AT a little after midnight on a wintry night nearly 150 years ago, nightwatchman James Durham was feeling the cold. He had been on duty since 8pm and a further six hours of his shift stretched in front of him, and all he had for shelter against the snow squalls was his little cabin.

It stood beside the level crossing where the Stockton and Darlington Railway met the Great North Road in Darlington - a bridge now lifts the railway over the cars before they are brought to a stop by the Albert Road traffic lights.

There was no heat in James' cabin, so he decided to walk to North Road station where the porters had a cellar with a gaslight and, best of all, a fire. There he would eat his supper in peace and quiet, protected from the chill of the night.

He descended the stone steps into the cellar, turned up the light, took off his overcoat, sat down on a bench and opened his bait tin. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he noticed something emerge from the dark coalhouse to his right. He looked up.

There, in front of him, stood "a strange man" with a big black retriever dog at his heel.

"As soon as he entered, my eye was upon him, and his eye upon me," James later told a local clergyman. "We were intently watching each other as he moved in front of the fire.

"There he stood, looking at me. A curious smile came over his countenance. He had a stand-up collar and a cutaway coat with gilt buttons and a Scotch cap."

By now James was on his feet...

"All at once he struck at me and I got the impression that he hit me. I up with my fist and struck back at him. My fist seemed to go straight through him and struck against the stone above the fireplace and knocked the skin off my knuckles. The man seemed to be struck back into the fire and uttered a strange, unearthly squeak.

"Immediately the dog gripped me by the calf of my leg and seemed to cause me pain. The man recovered his position, called off the dog with a sort of click of the tongue and went back into the coalhouse, followed by the dog.

"I lighted my dark lantern and looked into the coalhouse, but there was neither dog nor man, and no outlet for them except the one by which they had entered."

The man and the dog had disappeared into thin air. James looked at his legs - despite the pain, there were no bite marks. The only evidence of his extraordinary encounter was on his knuckles which were badly grazed because he had punched through the man and hit the wall.

However, his story caught the imaginations of those he told and caused quite a stir in Darlington. It reached the ears of Edward Pease - "the father of the railways" - and he summoned James to his home in Northgate.

In front of his sons John, Joseph and Henry, Pease questioned Durham. Could he have nodded off and had a nightmare? No, Durham had only just descended the stairs and he certainly wasn't dreaming when his fist slammed against the wall. Could he have been under the influence of alcohol? No, Durham was a teetotaller.

Pease, a wise old Quaker who was not much fond of fancies, was convinced. For he had known an old clerk by the name of Winter who had worked at the station shortly after it was built in 1842. Durham's description matched the appearance of Winter in terms of dress, features and manner. Winter had also kept a dog.

What is more, Winter had committed suicide - shot himself with a pistol - in the station office above the cellar. To avoid putting off the passengers while police concluded their investigations, the body had been laid out in the very cellar where Durham had encountered the apparition.

James had seen a ghost - and if "Old Neddy" Pease believed it, it was good enough for everyone else in the town.

The story has now entered local folklore but, sadly, without a date attached to it. We know, though, that Edward Pease died in 1858 so the apparition must have occured before then but after the station was built in 1842. We also know that in Darlington's North Cemetery is the grave of a James Durham who died on January 9, 1917, aged 75. This would have made him 16 in the year that Pease died which is consistent with him being employed as a menial gatekeeper on the graveyard shift; but it is not consistent with another version of the story that says he had worked at North Road for 15 years before he met Winter's ghost.

But there is more to this story than just old folkish legend and a couple of curious inconsistencies.

In 1891, James recounted it to the Reverend Henry Kendall of the Congregational Church in Union Street, Darlington. He had attended the church for 25 years where the Rev Kendall knew him as one of the strongest men he had ever met who would walk and run up to 40 miles a day. He also knew him as a man who would strike out in retaliation if ever the need arose.

Having inspected the cellar and spoken to other old-timers at the station who remembered Winter and his dog and his demise, Kendall was convinced. He wrote in his diary that James' encounter had been "genuinely apparitional".

Kendall was also a close acquaintance of The Northern Echo's legendary editor, WT Stead. Stead had become deeply fascinated in all matters spiritual during his days in Darlington, and moved on to edit journals in London that investigated paranormal phenomenon. He even set up Julia's Intercommunication Bureau in The Strand "for regular and systematic communication with the dead".

Naturally, as soon as Kendall stumbled upon a story that would appeal to his old friend, he informed him. Stead investigated and took his information to the Society of Psychical Research which was carrying out a Census of Hallucinations. The Society was an august body made up of distinguished professors and notables at a time when there was profound and widespread interest in the 'other side'.

Yet the Society was not convinced. Despite all the evidence that backed up Durham's story and all the testimonies that acknowledged his sincerity and his strength of character, the Society could not bring itself to believe that a ghost could ever physically assault a human. It was unique. To this day, it is still one of only a handful of cases of an apparition attempting actual bodily harm.

But we cannot lay the story to rest there. One hundred years ago, as the Rev Kendall discovered, there were people who knew that there was something spooky moving about the station. Indeed today, there are several people alive who have witnessed a shadow of a man and a dog flitting about the dark corners of what is now a museum. Others have also heard ghostly footsteps when there was no one there.

The most celebrated occasion was one wintry evening in the early 1950s. Soon after a fresh flurry of snow had carpeted the platform, a train drew into the station. The ticket collector heard a door open and someone get out. He retreated to his booth waiting for the passenger to present his ticket for inspection.

The collector heard the door close and the train move off. He heard footsteps crunch in the fresh fallen snow as the passenger approached.

But no one came past his booth. No one presented their ticket. And when he looked out expectantly across the platform, there was no one to be seen - and no trace of footprints on the carpet of white, virginal snow.