Now, i know one shouldn't take these things too seriously, but I got really cross with Most Haunted a couple of years ago.

They did a Halloween show about the Pendle witches. My ex-husband had done an article on them a few years back, and I'd done most of the research. We went to Pendle, did the Witches' Trail to Lancaster, and spoke to the local experts on the story.

As you would expect, these women were mostly poor and ignorant, grinding out a living in a harsh environment, and when things started going wrong for the local well-to-do families, guess who got blamed? Yes, they were dabbling in "magic". Yes, there were some clear mental instabilities which didn't fare well under the scrutiny of lawyers and judges. The testimony of a young child was used to condemn various members of her family.

It's a very sad story, which reveals more about the lives of poor people in the north of England in the 17th century than it does about "witchcraft" or "evil".

Most Haunted employed the awful Derek Acorah to do a "psychic investigation" of the places associated with the Witches. All he could talk about was their evil, and their malevolence, as he twisted the facts of the story to deliver the sinister and spooky goods. His big clanger was in the pronunciation of one of the surnames: theoretically, he doesn't read about the cases first and knows nothing about them, but he was nevertheless getting messages from a "Jennet Device", which he pronounced as it is spelled. however, if you talk to the Pendle experts they'll tell you that "Device" was an alternative local spelling for "Davis". So, if he was receiving aural messages from the spirit world, why did he pronounce the name as it's written, rather than how it's pronounced?

It made me really cross, because the story of the Pendle women deserves sympathy and understanding in the 21st century - not exploitation. There are now loads of people who will have watched that programme, who will think that the Most Haunted version of their story, and of the people they were, is the truth.