AS I WRITE these words the hairs on my neck are standing on end. I can still see the spectral grey man in the corner of my bedroom. He is not speaking or moving, just staring through the murky light, savouring my fear. And I can still taste my anxiety.
I'm in bed, rigid with fright, cursing my cowardice, my naive enthusiasm to experience a haunting and my friend Fi, who first told me about the unnerving apparition.
She, or rather her young children, witnessed the eerie sight on a recent family holiday to Mellingray, a tastefully renovated North Cornwall barn.
As she packed on the final morning, her daughter walked around in circles, pointing into thin air, repeatedly asking her mother to “look at the man”. Seeing nothing, Fi ignored her. But when filling in the visitors' book, she was shocked to discover that several other guests had encountered the ghostly figure.
It seemed a perfect excuse for a West Country break with a shot of psychic sleuthing. But then the story became slightly more disturbing. I was contacted out of the blue by Nick Winstone, who had overseen the barn conversion in 2003 and heard I was visiting.
While working alone he had seen Mellingray's lights turn on and off, and heard several old latches - “too heavy to be lifted by draughts” - being simultaneously pushed up and down. Friends scoffed, but on visiting were stunned to see the television turn itself on, increase to full volume, then abruptly switch off.
“I wasn't scared,” he said. “But it was very unusual. I considered getting a priest. It seems to have quietened down a bit now.”
Perhaps it has, but a gentleman always travels prepared. En route I stocked up with provisions: bread, milk, coffee and a crucifix. The area's crawling with spooks. Phil Williams, sales assistant at the Camelot garage, near Camelford, didn't know of Mellingray's haunting, but warned me about the local B&B where the piano plays itself; the nearby Tintagel hotel where the architect, who committed suicide, still plummets past guests' windows, and the wizened old “Glug” lady who suddenly appeared behind his car on Bodmin Moor.
The landscape is certainly evocative. Northeast Cornwall's dramatic coast is kissed by vast rolling slabs of agricultural land where coastal winds sculpt the trees like heavily gelled mohicans and vertiginous hedgerows tower over passing cars. As I drove towards the isolated house near Otterham Station my sense of foreboding increased.
But fear didn't mean discomfort. If Michelin rated haunted houses, Mellingray would be a three-spectre property. Swaddled by trees, with two duck ponds, its exposed timbers and slate tiles come with underfloor heating, satellite TV and five bathrooms. It's perfect for 12 people. And that was the problem. A supernatural visitor - unless he carries an axe - is a fun addition to a party. But with just two of us, myself and the photographer Doug McKinlay, the empty rooms simply fuelled our paranoia. We felt watched, as if someone, or something, was just out of view. It wasn't a comfortable atmosphere.
So we regularly escaped. One day it was magnificent Bedruthan Steps Beach, lashed by gusts that blew away cobwebs, hats and nerves. On another it was the elegy-inducing coastal path from Port Isaac to Padstow, a town surely destined to be haunted by a genial chef carrying a headless, marinated sea bass.
But we couldn't avoid the long, dark, lonely Mellingray nights. The burly photographer, a veteran of several conflict zones, slept with the lights on, door open, TV blaring. I'm sure that I saw him clutching his young son's teddy bear. Neither of us dared to sleep in the attic room, which hung above our stay like a dark, glowering cloud.
So who is haunting the 140-year-old barn? I investigated the atmospheric local graveyards. Is it Robert Embling, who died in February 1872 and is buried at the clifftop Forrabury Church? Or James Jennings? He perished a year later and is buried in Minster churchyard, where giant horseshoe bats wheeled overhead as I walked among its tombstones in the fading light.
A more likely candidate is Abel Medland. He died suddenly in January 1892 and his body rests in Otterham churchyard beneath the words: “Death does not always warning give, therefore be careful how you live.”
But corpses do not a holiday make. So for light relief we visited Boscastle's intriguing Museum of Witchcraft. Its ducking stools, human skulls and witches' paraphernalia - from mugwort to mummified hands - aren't designed to calm nervous ghost-busters, but did provide some Ouija-board tips.
“Be focused,” advised the assistant curator, Joyce Froome. “Visualise a globe of light within you and create a magical space for positive contact with the spirit. People used to burn incense to please them.”
Later, as incense sweetened Mellingray's living room and horror-movie clouds drifted across a full moon, we recited pagan prayers for protection against evil and waited for the glass to move. The spirits, however, had performance anxiety. The glass stayed put. Excellent. We celebrated with Doom Bar Bitter at the Cobweb pub, followed by a locals' singing session at the Wellington Hotel in Boscastle, home to a ghostly coachman and a poltergeist in Room 10.
Then, just as we relaxed, the supernatural intervened. Back at Mellingray, which we had left unlit apart from the hall, we found every light blazing downstairs. Had our séance annoyed someone?
Unnerved, I lay awake listening to the sound of owls scratching in the roof. And at 4.48am, he appeared: the silent staring man. A freezing flush passed through my entire body, and - I'm not sure that this is a psychic phenomenon - my testicles tightened. I lay silently under the duvet, disorientated with exhaustion and anxiety. It wasn't until dawn that I dared reach for my glasses and a first clear sight of the ghoul. It wasn't my finest hour. I had been terrified by a silver 14in portable TV.
Before leaving I chatted to Daryll, a local dairy farmer. He hadn't heard about Mellingray's haunting, but said that “if there's anything, it's probably a farmer who committed suicide. They get isolated and depressed and end it in the barn with a shotgun or rope”.
Suicidal farmers? I'm relieved that I knew nothing about that. My imagination would have run wild. After all, it's all in the mind. Isn't it?
NEED TO KNOW
Stay Mellingray sleeps 12 and costs from £941.50 for seven nights (0845 2681560, www.cottages4you.co.uk, code 17784).
Getting there First Great Western (0845 7000125, www.firstgreatwestern.co.uk) has fares to plymouth from £26 return
Moe information www.enjoyengland.com/halloween
SPOOKY SITES
Langsmeade House, Oxfordshire Despite sightings of a phantom Army officer next to people's beds, this Arts and Crafts-style B&B in Thame claims that “nobody has ever felt uncomfortable”. Doubles from £80: 01844 278727, www.langsmeade house.co.uk/
Kirkstone Pass Inn, Cumbria Lakeland isolation comes with the ghosts of travellers who perished in the wild terrain surrounding the 15th-century pub. Look out for the woman who murdered her child and a 17th-century coachman. Doubles £65 (minimum two nights); 015394 33888, www.kirkstonepassinn.com
Talbot Hotel, Northamptonshire February to April is prime time for spotting Mary Queen of Scots descending the staircase in Oundle's honey-stoned hotel. Doubles from £100 (01832 273621, www.thetalbot- oundle.com)
Lord Crewe Arms, Northumberland Guests have reported “being touched during the night” in the hotel's 12th- century rooms. The culprit is believed to be Dorothy Forster, sister of a plotter in the Jacobite uprising. Doubles £100 (01434 675251, www.lordcrewe hotel.co.uk)
Feathers Hotel, Shropshire Spirits include a mini-skirted teenager who walks through guests' cars. Doubles £95 (01584 875261, www.feathersat ludlow.co.uk)
