Is there anybody out there?

There are good reasons for the failure, of which more later, and he has reason to be satisfied with his performance. "I'm more experienced, and perhaps I have a bit of a gift, but I think any priest can do it as well as I can," he says.

What he does is what used to be called exorcism, but, since it was given a bit of a bad name by the 1973 film The Exorcist, now goes by the name of "deliverance". It means he casts out ghosts and poltergeists from people's homes. It's not all he does, and it's not that common: the 107 cases cover a 30-year period, and he says it's not glamorous or exciting, but he does take it very seriously.

"I'm certain there are poltergeists, though what a poltergeist is I don't know; I'm pretty certain there are ghosts, but what the ghosts are I don't know; I'm certain there is ESP, but what it is I don't know," he says. "I'm completely satisfied that telepathy happens, I see so much evidence of it. This is a very side issue for me, but I am able to relieve people of fear."

Bill, or more properly the Reverend Bill Broad, is a member of the Bishop of Durham's deliverance team, nine priests - seven men and two women - who specialise in this area. It is a sideline to his main job, as rector of Great Aycliffe in County Durham for the last four years.

He says there are three facets to the world: the normal, everyday world; the spiritual world and what we generally call the paranormal world. There is more proof of the existence of the paranormal than the spiritual, he says. From dowsers, the one in 23 people who can find water with a stick, to the stories of rats that really do leave a ship before it sinks, there is too much evidence to dismiss this world out of hand.

He points to the three manifestations of the paranormal - ghosts, which can generally be seen but not smelt or touched or heard; poltergeists, which are generally heard but can also be smelt or touched; and extrasensory perception, or ESP, which includes telepathy, feelings of being watched, and unexplained fear. But while he is virtually certain this paranormal world exists, he has never seen any evidence for it himself.

"I have not heard a poltergeist, seen a ghost or had serious experience of ESP. I will only take seriously somebody who tells me it has happened to them, not to a friend or relative of theirs. I have met many people who I believe are totally sincere in saying that something is happening. There are probably 10,000 stories of people who have encountered poltergeists, so we know a little bit about them, but not enough to be able to produce hard evidence.

"We can record poltergeists - at least, we have recorded a knocking sound. Because nobody knows about it, the normal reaction for the person who runs into it is to be frightened and go in search of the vicar. The local vicar probably won't know the first thing about it, and there is no reason why he should - he may never have run into it, or he may not believe it is real or that it is something he can handle.

"For that reason, every bishop has advisers, a panel of clergy who have chosen to serve the bishop by taking a particular interest in handling this phenomenon. The bishop's clergy can ring us up and we can offer to take them through it, or go and help."

Bill's own interest arose from his days as a prison chaplain in the 1970s, working with Hell's Angels who had taken part in Satanic rites. "They had pretty nasty experiences and when they got into prison they would need some form of ministry. When I got involved, I seemed to be pretty good at it.

"Because I got involved, I was invited on a number of occasions to visit houses, and once you start doing that you find out whether it means something to you or not. What you are actually doing is visiting the house, talking to the people who live there and chucking out whatever it is. The normal deliverance ministry, at its simplest, is find the thing and throw it out. If you tell it to go away, it normally does."

His own belief is that ghosts and poltergeists are the result of psychic energy, created by intense emotion. This emotion can be from a previous happening, but if it is the result of something ongoing, such as an abusive relationship in the home, then simply throwing the spirit out is only a temporary solution, the underlying cause itself has to be tackled.

Bill's one failure was one such case, where there was an ongoing problem and he didn't have time to resolve it. But generally he succeeds. "The exorcist tells it to go away, and then the deliverance minister blesses the house and the people in it. I will always assure the people that this works. I believe it does. If they need me again, it is probably something else."

The psychic energy can also be the result of using a Ouija board or tarot cards. There was one case where a family was having terrible trouble with its laundry basket, which kept turning itself upside down. It turned out the house had been sub-divided, and the front half was being used for spiritualist sessions. But there have also been cases where objects jumping off the mantelpiece may have been the result of an unsteady mantelpiece. This is where a spirit level comes in handy.

Virtually all deliverance ministry involves houses, but there are occasional reports of possession. And here the situation is more complicated. The risk of making a possible psychiatric problem worse means the team can only act with written permission from the bishop and written support from a psychiatrist. There has been only one reported case in the Durham diocese in the last 15 years.

"Only once can I recall somebody who had no symptoms of mental illness, who suddenly felt he was in the grip of something and asked specifically for help. There was a laying on of hands, and he assured me that he was healed."

He says there have been no instances of ghosts or poltergeists hurting anyone, and says the spirits themselves are not evil. What does hurt people, and therefore can be evil, is the fear. "If you are frightened of spiders, it is no good telling you the spider won't hurt you. The problem of the spider is not that it is dangerous, it is that it frightens. The spider is not malevolent."

But even though he believes these spirits are nothing to do with evil, there are good reasons why priests get involved. One is that prayer is the best defence against fear - "there are no atheists in a lifeboat", another is that priests take it seriously and a third is that their approach works.

"My 106-to-one record suggests that my ministry in God here is a good one. This is not about evil, it is not about the Devil. I think it is about something which goes wrong that clergy can put right," he says. "It is fairly minor stuff, it is fairly boring and there is nothing sensational about it at all.

"There aren't ghastly noises, things don't suddenly fall out of windows, people don't fall about and have fits. I don't believe it has anything to do with evil. I have no magical powers. We don't come around in the night, because that is a bad time, a time of fantasy, and we don't dress in black cloaks and black hats, because that would give people a fit. It is all pretty smooth, simple stuff.

"I do not know what it is because it is not happening to me, but some quite frightening things happen to people. If someone comes and tells me their house is haunted, I go with their local vicar and we sit down and talk to them. We go through the ritual and they tell me afterwards that it has gone. It may never have been there in the first place, they may believe it was there and it is there no longer. How am I to know?"