It's a good choice.

Yeah.

So it's, it's now...

It, it was closed down as a church in 1954, and it's now a archeological museum called DIG, which is owned by the same people who've got the Jorvik Viking Center.

And I went...

The first ever ghost hunt...

Sorry, the first ever ghost walk I went on was in York when I was about 15, and the very last story that we were told was at this church, and it was a story that it terrified me and captivated me in equal measure, I would say.

So I'm curious for both of you, and I think we'll start with Rob, what is your perfect Halloween?

Maybe tell our listeners a little bit about yourself and then how you got into the paranormal and then how you got into starting your podcast.

OK, so as you say, I'm Rob Kirk.

I'm from Newcastle in the northeast of England.

So I think there might be people out there in the world who aren't familiar with my accent, but hopefully you can understand what I'm saying.

And as you say, I host a podcast called How Haunted.

My.

Like how I got into the paranormal world.

But

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So when it was first built, it was a home.

It was a manor house, and King Edward I stayed there in 1298, and one of the bedrooms is called the Edward I room.

In 1344, there was a need to make it, uh, well, suitable for battle, suitable for it to withstand attack, and it was given a license to do so in 1344, and it was turned into a, a castle which was no longer designed to be a home.

It was designed to defend against invading Scots.

[laughs]

I'm assuming you first started writing the books, and then the podcast came after that.

So what happened, and this is again one of those things where I just took a chance and it paid off.

I, um, when I started doing paranormal investigations, I put a website together.

Doesn't exist anymore, it's long gone.

But I wrote the re- the, like, ghost hunt reports, for want of a better phrase, almost like a blog before blogs were a thing, where I tried to inject a bit of personality into it.

And people seemed to really like it, and one of my friends said to me, just in passing, it was almost like a throwaway comment.

They said, "Why don't you write a book?" And I said, "I can't write a book.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

That's their evidence.

That's their proof.

Just because, like, because I try so hard to try and rationalize everything, that does, that won't change my opinion about whether something like ghosts are real or not.

But when I, we went along to Chillingham that December night in 2005, and when we got there, the only member of staff was Bob, and he was putting up a Christmas tree.

And he said, "Oh, hi, I'm Bob." And we said, "Hello, Bob." And he said, "I talk to them, you know." And I said, "Sorry, what?" And he said, "Oh, the ghosts.

I can speak to them." I'm like, "Oh, okay, Bob," uh, immediately thinking, you know, like, "This guy sounds crazy." I don't know whether he was joking.

[laughs]

I'm assuming you first started writing the books and then the podcast came after that.

So what happened, and this is again one of those things where I just took a chance and it paid off.

I, um, when I started doing paranormal investigations, I put a website together.

Doesn't exist anymore, it's long gone.

But I wrote the re- the, like, ghost hunt reports, for want of a better phrase, almost like a blog before blogs were a thing, where I tried to inject a bit of personality into it.

And people seemed to really like it, and one of my friends said to me, just in passing, it was almost like a throwaway comment.

They said, "Why don't you write a book?" I said, "I can't write a book.

Mm-hmm.