HUNTING ghosts is not all about comical chases and masked crooks out to fool a bunch of kids - as TV cartoon character Scooby Doo would have us believe.

Nor is it all about paranormal investigations, the likes of which have fans of X-Files heroes Mulder and Scully gripping the edge of their seats.

But as Olive Howe and Irene Macleod - two of the most unlikely paranormal investigators you are likely to meet - have proved, the truth is out there, if you know where to look.

It was genealogy, rather than genius, which bore fruit from the pair's four-month search for evidence that the Darlington Railway Centre and Museum's ghost really existed.

The pair met as they attended genealogy classes while tracing their family trees.

Now they have used their skills to trawl archives and historical records and put together a book about the ghost story.

Olive, a volunteer at the museum, had long enjoyed visiting the centre and wanted to give something back.

"My granddaughter, several years ago, had asked me about the story of the ghost and I skirted around it," she said.

"So when I was looking for something to do in the museum, I thought I would take a look at the story of the ghost, find the real man and the man who saw his ghost, which was James Durham."

She enlisted the help of her friend and the pair used their skills to finally make all the pieces of the story fit together. With the dating of the story and the names, they had somewhere to start, which made it interesting to the ladies, who had no real interest in ghostly goings-on.

Irene said: "It was only because this ghost actually had a name and it was within recent history, comparatively speaking, he was findable if he existed. Usually it's grey ladies and monks and things."

The tale is bizarre in itself and has been well documented, even if some of the facts were distorted in time.

One such error was the belief that James Durham, the railway watchman apparently "punched" by the ghost of suicide victim Thomas Winter, was a Darlington man, buried in North Road cemetery in 1917.

However, as Olive, from Darlington, and Irene, from Bishop Auckland, observed, the date did not fit. A search through historical records found a second James Durham working in the town. He was from Aysgarth, North Yorkshire, and died in 1899.

And, having studied the 1850 census, an article by former Northern Echo editor W T Stead, a book by the paper's present assistant editor Chris Lloyd, and Darlington's archives, they headed to Durham University, and eventually discovered Winter's death certificate.

"That was an exciting day, because we actually found there was a Winter who had committed suicide at the station," said Irene.

That was one assumption which had stood the test of time, and proved correct, giving credence to the story.

Further investigations finalised the research and the booklet went on sale on Saturday, making an interesting document for people keen on learning about the town's history.

The booklet has been published and put on sale at the centre, priced £1.95, in aid of the museum