SPIRITS mean good business at The Red Lion in Avebury, and not just the kind dispensed from optics behind the bar.

Since TV presenter Yvette Fielding ran from a room in the inn during filming for a cable TV series on the paranormal earlier this year, the phone at the 17th century pub has hardly stopped ringing.

Deputy manager Graham Owen said: "It has been incredible. Since the first programme appeared people have been phoning, dropping in and writing for details about the place. Having a real, live ghost on the premises, as seen on TV, has been great for business."

Phantom children are said to run up and down the corridors of the pub, a Victorian woman in a flowery dress is reputed to have been seen in the bar while staff complain of objects moving around of their own accord.

The most famous legend is of an unfaithful wife who was murdered by her husband and dumped in the building's well.

Mr Owen is fascinated by the regular spectral reports in the pub, but other members of staff are not quite so happy.

"One of the girls who works here was changing one of the rooms. She left it for a short while and when she came back the two beds had moved to the other side of the room. She refuses to go back in there now," he said.

The latest team to examine the evidence is from Swindon.

Twelve members of the group Ghostseekers spent the night in the Red Lion on Saturday. They didn't find any ghosts but they did photograph and film a number of orbs, unexplained balls of light, thought to be the precursors of a ghostly manifestation.