Yea, though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death...

I loved Halloween when I was a kid - not the American version (which may have been the modern original) but the one involving spirits and poltergeists rather than chainsaws, axes and blood.

Our house had a stone-built wine cellar, and for a couple of years a friend would come round (a rare thing) and we would eat baked beans on toast by candle light down there, blissfully untroubled by the absence of wine. My parents were not big drinkers.

Being the youngest of four by up to ten years, I spent a lot of time on my own in the huge house and I embraced anything fantastical which could provide an escape from drab reality. I still do. If Harry Potter could have been filmed in the late 1950s I would have been transported to a place from which I would probably have never returned. I would be writing this (or something like it) from some sort of institution for the chronically insane.

The fascination/obsession continued into my early 20s. I had a sideline at college whereby I would persuade  a car-owner (also a rare thing in my circle of young friends) to take me to ruined abbeys in the middle of the night to look for black magic rituals. One night we found one.

It was at a place called Newark Priory, near the Surrey town of Woking. We discreetly parked-up and wandered into the dark fields which surround it then took shelter from the moonlight in the darker shade of a large oak tree. We could see flickering lights through the gaping windows and we knew that something was going on.

Both I and my companion were wearing full-length capes with large hoods - hers a woollen fashion item and mine an ex US Army waterproof one from the 1960s. We kept the hoods up.

As our eyes became accustomed to the gloom we noticed one or two people who had obviously been posted on the fringes of the field to look out for unwanted visitors. Black magic was still illegal in those days and the police sometimes raided parties and prosecuted Satanists. People still took Christianity seriously then.

After a while a figure which we had not spotted before began to move closer to us. Their path would inevitably take them right under the tree where we were skulking and we knew we would soon be discovered. My friend took hold of my hand and squeezed it so hard and long that the blood drained from it and it began to lose all feeling. I whispered to her to remain calm, silent and let me do the talking.

A second or so before the man became aware of two tall, cloaked and hooded figures silently standing a few feet away from him, I said "Good evening" in as deep a voice as I could muster.

The man jumped about a foot into the air, mumbled a response and hurriedly made his way toward the ruined priory. A few minutes later we heard car engines being started and the congregation had scattered.

We walked the couple of hundred yards to the ruin and discovered a lit fire with lit back candles in a circle and a severed pig's head in the middle.

What made the whole thing so sordid and silly was the man's shock at being discovered by beings which had been summoned from the dark side by his mates in the priory. He was more scared than we were. He must have thought we were the real thing - something which he had never really believed in up until that point.