STORYTELLER DAVID PHILLIPS: Halloween - my favourite time of the year

Ever since I was young, growing up in Bristol, I’ve always loved this time of year.

Being the eldest of four siblings, it always fell to me to organise the various games and activities we hosted for our friends, and Halloween was the highlight of our year.

We would take over our dad’s garage and decorate it with spooky pictures, hang up ghosts, witches, skeletons and bats. If we were lucky, we would get a pumpkin lantern to light up the trestle table on which we would have our Halloween tea.

Our friends would be invited round for that, and we would sit down in our costumes, tucking into jacket potatoes and hot dogs, washed down with mugs of hot soup, to prepare us for the evening’s activities.

We didn’t do trick or treat round the neighbour’s houses, some kids did, but it wasn’t as commercial then as it is today. Instead, we preferred just to parade around the estate showing off our costumes.

We liked to see what the other kids were wearing, and how other houses had been decorated.

If we were away for the autumn half-term school holiday, one of our favourite places to stay was the Dartmoor Lodge Motel, at Peartree Cross, just outside of Ashburton.

If Halloween fell during our week there, it was an added bonus, for they always had a party for us kids, with a fancy dress competition, so we always made sure we took our costumes with us.

We would spend the whole of that week on day trips, keeping a look out for pumpkin lanterns, and any other signs of Halloween activity. That’s probably why I’ve always associated Dartmoor with spooky stuff.

When I came down to Torbay to live, my interest in the paranormal developed further, resulting in setting up my own paranormal investigation group called TIP, along with my friends Dave and Adrian.

I still liked to mark Halloween in specials ways, only now it was organising events for the group. Quite often it was an investigation of some kind. Once it was a charity ghost hunt, with buffet and disco, in aid of Country Holidays for Inner City Kids (CHICKS) at Barton Pines. Guests ate, drank and danced downstairs, while upstairs we sought out the building’s ghosts, and allowed people to follow our progress via a TV link to our cameras, set up in the bar area.

My friend Maia and I made monthly guest appearances on John Govier’s Late-Night Radio Show on BBC Radio Devon for several years.

We even persuaded him to get into Halloween by presenting his show live from an investigation we were running.

The first time was from the Coffin House in Brixham, while for the next one we were invited into the old court house in Exeter, before it was converted into flats and businesses, where we had access to the prison cells, and some of our mediums picked up on some of the old convicts that apparently still reside there.

In the early days of TIP, us three lads paid a visit to Boscastle one Halloween, which began my love affair with the place. We visited the Witchcraft Museum and all the pubs, The Cobweb, The Wellington and the Napoleon.

All the cottages going up the lane between The Welly and The Napoleon had some sort of nod to the season on display, whether it was a ghost or witch hanging up, a lit lantern or a basket of sweets for trick or treaters.

I was so impressed by this that we agreed to come the following year and stay over, instead of just having a meal and driving home.

So, we booked into The Wellington for the night, mainly because it has quite a haunted reputation, and looked forward to a spooky stay.

Sadly, I felt very let down. There wasn’t a decoration or pumpkin in sight!

We walked up the hill to eat at The Napoleon... nothing. The only hint of Halloween was when we returned to the hotel, and the telephone box outside had been egged!

Undeterred, we continued to make regular visits back to Boscastle, especially on the weekend before Halloween, when they have held The Dark Gathering, a chance to celebrate the pagan festival of Samhain, with morris dancing, visits by the Mari Lwyds of Wales, and finishing up with a party in the bar of The Welly.

We’ve really enjoyed our stays, but I’ve a feeling things are going to be a little different this year.

One other thing I’ve done at Halloween for my group is hire a minibus, and take them on my Devil’s pub crawl, or Devil’s Quest, as I’ve renamed it for the purposes of my new business venture.

Dartmoor hostelries don’t seem to go in for decorations at Halloween, but as we all dress up, we take the vibe with us.

However, one year we did have an odd experience at the Warren House Inn, having arrived there for last orders.

Again, no sign of Halloween, we just had our drinks, amused ourselves, and prepared to leave when they called time.

As we all filed out, back to the minibus, every member of staff was standing in a row behind the bar wearing Halloween masks.

They didn’t say a word, and the effect was most unsettling.

This year, I’m laying on a minibus on Halloween night itself. If you would like to know more, or to book a place, please get in touch, but you need to hurry as there are only a few seats left.