Twenty-four hours after a highly entertaining show at Galashiels' Volunteer Hall, Derek Acorah, formerly of TV's Most Haunted, thrilled fund-raising ghost-hunters in Jedburgh Castle Jail and Mary Queen of Scots' house.

A large crowd assembled in the eerie jail with sponsor sheets and cheques in hand. Several of them make this an annual outing and had come from as far as Bristol.

In the former regal abode, now open as a museum, Acorah told two women that they were – although they didn't realise it – sensitive to the spirits. He later went on to say that left-handed people tended to be the more sensitive. Who were the only two lefties in the group? You guessed it, those two women.

Perhaps he has trained himself to notice small signs such as which hands people favour, but in a crowd of 20 people? It's small things like that which can stop even the most cynical of us debunking the whole paranormal thing out of hand.

The fund-raisers were split into groups. Acorah told our group that he could feel several spirits in the house, including one called Walter.
At a later sitting with another group, Walter was, for a brief time, able to join with the medium's "auric field" and enter his body.

Acorah said: "When he got in and he saw the group of people, it phased him a bit ... in his infinite wisdom, he decided to open a door and take me out into another room where it was quiet and there were no people."

He later said that now Walter knew what to do, he would be able to come through into this world in the same way with someone else. Although it would work best if there was no-one else around.

Any takers?

Later, in the jail, he encountered two very different beings. One, a tortured soul in life as much as in death, was named Jed Gallagher. The other was called Hugh Brown, a nasty fellow by all accounts. He was the one who carried out the torture on Gallagher and commited sins of rape and murder before his life was ended at the end of a gallows rope.

Acorah said his spirit guide – an Ethiopian boy named Sam, who Acorah said he had known in a previous life more than 2,000 years ago – would help Gallagher move on to "the world of spirit, where it's bright and heavenly for him". Helpful fellow, that Sam.

Brown, on the other hand, faces a different fate.

Acorah said: "Where Brown is concerned, he has to be collected by the angels of mercy from the spirit world, because there's going to be a bit of a tussle to get him out of here.

"I have called, very quietly, and asked for them to come into this atmosphere, to take him to his rightful place, where spiritual justice will see to him, once and for all."

That's all right, then. Perhaps, with the evil Brown gone, things might start to work around the jail.

On the night, battery-powered equipment failed almost en-masse, even though new cells had just been put in. Worst hit was Radio Borders' Vanessa Motion, whose audio recorder refused to function ... followed closely behind by her back-up. Only our back-up mp3 recorder worked through the night. And for some inexplicable reason, my camera lens kept misting over – another sure sign of paranormal activity, so I was told.

Almost everyone with a (working) camera was overjoyed to have caught several "orbs" – which some believe are the spirits which roam the world years after their death and others rationalise as being dust motes or raindrops caught in the flash.

But North Shields medium Richard Batey believes his photograph was of not an orb, but a fully-formed spirit lady, an anomaly which appears in a photograph he took of the exterior of the jail.

He said: "I was just standing here with a friend and took a photograph into this darkness. And when we had a look at this photograph, it looks like there's a lady standing there. There was no-one standing there at the time.

"I would like to think it's a spirit, to be honest with you, but I would like a little bit more validation. So, if this spirit person is about and if it is a lady, I would like that person to come forward so that more people can see the evidence."

And Zoe Gourlay of Jedburgh had a close encounter with one of the dummies in a cell in the ladies' section of the jail.

She said: "We were standing there looking at her and the arm – the elbow – moved. It flicked. It just went up and down, just like a flick. And I was fair excited!"

Hawick couple Darren and Amy McElrath spent an uncomfortable few minutes in a cell with local medium Eddie Nicol, one of the Borders Paranormal Group. Both complained of sore backs and aching legs. Amy said it felt like her leg "wasn't there". And Darren said he felt the muscles on the side of his face twitching. Eddie explained that a few of the other groups also felt the sensations of amputation and the after-effects of a stroke.

Radio presenter Vanessa also had a strange experience while taking part in another vigil in another cell. She said that she felt she was outside of her body, her legs felt like they were being cemented and that someone was standing on her foot. She later explained it away as the effect of her standing up quickly after crouching down.

However, when I was editing that sequence, my son noticed that there does appear to be a foot-and-leg-shaped shadow over her right foot.
However, the strangest incident of all was the one which happened to another member of the Borders Paranormal Group, Tess Brown, of Yetholm, who said she actually had a chat with the spirit of a little girl.

She said: "It was up in the juveniles' jail. I had a little lassie sitting on my knee, holding my hand and she kept on saying she liked it. There was only three of us in the cell at the time and the rest of the group was in the hall singing ring-a-ring-a-roses. She was quite happy when there were only three of us in. The rest came to join us and she just said to me: 'No like' and then she just took off.

"We asked them to leave and she came back. She was cuddled into me and was playing with my scarf. She was just a wee lassie with short, dark hair. She had a sort of Easter bonnet thing on.

"She had on a long dress and she just wanted to cuddle in."

And one member of the group took a picture of Tess just before she went into the cell. Indeed, there does appear to be a ghostly image by her left leg. It does appear to be made by camera movement, but the coincidence could help it to be read as otherwise.

It was a successful night for all that attended, believers or not. All got to see what they were there to see. And, more importantly, the Anthony Nolan Trust was the real winner.

Over the two nights, the leukemia charity had raised a minimum of £18,000.

The organisation's Allan Johnstone said: "That money will go directly towards putting more people on the bone marrow register and hopefully that will end up saving somebody's life."