Anyone who's watched Blue Peter or tuned in to Living TV will know that Yvette Fielding needs no introduction - but we'll give her one, as hers is exceptionally cool; Yvette is commonly known as the 'first lady of the paranormal' and even the Queen of Halloween.
In this exclusive interview with Closer online, Yvette talks about her new book, the terrifying (and we do mean TERRIFYING) moment she knew the paranormal was truly real and the best celebrities she's ever gone ghost hunting with.
Yvette, tell us about your new book, Most Haunted Castles.
It's one in a series of books, and it's basically about some of the castles that I've investigated with the Most Haunted team over the years. I do a little bit of the history, talk about some of the ghosts that occupy these castles, and then I go through the [Most Haunted] investigation and what happened to us during that time. So it's been wonderful for me, because I've been able to revisit some of these castles from series one and go, 'Look at the hair! Look I haven't got wrinkles there!'
Your looks were iconic. Your career as a paranormal investigator spans two decades, but you remember the moment you knew for absolutely certain there was something else out there?
I think it was when I resigned from Most Haunted – we were live.
Wait, what happened?
You can find it on YouTube. It's so embarrassing. It's like wetting yourself in public. We were doing a live show, and it was from Edinburgh. We were broadcasting live to America and across the UK. It was over Halloween period, I think, and we were live coming from a particular room in the vaults. It was the streets underneath Edinburgh, and then in one particular part, there's this stone circle where, allegedly, hundreds of years ago a coven of witches would go in there and summon up God knows what. Members of the public were going in there on a tour, but were coming out with scratches on their arms. So our [expert] said, 'Don't stand in the centre of the circle. Don't be disrespectful.' So what did Karl and Stuart [Yvette's husband and colleague] do off air? I couldn't believe they did it...
Stand in the circle?
We go live on air, and Karl is standing in the center of the circle, and there are scratches all down the back of his neck. He gets absolutely cut to ribbons and Stuart is on his back. He's got his black leather Most Haunted jacket... He just screams, 'Ah, my back. My back is burning.' So we take his leather coat off, and you see the blood coming through his T-shirt, and to this day, he still has scratches.
Core memory unlocked!
And then the worst bit is the sound guy; he collapses on the floor because he was being disrespectful, as well. He collapsed on the floor and had such a deep cut in his leg, you could see the bone, and he had to be taken to A&E, and that is when I lost the plot, because I just thought, 'What the hell are we dealing with here? This is not what I signed up for. This is a completely different thing, and I don't like it, and I'm terrified'. I was in shock, and it wasn't just me that was in shock. We all were in shock and and so I resigned live on air. So I looked up all these real cases, and in most of the real hauntings and violent poltergeist cases, you will find written down records of people being scratched, slashed, burned and bitten, teeth marks in human skin, and words and letters being branded and scratched into human skin. And I thought, 'This is a real phenomena'.
That's given us chills. Are you still doing Most Haunted? We know you eventually returned to paranormal investigating...
What people don't realise is we're still filming Most Haunted and it's being streamed on Pluto TV and STV, so they're taking the new episodes and streaming them worldwide, which is lovely.
You've taken a lot of celebs ghost hunting over the years. What are your sort of good and bad memories of paranormal investigating with celebs?
The best celebs have been Happy Mondays. They were fantastic. I really want to go and do another Ghost Hunting with Happy Mondays part two, because they were the best. They were the funniest, and the were the most into it. With Boyzone and Louis Walsh it was a bit, sort of, let's have a laugh and let's not take it seriously. But by the end of it, I think two of them were crying, and Louis Walsh said, 'That's enough, Yvette, we need to leave.'
Most Haunted Castles, written by Yvette Fielding, illustrated by Hannah Shaw, published by Andersen Press available now, £7.99.
Yvette, her husband Karl, and her team are on tour with Most Haunted: the Stage Show this spooky season. See dates and tickets at https://www.atgtickets.com/shows/most-haunted-the-stage-show/
Now watch: TOWIE's best Halloween bits
Ben Pulsford is a digital writer for Bauer Media, writing for both Closer online and heatworld. When he's not getting paid to gossip about Big Brother, Love Island and The Real Housewives of Cheshire, he's storming the London LGBTQ+ scene as drag queen, Beary Poppins. Both Ben and Beary are awaiting an invite to join The Real Housewives of Cheshire for series 18. The budget's not there, but the drama is.