Ghostbusting with Scotland's paranormal investigators

And as Malcolm Robinson and his team of ‘ghostbusters’ would soon discover, the angry spirit they had been summoned was in no mood to budge.

What was going on behind the rather unremarkable door in Condorrat will seem outlandish to many: from things were going ‘bump’ in the night, items mysteriously going missing, to pictures flying off walls and a very verbally abusive, possessive spirit.

But for Robinson, battling otherworldly entities prone to throwing a strop is all in a day’s work as Scotland’s leading ghostbuster.

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The eerie series of events that confronted his team of psychics and researchers at Susan Strachan’s family home, are recalled in his new book.

In it, he tells of the battle to tackle the particularly unpleasant spirit they called Jeffrey, and the not entirely successful efforts using charms and dowsing sticks, to banish him for good.

“It sounds a bit ‘Hollywood’ and might seem crazy,” he concedes, “but I’ve been doing this for 40 years, and it’s amazing the people we speak to who live in haunted houses.

“I started off as a major sceptic of all things weird and wonderful - ghosts, poltergeists and UFOs.

“But once you put yourself in the frontline of this subject… well, you soon start to wonder.”

His latest book is the fourth volume of his Paranormal Case Files of Great Britain.

Its meticulously recorded detail of ghostly investigations, close encounters and spiritual shenanigans could scarcely be timelier: later this month Disney releases summer cinema blockbuster, Haunted Mansion, a supernatural horror comedy based around Walt Disney’s theme park attraction of the same name.

Steven Bird, Malcolm Robinson and Ron Halliday (Image: free)

Starring Danny DeVito, Wilfred Owen, Jamie Lee Curtis and LaKeith Stanfield, it follows a mother and son’s efforts to enlist an ex-paranormal investigator, priest, psychic and college professor to help exorcise their mansion and expel its troublesome ghosts.

Not surprisingly for a film from the same studio that created Pirates of the Caribbean, it doesn’t go smoothly.

Nor, reflects Robinson, a paranormal investigator since the 1970s and regarded as one of the UK’s experts in the unexplained, did it go particularly well in Cumbernauld.

“This family was clearly affected by these troublesome events,” he says. “They had moved into their home in 2017 but it wasn’t until they bought their dog that strange things happened – it would bark at absolutely nothing, staring at the ceiling and barking.

“Then pictures started to come off the walls. Lamps fell and were bent out of shape for no reason.

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“The woman who lives there, Sarah and her daughter Ciara, started to experience bumps and bangs, there were footsteps going upstairs when there was no-one nearby.

“Psychics told them they had a very bad presence in their home and they needed to get rid of it. She used sage sticks to cleanse the house – that’s used the world over, but it didn’t work.

“Her friends were laughing at her. But she knew she had to do something.”

Robinson’s team of three psychics and fellow paranormal investigator Ron Halliday were called in as the incidents escalated. CCTV cameras captured odd fist-size glowing orbs flying around the room, and a strange male voice on the audio.

“There’s a lot of charlatans out there,” he adds. “But once you get rid of all that you are left with astonishing cases of people looking for answers. ‘Why do we have this ghost or poltergeist?’

“It’s up to me and my team to get to the bottom of it.

Susan Strachan and Daughter Ciara (c) Malcolm Robinson (Image: free)

“But we are still sceptics. You ask yourself is someone trying to get out of their house, are they looking to get rehoused somewhere that’s better, maybe looking for notoriety?

“But it soon become apparent that was not the case at Condorrat.”

Robinson’s research group Strange Phenomena Investigations are familiar with bizarre events – so many, he suggests, to simply discount that there is, indeed, something out there.

“After what I’ve seen, you end up coming off the fence a bit,” he adds.

“I’ve been in haunted houses and had my hair pulled, slapped and kicked but there’s been nothing there.

“When you have physical dealings with the paranormal, you come off the fence a bit.

“In one house in Stirling, we were in a haunted bedroom,” he continues. “The psychic said, ‘can’t you see the spirit in this room?’ I couldn’t, so she had me hold out my hand and asked the spirit to touch it.

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“I felt a massive heavy presence push my hand down - it was frightening.

