Mark was born right at the very start of the so called 'swinging 60s', but the only swinging he ever did was from a rope hanging from a branch of an old oak tree, at the bottom of his garden! He was fortunate enough to be raised in the beautiful rural Tillingbourne Valley, in Surrey, in the south east of England. As a young lad, his Mum and Dad read him bedtime stories, and these included the likes of Enid Blyton's 'Famous Five' books, Capt. W.E. John's 'Biggles' series, and the Arabian tales of 'Ali Baba'. But one night in the mid-sixties, his Dad told his son a personal ghost story that would change his life. He told him of a creepy encounter that he had had with a 'glittery man' riding a bicycle, the terrifying apparition of a gunpowder worker, close to an old gunpowder works! That night Mark couldn't get the image of the ghostly gunpowder worker out of his head. His Dad's spooky story had, quite unintentionally, sent Mark off on a long, creepy, dark, winding road, and onto a road on which he still likes to travel. Mark began to read every ghost story that he could get his hands on, regularly coming away from Guildford library with a bag full of ghost story collections. The 'Biggles' books were consigned to the past, and he moved on to stories by writers such as M.R. James, H.P. Lovecraft and W.W. Jacobs. There is an old maxim that says 'if you take an interest in the paranormal, it will take an interest in you', and that has certainly been the case for Mark. He began to experience his own strange events in his home, the surrounding countryside, and even while on holiday many miles away. As he matured, his reading matter expanded to include books about U.F.O.s, time travel, and other mysteries, by authors such as Colin Wilson, Michael Williams, and Brad Steiger. He bought his first property in 1983, and in that flat, and in every home that he has lived in since, (all over England), from Surrey, up to Northumberland, and down to Cornwall, the weirdness has followed him around like an obsessed stalker, leading Mark to believe that another old maxim may be true too, the one that says 'people are haunted, not places'! Mark's personal experiences in this book begin with that scary tale that got his 'Weird World' started, his Dad's chilling 'Gunpowder Ghost' story. The stories that follow it are in an approximate chronological order, beginning with his early boyhood spooky experiences in rural Surrey, and eventually reaching down to Cornwall, where he currently resides. But most of the short stories can be read separately, so you can, if you wish, just randomly dip into the book at any place. When Mark isn't writing, he still loves to read books about the paranormal, and the esoteric. In recent months he has been reading books by researchers like Jacques Vallee, John Keel, and Robbie Graham, and also good old fashioned ghost stories collected by the author Steve Stockton. Mark likes to keep up to date with the cutting edge of research in the paranormal world, and he relaxes by listening to interesting researchers like David Paulides and David Weatherly on paranormal podcasts, or by talking about paranormal subjects with his very knowledgeable friend Derek Thomas, or anybody else that is on a similar wave-length! Mark would like you to know that he does other 'stuff' too, his life isn't all paranormally orientated! He can be quite 'normal' too! He plays finger-style acoustic guitar, he listens to many different genres of music, (but admits to being slightly addicted to the music of Mike Nesmith). He walks in local woods, and on Bodmin Moor with his dog. He reads lots of biographies, he rides his bike down country lanes, he does a bit of gardening, and he still goes fishing on the Tillingbourne occasionally! He is currently working on a collection of witness testimonies to strange paranormal phenomena in Cornwall, which h