The former Blaenavon vicar who deals in the supernatural

Reverend Dr Jason Bray was the Vicar of the Parish of Blaenavon with Capel Newydd for 13 years, before moving six years ago to become the Vicar of St Giles' Parish Church in Wrexham.

However, Rev Bray has an unusual sideline of work through the church - as a specially ordained minister who can help people who feel they may be haunted, cursed or possessed.

Rev Bray has now written a book - Deliverance - on his time as a deliverance minister.

"To some extent it was an opportunity to get the story straight," he said. "There’s a lot of public interest in this sort of thing and there’s a lot of myths.

"A lot of people have watched films like The Exorcist and think it’s like that. What a lot of people do not know is the church has specialised ministers who go out to advise on the paranormal."

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When asked if the existence of ghosts contradicts Christian teachings, Rev Bray said: "The fact that they still continue to appoint people like me suggests there is some wriggle room, and that the church doesn’t have any concerns about it.

"We deal with church anomalies."

Rev Bray became a deliverance minister while working in the Diocese of Monmouth.

"When I was a curate, we lived in a house that was freezing," he said. "It had been empty for 18 months, so we just assumed that was just the way it was.

"We moved in at the end of July and it was still dark and damp. It never really got any better.

"We tested the radiators like you do, and although one was faulty, it wasn’t in the same area. Our first child was born just after we moved into the house. His room was always cold. It was icy. We thought it might be because his room had two external walls, but it was too cold for that.

"It was draughty in the house and we couldn’t work out why.

"The following summer we had a couple of experiences.

"My wife is really level headed. I’d gone away on a residential course. When I got back, she said it had been absolutely freezing, especially by our son’s cot. She had actually brought him in to sleep in our bed as she was worried he’d catch hypothermia.

"A couple of nights later, I was going to bed. I was stood at the bathroom door and it was like there was someone standing on the other side of the door. He was about my size and wearing a wooden mask. When I opened the door there was nobody there.

"My wife and I had a conversation and decided we needed to go to the local priest.

"He was really good. He listened, took me seriously, and was particularly concerned that we had experienced these things around my son’s cot.

"He came out to our house the following day. He used holy water and said prayers. We then gathered in the living room and said the Lord’s Prayer, and suddenly it felt quite nice.

"Friends of ours said they didn’t like coming to ours before as it was really spooky.

"In a sense, I wanted to find out a little bit about what had happened there.

"The training focuses hugely on psychiatry. If you are going to be dealing with people in a quite distressed state, you need to know what you are going to have to deal with.

"It’s not actually that much training on the paranormal, it’s expected that you’ve done a bit of research on that yourself.

"A lot of people ask you to exorcise demons, but to do that you have to be absolutely sure what you are dealing with is demonic.

"To show how rare that is, I’ve never had to perform an exorcism in my more than 20 years as a deliverance minister.

"It’s why we call ourselves deliverance ministers rather than exorcists."

Rev Bray said that instead of the Hollywood idea of an exorcist, or the idea of grabbing a proton pack on the way to a call out, the job involved a lot more of a human role.

“A lot of what we do is deal with people who think they have had paranormal experiences," he said. "We then deal with others, such as medical professionals, to help these people in the best way we can.

“We always go in and we’ll say a prayer and splash holy water on the walls or the affected area, but sometimes you come out and say they need to phone their GP or check their medication.

“Our job is to provide reassurance and to find the best way to help them.”

Rev Bray added that if people were concerned about any paranormal activities, they should speak to about it with their local vicar.

Deliverance is out now.