My favourite ghost story of all time

Oh my God, I've loved this weekend, getting up and finding an inbox full of ghost stories two days running, having to restrain myself until my coffee was made and Esme was silenced with enough breakfast to let me read them in peace. Thank you for your stories: thank you for making my morning coffee-with-Internet so much better than usual.

I envy those of you that have had very real ghostly experiences, because I'm fascinated by the stories I've heard of them and I haven't personally witnessed enough to know to what extent they exist. I tend not to believe in things I can't see. I like a nice rational explanation for things, and yet I love a meaty, inexplicable ghost story.

If I did one day see a ghost, and could be sure it wasn't a hallucination, then I'd know where I stood, but on the down side, 1. it would make me shit my pants and 2. my friends would immediately brand me the kind of nutjob who writes to Texas the Psychic Horse.

What, you didn't know about Texas the Psychic Horse? Where have you been?

Anyway.

My favourite ghost story was told to me by a drinking-companion of 20 years ago. His name was Paul, and he was about 15 years older than me, a very laid-back, good-time character who could always be found in one of three local pubs, always with a big smile, enormous moustache and a story to tell. He'd done plenty of strong acid in his youth and still seemed perpetually stoned, but very happy.

Long ago when Paul was a young student, he and his housemates went to a college bar one night and struck up a loud conversation about the paranormal. A couple of other people joined in, and after a few drinks, Paul's housemates invited them back to their house for a séance. They accepted. At once, Paul made his excuses and left: he went home ahead of the rest of them, because this was part of the plan.

Paul got home and went upstairs to the room above the sitting-room. He didn't turn any lights on in the house, so it would look like no one was in. Then he waited.

Presently, the rest of the party got home too.

Paul, upstairs in the dark, listened while the group downstairs settled in, rolled joints, poured drinks and cleared a table for everyone to sit around. Paul could smell the hashish as joint after joint was rolled, his housemates making sure the guests were absolutely baked by the time the séance got under way.

The séance began. It was very quiet downstairs. Paul could sense The Fear. He began to feel The Fear himself, waiting alone upstairs in this dark room where the shadows loomed and tiny noises made the hairs stand up on the back of his neck.

Downstairs, an edgy paranoia had taken hold of the stoned group sitting in the lounge. Paul's housemate, in charge of the séance, was playing his part with brilliance, slowly stirring everyone into a terrified and hyper-alert tension. When he sensed that their guests were properly on the edges of their seats with discomfort, he raised his voice.

"Spirit," he boomed, "if you are there, give us a sign."

Upstairs in the dark, Paul paused, then knocked twice, heavily, on the floorboards. From the muffled sound of alarm, he sensed the trouser-shitting terror from downstairs, heard people being persuaded not to go.

"Spirit," called his housemate, "if you are willing to talk to us, please knock again."

Paul gave the floor another ponderous thump, triggering further panic in the lounge. The guests had heard enough, smoked enough, had enough, and wanted to go home, go anywhere, just get the fuck out of this freaking house. The others entreated them not to go, not just yet, not now they'd actually made real contact with the other side.

"Spirit," called Paul's housemate, in a voice slightly wild with fear and excitement, "if you are able, please give us further proof of your presence ... spirit, please ... show yourself!"

And Paul ran downstairs and burst into the room with a white sheet over his head, going "Wooooooo."

The guests, shit-scared, screamed and ran out of the house.

Paul's housemates, despite being in on the whole trick, also screamed and ran out of the house, because they had worked themselves so far up into the Fear.

Paul, despite being the ghost, also screamed and ran out of the house, because waiting in the pitch dark and listening to a séance had terrified the living shit out of him too.

And they all ran down the street, Paul still with the white sheet wrapped around him; and that was the end of the séance.

And that is my very favourite ghost story of all time.