Jack Sparks

A call comes in from an unknown number. The word ‘Unknown’ doesn’t pop up as usual: the screen is completely blank except for the options to answer or reject.

When I answer, a piercing electronic shriek crashes out of the speakers. Warped digital feedback: the kind of thing Aphex Twin used to put on his records (Eleanor: I know you’ll ask me to update this reference and make it a more current band. Sorry, but it sounded like Aphex Twin. Not my fault you’re too young to remember him.) And it’s loud. So loud. I had no clue my phone was capable of such decibels.

The sheer physical shock makes me cover my ears with both hands. Which is bad, because I’m negotiating a tight bend. 

The Romeo hammers along the middle of the dirt road. If something hurtles around that bend towards me, there’ll be a head-on smash, no survivors.

Clutch. Brake. Steer. Terminate call with built-in steering wheel button. Pray.

I sail around the rest of the bend, sick with adrenalin, ears ringing. Edging the Romeo back to safety.

The noise sounded demonic. It was the natural, or unnatural, soundtrack to Edvard Munch’s Scream. And afterwards, however fleetingly, I find myself pondering how this call might be connected to Maria Corvi and her internal lodger. Which is ridiculous. Completely batshit. But it gets me thinking about the supernatural and how damn seductive that world can be. Because such connections are insidious. Once you start making them, it must be so easy to become seduced. To get sucked right in. Connections would lead to endless others: a vast social media network of belief. Before you knew what was going on, you’d be dragging your daughter to meet one of the Pope’s right-hand men at a knackered old church in the back of beyond.

By the time I’m propping up a brutally impersonal Rome airport bar, the outside world is studded with coloured runway lights. My ears still ring and my phone holds more surprises. When I’d asked, ‘Where’s the EVIDENCE?’, hordes of people took this to be a genuine request for EVIDENCE, or at least their interpretation of what constitutes EVIDENCE. So my feed is now jam-packed with helpful links to recommended ghost videos.

‘Check this one out, Jacky boy! [LINK]’

‘Oh yeah? Try THIS video on for size! [LINK]’

‘Fuk u watch dis. [LINK]’

At first it all looks overwhelming. 

Then I decide I’m going to watch these videos. Every last one of them.

If all these followers truly believe that a YouTube video provides evidence of life after death, then the least I can do is humour them by taking a look.

I post as follows: ‘All right, all right, thank you, guys, for the spooky YT links. I will have a look at this vital EVIDENCE and get back to you. Cannot WAIT.’

I slip my earphones’ jack into my handset. The bar atones for its lack of character with good Wi-Fi. Watching a whole row of videos will help pass the two and a half hours before my delayed flight, as will a whole row of large Jack and Cokes.

For the sake of my sanity, I discount the clips that are patently rubbish. People giggling while filming their partners with white sheets over their heads going ‘Wooo!’ You can see these clips coming a mile off, from titles like ‘What lurks within my shed? LOL!’ or ‘Danny’s ass is haunted – hear what it has to say!’

Frankly, I don’t think the people who sent me those particular links were taking the whole thing seriously. Skipping these (all right, I was curious about the pronouncements of Danny’s ass – and there’s a sentence I never thought I’d write) removes half of the list.

The videos I do watch embroil me in a world that knows no boundaries when it comes to lame attempts at scaring the viewer. A world that never settles for just the one exclamation mark and knows nothing of the apostrophe’s correct function. A world that owes Mark Snow, the composer of The X-Files theme tune, millions of royalty dollars.

I suffer through photo slideshows with voiceover narration, none of which convince. Photographs have, after all, been doctored since their early-nineteenth-century inception. Double-exposure shots may have retained their power to alarm the gullible, but only then at a pinch. Photoshop and similar programs have equipped fakers with more advanced tools, while simultaneously making their work all the more obvious. One video from user WooWooWooo, boldly entitled ‘Scariest Photographs of 2014 – DO NOT Watch Alone!’, does not make me glad to be surrounded by businessmen, depressed tourists and camp baristas. I’m bored stiff by the time the third old family photo appears with a ‘chilling’ cymbal crash, a circle superimposed around the alleged spectre peeking from behind Aunt Maude’s skirts. Over one million people have been suckered into watching this thing. A nice chunk of advertising revenue for the video’s creator.

‘Thanks for watching. Please comment and subscribe. 😊’

I endure videos that – gasp – actually do feature moving pictures. Most of these betray their lineage from Oren Peli’s successful ‘found footage’ movie franchise Paranormal Activity. The clue tends to be the word ‘Paranormal’ in their titles. Shot in people’s houses, generally in America, they show someone clowning around or presenting a video about some random topic, before a door slams shut in the background. Whereas Paranormal Activity did a good job of convincing the viewer that its stars might be real people, the protagonists here are less gifted in the fields of acting and improv.

‘Thanks for watching. Please comment and subscribe. 😊’

I somehow sit through clips that push the boundaries of taste by exploiting celebrity death. You might glimpse the terrifying ghost of a film star who specialised in fast-car movies (Eleanor: See? I can self-censor. I didn’t use the guy’s name. Anything to stop you and those lawyer guys quacking on about libel or whatever it is) walking away from his real-life fatal wreck. The dumbest example I see is a video from user HiggsBassoon4 that claims to show Princess Diana’s ghost on his own wedding day. We see the same few looped seconds of the happy couple cutting their cake, magnified closer and closer. We screw our eyes ever tighter in a vain attempt to see something in the window behind them that plainly isn’t there.

‘Thanks for watching. Please comment and subscribe. 😊’

I growl at videos that instruct you to keep a very close eye on static CCTV-style footage of a room or corridor. After thirty seconds, they attempt to jolt you with a sudden jump-cut to a close-up of a hideous face overlaid with a screech. The finest specimens manage to make you jump even when you’re blithely expecting them, but of course as evidence of the supernatural they leave everything to be desired.

‘Thanks for watching. Please comment and subscribe. 😊’

If you ever start to get suckered in by a video that claims to show a ‘super-white ghost’ during a school nativity play, abandon it. After replaying user ScalpLaughs65’s video several times, unable to see the ghost, I finally realised the whole thing was a joke at the expense of an unusually pale boy.

‘Thanks for watching. Please comment and subscribe. 😊😊😊😊 Don’t forget to collect your brain on your way out. 😊😊😊😊 LOL PMSL ROFLCOPTER’ ☹️☹️☹️☹️☹️☹️ The further I trudge through this shit, the more I drink, the more I bemoan the lack of creativity. I swear I could do better myself. None of it is remotely unnerving, scary or – most importantly – convincing. My jeans remain unsoiled. My heebies are jeebie-less. There are no willies up me.

As I tried to explain to people in the first place, if a genuine ghost video came along, we’d know all about it. The damn thing would be on BBC News and bounced around the planet faster than a Barack Obama sex tape.

To couch this in SPOOKS List terms, all these people are filming fake ghosts, whether trying to deceive others or being deceived themselves. No third explanation is required. 

Confident that the people of social media have wasted my time yet again, I do battle with my phone’s autocorrect funcion, which seems so much less helpful when you’re drunk: ‘Okay, guys! I’ve watched this ghost video “EVIDENCE” of yours. These videos are all – and I mean ALL – idiotic fakes. NO MORE.’

I’m satisfied this has put an end to the matter. I can give scary videos no further thought. And then I check my feed.

Big mistake.

