14 AUGUST 1953, Page 6

Spectral Housekeepers That Brighton is the most haunted town in

Sussex is asserted by a feature writer in Destiny, a magazine which covers all occult subjects including the Prince Regent. It seems this famous holiday resort is rife with ghosts, and con- sidering the town's traditional connection with romance this should not, perhaps, surprise as much as it does. More surprising though than any malevolent entity haunting the Lanes are, to my mind, the poltergeists which take over the homes of those on holiday. One expects on one's return to find, along with a carpet of bills spread in buff pleats across the hall floor, a certain amount of decay, but in default of super- natural tampering there seems no plausible reason why, in the space of two weeks, large bits of the furniture should have fallen off. It is just possible that the somewhat desultory passing of a duster over inanimate objects has a bracing effect or that the human eye possesses esoteric powers for holding pictures to their walls, so that when these are removed every- thing goes, to an inconceivable degree, to pot. Yet when the returned traveller ,is confronted with legless chairs, heeled over lamps and burst cisterns he cannot help feeling that here, surely, is a field for psychical research.