'Evil spirits used to terrorise me. I know what Halloween is really all about'

Laura Maxwell shares her testimony and explains why Halloween is best avoided

As a child, the supernatural interested me. My mother was a medium and was very much into spiritualism, new age and seeking after spirits. I was attracted simply because of the media and a lot of children’s books and TV programmes to do with ghost stories. If Harry Potter had been around then, I would have loved that type of book too.

We would go to a spiritualist church and there would be séances. The mediums would go into trances and say they had dead relatives with them they’d managed to bring through. They were supposed to be our dead relatives and they would give messages to the audience.