IT'S not a question of whether we have a ghost at St Michael's, but of how many.

I was phoned up one morning by the Secretary of Zion College, an old theological library near the City Temple. He said: "I've come across a large photograph of one of your predecessors. Rather a fine portrait it is too. Would you like to come and collect it?" So I went and picked up the picture, which was indeed very handsome: the picture of The Rev John Henry Joshua Ellison who was Rector of St Michael's in the early part of the 20th century. I fixed it to the wall in the vestry.

The following Sunday at the parish Communion I was standing at the high altar leading the prayers when suddenly there arose the most furious banging and clattering from the south west corner of the nave. I thought at first it must be an unruly child throwing a tantrum.

After a few minutes the noise ceased and I thought no more about it, but at the end of the service all the congregation were agog. Everyone had heard it - you couldn't help hearing such a loud commotion. And there were no small children in church that morning.

One man in particular, a very level-headed chap, an engineer, was seriously frightened. He was trembling even as he told me what he had experienced: "It was happening in my pew - as if someone was stamping his feet angrily or kicking the woodwork. The whole pew was shaking for three or four minutes". It was then that the parish clerk came forward and said: "I think I know what it was all about...

"Some years ago I was laying out the altar cloth one morning for the service. I noticed a clergyman walking purposefully up the south aisle towards the vestry. Anyhow, I walked out of the sanctuary to meet him. He walked through the door - which I always keep locked - and into the vestry. I rubbed my eyes. I thought I was seeing things. But when I opened the vestry door and went inside, there was no one there.

"I asked older members of the congregation if they had any idea who the ghostly parson might be. From my description of a balding man with an oval face and side whiskers, they told me the figure most resembled a Father Ellison who had been Rector 20 years or more ago.

"A few years after this, we were planning to celebrate the centenary of our association with London Electricity and I was asked to try to arrange for a bishop to come and preach at their annual service. By good fortune, I managed to persuade the then Bishop of London, Dr Gerald Ellison, to come. A month before the service was due to take place, I was at the high altar again when I saw the same ghostly figure - walking swiftly this time, as if a little late, towards the vestry. I ran round to intercept him, but he just vanished.

"Strange that this apparition of Father Ellison should have turned up - if indeed that is who it was - just a few weeks before his son was booked to preach for us. I told the bishop about the visitation and described the ghostly visitor in as much detail as I could recall. The bishop was most shaken by what I told him and he said, 'That's Pa all right. I wonder why he should still be here? I'll pray for him'.

"If a prayer for peace and rest was what was required, then it must have worked for I never saw the apparition again." The parish clerk gave me a severe look: "Except you've gone and put his picture up in the vestry, haven't you? I bet that's what stirred the old boy up and made him rattle the pews!"

*Peter Mullen is Rector of St Michael's, Cornhill, in the City of London, and Chaplain to the Stock Exchange.