While I’ve been watching the last thirty videos, lots of people have messaged me with variations on ‘Did you make this one yourself, then?’ or ‘This is actually pretty scary!’ Others have posted to their own followers, saying things like ‘Creepy new video from TheJackSparks!’ These posts have two things in common: they’re all spreading fast and they all feature the same clickable YouTube link.

It confuses the balls off me.

I click on one of these identical links and am surprised to be taken to my own YouTube channel. This is where I post sporadic videos, talking to a whole ocean of fans about whichever burning issue springs to mind. Usually something about science, technology, music or my books. Since entering rehab, I’ve let it slide, and three whole months have passed since the last post.

Or at least that’s how long it’s been since the last post by me.

There’s now a forty-second video on this page that I did not post.

It has no title or accompanying details, other than the date and time it was posted. Today, about half an hour ago. It appears that I posted it myself, although this patently isn’t the case. 

I stare at the page. At this video, waiting to be watched. I frown, hit the ‘Back’ button, then reclick the link. Surely the presence of a completely alien video on my YouTube channel was a random glitch that is about to repair itself.

Except I know others have seen it too.

Yep. The video’s still there.

All forty seconds of it.

My forefinger hovers over the ‘Play’ button. My stomach clenches, mainly because I’m worried that a complete stranger has dumped something obscene and incriminating on my YouTube channel. 

Basically, everyone’s going to hospital except me and Translator Tony. I have to catch a flight back to London, which means Tony is no longer required. It’s a shame the fun has to end: I might derive perverse pleasure from spending time in a crowded ambulance with a Catholic priest, a nail-spitting teen and two lunkheads. Great material for another episode of Satan & I.

While Di Stefano is being strapped on to a stretcher, I pull out my phone and walk around, fishing for reception.

My post about laughing during an exorcism has caused a furore. I honestly hadn’t imagined that, in this day and age, chuckling in the Devil’s face would be so controversial. Of course, plenty of people support me, but at least as many spiritually minded folk object to my ‘arrogance’, ‘disrespect’ and ‘rudeness’. These are people with whom my good friend Richard Dawkins spars on a daily basis. The kind of people who believe the Earth is only six thousand years old. I feel like I’m getting a taste of Rich’s online life. I’ve sampled it before while posting about atheism, but never to this extent.

‘An exorcism can be a very dangerous thing, both for priest and exorcee!!! Shame on you!!!’ writes GodsAmy12 from Tucson, Arizona. Loving the word ‘exorcee’. Is that really a thing? 

‘Your [sic] gonna be laughing on the other side of you’re [sic] face when you burn in hell!’ suggests the incongruously named TickleTumTina from Ipswich, Suffolk. Sorry for reposting your post, Tina! Hope you didn’t get too much grief from the rest of my 251,043 followers . . .

‘You are SO self-obsessed,’ offers TheRossotron in Tampa, Florida. ‘Not just laughing during an exorcism, but telling everyone. Why do we need to know? Is it impressive?’ I should point out that TheRossotron is following me. Presumably by choice.

I learned a while back that it’s pointless to try and reason with individuals on the internet. Even if you do succeed in changing one person’s mind, ten more will spring up asking the same questions and making the same stupid points. When you have as many followers as I do, the whole thing becomes untenable. You may as well try to scoop up the sea, one cup at a time. I soon realised that addressing everyone collectively was the best use of my time and energy. As was following no more than fifteen people.

It’s famously unwise to feed the trolls, but on this occasion the stream of abuse riles me. As I watch Di Stefano gruffly berate the paramedics who are trying to make him more comfortable, I see a stupid old man with way too much power over the ‘little people’. I see a man who, just like most people who promote the supernatural, is trying to deceive others. 

I post a new missive: ‘Everyone, seriously. If the Devil, ghosts and ghouls existed, don’t you think they’d be all over YouTube by now? Where’s the EVIDENCE?’ Then I return to the ambulance to try and prise some final words from exorcist and, ahem, exorcee.

It seems Father Primo Di Stefano, now in the back of the ambulance and impatient to be off, has nothing left to say. When asked to sum up how the exorcism went, he bats off an imaginary fly with one hand.

‘I did not expect it to be like this,’ is all a distressed Maddelena can manage, several times.

Maria winces as a paramedic carefully bandages her forefinger. ‘I can’t remember anything that happened,’ she says, with more than a note of despair. ‘It is just like all the other things Mamma tells me I’ve done, at night. But this is the first time it’s happened during the day.’

A shadow crosses Maddelena’s face – I think she just twigged that Di Stefano’s rite has only made her daughter worse.

I’m concerned about Maria and can’t help myself. Screw journalistic impartiality: I implore – no, tell – Maddelena to take proper medical advice at the hospital. Hopefully, this time, my words sink in. I wish them well and head for my Alfa Romeo rental, keys jangling in hand.

‘Hey there,’ calls Maria, in English. ‘Hey, Jack Sparks.’ 

Except her voice doesn’t come from the ambulance. It comes from the opposite direction. It comes from Translator Tony, who is approaching his own car. As if on cue, he spins around to face me, a dazed puppet, his centre of gravity awry.

His mouth opens and continues to move as Maria’s voice comes out of him.

‘Enjoy your journey,’ he says. Or, rather, Maria says it. His mouth, but her voice. Tony looks as surprised as anyone else that a thirteen-year-old girl’s words just sprang out of him. Then his jaw drops again and Maria’s voice says: ‘I’ll be back in a few hours, okay?’ Whatever that’s supposed to mean.

Back in the ambulance, Maria regains the power of speech and emits a childish giggle. She wears that same knowing smile she had during the exorcism, the one just after she looked at the window. The eyes are back jaundice-yellow. 

Maddelena’s face falls, as if this is the final straw. Father Di Stefano begins to pray out loud, on his stretcher.

The effect is disorientating and I don’t know how to react. We’re now all so accustomed to being able to replay moments over and over again that my first instinct is to reach for a non-existent rewind button.

I’d previously thought of Tony as a third party unconnected to the trickery here. So how did Maria’s voice come out of him – and how did she know my name? Di Stefano never spoke it. When telling Maria and Maddelena why I was here, he only described me as ‘a journalist from England’. 

Salvation soon comes when I remember that Di Stefano’s office recommended Tony in the first place – and Maria’s knowledge of my name only hastens the return of that Truman Show feeling. She and her mother are Vatican glove puppets after all. This whole thing really was an elaborate set-up. What the hell was I thinking there, for a while? Given the Catholic Church’s wealth, the ultra-convincing illusion of a nail spat into a leg is both achievable and relatively subtle. Making a young girl’s voice come out of a man’s mouth? Child’s play.

This whole thing has been organised religion to a T: the use of man-made lies to try and make people feel small, protected and grateful.

I award everybody the slowest, most sarcastic handclap I can muster, before getting in my car.

This time, no amount of further dicking around will make me look back.

Interesting. So Di Stefano will go to any lengths to convince an infidel like me that Satan is real – even if it means taking a nail to the leg. Either that, or he and the Corvis actually aren’t in cahoots. If the latter is true, then Di Stefano was just doing his theatrical shtick with a disturbed teenager who swallows pieces of metal, and he has tumbled under the wheels of rough justice.

