Visit Britain's most haunted village? That's the spirit!

No fan of Halloween, Rosamund Hall plucks up the courage to travel to Pluckley in Kent for some ghostly goings-on

- Rosamund Hall

The sound of a scream left me rooted to the ground – I quickly glanced around to see any signs of life, but there was nothing except the jackdaws bickering like teenagers in the trees. I was standing in a churchyard in Pluckley, allegedly the most haunted village in Britain (according to the Guinness World Records), and I was scared. And then I heard it again, this time, there were more. But it was the middle of the day... surely you don't see ghosts on a slightly misty Sunday afternoon in October?

I know most people love Halloween, with its associated ghosts, ghouls and ghastly goings-on, but I can't stand it. Even as a child, I refused to dress up and go trick-or-treating. The closest I got one year was reluctantly dressing up as Maud from The Worst Witch, horn-rimmed glasses and all, for a fancy dress party that I ended up leaving early. But I fear my days of avoiding that certain day at the end of October are numbered as my son is likely to be swept along with the fervour of this time of year, and I don't want to seem like a pumpkin-party-pooper. So I did what any mother does: I pulled on my wellies and headed to the countryside in search of ghosts.

Pluckley sits on the edge of the North Downs in Kent, a little over an hour away from London. It's a charming village full of redbrick cottages and houses framed by rambling roses climbing the walls, and fruit trees groaning with the abundance of autumn. Everything feels perfectly orderly, even the windows are all the same, known locally as “Dering windows”, after Sir Edward Dering, who escaped capture by the Roundheads through the top of a narrowly arched window during the civil war. But this wasn't an architectural tour; I was on the hunt for ghosts.