It is midnight and Mark Lunn is stood in the dark at an old Mecca Bingo Hall in the Black Country with a team of ghost hunters.

A chill runs down his spine as he hears a door creaking and suddenly the team spot a shadow moving in the corner of the room.

Calmly, Mark turns his torch on and walks towards the shadow, where he finds a curtain moving in the breeze.

“I’m not a debunker,” says Mark. “But there is always a rational explanation when people say they have seen a ghost.

“As a clinical psychotherapist, hypnotherapist and councillor, I have always been interested in how humans react when they believe they are in a haunted building.

“The powers of suggestion mean that people believe they see and hear things that are not actually there.

“Over the last year I have seen how strongly people have been affected by just being told that they could soon see a ghost.”

A year ago Mark, aged 30, from Walsall, teamed up with members of the Paranormal Seekers Society based in Willenhall to find out what makes people believe they have seen a ghost.

The group, which is holding a paranormal investigation tonight at the Locksmith’s House in Willenhall, uses hi-tech gadgets in the hope of tracking a ghost.

They use light beam barriers, electro-magnetic frequency meters, infra-red CCTV cameras, night vision camcorders and temperature meters.

“The first time the society met was two years ago at the Station Hotel in Dudley,” says psychic investigator Donna, aged 29, from Willenhall.

“We enjoyed it so much that we searched on a paranormal database to find other local sites that are renowned for being haunted.

“Recently we were at the Mecca Bingo in Wednesbury and were being filmed for the Heaven And Earth Show on BBC1.

“Mark helps to keep the group calm because there are a few members in the group that are a bit jumpy.

“The CCTV cameras spotted what looked like a man in a trilby but Mark dismissed it as a shadow.

“We have done seances, used our collective energies to move a glass and recorded voices that were not there at the time.”

Donna says the most haunted places in the region include the tunnels at the Black Country Living Museum, the Manor House at West Bromwich, Mecca Bingo in Wednesbury, Dudley Castle, The Station Hotel in Dudley, The Feathers Hotel in Ludlow, St Margarets, the former mental hospital in Great Barr, the Bassa Villa pub in Bridgnorth and the Kings Head, also in Bridgnorth.

But Mark says there are a lot of things that can affect people’s judgement.

“When people are in a room which they believe to be haunted, everything they feel, smell or hear will be attributed to ghosts,” he says. “If they anticipate that something is going to happen, the adrenaline starts rushing and their senses go into overdrive.

“After the event they will attribute a lot of what happened in their memory of the event to ghosts. The only school of thought that works when it comes to ghosts is psychology, there always has to be a human component.

“If something can’t be explained at first glance then the mind automatically assumes something suspicious.

“I was shown a picture of the Locksmith’s House and you could quite clearly make out a young girl’s face.

“But straight away I could tell the image was created by the light from a lamp casting a shadow on the wallpaper.

“When we are in a property and people start over-reacting to creaks and cold breezes I just have to remind them that it is an old building.”

Has Mark experienced anything that he couldn’t explain?

“One time we went to the Feathers Hotel in Ludlow,” he says. “We were in a room where there was believed to be a ghost.

“We asked it to give us a sign and I felt a gentle stroking on my leg.

“Then I felt something on my arm but I just attributed it to a breeze.

The article above was found on Google and was published originally on Express & Star