With Halloween looming, Plymouth Evening Herald reporter Matt Fleming teamed up with South West paranormal group Magic2k for a ghost investigation at Plympton's Boringdon Hall.
The Ghost Writers team may not have seen a spectre, but they were unnerved at the images caught on camera during their spook hunt.

Two months ago I got together with Neil Trigger and Peter Stokes, from South West-based paranormal website Magic2k.com.

They were planning their first ghost investigation, and thought it would be useful to get a local journalist on board.

I had dabbled in Ouija boards as a teen and am a fan of satellite channel Living TV's Most Haunted programme, which carries out investigations at reportedly haunted locations across the UK and beyond. So curiosity got the better of me and I joined their group.

We contacted Joseph Louie, owner of the Boringdon Hall Hotel in Plympton, and arranged to spend the night there.

Boringdon is reputedly one of the most haunted places in Plymouth - so Joseph wanted to see if the phantom rumours were true.

We got a team together comprising fellow-Herald reporter Tony Richardson, technical expert Andy Fleming, ghost enthusiast Jamie Anning and the boys from Magic2k.

Finally Gayle Force, one of the South West's leading spiritualists, and her husband and healer Vince joined the group to give us readings during the day. At night, we were alone.

We were blessed with a sunny Sunday, and laid out our equipment ready for a busy day. But the second we began, strange things started to happen.

Neil's daughter, a toddler who had just come for a few minutes at the start, ran screaming from the corner of one room where we later found a man had hanged himself during the Civil War.

This, of course, could have been a normal toddler thing to do - but inside the old building it felt rather more ominous.

Gayle told us facts about the hall that she couldn't have known - she knew that the 16th century's 'Nine-Day Queen' Lady Jane Grey had visited the hall and she claimed to have seen the ghost of John Parker, who remodelled the building.

And then, as if that wasn't enough, some really weird things started happening.

Peter, who was operating one of the cameras, started making excited noises while I was interviewing Gayle.

We ignored him - but later, when we saw the DVD, we were just as gobsmacked.

A total of 57 'orbs' were caught on film in broad daylight - most circling around me.

Some people believe orbs are the first manifestation of a ghost. Others dismiss them and maintain they are nothing to do with the paranormal. But no one - including photographic and paranormal experts - has yet come up with an explanation for them.

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