I am writing this on Hallowe'en, a time when youngsters dress up as witches, bats and goodness knows what, and 'trick or treatsters' knock on our doors at night.

This is, though, a very un-British custom - in my young days Hallowe'en was never celebrated; Guy Fawkes night was big, a time when we vied to build the biggest bonfires and made 'Guys', touting them around and requesting a 'penny for the guy' to buy fireworks. Market forces and health and safety changed all that and how many now 'remember, remember, the fifth of November, gunpowder, treason and plot?'

But there is among all of us, I think, a fascination about ghosts and the supernatural. Many places have their popular ghost walks and I have to say that in Monkton we have our fair share of ghost stories. I remember talking to the late Mrs. Lilla Jenkins who had experienced personally some supernatural encounters.

The Priory Farmhouse was haunted, she was definite; haunted because her father-in-law Georgie Jenkins had discovered and disturbed bones which had lain in a hidden passageway in the farmhouse.

They were, she was led to believe, the bones of a monk called Oyster John, who had been interred in the passage. The atmosphere was terrible and that was confirmed by her daughter Pauline Waters.

So terrible, that Lilla's mother-in-law Venetia slept with a shotgun by her side. The building was exorcised, but the haunting only ended with the death of Georgie Jenkins - then, and only then, was peace restored to Priory Farm.

The late Dilwyn Davies also told me a strange story concerning a visiting Swedish student, who claimed that in an earlier life he had been born and raised in Monkton as a Viking. His knowledge of the Priory and its layout was so detailed and vivid that it convinced Canon Tudor Evans, who was vicar then, that his story was true.

Old buildings have their secrets and it is not surprising to learn of the ghost of Monkton Old Hall and the Priory Church, especially in light of gruesome discoveries made during its restoration in the late 19th century.

Hundreds of human bones were found under the floor and a skeleton of a monk was found walled up above the porch, in such a position to suggest he had been interred alive.