Apart from his worldly success as a writer, Graham also has a passion for the supernatural having studied it since he was a teenager. So-much-so, that he was asked to make a TV series called GP Taylor’s Uninvited Guests where over six episodes, he investigated paranormal incidents throughout the country.
As a priest, Graham was regularly called in to help people who thought they were being haunted, especially around Hallowe’en.
He said, “It is amazing how many people think they have a ghost in their house and it’s not just old spooky buildings that are effected. Modern houses too can have unwanted house guests, but luckily, any priest can be called in to help get rid of them. Sixty nine per cent of the population believe in ghosts and half of them believe they have seen one.”
However, according to Graham, getting rid of spooks isn’t as easy as it sounds.
“One Saturday afternoon I got a telephone call from a man in the Midlands who said he was having a problem with a troublesome spirit that was throwing things around his house. I told him to put his phone on loudspeaker and I said the prayers over the phone. Thankfully, it calmed things down until I could get the local vicar to call in and finish the job.”
As a retired cop and natural sceptic who demands solid evidence, Graham says that some cases have left him very troubled.
“I can explain away 90% of all hauntings as natural occurrences that we humans think are supernatural. One woman said she was being haunted, but it turned out to be a noisy and very faulty central heating system. Strangely, whilst making some programmes for ITV, I stayed in an old country house. As I was just getting ready for bed, my bathroom door opened and translucent figure walked into the bedroom and vanished. As it did, a cold shudder ran down my spine. To this day, I cannot explain what I saw.”
In his time, Graham has visited over one hundred hauntings from Scotland to Cornwall and is still undecided about what is happening.
At one house where a young child was the centre of the haunting, he says that it was the only time he felt frightened as a cold hand rested on his shoulder giving him the feeling he was in the presence of something very evil. The next moment, something pushed him in the back but when he turned, there was no one there.
He said, “I have studied the paranormal for fifty years and firmly believe that on the weight of evidence, there is life beyond the grave. Hallowe’en is a fascinating time of year where the veil between the two worlds seems to be at its thinnest. However, dabbling in the paranormal is a dangerous thing unless you know what you are doing. I have been called in several times to deal with the fallout from people playing with Ouija boards and trying to contact the dead. Sometimes they open the door to entities that do not have their best wishes at heart.”
Graham has given up writing best-selling children’s books to concentrate on adult crime fiction where he combines his fascination with the supernatural and his careers as a police officer and a priest, both jobs he did at the same time.
‘Pig in the Pulpit is a crime novel centred around the life of The Reverend Peter Barnes who is also a full time copper. The worlds of police officer and priest soon collide and those long dead, reach out from the grave. Hauntings, funerals and a moribund congregation, clash with burglaries, thefts and murder on his rural police beat. Superiors in the police suspicious of his faith and a congregation hiding a long-held secret, bring challenges at every turn.
It is out now.
