I felt as if I was in that classic Hollywood horror The Haunting Of Hill House. Six of my closest friends and I arrived at a haunted castle for an evening investigating the paranormal. This was a serious event for Haunting Breaks, which is passionate about trying to ensure clients have a paranormal experience - that's why it chooses venues where unsuspecting members of the public have already been rudely awoken by spooks. 

We were staying at Bolebroke Castle, Henry VIII's hunting lodge, where he courted Anne Boleyn and where she now supposedly walks the corridors without her head. 

On arrival, we giggled like school children and teased each other about being spooked, all of us slightly sceptical but rather excited at the same time. Only 12 hours later I insisted two friends slept in the same room as me because I was too frightened to be alone. 

Bolebroke Castle, near Hartfield in Sussex, has a long history of 'sightings'. Guests have happened across a woman in grey, a running boy and other nightly apparitions. 

This might put some people off ever visiting but thanks to the growing popularity of TV programmes such as Most Haunted and Living With The Dead there are many willing victims desperate to find life after death or just wanting the thrill of bumping into ghosties in the night. I am one of them. 

The paranormal team, Peter Turner and Carol Bowen and guest psychic Ruth Brunt-Jones, are serious about the subject but welcoming and keen to be questioned. We sat outside in the sunshine diving into a cream tea and talking about the events to come later that evening. 

Group bookings work particularly well with this event. First, there's safety in numbers if one person gets scared witless; and second, the laughter tends to flow more easily and long into the night, making me think that this is an ideal hen-night escapade. 

Then, after tea, we tried on our Elizabethan costumes. I was a bit dubious about dressing up at first but it bonded the whole team and, according to 'medium' Carol Bowen, this encouraged activity. She also commented that spirits like laughter. Well, they were getting plenty of that from us, we were in hysterics at how we all looked. 

The bedrooms at Bolebroke are large and most are en suite. Mine was the King's Room, which made me nervous as I really wouldn't have liked a visit from Henry VIII. He was too much of a bully for my liking. 

Just before supper at 8pm, we had drinks and an excellent presentation from Peter and Carol who showed us pictorial evidence of spirit activity from other events and titillated us with what we could expect to see. And we were asked to pick a crystal to be kept on our person at all times for our own protection - the crystal having been blessed by a psychic. 

After supper we would be attempting to contact the dead, or at least finding evidence of ghosts with dowsing, the art of using a pendulum or a pair of dowsing rods to locate an energy field. 

Table-tipping was another, very antiquated, technique. This is a simple experiment where people seated around the table ask the spirits to 'tip the table'. I think I saw Margaret Rutherford do this in an old black and white movie when I was 12. Glass divination is equally 'schooldays'. I think everyone has tried this in the school common room at some point in their teenage years. Finally, there was the 1am seance. The idea of this slightly spooked me, as I was not sure I want to talk to the dead. I only wanted to see them. 

After a wonderful three-course supper in the spooky medieval banqueting hall, our activities started with pendulums and dowsing rods. I have dowsed before, for water and for ley lines (invisible power lines said to crisscross the world), and I take pride that I am a natural dowser. 

And my skills did not let me down. I made contact with a spirit immediately and had the attention of the whole room, especially when one of my friends photographed me and the camera wouldn't focus, instead capturing a purple 'aura' behind me. 

Peter guided me on how to have a dialogue with the other side by using the rods. I had to ask questions that could be answered with only 'yes' or 'no'. A 'yes' was when the rods crossed and a 'no' was when they moved apart. I could definitely feel a power moving through my hands and into the rods, moving them erratically. 

This was very exciting and not at all scary and encouraged the other guests to join in but they didn't all have the luck I had. 

Our hosts said they were highly qualified in contacting the other side but qualifications didn't guarantee who and what you contacted. 

I seemed to have 'spirited up' a maid who worked at the castle between the wars and she gave the name Joy. This took a long time to find out. I had to ask the question 'Does your name start with an A? Does your name start with a B?'... until I received a 'yes' for J. Then I could start guessing every name that started with that letter. 

Our next quest took us back into Bolebroke's eerie and oppressive dining hall, to try our hand with an upturned glass. 

With the team's fingers resting lightly on the glass, we took it in turns to ask if there was a spirit who wanted to make contact. 

Unbeknown to the Haunting Breaks team, I had chosen friends to accompany me who had all lost loved ones in the past 12 months and this was when the evening became very powerful. They all made contact with who they wanted to. It is easy to say that anyone can pretend to be a ghost and push the glass but each member of my team asked questions that only the deceased person could answer and only one of those questions received a wrong reply from about 30 asked. This success left all the guests stunned and elated. 

Next, we were taken to a bedroom on the first floor where past guests had reported being woken by their bedding being forcibly pulled off. 

Contact was again a glass and a table, with all of us placing a finger on the glass. We immediately had a very energetic and angry response, with the glass almost shooting off the table. This is where the evening became really spooky. Realising the glass was possessed by a male spirit, I started to ask questions. 

'Are you a huntsman?' 
'Yes,' said the glass. 
'Do you have many mistresses?' 
The glass violently shot to the 'yes' position on the table. 
'Were you killed hunting?' 
The glass slowly moved to 'no'. 
'Were you murdered by a mistress's husband?'

Don't ask me why I asked these questions. Possibly because I had entered into the 'spirit' of the evening by dressing up, possibly because I embraced the history of the castle, but the glass shot violently across the table to say 'yes'. 

By now, I was very scared and very tired. When we headed for bed I asked two of my friends to move into my room for the night and we settled down for a surprisingly restful sleep. 

Travel Mail (Daily Mail)
October 2008