I THINK we have a ghost in St Michael's church. I was phoned up the other week by the secretary of Zion College, an old theological library near the City Temple. The secretary said: "I've a large photograph of one of your predecessors. Do you want to come and collect it?" So I went and collected the picture of The Rev John Henry Joshua Ellison who was rector here in the early part of the 20th Century. Naturally I took it to church and hung it in the vestry.

Last Sunday at the parish communion I was standing at the high altar when suddenly there arose the most furious banging and clattering noises from the south west corner of the nave. After a minute or two the noise stopped and I thought no more about it. But at the end of the service all the congregation were agog discussing the cause of the racket. One man in particular, a very level-headed chap, an engineer, was seriously frightened. He said: "It was happening in my pew - as if someone was stamping his feet angrily. I could feel the whole woodwork shaking. But there was no one else in the pew but me." It was left to the parish clerk to offer a possible solution.

He said: "Some years ago I was laying out the altar cloth one morning. The choir was rehearsing. Nothing to suggest a spooky atmosphere. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed a clergyman walking purposefully up the south aisle towards the vestry. He seemed to walk through the door and into the vestry. But this would have been impossible, for the door was locked. Whoever it was had disappeared into thin air.

"I asked older members of the congregation who the ghostly figure - a balding man with an oval face - might have been, and I was told that he most resembled a Father Ellison who had been rector years ago. A few years after this, we were to celebrate at St Michael's the centenary of our association with London Electricity and I was asked to try to engage a bishop to come and preach at their annual service. By good fortune I managed to persuade the then Bishop of London, Gerald Ellison, to come. A month before the service I was at the high altar again when I saw the same ghostly figure walking swiftly - as if a little late - towards the vestry. This time I ran round to intercept him, but he vanished before he even got as far as the pulpit.

"Strange that this mysterious apparition of Rev Ellison (if indeed that is who it was) should have put in an appearance just a few weeks before his son came to preach. I told the bishop about these appearances and he was most shaken saying, 'I wonder why Pa should still be here? I'll pray for him'.

"If a prayer for peace and rest was what was required, then it must have worked for I never saw the vision of the purposeful clergyman with the oval face again. Except you've gone and put his picture in the vestry, haven't you? I bet that's what's stirred the old boy up!"

I remain to be convinced. No one could explain the clattering noises in that pew by natural causes. It was far too loud and continuous for it just to have been the wood expanding or contracting with the change in temperature. But ghosts, in broad daylight? It's a bit hard to swallow. I belong to the sceptical school of thought when it comes to supposedly ghostly manifestations. I might even say I tend to share Scrooge's view that you can put seeing ghostly apparitions down to trouble with the digestion. As Scrooge said to the ghost of Jacob Marley: "Why you could be an undigested piece of cheese! There's more of gravy than grave about you!"

Well, all I can say is that the whole congregation must have eaten a colossal breakfast that morning to have caused so much noise! What do you think - should I take down Father Ellison's picture? I'll wait another week or two and see what happens. I'll keep you posted.

l The Rev Peter Mullen is Rector of St Michael's in the City of London and Chaplain to the Stock Exchang