The book revolves around Eve, Tom and Clovis, but things get a little darker in their second adventure for three friends with a passion for paranormal investigations. Yvette said, “I think because some of the activity is based on me and I’ve witnessed it, that’s what makes it even more scary, for me anyway, writing it.”
A moment early in the book describes an account of a particularly violent haunted person who appears to have ties to one of London’s most notorious ex-residents. Yvette tells us about the moment when the assistant principal at a haunted school is injured by a ghost: “He gets burned and that’s something I witnessed on Most Haunted.”
At this point in the book, the ghost behind these horrific hauntings is unknown to the reader, but given the book’s title it should come as no surprise if it is confirmed to be the malevolent ghost of the infamous Jack the Ripper. In 2005, Yvette and the Most Haunted team went to London’s East End to look for the Ripper-related hauntings.
It’s not just demonic burn marks that haunt the fictional east London school that serves as the primary haunted location in The Ripper of Whitechapel, there’s also a moment when wet footprints appear in a corridor. The television ghost hunter experienced this herself during an investigation into the Queen Mary in California.
Recalling the eerie moment when the footprints appeared next to the historic ship’s basin, Yvette said, “I’ll never forget that night when we found those little wet footprints, children’s footprints.” She added, “I remember that all stunned, especially the parapsychologist.”
In the book, the ghost hunter children are guided on their first real quest by Eve’s uncle Rufus, a keen inventor who builds his own devices to communicate with the deceased. Some of these gadgets are based on Yvette’s own wishes and ideas for ghost hunting tools, such as B. a glowing knocking board that she would like to use in the real world. She said, “I’d love to find a toy maker or someone who can actually light up these letters.” This would mean that if a spirit knocked during a vigil, a glowing plaque would be able to spell a word.
In The Ripper of Whitechapel, Yvette writes about a ghost-hunting device based on the concept of an old Victorian ghost closet originally developed by the Davenport Brothers. Yvette told us about the origin of these cupboards, which were actually curtained boxes big enough to hide several people inside. She explained: “They used to start almost like a magic trick, so both men were sitting in this closet, but they were tied down. Her hands and legs were tied. And then they played like tambourines and trumpets in there. And then, lo and behold, the doors would close and they would hear the tambourine tremble or they would hear the trumpet blow.” The method became popular in the spiritist movement, says Yvette, “it’s proven to be a really useful tool.”
The second book in the series introduces us to a new character, Anwaar Saygh, a demonologist with Syrian roots. Yvette told us, “Saygh was my grandmother’s maiden name. So my grandmother was from Homs in Syria, which unfortunately was blown up, but I really wanted to include her and also my ancestors from that side of the family.”
Yvette not only introduces us to new characters in this book, but also to new locations. The kids soon learn from Uncle Rufus that they have the support of an organization called the Society of Paranormal Investigation, which is dedicated to investigating hauntings around the world and has its secret headquarters in an old abandoned London Underground station.
Yvette recalls visiting the same network herself for an episode of Most Haunted and a live special. She said: “It’s such a spooky, spooky place and when I describe how they went down to that kind of hidden world in that lost subway station and then kind of went through the tunnels, I remember how that felt felt.”
There is still work to be done by Eve, Tom and Clovis. Yvette has already written the third part of the series, which currently has the working title The Rise Of The Pendle Witches. Yvette confessed, “I think we’re all fascinated by witches, aren’t we?”
