producing music at the time of the Beatles and the Stones…” he tells me, “To be there, at that time… the golden age…”).