Liverpool psychic Billy Roberts to join Most Haunted TV show team

Nov 20 2008 by Mike Chapple, Liverpool Daily Post

Psychic Billy Roberts and Dr Ciaran O'Keefe _320

LIVERPOOL-born psychic and medium Billy Roberts has been signed up for a 12 month contract to appear as a regular guest on Most Haunted, Britain’s most popular TV show about the paranormal.

It follows his nightly appearance during Halloween week when the show was broadcast live from the old North Wales Hospital asylum in Denbigh which has been abandoned since 1995.

The show drew record viewing figures for the LivingTV channel that broadcasts it. But the show also attracted fury from local residents who took offence to it being labelled Village of the Damned because Most Haunted claimed the land had been cursed by three witches allegedly burned on the site.

Health experts were also concerned about the show’s frivolous treatment of mental instability.

Mr Roberts, however, remained unaware of the controversy while live filming took place over seven nights before a packed hall of 300 people inside the imposing Victorian building which was originally constructed in 1842.

"The only thing I was worried about was the terrible cold - there was no heating because of some health and safety regulations so I was sitting there every night on stage in my overcoat and thermals," said the 61-year-old author of a number of books about the paranormal including Spooky Liverpool One and Two.

"But I did sense a number of presences there at the hospital and not necessarily evil. Hospitals do generate a lot of emotion which can impregnate the atmosphere."

Mr Roberts, who has suffered from a serious bronchial disease since childhood, subsequently spent much of his childhood in Alder Hey which is where he first saw "dead people walk" and developed a fear of the dark.

"The darkness would act like a screen for the lights and faces I would see there." he said.

He is not the first Liverpudlian medium to regularly appear on the show.

Derek Acorah worked on the show for five series until his departure in 2005. Mr Acorah insisted that he had left the show to pursue other projects although it was claimed that he was asked to leave after Ciarán O'Keeffe, a parapsychologist for the show who was then lecturing in psychology at Liverpool’s Hope University, deliberately fed him misinformation about a fictional person. It was alleged that Mr Acorah subsequently used this during an investigation to present himself as being possessed by the spirit of this non-existent character.

"I think that’s why the producers approached me to take part in Most Haunted, to make it more credible," explained Mr Roberts, who will be presenting his own show with Mr O’Keeffe at Southport Arts Centre on Thursday, November 20.

Entitled The Great Paranormal Clash, it will feature Mr O’Keeffe bidding to prove that other, more down to earth techniques rather than genuine psychic ability, are responsible for passing on information to a subject.

Mr Roberts, with the help of London based psychic Liam Scott, will attempt to prove otherwise.

"My mediumship is to convince the sceptics such as Ciaran with proof of the continuity of the soul by communicating with the so called dead," he explained.