The “something else” has always caught my imagination. As a young child I was convinced there was a ghost in the house. Whilst my parents would be downstairs I heard footsteps and doors opening on my floor. It could not be one of my parents, so who was it? I would brace myself as occasionally my bedroom door would open and I would be transfixed as there was no one there.  I then spent the rest of the night underneath my blankets and I would not get up until I saw the light of the next day. This started my interest in the paranormal and I remember as a school kid visiting my local library once a week and rather than go to the Children’s book section, I would head to the Adult’s section and take out my allotted two books for the week and I would always choose books on true ghost stories or books about folklore and myths and legends. As a teenager whilst most of my peers would be reading contemporary novels I would be relishing the works of M R James and Edgar Allan Poe, the masters of the mysterious and macabre.

From my early twenties, every time I went on holiday to anywhere in the UK, I would ask whoever I went on holiday with, if ever we went to a major town, if I could visit the local book shops and I would buy as many books as I could on that areas local ghost stories. My friends would kindly accommodate my wishes and in return I would be happy to spend time with them sunbathing at a beach or going for a boozy night at a pub and spending time with the other kind of spirits. Over the years this has amassed into quite a big collection and my books are proudly displayed in bookcases in my hallway.

• Around early 2001 I moved into my current house and I invited a friend to come round one evening so they could see my new house. When they arrived I opened the door and they saw straightaway my large collection of books. For the next half an hour they were looking through my books and flicking through the books and reading pages that caught their attention. I had to pries them away from my collection as I was eager to show them the rest of the house and after the guided tour of my property, we sat in my living room and had a cup of tea. We then returned to the subject of ghosts. We both discovered that we shared the same interest in the paranormal and  as a teenager they had also read the work of M R James and Edgar Allan Poe. I cannot remember who suggested the idea, that it would be good fun to investigate one of the alleged haunted sites and living in the county of Kent, where better to start than the UK’s most haunted village of Pluckley. I remember that over the next few days we both made phone calls and we each brought out about half a dozen friends each and one Saturday night we descended en masse to this little village. As ghosts hunts go, I think it is fair to say that it was organised chaos. We did not have a clue where we were going, we had no ghosting hunting equipment and no idea about how to call out to the spirits. We made a beeline for the Screaming Woods which are on the outskirts of the village. We all split up into groups of three and four and went off into different directions.We agreed that we would meet back at our cars in an hour. The woods cover quite a few acres of land and in places are quite dense. The people that remembered to bring torches found themselves being leaders of these small groups as they could guide as, as to where we were going. The group I was with was made up of all young men in their twenties. We walked for about 30 minutes going deeper and deeper into the woods, we lost sight of our colleagues within 5 minutes of exploring, though being made up of a team of young lads we were not afraid of the dark, haunted woods . We did not come across anything unusual, though we did hear animal noises which is what you expect to hear in a wood. We decided to turn back as we arranged to rendezvous back at the place where we parked our cars. When everyone arrived back we shared our experiences. One team said they saw white shining lights in the wood that seemed to be following them, one group said they saw a shadow figure appearing within a group of trees. When it came to our group, we disappointingly  said we heard a few animal noises but nothing extraordinary, but the evening had created one thing, a group of people who had come together for the first time that night who were eager to do more investigations again. Every few weeks we would go out investigating, we would get better with our techniques every time we went out and we all clubbed together to buy some ghost hunting equipment.
• I will tell you the tales of what happened with our other investigations another time. This includes, encounters with an invisible phantom,  conducting a ghost hunt on a live radio show and literally taking the show off air, another visit to Puckley and the Screaming Woods. I co run a different group now and it is called South East Spirit Quest, and if you like to see what we do, please head to our You Tube channel and just type in South East Spirit Quest to see our videos..

           Finally, I would like to thank Mystic Soup for giving me the opportunity for me to write this article for their web site

           and I look forward to writing many more.

       

        STEVE MURPHY

        GHOST HUNTER