MJ Wayland
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MJ Wayland

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MJ Wayland is a British ghost researcher, historian and author of the 50 Real Ghost Stories series. An active investigator since 1988, he traces reported hauntings back to their earliest accounts, working from period newspapers, court records and parish registers, much of it never digitised. That work has brought to light cases that had never been published before, and a long-running argument about why particular places become haunted.

His books include 50 Real Ghost Stories (2011) and 50 Real American Ghost Stories (2013), both regular Top 10 paranormal titles on Amazon at Halloween and Christmas. A new series, American Strange, covers the United States place by place, from hauntings to weird history and unsolved crime.

Since 1995 he has provided consultancy for television, film and theatre, with film credits including The Quiet Ones, The Awakening and The Conjuring 2. Across more than two hundred programmes, documentaries, radio shows and podcasts, he has appeared in or consulted on Most Haunted, Ghost Adventures, Ghost Hunters International and Coast to Coast AM. He edited Mysterymag from 1998 to 2013, and his research has been published in the Daily Mail, the Daily Telegraph, the Guardian, the Sun and the Mirror. Lecture invitations have taken him to universities and festivals in the UK and abroad, including The Sunday Times Literature Festival, where he appeared alongside Professor Bruce Hood.

Wayland founded Mary King's Ghost Fest in Edinburgh and programmed the fourteen-day Oxford Castle Ghost Fest in 2009 and 2010. Investigations he has organised include Warwick Castle, the Tower of London and Harewood House.

His interest in ghosts began in childhood, after reading Valerie Salim's Ghost Hunter's Guide to Sheffield. The book sent him to the Sheffield Archives to look for older, unrecorded hauntings. He joined research societies in his early teens and has since researched cases from British castles to the graveyards of New Orleans.
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