It’s hot, hot, hot, as Caribbean songsters Arrow once sang. And as Britain broils, bakes and burns, your humble author is spending his time… hidden away in libraries. (That’s right, I get to devote large amounts of time to doing things I love. Pity me.)

I’m delving deep into the research for Poltergeist over Scotland, and so librarians and archivists from Perth and Glasgow to Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Cambridge have learned to fear my hunger for request slips.

Amazing stuff is being dredged from the archives, including episodes and facts that haven’t seen the light of day for more than a hundred years, if at all. Who would have thought that the history of Scottish poltergeists could be so extensive?

So if you see a pale figure tottering from bookstack to bookstack, his pallid skin untouched by scorching sun, you might just have glimpsed the elusive f=entity known as Ye Poltergeist Hunter of Olde Scotlande…