Spectre a spooky time at Muncaster

Halloween is a few days away so Alan Cleaver has been investigating haunted Muncaster Castle...

Margaret Pennington - is it her ghost haunting the tapestry room?

THE good folk of Muncaster Castle invited me to a preview of their Haunted Muncaster event and proceeded to try and scare me to death! Their Haunted Maze is certainly not for the faint-hearted (or for those under the age of 12) but they were pushing against an open door when trying to persuade me and the rest of the press pack that ghosts really do exist. I spent two years of my working life at the Spiritualist newspaper, Psychic News, and talking to spirits, investigating ghosts and observing the likes of Uri Geller at close quarters was all part of my daily routine on the paper. Indeed, trying to find a teaspoon in the office canteen that wasn’t twisted into all manner of weird shapes became a real challenge. Looking back on my psychic research days, I realise I was fortunate to witness so much at close quarters (this was the days of Doris Stokes, Geller, Matthew Manning and other top psychics). I’ve come to the conclusion that those who says they don’t believe in ghosts, do so because they’ve never investigated them. Anyone who takes the trouble to do a bit of research usually finds enough evidence to convince them there are indeed more things in Heaven and Earth than we might imagine.

* I stumbled across a lovely piece of Cumbrian dialect last night. While reading a book, it mentioned that a woman was knocked over by her dumpy wully. An asterisk next to it directed the reader to the bottom of the page to advise that a dumpy wully is a pet lamb!