For example, the advent of the camcorder has resulted in thousands of pieces of bizarre UFO footage being taken.

And digital sound recorders are a positive boon when it comes to capturing spooky, disembodied voices in haunted locations.

Reader Dave Shirley certainly discovered a very strange use for his mobile phone recently when he captured what seems to be the image of a ghost with its camera facility.

Dave happened to pop into The Chichester Arms at South Shields – one of the borough's friendliest pubs – for a pint, and in his pocket was a new phone with a myriad of accoutrements – a camera being one of them.

As he quietly supped his beer, he pulled the phone out of his pocket and started to fiddle with it.

Bar assistant Paula Coxill was seemingly much better versed with techie stuff, and offered to show Dave just how the camera worked.

On a whim, Paula launched the camera facility, and jokingly took a picture of Dave as he leaned contentedly upon the bar.

Nothing strange so far, but when Dave looked at the photo later he noticed something rather odd about it.

In the background, a man was walking past – someone that Paula was sure hadn't been there when she took the photograph.

Dave contacted me and asked me to take a look at the photo, as he was completely baffled by the presence of someone who, quite literally, just shouldn't have been there.

The more I studied the image, the stranger it became. Behind the man one can see the small, framed windows of the bar.

Bizarrely, one of the vertical frames seems to be poking through the head of the "ghost", and the lower half of his torso seems to be missing all together.

Another anomaly is the size of the apparition. The mysterious stranger's head is just about level with one of the horizontal window frames, which would mean that he would have to be at least 7ft tall.

The ghostly figure is obviously that of a male who seems to be wearing a dark-coloured donkey jacket and a beanie hat.

Seemingly oblivious to Paula, Dave and the others in the bar, he appears to be walking past like a man – or a ghost – on a mission.

"I haven't a clue who he is," Dave told me. "I certainly wasn't aware of anyone behind me when Paula took the picture. It's a complete mystery."

Paula backed up Dave's story: "I opened up the camera facility on Dave's phone and took the picture. I can say absolutely that there was no one walking past when I took it."

The fact that the man seems to be walking through the window frame, and not on one particular side of it, makes it rather difficult to work out whether he's in the pub or outside.

Whichever option you go for, the picture raises a number of baffling questions.

The Chichester Arms has a reputation for being haunted, although most of the stories date back to the 1940s and beyond.

In 1949, a man from nearby Dean Road, suffering from depression after his wife went missing, hanged himself in his flat after having a last pint with his friends in the pub.

During the subsequent months, his ghost was seen there on several occasions, always in the same spot.

Manager Dianne McIntosh told me, "One or two of the staff have seen things over the years – but nothing frightening. Dave's picture is certainly mysterious though!"

The odd apparition in Dave Shirley's photograph obviously isn't one of the "old ghosts", though, as his clothing is simply too contemporary.

We may never know who the stranger is in the picture taken with Dave's camera, but whether he's in this world or the next, I wish him well.