DANIEL Radcliffe has shed his Harry Potter image by starring in the ghostly horror film The Woman In Black.

It seems destined for success and proves, once again, the enduring fascination with ghosts, the unexplained and things that go bump in the night.

I wrote about local ghost stories last week and am still open to new ones. Mind you, that original piece brought a scathing response from Colin Liversidge of Dalton.

“Where is the proof?” he asks.

He says he has slept aboard a “haunted” ship called The Freyr. It was originally a fishing trawler from Hull and the story was that someone had been killed on board.

It is now in Tilbury docks, has been renamed the MV Ross Revenge and is used by Radio Caroline and for internet and radio player broadcasts.

“People on the ship have said to me they have felt a presence. A shadow-like person behind them.

“They say it is a friendly ghost and stops people from having accidents. I have slept a few times on the ship but no cabins have gone cold and I have felt nothing.”

Most ghost stories, he says, are spread by hear-say and there is never proof that anything ghostly or supernatural actually exists.

I have to agree with Colin. History, circumstance and atmosphere are probably the factors that are woven together to produce a haunting. Take Storthes Hall. When it became a residential campus for Huddersfield University, students began reporting strange experiences. Why? Because the campus was on the site of what had been a mental home.

During the 1970s and 1980s, I played Sunday football there and the residents would come and watch. I was also a frequent visitor when a friend was himself a resident for some months.

The place at times had a sadness, but that was only to be expected because of the nature of the illnesses being treated. But never did I sense anything ghostly or supernatural whether I was there day or night.

But the occasional undergraduate who is full of good cheer from the student bar and takes a nocturnal wander into the woods with a half digested legend of asylums may very easily discover bedlam.

Believe it or not, the Examiner actually sent me ghost hunting once. I was despatched with flask of coffee, pack of sandwiches and a sleeping bag to spend a night in the Chamber of Horrors at Louis Tussauds waxworks in Blackpool.

I chose my spot by a torture chamber, opposite a cell full of infamous murderers.

The night watchman warned me that as the temperature dropped, the wooden joints that held the effigies together might creak and limbs might move.

“Hah!” I said, and settled down alone at midnight with only safety lights to provide dim illumination.

It got colder and I snuggled in the sleeping bag and time stood still. Cracks and creaks were happening all around me, as if the chamber was coming to life. A bit like that Ben Stiller film, Night At The Museum.

Then Dr Crippen nodded at me and that was enough. I packed up and left and by quarter to two was in McGinty’s Goat nightclub for last orders.

I still don’t know which was the deciding factor in abandoning the vigil: Dr Crippen or the thought that I could get a pint before going back to a hotel bed, but the circumstances were ripe for self delusion.

Like Colin, I’m a sceptic but I can still enjoy a good ghost story. Which is probably where they are best left – as fiction and in film with Daniel Radcliffe to provide big screen entertainment and a healthy scare.

Unless you have some to share?