I inspect the vomit on the floor. Oh, the glamour. There’s another nail there, like the one in Di Stefano’s leg, plus a piece of jagged, indistinct metal. When I go to touch the nail, Beardless barks something that will turn out to mean ‘Leave it alone!’ when I get the audio translated. Happily, Translator Tony is nowhere to be seen, so I feign ignorance while rolling the nail back and forth. It really is made of weighty metal.

‘Do not touch that!’ commands Beard. ‘This is now a police matter.’

‘No no no,’ says Di Stefano, through gritted teeth. ‘I will not press charges against a young girl who does not know what she is doing.’

I suspect the old boy regrets having allowed a journalist to witness an exorcism. This one presumably hasn’t gone as smoothly as he’d hoped. How fortunate, then, that I signed the wrong name on the papers which would have granted Di Stefano copy approval. In case you don’t know, copy approval is when the interviewee gets to read the finished piece and object to certain bits and pieces, which are generally then pruned to suit them. This phenomenon happened to journalism a decade or two back, when some sackless editor caved in and agreed to give some big-shot celebrity that ridiculous power. It has been a blight on the profession ever since, along with other regular mandates such as PRs sitting in on interviews, and questions having to be approved in advance. And you wonder why I moved into books . . .

Now that the show’s over, Maria has returned to her normal self. The whites of her eyes are white again and her neck appears the conventional length, although the redness on her face remains and that broken, bleeding fingernail looks painful. Sitting with her mother across the aisle, she looks frightened and bewildered, firing off questions in Italian. Maddelena fights back tears as she tries to answer those questions, while using a handkerchief to dab blood from around Maria’s mouth.

Feeling the heat of Maddelena’s long, hard stare, I try to explain how I was laughing at the situation, rather than at her daughter. Without Tony present to do his job, the distinction doesn’t register. When I ask what her next move will be, she manages some English: ‘I don’t know. Maybe doctor.’

‘That’s good,’ I say. ‘It’s good to try all options.’ I want to add, ‘Especially as, you know, your daughter’s just puked blood and metal,’ but surely that’s self-evident.

‘Signor,’ says Di Stefano from across the aisle. This sounds like a summoning, so I search for Tony. I find the work-shy bastard outside, standing on grass, gazing along the side of the church towards the cliff edge, with cigarette smoke billowing from his nostrils. I’m telling you this part for a reason: Tony actually starts at the sight of me, confused and shaken, instinctively touching the small cross hanging around his neck. It reminds me how very powerful things like exorcisms can be to believers. He pulls himself together and follows me back in, tossing his cigarette aside.

The Beard Brothers have staunched the priest’s bleeding as best they can, but he’s pallid. His aides whisper to him in Italian, presumably advising him to forget about the stupid journalist and conserve his strength. Yet the question on Di Stefano’s mind is too pressing to wait.

‘Why was the exorcism funny?’

Those dead eyes burrow right into me.

At this point, if I was a Louis Theroux or a Jon Ronson, I would nervously pop my spectacles back up onto the bridge of my nose and utter something evasive, most likely in the form of another question. (Eleanor: I know you and Murray don’t like me mentioning these guys in print, but I heard Ronson slagged me off on the radio last week. He didn’t mention me by name, but blatantly cast aspersions in my direction. And in the Fitzroy Tavern, one of Theroux’s flunkies couldn’t resist telling me all about Louis’ book sales and viewing figures and asking whether I’d landed myself a TV series yet. So as far as I’m concerned it’s open fucking season.) Instead, I tell Di Stefano I laughed because his exorcism struck me as a pantomime.

Di Stefano absorbs these body blows with dignity, for a man stretched awkwardly across a pew in a torn dress, with a filthy piece of metal sticking out of him.

‘But I suppose that’s the way I see all religion,’ I add. ‘I’m an—’

‘Atheist,’ interrupts the priest. ‘Yes. I know about you. An atheist and a drug addict.’

He groans and clutches his leg with one liver-spotted hand. I’m glad he’s in pain. Because I’m not a drug addict, whatever they told me every day in rehab. Much like religion, drug addiction is for the weak. Right here, right now, on this bright, chilly afternoon, I feel in control. I feel good. Great, even. Haven’t even thought about cocaine, my number one fix, in a long time.

Beardless intently reads the small print on the packaging of some painkillers. He and Beard debate whether they can give Di Stefano more before the ambulance gets here.

‘At first,’ I tell Di Stefano, ‘I thought Maria was in on the deception.’ I glance at the nail and the wound. ‘But now, I don’t think so.’ 

‘Well,’ says the priest, ‘then we have changed your mind in some way. But I assure you, there has been no deception here. The only deception is in your mind.’

Sidestepping that odd, tit-for-tat playground comment, I say, ‘Seriously, mate, can’t you see she’s mentally ill?’

Di Stefano’s selective deafness kicks in. ‘A word of warning,’ he says. His voice may be slighter now, having lost its boom, but nevertheless I wonder if he’s about to threaten me. ‘You can laugh at the Church, no problem. We are laughed at every day. But when you laugh at . . .’

His eyes flit across the church.

‘At the Devil?’ I ask, raising my voice for Maria’s benefit as much as anyone else’s, hoping she and Maddelena will understand. ‘There’s no such thing as the Devil!’ Di Stefano makes a kind of horse’s whinny. I think it’s supposed to mean I’m treading on thin ice with The Man Downstairs.

Across the church, Maddelena stands alone. She must have been keenly eavesdropping on our conversation, because only now does she realise that Maria is no longer beside her. The woman’s hair flails as she scans the church.

I frown my most irritating frown at Di Stefano. ‘Why would the Devil care? Isn’t his greatest trick supposed to be convincing the world he doesn’t exist?’

‘Maria?’ calls Maddelena. With one swipe of a curtain, she reveals an empty confession box.

Di Stefano opens his mouth so Beardless can insert pills, then gulps them down with water. He tells me, slowly and deliberately, as if instructing a child, ‘That was a movie.’

The priest has underestimated me in assuming I was paraphrasing cinematic dialogue as opposed to the Charles Baudelaire quote, but I’m impressed that he’s seen The Usual Suspects. It makes him seem more human when I imagine him lounging around in his underwear, throwing a DVD on the box. I resist the urge to ask which other cool nineties films he’s seen, like Reservoir Dogs, or Goodfellas (‘My exorcism is funny, huh? I amuse you, I make you laugh?’) 

Maddelena’s voice is smaller and without echo, suggesting that she’s outside. ‘Maria? Maria? Dove sei, la mia bambina?’

I nod over at the stained-glass window that Maria looked at so pointedly during the exorcism. Its coloured glass panels collectively depict a glum Jesus Christ sitting on some rocks.

‘What is the meaning of that?’ I ask.

‘No more, no more,’ says Beard, making the universal gesture for ‘No more’ with his hands. ‘Move away.’

Di Stefano glances irritably at the window. 

‘It is Christ during his forty days in the wilderness,’ he says, sagging with relief at the approaching wail of an ambulance siren.

Beard and Beardless grimace, fists clenched by their sides. Maddelena’s gaze scorches the side of my face.

The church falls grimly silent.

Grinning broadly, I applaud the assembled players, hands above my head, each clap resounding in the rafters. 

‘Chill out,’ I tell them. ‘I’m just enjoying the show. Highly entertaining.’ Tony helpfully translates.

Maria’s reaction is the most curious. Instead of raving about the crucified Nazarene, she looks straight at me. A glint of sun makes those yellow eyes burn as she cocks her head to one side, quizzical. And she smiles at me. Everyone else is scowling, but Maria smiles. Still playing the role, I suppose. Improvising. Riffing. What a trouper.

