Our host, Roy Basnett, presides over a weekly paranormal chat show called The Zone Unknown, which covers everything from weird animals to apparitions.

During the show, Roy asked me to imagine if a large electronics company were to invent a gadget for recording paranormal phenomena, what would I like to see?

It's a difficult question to answer, but personally I think that we already have enough equipment for recording such things.

What I'd really like to see is a gadget that can make them happen!

One of the problems with paranormal phenomena is that they can rarely – if ever – be made to happen when we want them to.

Supposing we had a device that could actually make ghosts, cryptozoological animals and other paranormal phenomena appear to order, though?

I think it's a pipe-dream, of course. UFOs, apparitions, cryptids and other inexplicable phenomena are all different, and what causes one to appear is highly unlikely to precipitate the appearance of anot-
her.

In 1972, BBC2 broadcast a TV drama called The Stone Tape. The science-fiction play, which starred Jane Asher and Iain Cuthbertson, was directed by Nigel Kneale who also authored the legendary Quatermass story.

In The Stone Tape, a group of scientists find themselves ensconced in a haunted mansion, and discover that the ghosts are really recordings of past events embedded in the stone walls of the building.

Eventually they stumble upon a way to replay the images, effectively calling up the ghosts at will.

Back in 2002, a British researcher carried out a similar experiment which did not produce images or apparitions, but did capture noises that seemed to come from a bygone age.

A colleague of mine once recorded sounds in Newcastle Keep which sounded very much like a Gregorian chant, and another researcher, Trevor Brown, photographed an eerie cloud of mist which many believe has a human form.

Because the capturing of paranormal phenomena on film or audio tape is such a rare event, sceptics often argue that they don't really exist.

Why, they ask, has no definitive proof been found over centuries of research?

Well, the first point to make is that many investigators believe that such proof has been found; it's just that the cynics won't accept it, and prefer to bury their head in the sand.

It's also interesting to note that the Mountain Gorilla wasn't discovered until 1902, and before then, respected scientists denied its very existence.

If a creature the size of a gorilla could go undetected until just a century ago, who is to say that there aren't many wonders in this world still awaiting discovery?

Technology definitely has a part to play in researching the paranormal, but whether or not we ever find enough "proof" to convince the scientific community of anything remains to be seen.

* If you have any spooky stories you'd like to see in print, e-mail them to wraithscape@mikehallowell.com