Hear some spooky tales from Sutton's very own ghostbuster as Halloween approaches

Lee has spent most of his life investigating ghosts, ghouls and unexplained things that go bump in the night.

The 45-year-old, born and bred in Sutton says he had his own first ghostly encounter aged just six.

“It was about 2am, I was at my parents’ home, walking to the bathroom, I saw an apparition of a little boy in blue pyjamas, kneeling by a red cushion. It was so clear, it wasn’t a dream.”

Despite his family’s protestations he must have been dreaming, the experience convinced him that he had seen something ‘other worldly,’ and the experience stuck with him into adulthood.

As a youngster, the popularity of the original film Ghostbusters in the 1980s, also help spark his interest in the paranormal.

At the age of 17, as a hobby, he started investigating spooky sites, setting up cameras in old pubs and clubs, many in or around Mansfield and the Ashfield area.

On one of his earliest hunts, aged about 18, he went with friends to the Bentinck Miners Welfare building at Kirkby.

"It was known locally as a bit of a haunted building," said Lee, who is now married to Mary-Anne and has four children and one grandchild.

"Myself and a group of friends persuaded the people to let us stay on after it closed.

"In the middle of the night we all saw this dark shadow of a person on the stage, it was quite a long way from where we were. When we went closer to investigate it seemed to back away from us. It was really very strange, but we all saw it.

The former Nottinghamshire police officer, who has also run a private ambulance service, now works full time as a ghost hunter.

One hunt has left him in “no doubt” of the existence of ghosts.

It happened at Newstead Abbey, formerly an Augustinian priory, which was converted to a domestic home following Henry VIII’s Dissolution of the Monasteries. It is best known as the ancestral home of poet Lord Byron

"We'd gone to investigate, there was a lot of activity reported there,” Lee said.

"We were all stood in this room calling out, to see if there was anything there, and suddenly a heavy table lifted up, it shot up into the air and hit the ceiling, it exploded, we all saw it.

"I know, categorically, no-one had tampered with the table, it was the most compelling evidence for me that there was something we all think of as supernatural going on," he said.

His most terrifying hunt happened at the home of the Rashid family, at Clifton Hall, at Old Clifton, Nottingham.

"It’s the only time I have stopped an investigation in the middle, the team investigating were getting so frightened. A family had reported paranormal events there, it was a 3.5 million pound mansion house.

"It was like entering the ‘twilight zone’, you would walk down one corridor and come out of another but find yourself back where you were, it was mind-bending, really scary, it played tricks on your mind, people started to panic. I called a stop, we all got out of there.”

"The family eventually moved out in 2008 leaving the property back to the bank, it was the most expensive repossession in UK history.” he said.

“The story of the haunting, made international headlines was dubbed the ‘UK's Amityville.’

In 2015 Lee was the first ghost hunter in the world to use social media to broadcast a LIVE ghost hunt. He did the very first ghost hunt LIVE on Facebook at the Idlewells shopping centre, at Suton, where the spirit of a woman was reputed to have been seen and had filmed at the notorious haunted house, 30 East Drive in Pontefract, in Yorkshire.

He was also founder of the Haun7ed Live paranormal group which broadcast live from the Silverhill Trail, in 2016, on an iPhone. Lee said it was the first paranormal show in the world to have a million people see them hunting on a live social media broadcast.

He has filmed with Katie Price, for her show a few years ago, and featured on numerous shows in the UK and USA, including presenting Paranormal Captured.

In 2006 Lee was also the founder of The Ashfield Paranormal Investigation Team, known as T.A.P.I.T. and runs and leads numerous, ghost hunts, including at the Village,in Mansfield.

As to what 'ghosts' are, Lee describes them in terms of “energy.”

"There are all kinds theories about what is a ghost, for me, I think there is some sort energy, that will leave a footprint of the past, some sort of consciousness that can communicate, or it’s like an energy.

"Paranormal events are reported too much, and it happens worldwide, so I believe strongly there must be something in it."But When we see things that we can't explain, it is our human nature, our default position to automatically try and debunk it, be sceptical, have doubts,”

“There has been a lot of faking in the past, whether its pictures blurred out, or films made by people, so it is hard for people to know what is a genuine and what isn’t.

"I know from my own experiences, I have seen things. Hopefully someday, science may be able to explain, some of the things we don’t understand.

“If something supernatural happened, if it was real, there would still be such a backlash of people debunking it, even with the best evidence, there will always be sceptics. I am even sceptical, on every hunt I go on.

“I will always try and understand what is really happening, and use scientific ways and my experience, to try and understand what is happening. Sometimes it can be explained in rational ways, but sometimes it just can’t.”

Lee uses a lot of different equipment including cameras, voice detectors, light sensors, laser sensors, EVP boxes, electronic voice phenomenon gadgets which use radio waves and produce random words. But other more simple tools are also among some ghosthunters armoury, such Ouija boards and a glass, traditionally used in seances.

“Using something like an EVP machine, which generates words using radio waves isn’t forthcoming. If you were somewhere like Newstaead Abbey, and it came up with the word ‘Byron,’ it might just be a random coincidence, you would try and look for something to back that up.

"If it went on to say, ‘abbey,’ or something that relates to the location, you might start to think, well we may have something here, but you would look to build on that evidence, it’s not always definitive, often it is just random words.”

As for Halloween?

"I don’t think things happens any more around Halloween, any more than any other time, I just think people are just more are aware and things just become more perceptible, in the darker, winter months," He added.