Most Haunted's Yvette Fielding on how she still communicates with her dead father

“And I am a writer, so it wasn’t the writing process. It was talking about myself that I found difficult. When you go back and think about your memories – they can be hard sometimes, particularly if you’ve had a bit of a rum experience.”

As you read the book, Scream Queen – a nod to all the screaming she’s done on TV (and there has been a lot) – it’s clear to see Fielding’s had quite a time of it. She had some lucky breaks, like being the only girl from her drama school to be picked for a role in an 80s TV series called Seaview, to becoming the youngest ever Blue Peter presenter. But it wasn’t all plain sailing. Fielding chats openly and honestly about the workplace bullying she struggled with for years. She talks about the put downs being “relentless” and really taking their toll. “I was constantly shaking. They call it workplace anxiety nowadays, but it was really abuse.”

She stayed at Blue Peter for five years and has appeared on a variety of other TV shows, but remains known for Most Haunted – and the stage show is as popular now as the series was when it was commissioned back in 2002.

Fielding, 55, admits to being afraid of horror movies, and would hide behind the sofa to watch Doctor Who, so why she agreed to stay overnight – and be filmed – in a haunted mansion is a mystery.

“I know, it sounds crazy, doesn’t it?” Fielding laments, lost in thought. “I’d always been interested but frightened of the ghosts.”

One fateful night, when a friend came over to see Fielding and her TV producing husband Karl Beattie, they talked about Michelham Priory in East Sussex, and that it’s one of the most haunted houses in Britain.

“Karl looked at me and said, ‘Would you spend the night alone in a haunted house? We could film it’ – and I told him where to go. And then he said, ‘What if we did it with a camera crew and we’re all in shot?’ So then we sat up all night…

“I don’t know what it was,” she continues. “But I genuinely felt from that moment on, we were being pushed. By what, I don’t know. Divine intervention? But there was this passion to make this thing work, like somebody was really pushing us to do this, maybe from the other side.”

Fielding loves all things spiritual, Buddhism, has an office full of crystals and has always been into tarot cards and palm reading, but is genuinely frightened of the more scary stuff.

Beattie had experienced ghostly goings on previously and believed in the paranormal. And it’s clear as Fielding talks that she really believes in it, too. Many viewers – especially in the early days – thought everything on Most Haunted was completely made up.

She regales story after story – both in person and in the book – of all the ghosts and incidents they’ve encountered over the years, maintaining “what we do is real”. But at home, she has a very different way of getting in touch with the dead.

“I’m very lucky, because I communicate with my father, who passed over. I know he’s with me and that’s such a huge comfort,” says Fielding, matter-of-fact. Her dad died of a heart attack 15 years ago.

“There’s nothing to fear when we die. That journey that we go on to the other side is beautiful, and we do see our loved ones again. And I can say that because I have had messages come through with my dad. He showed me in a very vivid dream what it’s like to die.

“I always say to people, when they’re having a really bad day, to talk out loud to their [lost] loved ones. It works. If I’m having a rubbish day, I’ll say to my dad, ‘Please help me’ and literally within an hour or so, whatever I’m doing, I’ll feel marvellous. You’ve got to talk out loud to them. They’re listening, they’re watching, they’re with you.

Grief can be tough, but Fielding buys birthday and Father’s Day cards for her dad, and toasts him with Champagne.

“He loves it,” she says. “And I know people will read this and think, ‘Oh my God, she’s lost the plot’ but I don’t care. I don’t care what anybody thinks. I love my dad. I am so blessed. And I want to pass on the messages he gives to me, to people that have lost loved ones.”

It was Buddhist meditation that first enabled Fielding to talk to the dead. “It’s all to do with vibration and sound,” she says. “I’ll use a Tibetan singing bowl and om, and if I take that into a haunted location and do it for ages, it’s bizarre – some really great paranormal activity will kick off.”

She believes we all have the ability to talk to the dead. “I’m certainly not psychic, but I think we all have the capability to be psychic if we tune in,” says Fielding. “It’s whether we want to open up, and we can do that by meditation. You’ve got to put the time in – the more you do, the more open you become.”

Fielding tries to meditate every day, though admits it’s not always possible. She does it in her office, where she has a day bed. “I’ll close my eyes and go into that state if I can, and see what pictures I get in my mind. Sometimes, I get absolutely nothing at all. I think it depends on what stage you’re at in your life. You know, whether you’re busy – if you’re stressed, you’re going to get bugger-all out of it. But I do like to do that.

“People often say to me, ‘My loved one has passed over and they haven’t come to me, why is that?’ And and I say, ‘Well, have you put the time in? So I always encourage people to do the meditation.

She suggests having an afternoon ‘nana nap’. “You don’t go into such a deep sleep and I think the spirits find it easier to contact you. You might have this wonderful, vivid dream of your loved one, and that is them coming to say hello. Try it.”

Scream Queen by Yvette Fielding (Ebury Spotlight, £22)