The chill factor

Lawyers come across a range of odd behaviour.

But, as Halloween looms, for some, the truth is often stranger than fiction.

Paula Rohan investigates

Little did newly qualified solicitor Jonathan Harker realise when he set off to deliver some documents to a mysterious count in Transylvania that his client would turn out to be a blood-sucking vampire.

Mr Harker's experiences were, of course, the subject of Bram Stoker's late 19th century chiller, 'Dracula'.

However, for many lawyers truth can often be stranger than fiction.

Just this year a rape suspect walked free from the Old Bailey because the victim claimed that she had been put under a voodoo curse and was too afraid to testify.

In another trial, lawyers in south Wales dealt with a woman whose defence to an arson charge was that ghosts had told her to burn down her council house.

Her plea failed and she was sentenced to 15 months in prison.

In fact, ghosts have proved to be something of a problem with property solicitors.

Richard Carroll, residential property associate at Birmingham firm Martineau Johnson, recalls acting for a buyer of an 'average' five-bedroom property.

'It was not very old and there was nothing particularly sinister about it.

It all went fine until one month after the sale was completed and the clients had moved in.

The guy rang and asked if a house was haunted, should that be disclosed before the contracts were exchanged?'

The client revealed that he and his wife had been lying in bed when they heard someone walking about opening and closing doors, and that they had also witnessed a woman walking about on the landing one night.

They later discovered that an elderly previous resident had died in the house.

Although the clients declared themselves happy to live with their 'lodger', Mr Carroll suggests the law in this area is blurred, and that the existence of the supernatural is something the Land Registry should think about when devising its paperwork.

'There are searches for every mortal thing imaginable,' he adds.

'Perhaps they should introduce searches for the immortal as well?'

Matters were even more hairy for one Herefordshire solicitor, who was acting in the case of a defendant trying to claim tenancy of a picturesque local cottage.

Evidence gathered by the landlord soon began to point to witchcraft, but it was not until the 'witch' performed a moonlight flit in the middle of the case and the solicitor's clients - the owners - went in to clean up the premises that the true horror emerged.

'There were eviscerated animals on the premises, there were dead animals in the garden, and there was blood everywhere,' remembers the solicitor, who does not wish to be named.

'It was splattered all over the carpets, the floorboards, the walls and the bath.

The woman ran a cat's home, so you can imagine what happened to them.

Cats were her favourite, in fact - cats and ducks.'

Witchcraft is one area that is proving to have ramifications even to this day, and there is one campaign running to clear the name of a woman accused of witchcraft back in the 1940s.

This has been led by Australian solicitor Victor Zammit, and until his death earlier this year, English barrister Derek Wilmott.

The case began when a Scottish medium was arrested by police and charged with breaches of the Witchcraft Act 1735 - the first person to have been charged under the legislation for 100 years.

When Helen Duncan was given a nine-month prison sentence, there was uproar in legal circles.

Campaign spokesman Michael Colmer says: 'The outcry following the judgment at her Old Bailey trial in 1944 generated a number of protests to the broad sheets from members of both the English and Scottish bars [and Law Societies].'

On hearing the Appeal Court judgment, Lady Eleanor Smith, daughter of former Lord Chancellor Lord Birkenhead, condemned the judges' views as 'a disgrace to British justice, and another detestable attempt to interfere with our personal liberty'.

She added: 'I'm only astounded that she wasn't sentenced to be burned at the stake.'

In fact, many argue to this day that Ms Duncan had been prosecuted over fears that she was obtaining classified wartime information, as on one occasion she had 'contacted' a sailor whose ship had sank - but this information was not officially released until three months later.

In 1951, the witchcraft legislation which had been used to imprison Ms Duncan was repealed.

She died in 1956, five weeks after another police raid on her house following her release from prison.

Friends say Ms Duncan's death came about because the police touched her when she was in a trance, forcing ectoplasm to return too quickly into her body and causing second-degree burns.

However, the fight for a posthumous pardon goes on, and the campaigners are looking to recruit more legal minds (see www.helenduncan.org.uk).

In some parts of the world, mediums like Ms Duncan are offered a bit more protection.

Patent lawyers in the US were startled when a woman, Judith Knight, approached them asking for a copyright on a 35,000-year-old spirit called Ramtha.

The client's reason for acting was that she had founded a multi-million-dollar business - including a bookshop, clothing store and catalogue operation - based on her exclusive ability to channel the spirit.

She brought the action to stop an Austrian woman from claiming that she too could contact Ramtha, and three years later - after a hard-fought battle in the Austrian courts - it was agreed that the American could trademark the spirit to protect her business interests.

London-based sole practitioner Gordon Hausmann is another solicitor to have dealt with a client with supernatural abilities - he acts for celebrity psychic Uri Geller.

Prior to their first meeting ten years ago, Mr Hausmann says he was 'sceptical' about Mr Geller's powers, but he soon became convinced when his client invited the office staff into the boardroom for a spoon-bending demonstration.

'Before we went in, we had an elderly secretary who had a clock on the wall that didn't work,' he says.

'Uri took the clock and touched it but nothing happened.

We then went into the boardroom where he bent some spoons and asked a clerk to do a drawing and fold it up, and he reproduced it exactly.

Then he said he had to go, and the next thing you knew the secretary was running down the corridor saying: "Mr Geller, the clock has started to work."'

Other entertainment lawyers can also become spooked by the work they take on - especially if they step into the horror movie industry.

This can often involve deals worth millions of pounds, and it is a solicitor's job to advise their clients on how to operate in line with the local authorities that grant cinema licences and the British Board of Film Classifications (BBFC).

The BBFC has recently performed a u-turn by granting licences for classic horror films such as 'The Exorcist', Texas 'Chainsaw Massacre' and 'Driller Killer' to be released on video.

Nigel Bennett, head of films and television at the London-based niche firm Simkins Partnership, maintains there is no evidence that the boundaries film makers have to adhere to are any more or less restrictive than in the past, and that the censors are very reasonable.

This has created a healthy market to the delight of studios, investors and the public alike.

'Horror films are still as popular as ever - just look at the success of films like the Blair Witch Project,' he says.

'Most big studios still regard them as a major commercial property.

Censors have not really been taking the axe to horror films, so not many are refused a certificate.

From a financier's point of view this is vital because you want to attract as wide an audience as possible.'

Mr Bennett says that although ghoulish films do not generally frighten him, last year's release of 'The Others' - a film about a haunted house - did have some effect.

'I found it a bit spooky,' he admits.

Sometimes, though, it is the solicitors themselves doing the spooking.

Staff at the Museum Library in York once reported a ghostly presence that was obsessed with a book called Antiquities and Curiosities of the Church, and would return on a monthly basis to look for the item.

Eventually, an investigation was held and it transpired that the former owner of the book was a solicitor and antiquary, Alderman Edward Wooler, who was believed to be the ghost.

In fact, clients would be advised to be on their guard when approaching some solicitors, judging by Jonathan Harker's perceptions of Count Dracula.

'He certainly left me under the impression that he would have made a wonderful solicitor, for there was nothing that he did not think of or foresee,' he said.

'For a man who was never in the country, and who did not evidently do much in the way of business, his knowledge and acumen were wonderful.'