Live Ghost Hunt interview

The British Comedy Guide chats to paranormal investigator Edwin Griffiths (picture left, with the candle) and psychic Maurice Smythe (picture right, in the pink shirt)...

Hi Edwin and Maurice. We hear you're up to something interesting this Halloween?

Edwin: You hear right. We are on a Live Ghost Hunt. We'll be spending the night in a deeply haunted location and broadcasting our supernatural investigation live around the world on a thing called the Internet.

Maurice: I'll be using my psychic powers to channel the spirits. We're hoping that together we will be able to explic the inexplicable.

Edwin: We might meet ghosts, we might not, but hopefully we will. We'll also be joined by our assistant, Miriam. She's a Goth, so, she's quite frightening to look at just by herself. If we don't see any ghosts, we'll just have to stare at her a bit.

Maurice: You can follow all the action at www.live-ghost-hunt.com and you can tweet us up too at @liveghosthunt. As well as uploading audio reports to the website throughout the night we'll also be tweeting photos and links - some of them probably to amusing YouTube videos of kittens on skateboards.

Edwin: It's full on multi-media. So get logging on. I don't understand it myself - I still use a pager, but Miriam's very techno-savvy. She runs a blog about The Cure.

Maurice: It all kicks off at 8pm on Halloween and should all be done by midnight, unless we really open a portal, in which case, who knows...

Edwin: We could have our brains sucked out of the top of our heads by an evil spirit.

Maurice: I was once psychically kicked in the plums. People don't realise just how dangerous ghost hunting can be. If you've seen Ghostbusters, you'll know the risks.

Edwin: Ghost are dangerous. Even Caspar the Friendly - he can turn. He's got a less-friendly side.

Do you believe in ghosts? If so, do you have any evidence of their existence?

Maurice: Yes and yes.

Edwin: I think they'll want you to go into a bit more detail.

Maurice: Oh right. Yes, I definitely do and yes I definitely do.

Edwin: I'll take this one shall I? Do we believe in ghosts? You might as well ask me is the Pope a Catholic!

Maurice: Well actually, he's a lizard from an alien race...

Edwin: Yes, but we won't get into that. To answer the question, Maurice and I have been on lots of investigations together that categorically prove the existence of ghosts. There was one case involving a poltergeist haunting in a Greek restaurant. We saw clear evidence there - broken plates everywhere. We back all our investigations up with science. I think people are surprised just how much science is involved in ghost hunting. I have both GCSE and A Level and Maurice has seen all of those Brian Cox programmes.

Maurice: They're great, though I preferred him in the film Manhunter.

Edwin: If anyone wants proof of the other side, I say log on to our website on Monday night.

Maurice: But don't blame us if your computer gets possessed and starts doing weird stuff.

Edwin: To be fair, that could just be a dodgy wifi connection, but Maurice is right. It's going to get pretty scary, so you'd better be brave.

Maurice: And bring some waterproof pants.

Edwin: That was too much.

Maurice: Sorry. I got over excited. But there is a good chance at least one person will pee themselves with fear. Me, if nobody else.

Maurice, as a psychic, can you tell us why, when you see a medium contacting the dead, the spirits only ever seem able to give the first letter of someone's name in reply?

Maurice: Ah, a typical sceptic question.

Edwin: So... what the answer? I've always wondered that myself.

Maurice: Well, you have to remember the spirit world is not like ours. They're very busy rushing around doing ghostly things. They don't really have time to say all the letters in someone's name. So they just say the first letter. Sometimes they don't even have time to say that - I just have to make the whole name up.

Edwin: You 'make it up'?

Maurice: It's a technical term amongst us clairvoyants. You wouldn't understand. Moving on... Oh look a spirit!

Edwin: Where?

Maurice: He's gone. I think his name began with B.

Derren Brown or Derek Acorah?

Maurice: Derek Acorah every time. It was watching him making lots of money through his appearances on Most Haunted that made me think - I could be a psychic medium. Oh, that and discovering I had a gift for channelling the dead obviously.

Edwin: I'm no fan of Derren Brown. He just seems to want to take all the fun out of the supernatural. Come on, if freaky-deaky stuff is going down in your neighbourhood would you rather believe it was the fault of massive ectoplasm-filled ghost or some clever ginger bloke with a beard?

Maurice: I met Derek Acorah once at the AGM of the Clairvoyant's Association. Lovely man. I don't believe any of the rumours about him faking stuff. And it will take more than incontrovertible concrete evidence to change my mind.

Edwin: Didn't you get thrown out of the Clairvoyant's Association after a fist fight?

Maurice: Yes, I was just trying to strike a happy medium.

We know of a teenage friend who wakes up with what appears to be something like ectoplasm on his sheets in the morning. Is that a sign of paranormal activity?

Maurice: His parents should check for any signs of shaking or convulsions under the duvet. Or deep breathing or grunting noises. It could be a sign of possession.

Edwin: Hold on, what do you mean, 'teenage friend'? We're answering this over the internet, we now have no idea if you're a teenager asking the questions or some dodgy middle-aged bloke.

Maurice: Like us.

Edwin: Yes. No. We're not dodgy. Well, you are, but I'm not. Check my internet history - it's whiter than white - and not in a crazy supremacist sense. Oh, I'm digging myself a hole here. Next question please.

Back to this Ghost Hunt then... you're planning to report back with technology. How are you going to do that without distracting from the hunt?

Edwin: We've got a team of boffins to help us out. Well, I say that, it's actually one slightly nerdy man who works in IT, but he's promised us it'll all go swimmingly. We'll be uploading each chunk of our investigation on to the website, so you can either listen to them live as they go out or, if you've got other stuff to do on Halloween - like Trick or Treating or killing high school students with a fish hook - it'll all stay up there online so you can catch up with it like a whole radio show whenever you like.

Maurice: On the night you'll be able to get in touch with us on the Twitter and even help steer what we investigate - like choosing which of us investigates which room. It's going to be properly soil yourself scary.

Edwin: Will you stop going on about that? He's right though, don't listen in if your sanity is fragile.

Best of luck guys. Do you want to leave any last messages for friends and family in case you don't come back alive?

Maurice: It's fine. If we are killed by ghosts we will be able to let you all know by contacting Derek Acorah. If you get a message from two people whose names might begin with E and M it will be us. Probably. Do check though.

Oh, by the way, do you have any idea who Dan Tetsell and Danny Robins are?

Edwin: Never heard of them, but they sound like the sort of writer performer types who might come up with a spooky but funny Halloween webcast.

Maurice: I'm channelling and I'm getting a message from the spirits that you can find them at www.dannyrobins.com or www.tetsell.com

Edwin: Was that really the spirits who told you that?

Maurice: No, it was Google.

To find out more about Edwin and Maurice visit www.live-ghost-hunt.com