Spooked out at a Shropshire castle

At Whittington Castle, near Oswestry, it's approaching midnight: Time to talk to dead people.

Seated around a table in a 'chapel' lit only by moonlight from a nearby window, I am part of a group of paranormal investigators taking part in the first late-night vigils of their kind at the castle, attempting through a series of experiments to make contact with spirits and energies of people who lived and died here.

And they're not shy. A few minutes into a seance, in which our collective fingertips touch an upturned glass, the tumbler shudders and begins to move, supposedly in response to direct questions from participants such as "Are you male?" "Did you used to work here?" "Have you seen bad things?"

A voice in the darkness asks: "Who do you want to talk to? Can you move towards the person you want to make contact with?" Slowly the glass moves towards the lady to my left, who shudders and lets out a ghoulish gasp.

Before long we are having a chat with a dead chap called Thomas, whose surname may or may not be Pickford and who apparently worked here.

Later, during an experiment with a pen attached to a small moveable trolley that works in a similar way to a seance glass, our man Thomas is invited to give us information about himself by drawing a picture.

Again the pen glides around on a piece of paper. The result looks like idiotic scribble until a member of the group points out that the drawing bears an uncanny resemblance to an iron.