I'm still in pain after being possessed by a ghost

Halloween may be over - but there are people in the West of England who spend the whole year preoccupied with suspected paranormal activity. We asked how they first became interested in ghosts - and spoke to an expert about what they believe could be behind paranormal experiences.

Whether you believe in ghosts or not - stories about them have captured the imagination for millennia.

According to Dr Katy Soar, senior lecturer in Classical Archaeology at the University of Winchester, the earliest recorded haunted house story dates to 100- 109CE, when Roman writer Pliny the Younger recounted the tale of a Greek philosopher who rented a house with a shackled and howling ghost of an old man.

Paul Cowneadow, from Gloucester, says he still suffers from pain caused by a ghost which attacked and possessed him in an old prison.

He said he now investigated buildings across the city after becoming interested in the paranormal when he was a child.

Gloucester Prison - which is now closed but once executed prisoners - was one of the most memorable places he had been, Cowneadow said.

A visit with a friend in 2019 was particularly dramatic, he said.

"I remember him radioing down to me that my name came through on a piece of equipment and the words 'I will hurt you'," Cowneadow said.

"And then I had a massive pain in my neck, like someone put something blunt on my neck and it put me on my knees.

"It caused me nerve damage on my neck, I still suffer from it to this day. There's no other cause to it, I didn't fall or anything," Cowneadow said.

Lisa Rawding is a paranormal investigator with a company which organises ghost hunts across England.

"This obsession will never die - people will always be fascinated with ghost stories and the paranormal," she said.

One of the places she visits is The Rifles Museum in Wiltshire, which she said was known for its poltergeist activity.

"You can have books flying from shelves, people hear heavy footsteps.

"We give people the chance to go around and investigate using old Victorian ways like table-tipping and Ouija boards, or more modern methods like using ghost and spirit boxes.

"A lot of our guests scream when they feel something touch them and that does make me jump," she added.

Rawding said she saw her first ghost when she was four years old "which was a monk of all things".

She said the encounter both terrified and fascinated her.

Samantha Tuck runs another company which offers paranormal investigations and ghost tours.

She said she had always been interested in the paranormal.

"Growing up, my granddad used to take his dog out for a walk in a village and tell me stories about spirits down lanes.

"My auntie died unexpectedly and so I started going to a spiritual church where different mediums would come," she added.

Tuck said she had been to Warmley Clocktower, an 18th-Century building and community hub on the outskirts of Bristol, four times to investigate.

"One of the times I had a laser device and set it up - you put it in a doorway and if you walk through it an alarm will go off," Tuck said.

"Nothing really happened all night and then it suddenly went off when none of us were moving. There were voices too," she added.

Ian Fairholm, a lecturer in psychology at the University of Bath, focuses on parapsychology - the study of alleged paranormal phenomena.

"Ghosts relate to what it means to be human, what the next state of being is. We know what it is to be alive but we don't know what comes next," he said.

Fairholm added that people frequently reported paranormal experiences in old buildings, which "often have weird things going on in their piping or holes".

"A popular theory is about infra sound, which is sound just below human hearing.

"The idea is that - even though humans can't hear it consciously - maybe it's still affecting them in some ways," he said.

Fairholm said people thought about ghosts more during this time of year.

"We've just had Halloween and it's getting darker earlier. It's when we want to tell stories and swap ideas and that fits in with us being maybe a little bit more anxious," he added.

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