It’s been hugely exciting. The last 3 years have been a bit of a mad dream for me. I never anticipated that my podcasts would become as popular as they have. After The Battersea Poltergeist, I found myself in the surreal situation of fielding calls from Hollywood horror producers in my shed at the bottom of my garden in Walthamstow, and then, as Uncanny got popular too, watching this wonderful community build around it on social media, a group of people, some sceptics and some believers, who, unusually for the times we live in, agree to disagree but all enjoy the stories in their own way. Alongside the success of my play 2:22 – A Ghost Story in the West End and now on tour, I’ve found myself in this lovely, unexpected position of being described by newspapers as “the UK’s go-to ghost guy” and “High Priest of the Paranormal”, but I think really the popularity of what I do speaks to the huge interest in this subject matter at the moment. I’m talking about something that has obsessed me my whole life, but it feels like there is an audience of people out there who are equally fascinated. What do you think Ghost means when he tells Coach, “I guess the only other person I’m really scared of, maybe . . . is me”? How does Coach respond? Do you think Ghost is hard on himself?

The show spawned dozens of spinoffs and imitators, and it's not hard to see why the show is so popular: the premise is that anyone can look for ghosts. The two original stars were ordinary guys (plumbers, in fact) who decided to look for evidence of spirits. Their message: You don't need to be an egghead scientist, or even have any training in science or investigation. All you need is some free time, a dark place, and maybe a few gadgets from an electronics store. If you look long enough any unexplained light or noise might be evidence of ghosts. But the idea that the dead remain with us in spirit is an ancient one, appearing in countless stories, from the Bible to "Macbeth." It even spawned a folklore genre: ghost stories. Belief in ghosts is part of a larger web of related paranormal beliefs, including near-death experience, life after death, and spirit communication. The belief offers many people comfort — who doesn't want to believe that our beloved but deceased family members aren't looking out for us, or with us in our times of need? For centuries, people believed that flames turned blue in the presence of ghosts. Today, few people accept that bit of lore, but it's likely that many of the signs taken as evidence by today's ghost hunters will be seen as just as wrong and antiquated centuries from now.The uncanny describes experiences that are strangely familiar. For instance, situations where something familiar occurs in an unsettling or eerie setting may be considered uncanny. Literary ghosts:

Perhaps the most familiar idea of a ghost is a deceased person, particularly a friend or family member, or even a historical figure. The ghosts may be friendly or hostile, and they can appear in a variety of ways. The interactive personality may appear in a visible I think the Miss Howard case is the one that feels the most unsettling because every time you think you have understood it, it simply shifts direction and evolves into something more. Pareidolia is a normal human tendency to impose meaningful interpretations on vague visual stimuli when there are none. Examples include seeing faces in a cloud or a pattern in a particular image. The concept can be extended to include sounds and other phenomena, such as hearing a hidden message in a song or thinking your phone vibrated before realising there's no message. An example of pareidolia is included below, where a piece of rusty machinery looks like a face. While it seems to contradict the contemporary notion of ghosts as immaterial spirits, there are accounts from the Middle Ages of ghosts being wrestled and restrained until a priest arrived to hear their confession! However, others were less substantial, and were described moving through walls. There were even some cases reported of armies of ghosts fighting one another; sightings were reported at Wandlebury, near Cambridge.Despite the fact that many people believe in ghosts, science overwhelmingly denies their existence; there is no evidence either that ghosts exist, or that a particular location is inhabited by spirits of the dead. What does paranormal mean? Working with a group, try to translate Ghost into film. Which aspects of the book would translate especially well to film (ex. dialogue, setting, character, conflict)? You may choose to create a book trailer for the novel or adapt a scene in the book into a screenplay and film it. In a state of absorption, we become so focused that we tune out everything else. We only tend to remember the things that we pay attention to, so in the case of ghost experiences that involve unexplained sound or movements, it may simply be that a person is too absorbed in one thing to notice the reasonable explanation for another.