Crocanapple and the Paranormalist Files

We happened upon the Paranormalists files outside a pub in Dawlish in mid 2005. We had been enquiring after local tales with the aim to make a documentary about West Country eccentrics.

One particular old gentleman was brusque to the point of rudeness: he introduced himself as Plutarch Black, insisted that we bought him a "rum and shrub" (a disgusting concoction), muttered incomprehensibly about "it being time for the truth, not stories" and disappeared.

On leaving the pub we found a large cardboard box on the bonnet of our car. It contained documentation of an extraordinary sequence of events surrounding an organisation known as The Paranormalists. Formed by West Somerset schoolboys Hitchard Screening and Murray Black in 1982, the organisation experienced an unprecedented level of activity in the early nineties before ceasing all activities amid circumstances that are shrouded in mystery.

We decided immediately to dramatise these events and publish them on the Internet. This is what we found.

Crocanapple Productions January 2006

Rob Crouch
Mike Davis
Simon Whalley

Email The Paranormalists