I Ain't Afraid Of No Ghosts...

Ghosts, of course, don't exist in the real world (like pixies, elves, angels, magic etc), but that doesn't stop them being fascinating subjects for stories.

It was with this attitude that I approached the "ghost tour" of The Pantiles In Tunbridge Wells, which Rachel had snagged a pair of free tickets for as part of Kent County Council's annual Big Day Out promotion.

Twelve of us gathered in a cafe on The Pantiles (the old Georgian promenade area), which our guides claimed was "the most haunted area in Kent" before leading us on an hour-long walk.

It was just getting dark as we started, and the earlier heavy rain thankfully held off, but the chilly and slightly oppressive air certainly contributed to the atmosphere.

The interesting part of the tour dealt with the early history of Tunbridge Wells (it grew up around the "healing waters" of the Chalybeate Springs) and The Pantiles, as well as a brilliant old 10th Century folktale of the blacksmith Dunstan (later archbishop of Canterbury and saint) who tweaked the nose of the Devil with a pair of red-hot tongs, forcing Satan to take flight, then plunge his sore nose in a nearby spring - which was then forever tainted by his singed nostrils (how this metamorphosed into "healing waters", however, wasn't explained).

However, the ghost stories were, naturally, the usual cross-section of unsubstantiated, second/third/fourth/fifth-hand (or more estranged) accounts stemming mainly from such reliable sources as the area's numerous ale houses, the odd behaviour of animals or the proclamations of self-declared psychics.

It would also seem that the spectres frequenting The Pantiles have little more to do than rearrange people's clothes, lift toilet seats and tap on windows, with evidence of their presence mainly boiling down to "strange feelings" - if evidence was proffered at all.

Reading between the lines, many of the stories - if they hadn't already been totally exaggerated through multiple-retellings - were variations of my own "spooky encounter" in China, which the rational and logical part of my brain decided, on further analysis of the facts, was simply a common side-effect of a phenomenon known as sleep paralysis - which can explain away the majority of night terrors and phantoms which haunt people in the night.

That's not to say that these things aren't frightening - sudden noises in the dark, creepy shadows, unexplained movement - can still scare the bejeezus out of me; but I know that's just the primitive survival instinct of "fight or flight" hardwired into my genes... and has nothing to do with supernatural creatures returning from the grave.

We'll save that for the movies.