She turns to look back across the church at something. I follow her gaze over to that towering stained-glass window on the rear wall. Then her eyes are back on me and she’s got a weird, knowing look on her face. For the life of me I can’t work out what this odd little moment with the window is supposed to mean.

Evidently keen to re-establish the mood, Di Stefano intones what I later discover is an exorcism prayer. Maria ignores him. She’s still looking right at me. Getting sick of her smile and B-movie eyes, I pull out my smartphone. The reception here is patchy, but I grab a scrap of signal.

Di Stefano’s pronouncements and Tony’s translations (‘In the name of Jesus Christ, our God and Lord, strengthened by the intercession of the immaculate Virgin Mary, mother of God . . .’) fade into the background as I check my updates. Social media is the usual heady potpourri of hearts and minds. 

‘How long were you in rehab for, dawg?’ enquires Jack Sparks on Drugs fan Monky617 (two months is the answer, in case you’re similarly curious – and the only drug I’ve done since leaving is alcohol, which was never my problem in the first place), while PaulTrema8 wants to know what my next book is going to be about (as if the exorcism isn’t a pretty good clue). SpazzDick2, on the other hand, kindly offers, ‘I’ll punch ur fucken head off u arogunt [sic] cock.’ I’m pretty sure I blocked him last week, but apparently not. Must have been his earlier incarnation, SpazzDick1.

‘. . . as wax melts before the fire, so the wicked perish at the presence of God . . .’ drones Di Stefano, as Maria gnashes something feral back.

I might seem to shirk my journalistic duty by reading social media during an exorcism. But in the face of this amateur dramatics society play, social media provides a vital lifeline to the real world. Feeling a strong urge to connect, I fire a message into the ether:

‘Probably bad to laugh during the exorcism of a thirteen-year-old girl, right? Well, I just did. You should SEE this bullshit.’

I consider attaching a photo of the exorcism in full swing, then ditch the idea. It might prompt Beard and Beardless to wrestle me to the floor while trying to confiscate my device. I could take them both on, no question, but just don’t need the bother.

Di Stefano seems back on a roll, clutching a wooden rod with a perforated metal ball on the end. He emphasises certain bits of banter by using this device to fling droplets of something at Maria.

‘We drive you from us, whoever you may be . . .’

Maria shrieks every time this stuff hits her. Oh yes, he’s bringing out the big guns now. Holy water! Another box ticked.

‘Unclean spirits, all satanic powers, all infernal invaders . . .’ 

Maria shrieks again and bares her teeth. ‘Poor Maria,’ she growls. ‘In such pain, locked deep inside herself. She will die before we ever let her go.’

‘All wicked legions, assemblies and sects . . .’

Maria twists in agony as this last triple whammy of water gets her right in the face. Interestingly, her skin reddens, as if scalded. Wonder how they did that. I should pay more attention.

‘Remember what a small boy once told you, about your nieces?’ Maria says. ‘He meant what he said. Believe it.’

Di Stefano shoots a swift, meaningful glance my way, weirdly vindicated. 

It’s a great moment. Very clever. I do love a bit of continuity.

Online, there are already over two hundred responses to my exorcism post. Most of these ask whether I’m really at an exorcism or where exactly it is taking place. Some say how scared they’d be to see an exorcism, while others laugh along with me. ‘Are they really still doing that stuff?’ says Domina22 from Cape Town. ‘It’s like science never happened.’ 

Beard and Beardless hold Maria as firmly as they can, as the exorcism builds to a grand finale. Di Stefano dishes out his pious gems, louder and more forceful than ever. One thing’s for sure: if Maria Corvi isn’t giving the performance of her young life, she needs an MRI scanner right away. She froths at the mouth, her irises are nowhere to be seen and her neck appears to have stretched, which must be down to the angles again. Always working the angles, these guys.

Finally she convulses, breaks free of the aides and falls to her knees. Then she regurgitates something red and unexpectedly solid, which hits the ground with an even less expected clang.

Okay, they’ve upped their game. They’ve got me back. Yes, vomiting is yet another exorcism cliché, but I’m curious – why the clang? I crane my neck to see, but this brings no satisfaction, so I spring up, edge past Maddelena and head to the front. I am an audience member evading security and running to get a closer look during a Penn & Teller show.

Beardless gestures for me to stay back, offering a clear challenge. Ignoring him, I strain to see what Maria’s thrown up.There’s blood, some kind of spongy matter . . . and pieces of metal that are hard to identify. 

‘You will leave this poor girl,’ commands Di Stefano, ‘this child of Christ!’

The teenager cackles, still on all fours. Strands of bloody drool connect her chin to the floor.

‘You will return to the foul depths whence you came. The power of Jesus Christ compels you!’

The latter phrase may amuse me, but it rocks Maria. As if in response to this upping of the ante, she yells fiercely up at him: ‘Leave us be, Di Stefano! Or we will slaughter this bitch.’

Her whole body spasms and her fingertips dig hard into the floorboards.

I wince as one of her fingernails bends back, strains, snaps.

Her head jerks back and a solid object explodes from her mouth in a torrent of red mist. This startling missile punches into Di Stefano’s left upper thigh and stays there, the end quivering. When he cries out and grabs at it, his own blood spritzes his hand. 

Mr Beard steps in between Maria and Di Stefano, as if intending to block further projectiles. Beardless rushes to support Di Stefano, who nevertheless topples backwards and crashes to the floor, banging his head.

I’ve never seen anything with this kind of impact, even in the fiercely unpredictable world of gangs. It’s all so convincingly chaotic that my Truman Show theory falters.

For now.

The Hell Hotel sits in a tangled web of gaudy light bulbs, roller-coaster tracks and crazy crane-like rides at the far end of Brighton Pier. When we’re both home and need a catch-up, this is our ritual: ghost train, then pints, then chips. I’ve checked into the Hell Hotel more times than I have into actual hotels. So has Bex, and yet it never seems to lose that primal power over her. I, on the other hand, simply appreciate the ancient gear-grinding mechanics that propel our car through darkness. This visit feels extra special, being our first since I got out of rehab a few weeks back.

We stroll back along the pier’s charmingly uneven floorboards, heading for Victoria’s Bar stationed halfway along it. To the west, the horizon is ablaze. Gulls soar overhead, seemingly carried against their will by freak winds – the kind that can jump down your throat and steal your breath. Bex takes her wild red corkscrew hair in both hands and reins it in with a scrunchie.

‘I don’t think I’ve ever asked you this,’ I say. ‘I know you’re not exactly religious, but you do think there might be a God. So do you actually believe in ghosts?’

‘If you accept the possibility of God, then you have to accept the possibility of ghosts. Because you just never know, do you?’

‘Well, that’s the thing. Thanks to science, we do know.’

‘How can we know what happens after death? It’s death! The great unknown. But we can’t imagine having no consciousness; feeling nothing forever.’

‘What do you feel while you’re asleep, though?’ 

‘I dream.’

‘Good for you.’ I’m about to explain the burden of proof and the truth about so-called near-death experiences on the operating table when a new urgent query consumes her: ‘Anyway, what happened in Italy?’

I tell her about the Laugh, on the way to the pub. Whenever Bex laughs, or even smiles, she holds one hand over her mouth because she wrongly thinks her teeth are too big. ‘You’re a bad man. So where does the YouTube video come into it?’

