Do you believe in ghosts? ‘I thought it was normal to see people that weren’t there’

It’s the season of phantoms and apparitions, when the barriers between this world and the next are at their thinnest. But why, asks David Barnett, do we really believe in ghosts?

Ectoplasm emerges from the mouth of medium Marthe Beraud (aka Eva C) during a seance in 1910 (Juliette Bisson/Getty)

Nina Gill sees dead people. It started when she was four years old and living in Pakistan. A neighbour had died in childbirth and Gill’s mother was looking after the premature baby while she grew strong enough to go back to the father.

Gill hadn’t been told the baby’s mother had died, and kept seeing the woman around the house. She recalls: “My mum was spooked but very open-minded as she had also seen the baby’s mother a couple of times, usually by her in the mirror. After the baby was strong enough she was given back to her father and siblings and I didn’t see the baby’s mum again, that’s when mum explained to me that she had passed away.”

That was the first paranormal experience that Gill, who is now 30 and living in Worcestershire with her husband Samuel, can remember. But it certainly wasn't going to be the last. The youngest of four girls, she moved with her family to England in 1996, when she was six, to help care for her grandmother.