LIVING

We were talking to Karl earlier, and he was saying that he watches horror films the night before a shoot to prepare. Do you have any ways that you prepare for a show?
No, not really, but I like to watch costume dramas you see, so while Karl goes downstairs watching his horror movies, I'm upstairs in pyjamas with a hot chocolate and I'm watching very nice romantic comedies, or Pride & Prejudice-type costume drama movies.

Yeah, we can't think of a worse way to prepare than watching horror movies.
Yeah, well, on the night we were both watching Ghostbusters for crying out loud!

Ah, well that is a bit scary!
(Laughs) No it's not compared to the stuff that Karl watches!

How do you relax after a show?
Same sort of thing really. Sorry it's not more exciting. Just being at home, being with the children. I've got two horses... we've got 10 acres of land so we tend to sort of get the quad bikes out, and go and do some walking. We might do a little what we call 'raking of the fields', and that sort of thing. Making sure the ducks and geese are all right, and walking the dogs, and just relaxing at home.

How about the live events, because you've got lots of pressure. It must be difficult to get your head in the right place in between those.
Well, because of our team that we've got that we work with on Most Haunted: Cath and Stuart and Kieran, we're all really good mates, so we try to go out to lunch together, and have a bit of a giggle, and we've always got our DVD players with us, so we'll watch a movie, or something light-hearted. We keep each other company as well, so we go to each other's hotel rooms and have a bit of a giggle and have a laugh. After each live show we'll all go back to mine and Karl's room and we'll all have cakes and wine.

Is it important to have those people around you? Do you think you wouldn't be able to make the show without them?
It doesn't make the show without those people. Most Haunted wouldn't be Most Haunted. I just couldn't do any other investigation at all without those people. I don't know what it is, but as a group we seem to attract activity, which is great. Another show I do for another channel, I have them with me. They're not on screen, but they're there.

We were going to ask: it must be difficult to go off and do other things, not to have them around.
No, they're always there and they're with me. Cath's there, Stuart's there, Kieran's there, David's there, Karl's there. We're all there together.

Do you feel like you've become less frightened as time's gone on with the show.
No, I know Cath and I agree on this: we've become more frightened. Because more and more things have happened to us, and we've seen more things that we can’t explain, the thought of going off on your won anywhere is absolutely terrifying, because you think, I don't really want that to happen, I don't want anything really frightening to happen to me when I'm on my own. I've seen tables fly across the room, I've had horrible voices in my ear, I've seen Karl and Stuart being scratched, I don't want to be on my own when it happens, so of course you become more fearful because of the things you've already experienced.

By the same token do you feel closer and closer to some kind of answer?
Gosh, that's a difficult question. I don't know... I know that we must be doing something right, because whenever we go into a property this tapping starts; and they're controlled noises, so I.ll say, 'Is anybody here? Tap one for yes, and twice for no', and you have controlled tapping: it will answer to the questions that I ask. And every time we speak to the curators of these buildings they're just gob-smacked. They go, 'Never, ever, ever have we had anything like this happen, and we've had mediums here, other paranormal groups', and they’ve never heard anything like that before, so we must be doing something right.

Do you think as time's developed you've got more in tune to that sort of things, or more sensitive to it?
Uh... no. I mean, I know that I have. I think maybe Cath. I think she's seen more things and heard more things. My hearing's become fantastic. Like when I go, 'Did you hear that?!' I think it gets on people's nerves, but I can't help it! I hear things very quickly. But that's the only thing: I'm not psychic in any way. I don't think I'd want to be. I don't want to see dead people. I don't want to wake up in the middle of the night and see a dead person stood at the bottom of the bed. Why? Why would anybody want to do that? I suppose a lot of people don't have a lot of choice, but if I had a choice, I wouldn't want to be a medium.

Has your opinion of the paranormal changed while you've been doing the show?
Of course it has: when I first started I didn't know anything about it. It was just an idea that Karl and I came up with, and that was it. Now, all of a sudden, it's taken over our lives, the way we live. I can't stop thinking about it. I can't stop thinking about new ways we can do things, new experiments, what are we missing, what are we doing wrong, how can we make it right, and yes, it has, it's certainly changed my opinion of the paranormal. And it's not a fad, it's not something that's 'in' at the moment in television, this is here to stay, because it's unexplained, and I don't know if we'll ever get round to explaining exactly what it is.

What has been your most frightening moment on the show?
Oh Gosh, there's been so many, but I suppose it have to be watching Stuart being scratched in Edinburgh would be the latest one; and also just recently we did a live in America, and again a scratching occurred there, and that was very, very frightening. When you see somebody in complete agony, and then they take their top and their clothing off, and there's these massive lashes across their back or on their arm. You just think 'My God, what are we dealing with here?' It plays on your mind a little bit.