‘I’ll get to that. Give me a chance!’

‘Okay. So. You laughed during the exorcism . . .’

‘Yes,’ I say, revving myself up into a clickbait headline. ‘And you’ll never believe what happened next.’

Maria’s mother doesn’t seem to interpret this look the same way. She smiles back encouragingly and wrings her bony hands in anticipation, as if her daughter is about to audition for The X Factor.

Father Di Stefano stands before Maria, an ancient leather-bound Bible spread across his palms. Beard and Beardless position themselves at either far side, hands behind their backs.

Di Stefano reads interminable passages from the book. His words echo darkly around the ceiling. Maria looks embarrassed, as if wondering what she’s supposed to do. It’s weirdly hypnotic. Thanks to a late night out in Rome, my eyes lose focus and I drift into a dreamlike state . . .

Maria’s whole body goes electric-shock rigid. Her eyes bulge and her hands and feet shoot out in all directions. I can’t see her toes from here, but her trembling fingers are spread wide. She holds this bizarre position for no more than a second before the chair beneath her gives way, breaking with a loud crack.

Maria falls to the ground, her back arching awkwardly over the pile of broken wood, her body limp. I shake my head, disappointed that the all-powerful Church has resorted to age-old slapstick ruses like sawing halfway through chair legs in order to jazz things up. Coming next: Maria and Di Stefano attempt to carry a piano up a tall flight of steps, with amusing consequences.

Beside me Maddelena gasps, a rosary gripped tight in one hand, the beads fit to burst. Beard and Beardless dash in and examine the lifeless girl, while carefully removing the pieces of chair from beneath her. They return to the sidelines: twin roadies who scurried on to fix a rogue microphone stand during a gig.

Di Stefano switches his attention from the Bible to the prone teenager. ‘I am addressing directly the spirit that dwells within Maria Corvi,’ he says. ‘Speak your name, before I have cause to do so myself.’ 

On the word ‘myself ’, something dramatic happens. Something that, I’ll admit, is harder to explain than the magical breaking chair.

As a kid, I owned what is generally referred to as a thumb puppet. A small wooden donkey standing on a cylindrical base, its tiny constituent parts joined by string. When you pushed your thumb up inside this base, it made the donkey collapse. On the withdrawal of your thumb, the donkey would spring back up into its former rigid state.

Maddelena cries out in shock as Maria Corvi springs up from the church floor like my donkey used to. Her heels remain on the ground, but the rest of her rises fast, as if hoisted by some invisible pulley system. Unlike my donkey, Maria remains loose. Her body appears boneless. Eyes shut, she drifts from side to side as if underwater. I stand and peer over the pews, spotting that she’s now up on her tiptoes. It doesn’t seem possible for a human being to achieve this stance, or at least to maintain it for so long. Her centre of gravity is not so much off as non-existent. The magician David Blaine would take notes. 

Father Di Stefano, of course, is not fazed. He’s seen all this stuff many times before. Truth be told, he invented it. Because as he repeats his exhortations for the evil within Maria to speak its name, the truth hits me. Remember Jim Carrey’s character in The Truman Show – the guy who discovers that the world around him is artificial? All of this is one big set-up, for my benefit. It’s a feeling journalists will know well on a smaller scale: the sense that you’re no longer a non-influential observer of events, but instead the spark that brought them about.

If Maria Corvi isn’t an actual actress, then she and her mother have surely agreed that she will become one, no doubt in exchange for a better life. (Eleanor: please don’t kick off about libel here. I really can’t be dealing with another debate like the one about Katy Perry and the bag of . . . well, you know.) The arrangement of the pews and the space before the altar resembles audience and stage, with stage managers Beard and Beardless lurking in the wings. After all, what has the Church always been about, if not an audience flocking to watch a performance? And of course here I am, hemmed in several rows back – all the better to stop me seeing this propaganda display from the wrong angles.

Maria’s eyelids flick open, revealing that her eyes now swim with some cunningly applied yellow dye. Nice touch. She’s still up on her tippy-toes, and I now suspect that her conveniently oversized smock harbours some kind of body harness. Her lips stretch back over her teeth to form a sickly grin. When she speaks, her voice is lilting and childlike, in direct contrast to her words. ‘You cock-sucking prick,’ she tells the priest, thereby fulfilling the minimum post-Friedkin quota of fellatio mentions during an exorcism. Translator Tony lowers his voice reverentially as he continues to whisper her words in English: ‘You fuck children and yet judge me?’

Maria’s laugh is slithery. If a snake could laugh, it would sound like that. This Maria, if that really is her name? She’s good.

To a man like Father Primo Di Stefano, child abuse accusations, whether from entities alive or dead, are water off a duck’s back. Delving into his robes, he produces a sturdy, old-school wooden cross with a Christ figurine on it.

When he presents this trump card to Maria, it’s as if she’s being made to look directly into the sun. She lashes out at the priest and the cross, her fingers cramped into claws. Di Stefano takes a step back, while Beard and Beardless hurry in to restrain Maria, each gripping an arm. She struggles against them with surprising force and sends Beard tumbling to the ground.

‘Maria is ours,’ she says. Her voice is now deep and throaty, but punctuated by freakish high notes. ‘We are her blood. Her flesh, her bones, her guts. We have freed her soul. By hurting us with your trinkets, you only hurt her.’

Di Stefano steps back into the fray, his cross to the fore, bellowing, ‘That is a sacrifice I’m prepared to make in order to secure her freedom.’

I wonder how Maddelena feels about Di Stefano taking that decision into his own hands. To my consternation, she seems okay with it. Oh, hey, she’s in on all of this anyway. Just playing along with the script.

And so it goes on. Yellow-eyed Maria verbally abuses Di Stefano, spits, shrieks and generally misbehaves. Di Stefano remains devout and steadfast. He brandishes his religious iconography as a pepper-spray threat and mentions Jesus Christ at least three times per minute. Translator Tony struggles to keep up with them.

Now. Here’s the thing. It’s a universal truth that laughter becomes more insanely delicious the more wrong it is. 

Taboos are funny. They just are. When you’re absolutely, definitely not supposed to laugh, that’s when laughter is all the more potent and combustible. As scarily inevitable as a sneeze, or an itch you just have to scratch, no matter how demented you’ll look.

You might be sitting among heartbroken folk at a funeral. You might be sitting behind a TV news desk, staring into a camera and telling the world about the latest genocide.

Or, as in my case, witnessing a faux exorcism.

Surely I can’t be the only man on earth who considers The Exorcist a comedy. Even when I first saw it as a child, in the late eighties, the film provoked far more chuckles than shivers. Friedkin’s po-faced seriousness really tickled my ribs. ‘The power of Christ compels you!’ became something to yell at other kids in the playground with a big grin.

As the action escalates, so does my urge to laugh at it. This whole charade is so very deadpan that laughter is the only sane response. Part of me needs to laugh, in order to exorcise myself of these ridiculous characters. And while I’m genuinely overcome by mirth, there’s no doubt that my laughter will also be a statement. Because people’s enduring belief in conveniently invisible devils makes the work of science so much harder. It slaps a leash on progress and encourages backward thinking.

