From the late 1940s he gained a reputation as a ghost hunter, although this was never officially admitted by the Church of England. I found out about him purely by chance, but making contact was almost impossible. The bishops denied all knowledge of his activities. Numerous other clergymen and laymen too refused to discuss even the possibility of such a person being in the established church. Enquiries were met with a wall of silence.

When I finally found him there was no such secrecy, though he did make certain conditions about how his experiences should be presented. Firstly, all place names to do with actual events have been changed, and so have the names of the participants themselves.

As James Newton-Hall has relatives and friends still living, details of his private life are often deliberately vague, to stop representatives of the forces of darkness using them to the disadvantage of others.

James Newton-Hall, for the same reasons, is a pseudonym.

The details of the following stories are true, although certain place names and all names of individuals concerned have been changed. I decided to co-operate with the compiler of this little collection for two reasons.

1. I felt that, if someone had taken the trouble to find out about certain aspects of my work, then he deserved co-operation.

2. Good and evil are part of our everyday lives, even in the "space age", and, despite the ever-widening field of knowledge possessed by modern man, many things remain unexplained.

I dislike the term "ghost hunter". I have never seen a ghost, although I keep an open mind on whether or not such phenomena exist. Nor have I been an "intrepid seeker-out and destroyer of evil", as one Press report of years ago put it. The greater part of my clerical life has been spent as an ordinary parish priest, doing the things which parish priests do all over the world.

Nor, by the way, is it true that the introduction of the Alternative Service Book forced "ghost hunter to leave Church in disgust", as another wrong-headed Press account put it. I had already decided to retire in 1980, and the introduction of a new form of service seemed a convenient time for an old hand to call it a day.

Mr Clark and I have spent two years putting together these stories. That is longer than the events in them took to happen. In total, the events covered less time than would make up a year in more than thirty years of ordinary Church life.

The only gift that God has given me is what some call "Extra-Sensory Perception" or "E. S. P." That is apart from that faith which any true Christian can call upon in the hour of danger. Though I have been very frightened on a number of occasions, He has given me the strength I needed to do His work.

J Newton-Hall,

September 14th 1981