EVEN the most sceptical of sceptics cannot deny they have heard footsteps on the stairs at Allhallows Museum, Honiton – when there has been nobody there. The noises are so pronounced that a group of mediums was recently granted access to the building.

EVEN the most sceptical of sceptics cannot deny they have heard footsteps on the stairs at Allhallows Museum, Honiton - when there has been nobody there. The noises are so pronounced that a group of mediums was recently granted access to the building, which is the oldest in Honiton.

There to independently witness and record their findings were museum archivist Margaret Lewis, her daughter Donna, and Belinda Bennett, editor of the Journal's sister newspaper, The Midweek Herald.

ON a bitterly cold autumn night, a sense of great heat engulfed part of Allhallows Museum.

Specialist equipment detected the temperature in one area was two-and-a-half degrees higher than the rest of the room.

It was hot; too hot. I felt dizzy and then sick. I wanted to shout out: "I don't feel very well!"

I looked at the other seven people in the room and noted some of them looked uncomfortably hot, too.

One of the five mediums present said he could hear singing. Another said she had a bad feeling about a presence in the room.

She said she could 'see' a man of the church in white robes and wearing a mitre hat.

His cloak was embossed with gold braiding.

"He is not all he appears to be. There is something unpleasant about him," she said.

His hair was white, like an old man's, yet his face appeared young, the medium claimed.

She felt he was someone who had visited Honiton, not lived there.

'Father Francis' was the name the spirit gave to the medium, but she didn't feel she could trust him, she said.

She added, she could feel the spirit trying to enter her body.

Then, in the midst of a deep silence, an unearthly sound penetrated the room.

At first, I thought it was a plane overhead; the noise seemed distant.

As it continued, I realised it was coming from within the museum.

It sounded like a deep breath of wind, with a kind of whirring that you would expect to come from an engine.

I looked at Margaret Lewis, partly for reassurance. Could she hear what I could hear?

I could tell from the look on her face that she could.

It gradually dawned on me that the noise was coming from the body of the medium; the one who had said the spirit was trying to enter her.

Although I was later assured she was careful not to let the spirit fully in, it spoke from her mouth.

"Blessed are the children!" it shouted with a sneer, before launching into a fit of laughter. The spirit was evil. There was no doubt about that.

The mediums present agreed it must be "sent to the light".

One stepped forward and told the evil spirit: "You've got to go through me!"

He suffered a visible struggle with the spirit as it was forced away. His body twisted and turned as he fought its resistance.

"I could feel the suction as he went," said the woman medium.

She went on: "He abused boys as well as girls. His face did not match his hair."

l If you think you've got a ghost in your house and you would like mediums to visit free of charge, you can contact them by calling the Belinda Bennett on (01392) 888488.