In 2012, while appearing on a TV show in the Dominican Republic, US magician Wayne Houchin unexpectedly had his head set on fire by a man who reportedly believed him to be a voodoo practitioner. In 2013, a YouGov poll found that over fifty per cent of Americans believe in the Devil and exorcism. And earlier this year, in his documentary about ‘gay cures’, British doctor and TV presenter Christian Jessen encountered American teenagers who genuinely thought homosexuality was caused by demonic infestations.

Belief in the concept of Satan possessing children has led to murders around the world. Sometimes these murders are deliberate: kids have been burned and buried alive. Such things are straight out of the Dark Ages. Other deaths have resulted from misguided attempts to get those imagined demons out, often by one of those maverick exorcists. In the Philippines as recently as 2011, an anorexic girl named Dorca Beltre starved to death during a botched five-day exorcism.

And so we must laugh at this medieval crap. It is our duty to do so.

My laugh explodes out of me in a great belly-pumping blast, amplified by its own inappropriate glory.

At first sight Maria doesn’t strike me as demonic. Neither is she all cute-as-a-button smiley like Linda Blair’s Exorcist character Regan MacNeil, who was one year younger. Maria Corvi radiates the sullen nonchalance of your typical teenager who’s doing her best to mask fear. Look closer and you see that, like her mother, Maria is quietly desperate. The pair are decked out in the same plain, practical blue smocks and boots they wear for their work as farm labourers. Maria is pretty and worryingly thin. Gaunt, too, and those dark-ringed eyes suggest sleepless nights. Her unwashed black hair hangs halfway down her back.

Apart from a splash of grey up top, Maddelena is so self-evidently Maria’s mother that they could be nesting Russian dolls.

I watch Maria carefully as she crosses the threshold into the church. Her flesh does not burn and she does not shriek. She does, however, bring a hand up to her throat and swallow hard, as if resisting the urge to be sick. Catching my eye awkwardly, almost shyly, she looks away and continues with her mother towards Di Stefano as if nothing had happened.

The priest greets Maria and Maddelena by launching into a formal speech in Italian. It reminds me of company reps who read legal tedium over the phone, while you play Candy Crush and say ‘Yes’ every thirty seconds. It very clearly reconfirms, no doubt partly for my information, that Maria and her mother have agreed to this rite. The Church, stresses Di Stefano, would only force such a thing on someone if they had harmed others or were deemed to be at risk of doing so.

‘Please do not be afraid,’ he tells the women. ‘Today, Maria, you will be free of the negativity that has no business within you.’ I later learn that ‘negativity’ is a euphemism the Church often employs. They claim it helps to avoid leading the subject through the power of suggestion. Which seems unusually sensible of them.

Maria nods, her expression neutral. I can’t tell whether she believes in this stuff, or is going through the motions for her mother’s sake. Did Maddelena find an Ozzy Osbourne album on Maria’s iPod and hurriedly dial the Vatican’s 1-800-DEVILCHILD hotline?

Di Stefano briefly explains why I’m present. Then he leads Maria to the strip of dusty floor that passes in front of the altar. Her mother signs legal papers handed to her by Beard (oh yes, legal papers – the Church likes being sued about as much as any other multinational corporation). Then he and Beardless usher her, along with me and Translator Tony, to our designated pew five rows back from the front.

Maddelena chews what’s left of her fingernails while Tony translates her. ‘I know this has to be done. But . . . she is my baby, you know? I do not understand. Why has Satan chosen her?’

It doesn’t seem the right time to tell her Satan doesn’t exist. Or indeed to ask if, you know, Maria might just be your average teenager who seems a bit nuts – especially against the backdrop of a quiet rural expanse like this. Instead, I ask what led Maddelena to hire an exorcist.

‘Maria started to sleepwalk,’ she says, never taking her eyes off her daughter as Di Stefano gives the girl a final briefing in hushed tones. ‘Or at least I thought she was sleepwalking. In the middle of the night I found her standing outside our home, at the edge of the clearing . . .’

Maddelena flicks her eyes around the church before continuing.

‘She was naked, in the freezing cold. I thought she was asleep, but she turned her head when I spoke. Her eyes were wide open and . . . her eyes were on me. I say to her, “Maria, please wake up.” And she smiled. I’d never seen a crazy smile on her face like that. She say to me, “I am awake.” And then . . .’ Maddelena looks set to cry, but steels herself. When she lowers her voice, Translator Tony follows suit. ‘And then . . . she slapped my face and said, “You wake up, you Christ-loving whore, before I rip out your fucking heart.”’

After that night, Maria’s nocturnal wanderings escalated. Maddelena claims she tried locking both of the house’s external doors and hiding the keys, but still her daughter managed to break out. One time, Maddelena and a search party of friends found Maria a mile away from home, in the dead of night. She was writhing around, naked again, covered in the blood of a deer that she’d slain with a butcher’s knife taken from the kitchen.

‘She was laughing when we found her,’ says Maddelena with a shudder. ‘After that, I felt so lost. I knew that only the Church could help with something like this. The old pastor who owns this church helped me make contact with Father Di Stefano in Rome. The good father sent an assistant to meet Maria, then it was decided that a blessing would be best.’

Another euphemism, there. It’s so much easier to agree to a blessing than an exorcism. When I ask if Maddelena ever considered medical help for her daughter, her face suggests that she trusts doctors and science about as much as I trust priests and religion.

‘If this does not work, then maybe . . .’ she says, as if that really would be the last resort.

Inside, it is functional, relatively bare bones. There are still a few of the usual looming statues calculated to intimidate and belittle, plus a few glistening symbols of opulence and power.

Yet the most elaborate feature is the stained-glass window in the back wall, shot through with winter sun.

I always think the beauty of stained-glass windows is wasted on a church.

Everything is so quiet and serene, you’d scarcely credit the fact that in ninety minutes we’ll need an ambulance.

Arriving half an hour late at 1.30 p.m., I barrel in looking windswept and interesting. Eighty-year-old Father Primo Di Stefano greets me with a stiff smile and matching handshake. Sporting a large black frock, he is flanked by two frosty aides, who are both short and stocky, in black shirts and grey trousers. The only real visual difference between these two is that one has facial hair, so let’s call them Beard and Beardless. I also have a handy Italian translator at my disposal, named Tony. So he’ll be Translator Tony, obviously. Despite his werewolf-hairy hands, a monobrow crowning shifty brown eyes, and teeth you could ride a Kawasaki between, Tony’s the only halfway personable guy here. We bond over a cigarette outside, when he admires my brass Zippo. A dull, tarnished old thing these days, but it does the job.

Di Stefano does not run this church. To all intents and purposes, the priest is a guest here, like me. One of the Pope’s most trusted foot soldiers, he is based in Rome and has travelled many miles to commandeer the place on a mission of mercy. Specifically, he has come to drive the Devil out of a thirteen-year-old girl with the use of words, gestures and a great deal of biblical Sturm und Drang. This man claims to have carried out over two hundred exorcisms. As a purely incidental side effect, this has provided him with material for a lucrative string of books detailing his crusades. The titles include At War with the Devil, My Lifelong Battle with the Antichrist and of course Satan & I. That last title is my favourite, like a wacky sitcom. ‘In this week’s episode of Satan & I, Father Di Stefano attempts to throw a house party for friends, only for his mischievous flatmate Satan to slay them all while denouncing God!’

Bitterly cold winds sail up and down the aisle as Father Di Stefano, Translator Tony and I literally pull up a pew for a chat. We have time to kill before the subject of the priest’s latest ritual arrives.

