Chilling Monk of Pontefract who terrorised a family by smashing eggs and eating butties

From a Yorkshire town comes an intriguing and scary tale of the supernatural and a lurking poltergeist.

Film director Pat Holden grew up in the West Yorkshire town during the 1970s and said his mother Rene would tell some spooky stories about a poltergeist known as the 'Black Monk or 'Monk of Pontefract'.

Pat told the BBC : "It did everything a poltergeist does normally. I say normally. Throwing things around, freezing rooms down, creating water puddles and making noises. And he did a lot of unique things as well."

More mischievous deeds were carried out by the naughty ghost, according to the family, such as putting jam on door handles.

The creepy poltergeist story was made into a film (IMDb)

One time, Pat recalled, the poltergeist is said to have chucked eggs around the room despite people sitting on the box.

He said: "And these eggs started flying in from the kitchen into the living room where they were and smashing on the floor. Each time that happened, they looked in the box and there was another egg missing."

No real evidence of ghosts exist has ever been credibly put forward, but plenty of people still choose to believe they exist.

Scientists argue the weirdest events can be explained, putting them down to things like hallucinations.

In 2017, TV science boffin Brian Cox has said CERN's Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland would have found them.

Even Pat Holden is sceptical about the story, but says his family are unlikely to lie (IMDb)

Fellow famed scientist Neil deGrasse Tyson on The Infinite Monkey Cage podcast, in which the American asked: "If I understand what you just declared, you just asserted that CERN, the European Center for Nuclear Research, disproved the existence of ghosts."

Cox simply replied, "yes".

Pat himself says he is sceptical about the tales put forward by his mum and said he can't imagine his her and his aunt making the stories up.

He said: "I'm sceptical myself, but my mum and my auntie were very down-to-earth, working-class people.

"The idea of them making something like this up, I just can't imagine that happening. Also it's not just their word for it - there were so many people who saw it first hand."

He added: "The mayor went round, the police, they had psychic investigators, friends and family - so many people saw it. It makes you think there's a good chance that it must have happened. They can't all be lying."

Director Pat used the stories to inspire a film on the big screen, creating the film 'When the Lights Went Out' in 2012.

It starred the likes of Kate Ashfield, Steven Waddington and Line of Duty's Craig Parkinson and Martin Compston.