So you're more affected when it happens to other people, rather than yourself?
I don't know, cos I've never had it happen to myself, and I don't know how I would react if it happened to me.

But you're more upset when paranormal activity happens to other people rather than yourself?
Oh God, yeah. Of course you are, yeah.

Has anything strange or paranormal happened to you off the show?
Yeah, the tappings I was talking about: sometimes we'll be out having dinner and the table will start moving in a restaurant, and it will start banging away, and you have to be careful because people start looking at you, like, 'Oh... my God... there's that freaky lady', and I'm actually saying, 'Is there anybody here?', and Karl's going, "Shh, keep your voice down or people will think you're a loony'. Also, at home, the same sort of things are happening there, and it's becoming more and more frequent, the tapping and the banging... and you think, 'thank God no-one can see us! We look completely bonkers!' But yeah, we're getting more and more of that happening.

So every time you go near, or enter any building, that's on your mind?
It's not on our minds. We can just be talking about something or standing there, and this pounding will start happening under your feet. And it's not just us hearing it, but the people that we're with. I went to see my agent about something a few months ago, and it started happening underneath her desk! A bit odd!

Do people find that alarming do you think?
I don't think they really know what it is. We went to a tea shop once, and they said, 'Ooh, I knew the builders were in next door, but I didn't know they were in today. There's a lot of banging on'. And we all went, 'huh, huh, huh, yeah...'

That must be quite unnerving!
It's not unnerving; it's fascinating. I don't know what it is, I just feel honoured that we're experiencing it. It's interesting. When we were in America, there was Stuart, Cath, myself, Karl and David sat round a table in the bar having drinks, the next minute the table starts moving, and tipping up and down, and nearly knocks bottles of Coke onto the floor. And all of us like, you know, when something embarrassing happens and you try to brush it under the carpet, all of us are sort of like, 'ha ha ha', and pushing the table down, in case people were thinking we were doing it, but we weren't! So that's a bit strange. I wouldn't change it for the world, and I certainly wouldn't want it to stop. I think it's fantastic.

Do you ever have nightmares or anything like that?
No... when I was doing a programme for ITV, Deadline, and I was staying in a hotel in London, I had a horrible nightmare where I thought a man was in my room, and chasing me in the room, and I found myself by the door, I had slept-walked and was trying to get out the door because thought someone was in my room. And thank God I didn't get out the door because obviously I didn't have a key! And that's only happened once, but interestingly enough, it wasn't when I was doing Most Haunted, it was when I was away from doing that. In the early days, when we first started, we used to keep the light on – I know I can speak for both Cath and Stuart. And when we do the live show, some of the production staff have admitted that they had to keep lights on in their hotel rooms.

How does the live show differ from the series for you?
It's nerve-racking. I'm absolutely terrified and racked with nerves. I want to be sick, and have terrible tummy pains just before we go on air because I'm so worried. The only thing you can rely on is David, and hopefully any spirits that are there that want to talk to us. If that doesn't happen, you've not got a show. So you can wander round this fantastic location, and you know you've got an audience back at the studio, and Paul Ross is doing his stuff, but if nothing happens people are going to be very disappointed. And I know there have been some lives where hardly anything has happened at all, but you know, you can't fake it, you can't make things up just so you can say something's happened. And that's what makes me terrified, more so than the ghosts. I just pray to everybody, 'Please, please make something happen', before we go on. If anybody saw me filming outside a property, they'd see me pacing up and down, praying!

How is it meeting all the fans at those live events?
It's brilliant. It's really nice, because you're kept away from all of that when you do the series. You don't really get a chance to see any of the fans. And a lot of TV shows don't get the chance to meet their fans – they might meet the odd fan in the street – but for us, to have a live audience, and for us to meet the fans... and also it's good because they give us some ideas as well, they'll say 'have you heard about this?', or show us photographs, or tell us about haunted locations that we've not heard of before. There was one fan that asked us, 'Have you ever though about putting blindfolds on the people sat round the Ouija board so that they can't see the letters?' And so we did that. We always rely heavily on the fans for their input.

What's the strangest thing you've ever been sent?
I had three firemen wanting me to send them my knickers, which is a bit odd!

Is there any place you'd love to go back to, or investigate for the first time?
I'd like to go back to America to the State Penitentiary, because so far, none of the British fans have seen what actually happened there. We did a seven-hour live show, and I think Living are working on showing that. But if they don't, it's somewhere I'd like to go back for the British viewers because it's a real treat. It's absolutely terrifying.

Read our interview with DAVID WELLS

Read our interview with KARL BEATTIE