The Writer And The Wraiths Bestselling author Peter James sold one haunted house — only to buy another in Sussex
(The Sunday Times, 12th March 2006. By Mark Anstead)

Crime writer Peter James believes in haunted houses. The millionaire novelist and movie producer, whose film company made the 2004 version of The Merchant of Venice, starring Al Pacino, is prepared to put his money where his mouth is when it comes to the supernatural, spending £200,000 on an extension to his five-bedroom home near Lewes in East Sussex in order to avoid a ghost.

"I don't accept stories about ghosts without evidence," insists the 57-year-old author. "But when my girlfriend's mother said she saw a stream of people dressed in medieval clothes walk past our lounge window, it got me thinking. Soon afterwards, another visitor nearly jumped out of his skin when he saw a clothes rail move the entire length of my library by itself.

"I had never felt comfortable in my downstairs study: the hair on the back of my neck would stand on end, and I found it hard to focus. So I called a medium to clear the spirits, but the room still didn't feel right. Then I decided to extend one side of the house and convert a poky upstairs bedroom into a larger office. Now I find I can write far more comfortably up there."

It may have proved to have been an expensive paranormal problem, but James's new oak-floored room enjoys terrific views over the South Downs, and the atmosphere within it seems calm enough.

During the week, he lives in a three-bedroom penthouse in Notting Hill, in west London, but at weekends he works here, writing the follow-up tales he has planned for his latest bestseller, Dead Simple, a thriller in which the police turn to psychics for help in a missing-person case.

As co-founder of British film production company Movision, James has worked with a host of other Hollywood stars, including Charlize Theron and Penelope Cruz on Head in the Clouds; and Robert De Niro and Kathy Bates in the film adaptation of Thornton Wilder's novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey. He isn't fazed by celebrity.

"Most of the actors I have worked with are terrific," he says. "After a few hours, you completely forget they are famous - you just start thinking of them as ordinary people."

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James moved to East Sussex seven years ago, after he and his wife, Georgina, a lawyer, divorced. They had been living in a Georgian manor on the other side of Brighton that, he says, was also haunted, this time by the spirit of a woman who broke up marriages: the couple were the third owners in a row to see their relationship end in divorce. They sold the property in 1998 for £1.2m and split the proceeds.

Vowing to find a more modern and less draughty house for his next purchase, James initially looked for a home in West Sussex with his girlfriend, 52-year-old caterer Helen Shenston. When an estate agent recommended a £675,000 barn conversion in the east of the county, he was initially sceptical about transport links, but having viewed it, he fell in love with the design and the surrounding expanse of open farmland, and paid the asking price to ensure he got it.

The place had been converted in 1986 by the previous owner, Sir John Lovell, who told James he had spent more than £800,000 transforming what had been a derelict barn and hovel into a modern home, although he didn't recoup his outlay. As in many barn conversions, there is a wealth of exposed beams, and full-length windows dominate the open-plan living room.

In the cellar, James was impressed to find that Lovell had installed a cast-iron, walk-in safe from a London branch of Midland Bank that had closed down in the late 1980s. Lovell bought it, he told James, for £400, but it cost £10,000 to transport and install. He used it to store fine wines and expensive art when he was away, and now it is the perfect storeroom for James's shotguns. "It's big enough for an office," he laughs.

Outside, in the courtyard, an ancient well and the remains of an old L-shaped house hint at the property's history, but it was a full three months after he moved in that James's friends and family started seeing the ghosts.

He called in a medium, Matt McLean, who, he says, spent the whole day walking around the house with a dowsing pendulum, stopping at any location where he detected a "disturbance" and doing "whatever it is that mediums do".

"He told me our house is sited over graves from the Battle of Lewes (in 1264)," says James, "and I've since verified with local historians that Henry III was defeated by Simon de Montfort here. The wounded and dying fled this way over the River Ouse, and some must have been buried here in battlefield graves."

After locating the main ghostly trouble spots, McLean performed a quiet exorcism, which took the form of silent prayers to set the spirits to rest. Afterwards, James says the house certainly felt a lot better, but the study, where he had been struggling to write, still didn't feel right.

As a last resort, he decided to relocate his work space to a spare room upstairs, but in order to make it large enough, he would have to extend the house. What began as a supernatural problem soon produced its own fair share of physical challenges as well. When workmen began cutting through a horizontal wooden beam that ran across the outside wall of the house, the building started to fall in.

"It was terrible - wall seams were cracking and joists were popping up from the floor," he says. "We had to demolish the single-storey utility rooms directly beneath the study and rebuild them, which is partly why the work ended up costing so much."

After he had finished the extension, which took two years, James applied for permission to build a £22,000 tennis court on a piece of his field next to the garden.

The application was rejected on the grounds that it would spoil the view from the South Downs walkway, which seems ironic given that he was allowed to build the court in his garden, just a few metres closer to the house.

"But I've solved all the main problems now," he says, happily, leaning back in his office chair. "I can now turn my attention back to supernatural elements in my books and films."

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