From fishy smells to little red men; from jumping scones to flying loaves and ghostly figures galore, Purbeck, it seems, is positively bristling with all kinds of weird, unexplained phenomena.

Now former teacher David Leadbetter has attempted to record it all in a new book.

“I was always interested in the paranormal as a child, partly because of some of the stories my family told me,” he says.

These stories, documented at length in his book, Paranormal Purbeck, include his father’s out-of-body experience, his granny’s ability to see ghosts, spirits and ‘visions’, his mother’s precognitive dreams and his sighting of a UFO when he was just 13.

“About five years ago I renewed my interest in how all this connected with the science and physics side as well as what I’d call the core religious experience,” he says.

He’d always wanted to write a book and, to David, who had returned to the Swanage area of his childhood, it seemed natural to write about the unnatural because that was what he knew.

“I’d heard many of the old stories, such as The Phantom Army of Tyneham, witnessed in 1678 by Captain John Laurence of Creech Grange, but once I started asking people I was amazed by what came out,” he says.

Stories such as the one recounted by Cherry Stearn of Norden Farm, who saw a lady wearing a cape and bonnet, coming towards her with a basket of primroses one day.

“As they passed, the lady said: ‘Mornin’,” says David.

“It was only after she had gone by that the thought struck Cherry that the lady’s basket should have contained blackberries, not primroses, as it was September.”

Cherry later discovered that a shepherd’s hut had been burned down in the area and that a local rider was unable to take her steed down the lane near Norden Bridge because the animal always became too frightened.

Some of the tales, such as that of the ‘fishy’ smell in a Swanage cottage which was allegedly dispelled by the power of prayer do seem a little, well, fishy, although David vouches for the sincerity of the tellers.

But what can even the most sceptical make of the goings-on at the Royal Oak pub in Herston, Swanage, which are so numerous that David has devoted a whole chapter to recording them?

From loud footsteps when the property was empty, to Victorian lady apparitions, out-of-body experiences, mediums, premonitions, creepy presences, psychokinetic forces, shadowy figures, a horrible sensation of damp straw and spooky shadows in mirrors, all non-human life is here.

David himself reckons he has seen a ghostly face appear on his own photograph of the wall next to the pub’s cellar door, where several landladies have reported a ‘nasty feeling’.

Add to this the reports from several psychics that there may be human remains buried in the area and, for David at least, it all adds up to a pretty convincing picture.

Especially when he recounts his experiences of a séance in the place, which include an uncannily accurate set of comments from one medium, and a black mass accompanying another.

And this, remember, is just the stuff from the people who were happy to talk about their experiences.

“I think men, especially, are afraid of peer group pressure,” says David.

“They don’t want to look silly in front of other people but I think that’s beginning to be broken down a bit. They don’t want to be ridiculed although I’ve got to the point where I don’t care what people think.”

And when you consider that he’s interviewed more than 40 people for his book, the really scary thing for the sceptic is this: they can’t all be wrong. Can they?

  • Paranormal Purbeck A Study of the Unexplained by David Leadbetter, Roving Press