By John Cairns

BRIGHTON, England – Do ghosts often peer over the shoulders of British crime novelist Peter James as he writes?

Peter claims that his home near Brighton, Sussex, has been haunted and that so was his last home. By all indications, he's neither kidding, nor deluded.

The charming, grey-haired Peter, six decades old, knows a thing or two about ghosts and other paranormal topics, having written and hosted popular radio shows about them.

“I live on an historic site between Lewes and Glynde,” said Peter. “The house is just 20 years old, but it's built on ruins that go back to the Middle Ages. Until recently, it had ghosts from the Battle of Lewes, but they've been politely evicted.

“When we moved in a decade ago, we'd been there only a week when my wife's mother asked, ‘Do you let your neighbors walk in the garden?’ Part of the garden was a walled courtyard. And we're very remote. My mother-in-law said, ‘I just saw nine people in strange clothes walk through the courtyard.’

“At first, I thought she'd had one too many glasses of wine. Then other things happened, like the doorbell ringing in the middle of the night. During a party, the clothing rail moved the entire length of our library. Sometimes we'd smell cigar smoke in the house for no reason.

“Soon I couldn't work in my study – I just couldn't work in it. Later we learned that the study had a grave under it, the grave of a soldier killed in the Battle of Lewes in 1264. So I moved my work to a different part of the house.”

Maybe it's no coincidence that Peter has titled recent novels Dead Man's Grip, Dead Man's Footsteps, Not Dead Enough, Looking Good Dead and Dead Simple.

“Previously, I lived in a former monastery, built on the site of Roman ruins, seriously haunted by ghosts,” Peter said. “My ex-wife and I bought that house in 1987. The day we moved in, we saw a strange shadow, like a bird going over, inside the house.

“The next morning, my wife had gone to work and I was writing. I went to get a cup of coffee and saw tiny pinpricks of light in an ante-room. Initially, I blamed my glasses. So I got my coffee and returned to work. When I went back at lunchtime, it was the same thing. This went on for a couple of days.

“Then as I walked my dog in the village, an old fellow came up and said, ‘Mr James, how are you getting on with the gray lady?’

“I said, ‘What gray lady?’

“He told me he'd been house-sitting for the previous owners and once saw a woman in gray crinoline walk out of a wall before giving him an evil stare and brushing his face with the gray material. He said, ‘I rushed away and haven't gone back.’

“Later my mother-in-law described seeing exactly the same woman.... Then I got a psychic out to the house, who confirmed a malevolent presence.

“Through my research, I'd become friendly with the Church of England's chief exorcist. He came out and firmly said, ‘Go away’. Things calmed down, but we went through lots of house-sitters when living there. Something was happening, for sure.”

Peter lives with his partner Helen and three dogs, dividing his time between Sussex and his Notting Hill, London, apartment on the site of a former cinema. “I've seen no spectral screenings at night there, but I always hope,” he said.

The paranormal may be “a name we give to anything we can't explain yet”, Peter said. “I have an open mind. It fascinates me why we're here, what came before and if there's something else after we die.”