My Haven YVETTE FIELDING

The Most Haunted presenter, 51, in the living room of her ghostly Cheshire home

1 THAT’S THE SPIRITS

We have several ghosts in our house, which dates back to medieval times – there are two children, a Victorian lady, a priest and a Cavalier from the Civil War. You can hear the ghosts on the stairs and knocking on doors. They aren’t scary to us but some relations refuse to sleep here because of them. I’m really into old-fashioned ways of trying to communicate with the other side, and bought this crystal ball at an antiques shop. I often use a ouija board too.

2 CREATURE COMFORTS

I was looking for writing inspiration when I spotted Humphrey in an antiques shop and fell in love with him – he’s such a beautiful, wise and magical owl. The house also has a mummified cat, which we inherited. People used to secrete one somewhere in their home to ward off evil spirits. The people we bought our house from told us not to move it, but we did and loads of things started going wrong – so the cat is now back in a glass case behind the kitchen sink.

3 oh boys!

I’m a Beatles obsessive and I love this picture of them outside the EMI offices. I recently went to just stand outside John Lennon’s old house, and I actually met Paul Mccartney once. Music is a huge part of my life because my son William is in a band, White Eskimo. When I was pregnant with him a man came up to me, grabbed my stomach and screamed, ‘A baby! Oh baby! I bless this child!’ I didn’t know who he was but the people I was with did – it was Little Richard!

4 I DO, I DO, I DO

As soon as I saw my husband Karl, I thought, ‘Phwoar!’ He was a cameraman on a show I presented, City Hospital. When we got together we knew we were soulmates and after three months he proposed, live on air! We’ve been married for 20 years now and every decade we renew our vows. Our ten-year anniversary was in Las Vegas and this year we married again at a local church. My son William, 25, and our daughter

Mary, 20, read out some of our love letters, which we still write to each other.

5 DOGGED DETECTIVE

We got my gorgeous, funny British bulldog Watson as a pet but I missed him so much when we went away to film Most Haunted that I asked if he could come too, and now he’s part of the team. If he senses something suspicious, he stops still and his neck fur stands up. He really lives up to his detective name. But if there’s any real danger he may bark but then he’ll run away as fast as he can.

6 BADGE OF HONOUR

Polperro in Cornwall is one of my favourite places. There’s a pub there called The Blue Peter Inn, and as soon as I walked in they gave me this special badge. We now hope to retire there; it feels it was meant to be, and my children’s book, Archie The Ghost Hunter, was inspired by it. I started presenting Blue Peter at just 18 and had so many adventures – a highlight was trying to find a bull elephant in Zimbabwe; we ended up face to face with a whole herd of elephants!