Exorcism can be traced back through millennia to the dawn of civilisation. Right from the word go, man was all too keen to ascribe sickness, whether physical or psychological, to evil spirits. And of course people from the ancient Babylonian priests onwards were all too keen to present themselves as exorcists. As saviours. The most famous was allegedly Jesus Christ, who couldn’t get enough of it.

Di Stefano considers exorcism more vital than ever in the online age. ‘The internet,’ he tells me via Tony, ‘has made it much easier to share information, but not always good information. People experiment with Ouija boards and get themselves in trouble. And then they call us, asking for help.’

This man has the lived-in face and manner of a mastiff dog. There is not the faintest flicker of humour in his dark eyes. He is barely tolerating me. His aides hover within earshot, which always irritates me during interviews. I ask for them to move further away, but the request is rudely ignored. I soon discover that Di Stefano’s hearing is poor when he wants it to be – when I ask a challenging question, for instance. At other times, when I say something he wants to pounce on, his ears sharpen the hell up.

Di Stefano has granted a fair few interviews over the years – most notably when he’s had a new book out – but as far as I can tell, no journalist has been allowed to watch him perform an exorcism. Today feels like a concession to the modern media, a canny PR exercise: if the Church is seen to be helping people, it stays relevant in the eyes of the world. And if there’s one thing religion should be worried about these days, it’s relevance. There’s no question that converting Jack Sparks would be quite the coup.

I can’t help but picture Di Stefano conducting an exorcism with an entirely straight face, then bursting into uncontrollable fits later on, the moment he shuts his front door behind him. Just hooting at the nonsense he gets away with on a daily basis. But there’s undoubtedly a very serious side to all this. After all, Di Stefano deals with often quite severely distressed people of all ages (except babies, seemingly. Babies are so consistently insane that it’s hard to tell if they’re possessed, unless they start floating about). The lion’s share of these people arguably suffer from some form of mental illness, or have experienced abuse.

‘That is true,’ allows Di Stefano, to my surprise. ‘Very often we realise, you know, that a person does have a mental illness or there is some other history there. In those cases, a demon is not to blame after all. When this happens, of course, the person will be sent for the correct treatment. The need for an exorcism is actually very rare.’

‘How can you tell when an exorcism is required?’ I ask.

Di Stefano looks down his nose at me, regarding me like the rank amateur I am. His stare is unyielding, those eyes dead as a cod’s. ‘You get to know the sign of a true demonic possession,’ he says. ‘You can feel it. The feeling is completely different.’

So far, so vague. ‘How exactly does it feel when it’s a real demon?’ I persist.

‘The air feels . . . thick,’ he says, with distaste. ‘And black, like oil. It is . . .’ He rubs his forefinger and thumb together as he searches for the word. Then he exchanges rapid-fire Italian with Tony, who provides the word on the tip of Di Stefano’s tongue: ‘Oppressive.’

‘Also,’ the priest continues, ‘you can see it in the subject’s eyes. The eyes, you know, are the windows to the soul. You can see who, or what, is living inside.’

‘How do you know it isn’t all in your head?’ I ask.

That mastiff face crumples. No mean feat when your face is already a sponsored crumple-thon. He doesn’t enjoy this line of questioning, no doubt because it could just as easily be applied to religion as a whole. Still, he gamely indulges me. ‘As far as I know, I am perfectly sane. So are my exorcist colleagues. The things we have seen . . . the way people have behaved with demons within them . . . this is no make-believe.’ He gestures around the church. ‘You will see today, I think.’

‘Have you seen The Exorcist?’ I ask.

‘The movie? A long time ago. I don’t remember too much about—’

‘Are exorcisms anything like that?’

‘Sometimes they are,’ he says wearily. As if anticipating my next question, he adds, ‘But you know, exorcism existed for a long time before that movie. The movie took its . . . uh . . .’

‘Cue?’

‘Yes. The movie took its cue from exorcisms before it. But I must say, I have seen things far more terrible in real life.’

I lean forward, quote-hungry. ‘Could you give me an example?’

Di Stefano recalls a middle-aged single mother in Florence who would cry blood. Her skin turned sickly green and broke out in open sores. When he tried to expel her demons in an attic room, she whispered the Lord’s Prayer backwards as she gouged out one of her own eyeballs with a rusty antique spoon. Di Stefano (then a mere assistant, in the late seventies) and his exorcism instructor restrained her, encased the eye in ice and rushed her to hospital. Despite a five-hour emergency operation, the eyeball could not be reinstated. Still, Di Stefano claims that they eventually exorcised the demon from this woman, who was reunited with her children.

When pushed for his very worst memory, he reluctantly dredges up the 2009 case of a ten-year-old boy in Milan. As he speaks of this boy, his full-bodied voice becomes little more than a murmur.

‘The first time I tried to exorcise him, he laughed in my face, as he broke each of his fingers one by one.’

‘Just the fingers on one hand?’ I ask, genuinely curious. ‘He couldn’t do both, right?’

Di Stefano glares at me, as if I’m trying to be funny. 

He bows his head. ‘I could not save him. The demons had such a firm hold. I think they wanted to make a point, to scare me away from my life’s mission. During exorcism number three, the boy smashed his face against the corner of a glass table, blood everywhere. In number five, he threatened my nieces’ lives. He said he would cut all the skin from their faces as I watched, then force me to eat it.’

Translator Tony pops a square of nicotine gum into his mouth. 

Di Stefano takes a moment to compose himself. ‘Two nights later, I had one of my visions.’

Ah yes, Di Stefano’s famous visions. His books are full of them. These visions physically root him to the spot and flood his mind with astonishing psychic sights. Interestingly, he rarely seems to tell anyone about them before their real-life counterparts occur. Why, it’s almost as if he pretends to have had the vision in retrospect.

‘In my mind, I saw the boy murder his sleeping stepfather with a hammer, then jump out of the window. And this actually happened, thirty minutes later. The boy, he jump ten floors down to the busy road. Such a terrible, terrible . . . People said he screamed blasphemy as he fell.’

Satisfied that I can’t come back with a smart answer to such a grim story – or worried that I might ask for more information about that stepfather – he stands, ending our cosy chat.

He needs, he says, to pray and mentally prepare. As I leave him to kneel before the altar, I wonder how many exorcisms actually take place in churches. Aren’t the possessed supposed to burn up when they walk through the door, or at least protest and writhe around? Have these people never seen The Omen?

I open my notepad and review the SPOOKS List I’ve created . . .

THE SPOOKS LIST (Sparks’ Permanently Ongoing Overview of Kooky Shit) (Full disclosure: I had to ask social media’s hive mind to help with the ‘K’ word. Prior to that I only had ‘Kreepy’, which simply wasn’t good enough.)

People claim to have witnessed supernatural phenomena for the following reasons: (1) They’re trying to deceive others (2) They’ve been deceived by others

Those, then, are the only two viable explanations as I see them, in top-down order from most to least likely. It won’t surprise you to learn that I don’t consider ‘Ghosts are real’ to be a viable hypothesis. Neither can I entertain the notion that people can be deceived by their own minds to the extent that they ‘see’ a ghost. Not without the use of LSD, anyway, and in such cases the drug is clearly the mother of total delusion. I should know this better than most, after the incident with the dive-bombing spider-geese. 

