Some years back, seated next to HRH Princess Anne at a charity dinner – she’s a sparky lady and great fun to talk to – she told me a very convincing story about a friend of hers who had a poltergeist in her home. And the late great comedian, Michael Bentine, made my hairs stand on end with stories about his father who carried out exorcisms. I talked to mediums, clairvoyants, scientists, psychologists, psychiatrists, and became good friends with a truly extraordinary character, the late Professor Bob Morris, who had been appointed as the first Chair of Parapsychology in the UK, heading up the Koestler Parapsychology Unit at Edinburgh University. What made Bob Morris a fascinating man, to me, was that he was a scientist – a physicist – who had had a paranormal experience early in his life, which had opened his mind to the existence of the paranormal. I learned from him an astounding statistic: that a survey was taken, in 1922, of scientists in Britain who believed in God. The results came out at 43 per cent.