“In a house in Tullibody, nothing was happening in this haunted bedroom. We had video recorders going, audio, taping. Nothing.

“I said ‘it’s pointless’, at which point the whole room illuminated with thousands of pinpricks of white light, like a November 5 sparkler all over the walls and the ceiling.

“It lasted 20 seconds; the psychic said it was pure psychic energy.”

Not all cases are as terrifying as they sound: “We had one case in Glasgow. The lady said she didn’t want us to get rid of the spirits, that they were lovely, and she just wanted to know who is behind it.”

Two incidents in particular fuelled his lifelong passion for the unexplained, one when he visited a spiritualist with his highly sceptical mother, who spoke of divorce and an Irish man.

“We left, my mother was upset, and I asked what was wrong. She said how did she know I’m going to divorce your father; I’ve met an Irish man?

“I’m still sceptical but I know there’s life after death,” he adds. “We have out of body experiences – I’ve spoken to clinical physicians who have said they’ve seen spirits standing next to patient’s beds.”

One leading surgeon in England was said to have met and spoke to a confused man in the hospital corridor. “His pager went off; he was called to resus. He turned back to the man, but he’d gone.

“In resus, he saw the man with paddles on his chest, trying to be brought back to life.”

But it was another major incident that has intrigued him for decades: when, in 1979, forestry worker Bob Taylor returned from Dechmont Law in West Lothian with torn clothes and cuts and grazes.

By all accounts a sensible, grounded man, he claimed a flying dome had tried to pull him on board. His claim became even more bizarre when police confirmed odd marks on the ground where the incident took place.

Robinson, proud owner of Mr Taylor’s ripped trousers from that night, says the mystery continues to fascinate. Next month, he’ll be joined by one of the investigating police officers at a public event in Livingston to discuss it, while in recent weeks he has filmed a sequence on it for a forthcoming television programme.

Back in Cumbernauld, one of his team used dowsing rods to gauge spirit activity, while one of the three mediums uttered a cleansing charm to chase away the spirit.

It seemed to work until a few months later, when, with more odd occurrences at the home, the team had to return to conduct “a permanent fix”. But even that appears to have failed.

Robinson doesn’t mind too much if some people don’t believe a word.

“My view is you have to get these stories out and let the public decide whether it’s rubbish or something they can relate to it.

“We’re learning all the time,” he adds. “And the world is a strange place.”

There’s a ghost in her house – how Susan Strachan has come to accept living with a spirit

Living with a ghost called Jeffrey in the house has became a way of life for Cumbernauld mum Susan Strachan.

“He’s been here for a few years now and just refuses to leave – he thinks I’m his partner,” she says.

“He’s not aggressive to me, and I’ve learned to live with him.”

Since first making his ghostly presence felt around seven years ago, there has been a string of attempts by psychics to encourage him to leave – all have failed, while some have left the people involved terrified.

“The other night I heard Jeffrey saying to me ‘Susan, I’m home’,” she adds. “I’m used to him visiting me and everyone who knows me, knows my house is haunted.”

She says she has always had ‘psychic’ abilities, ever since as a teenager she sensed something awful on her way past a graveyard and moments later found out her father had been killed in an accident.

Named ‘Jeffrey’, the spirit has been blamed for bangs and bumps in the house, throwing items to the floor and sending others crashing through the air.

“One night we thought the house had been broken into, that someone was downstairs,” she adds. “When we went to look, there was no one there.

“At the start, I was petrified. Recently I’ve started to see the shadows and I’m not scared at all.

“I’ve had so many people come up and say I’m psychic and I can see a man that’s followed you from your house. They all describe him the same way. “

‘Jeffrey’, she adds, appears to dislike the presence of other men in the house and becomes more persistent when he receives attention.

“He’s never harmed me,” she adds. “It’s uncomfortable sometimes when you feel him watching. But there’s no point in me leaving this house because he’d just come with me.

“I’m a businesswoman, I don’t have any reason to make this up,” she says. “I hope talking about it helps other people who are going through the same thing.

“It has made me look differently at life – and that there’s life after death.”

Paranormal Case Files of Great Britain, Volume 4, by Malcolm Robinson is published on August 1 by Flying Disk Press