What I’ll be looking to do, both here today and throughout this book, is to fit everything I see to one of the two explanations above. Should neither of them fit, I’ll potentially add a third explanation to the list. 

That’s highly unlikely, I’m saying, but let’s get stuck in.

‘Last time I looked, in about 2009, social media was one big room full of people not listening to each other, shouting, “My life’s great!” I doubt this has changed.’

‘So why are you still on there?’

Bex makes her frustrated, dismissive noise: the sound of a brief, chaotic catfight. ‘I have profiles, Jack, so old friends can catch up, but I don’t read anything. Social media makes me think less of people. I’d rather not know all the self-obsessed shit in their heads.’

‘How selfish of you.’

‘Won’t this book be kind of short? Just a great big atheist travelling round the world saying “Bullshit” a lot?’

I frown at her underestimation of the concept. ‘Obviously I’m going to keep it rational. But I’ll also keep a completely open mind. Social media’s full of people who think ghosts are real, so I’ll give them a chance to guide me in the right direction. I’ve got this ongoing list of hypotheses for paranormal phenomena, which I’m calling SPOOKS. That’s short for—’

‘I think I can do without knowing.’

‘And when the book’s done, I can at least tell all the mad believers, “Look, you had your chance to convince me and you blew it.”’

‘How very magnanimous of you.’

My hopeless love for Bex intensifies when she employs long words and sarcasm together. Long-time readers will recall her as the late-twenties fitness instructor I’ve known and shared a flat with too long for anything to happen between us. They’ll also know I’ve found it challenging to listen to her banging men in an adjacent bedroom. This may explain why my books tend to involve travel. (By the way, she doesn’t bang loads of men. She’s not like that. She’s been seeing a guy called Lawrence for six months, even if he is a smarmy chinless loser. And he is.)

I can openly discuss this love of mine because Bex doesn’t actually read my books. ‘Jack, I live with you,’ she once said while we half watched EastEnders and fully ate Chinese food on our big fat yellow sofa. ‘I don’t actually need to read these books. Why would I want to relive you overdosing on coke in our toilet?’

Apart from making the mistake of not reading my books, Bex is the most sensible person I know. In truth, I always seek her approval on my book ideas. Which makes me want to win her around on this one.

A burst of power makes our very small car rattle and hum. We roll forwards with a creak.

‘So,’ she says. ‘How was Greece?’

‘Italy,’ I say, forced to raise my voice as people start squealing behind us. ‘It caused the big bust-up. I did a bad thing and got yelled at by an exorcist.’

‘On Halloween. Perfect.’

‘Then I saw this weird YouTube video.’

Bex processes all this information. As our car gains speed, she settles on a question: ‘What video?’

‘I’ll tell you after this.’

And into the mouth we go.

The cloakroom was a place we took special measures to avoid. We would take the long route around every time – anything rather than having to enter that stale pocket of black. As you hurried through, your pulse would gallop. You’d gasp or even cry out as you mistook a prickle on the nape of your neck for the cold, stale breath of the dead and gone.

The incident happened one Saturday in the summer of 1983, when Jacob was aged five, four years my junior. As with all siblings, there was some rivalry between us, but brotherly harmony was the norm. We would climb trees, ride bikes, play football. Then we would lean against each other as we limped home, after accidents that tended to involve trees, bikes or  football.

This incident was born of pure childish innocence, but feels unexpectedly relevant here, in a book to which I never dreamt I would contribute. I really feel it sheds light on my brother’s nature and, I’m sorry to say, his severe downward spiral.

Most of the windows were open that day. Outside, hot air rippled. Our mother was in the garden, stretched out on a reclining lounger that occasionally broke and made her swear so loudly that our neighbours complained. She had one of her suspense novels, a pack of Silk Cut and her usual lack of suncream.

Jacob was absorbed with a toy car, whooshing it across the dining room floor, his face flushed. Seizing my chance for a bit of mutual fun, I stalked around the house and jammed all but one of the cloakroom’s doors shut, dragging furniture to create blockades. The architect had at least thought to make these doors open outwards.

I peered out through the kitchen window and saw Mum dozing, the book splayed on her belly. Then I told Jacob we were going to play a game. He, I explained, would be a ghost-hunter. And I would be a ghost, chasing him. The rules of the game were simple. I would pursue him around the house. He had to try and pass through the black hole three times without being grabbed and turned into a ghost himself.

Jacob looked uncertain. ‘If I’m a ghost-hunter, why am I running?’

‘’Cause you’ve met me,’ I told him. ‘I’m a ghost that’s too big and evil to deal with.’

He thought this over, then to my relief accepted it. The trap was set.

Jacob ran whooping ahead of me as I waved my arms about and made spooky noises, restricting my speed so as not to catch him. Making a beeline for the exact cloakroom door I’d planned, he raced across the length of the dining room and bolted into the black.

Sprinting to catch up, almost slipping over, I slammed the door shut on him. Then I gripped the handle tightly with both hands, the muscles in my arms taut with anticipation.

There was a muffled thump as Jacob tried to exit through one of the other doors, only to find it impossible. His voice was indistinct, as if piped down a bad phone line.

‘Hey! It won’t . . .’

His voice trailed away as he tried another door. Another thump, and this time just a bewildered cry.

The blood thundered in my head as I squeezed that door handle, ready for the assault, which began in seconds. When Jacob wrenched it, only to encounter the perceptibly imperfect force of human resistance, his voice became charged with fear.

‘Ali, stop it! Ali!’

There was no chance of our mother hearing, and yet Jacob’s pitch rose along with his volume. Sometimes he would abandon his vain attempts to open the door, only to suddenly try again in the hope of surprising me. Or I would hear the whumphs as he slammed himself against one of the other doors, yelling for Mum. Still I did not relent. Since he didn’t sound terrified and was not crying, I felt confident he too would see the funny side when I released him.

Then those calls from inside the cloakroom stopped dead. Biceps burning, I twisted around and leant heavily back against the door. While watching flies chase each other, I listened hard.

I listened for what felt like a long time.

Nothing.

The sense of fun began to fade.

‘Don’t worry,’ I called through the thick wood. ‘I’ll let you out now, okay?’ I laughed, lightly.

There was no reply.

Despite standing in a room flooded with sunlight, I began to feel uneasy. Against all odds, I creeped myself out. A sly, arcane image snuck unbidden into my mind. I pictured Jacob transformed, inside that room. In my head, he now stood wearing a cloak, with hollow darkness where his face should be.

I became convinced that this spectral monk who was once my brother now stood silently waiting for me to see him. When I opened the door, I decided, he would lurch out of the room. He would tear off my limbs, one by one, laughing as he did so.

‘Jakey?’ I called out.

Still nothing.

‘Jacob?’

My heart, which had thumped so excitedly only moments beforehand, now felt like it was banging on a door, wanting out.

I felt sick with worry about what had happened to my brother.

About what he had become in that unknowable space.

Seconds later, I saw it all coming out from under the door.  The purpose of my anecdote is certainly not to lend further ammunition to my online trolls, who nonsensically hold me responsible for the direction Jacob’s life took. I merely seek to offer a glimpse of his formative years, as a child who reacted in an unusually extreme manner to an otherwise harmless prank. On that front, at least, my conscience is clear. I also felt it prudent to present my side of the story, given that my brother also includes it in this book. He will pick up the story later, but sadly tells an exaggerated version, employing far less honesty than I. Read more from Alastair Sparks