One day left for Halloween competition!

For details of this simple-to-enter competition, read here.

Great Halloween competition - one week left!

That's right - only one week left to enter our great Halloween competition. Here's your chance to win a collectible, original piece of artwork from a top UK comics artist.

In fact, there's the prize in front of you now. Imagine holding in your sweaty hands the original, intricate A3 drawing of the above illustration, signed personally to you by the two men themselves (but not a ghost).

All you have to do is answer one simple question. More details here.

And while you're thinking of the answer, have a listen to Mike Kazybrid's lengthy interview this week with Rony Robinson on Radio Sheffield. Mike can be heard here, about 2 hours, 20 minutes in, and the file is available to listen again till 28th October.

(This competition is not open to friends, employees or relatives of the ghost.)

'I've seen a ghost!' (by Julie Blount)

Last month, during one of our appearances on Radio Sheffield, we bumped into Julie Blount. (Sorry, Julie! Hope the coffee stain has washed out by now.) Julie is a stand-up comedienne at night - watch out for her on the Sheffield circuit - but by the day she runs an excellent marketing company which can be found here. Julie has very kindly agreed to share a personal ghost story with us:

I thought I would tell you about a ghostly tale from my younger years ... it is true ... I used to be young.

Well, I was married at the time (yes, it's true, I used to be married) to an annoying chap, but we won't go there. Well, it was early in the morning and I was alone in the house. I was finishing off my last few scraps of breakfast (yes, it's true, I used to eat scraps for breakfast) and it was during the final slurp of tea that I turned around to look in the living room.

As I turned, I saw a figure pass from one side of the room to the other. This figure wore a blue uniform and hat ... don't know what the uniform was, but the hat was a box type without a peak. The colour was more of an electric blue and the outline extremely realistic ... it could have been someone actually walking in my house. I don't know where the figure started walking from, but it finished going through the wall which would lead to the outside of the house.

Strange thing was that as I looked at it I didn't think anything of it. I fully realised it was inside the house, but after it disappeared I simply went to work. Then, at about ten o' clock as I drank yet another cup of tea in my unauthorised break at work, I started to shake a bit, declaring: 'I've seen a ghost!'

My colleagues were intrigued and looked around the office to see where it was.

'NO!' I said creepily. 'It was this morning before I set out to work!'

'Right!" came their cynical response as they sniffed suspectingly at said tea. No matter how I tried to convince them, my colleagues were loathe to believe.

I have no idea why it took me a few hours to actually realise what was going on. Needless to say, I moved very shortly afterwards and never felt relaxed in that house again.

Now, some 20 odd years on, I just wish I could've offered him a cup of tea ... thirsty work I reckon this wall walking.

The wit and wisdom of Reggie Droppings

Huge Halloween competition - win a unique cartoon, personally signed to you!

Okay. We promised it, and now here it is. Yes, it's ... definite proof of ghosts!

Well, not quite. We're almost there, but in the meantime, to reward all good readers of our blog, here's a Halloween competition with a very special prize indeed.

1. The question - A mask based on a famous sci-fi actor was turned inside out in order to become the villain of the movie, Halloween - who was that famous sci-fi actor?

2. The email address - Send your answer to our brand new email address: twomenandaghost@hotmail.com

The deadline is the night of 1st November, the day after Halloween. On 2nd November we will print out all the correct emails, try to cram them all into Mike's special ghost hunting hat, then pick out just one to win our unique, collectable prize, which is...

3. The prize - an original pen and ink cartoon of those fearless seekers of the para-abnormal, 'Two Men and a Ghost' (aka 2MG). This will be produced on art paper, size A3, and will be mailed to the winner's address. It will be personally signed (with your name on it) by 2MG creators Mike Kazybrid and Andrew Wooding.

Just to give you an idea of how prestigious this original cartoon will be:

Artist Mychailo 'Mike' Kazybrid has worked in the cartoon and comic book industry since 1975. His portfolio includes artwork for countless licensed characters ranging from Wallace & Gromit, Shaun the Sheep, The Tick, Count Duckula and DangerMouse to name but a small few. He has been a featured guest at a number of Transformers conventions, and UK comics luminary Dez Skinn (former editorial director of Marvel UK and editor of Comics International) says of him in the book Comic Art Now: '...his detailed pensmanship on his backgrounds is little short of 19th century engravings, and in stark contrast with the foreground hero...'

This is a one-of-its kind prize and sure to be sought after. It'll look great on your mantelpiece!

Go on. Name that mask and win that prize. Email your answer now to: twomenandaghost@hotmail.com

And while you're at it, tell us what you think of us.

On second thoughts, maybe not...

Competition coming soon...

For those of you who listen to the excellent The Paul and Spike Show - broadcast weekly over the airwaves by radio six international then made available as an extended podcast on iTunes - you'll be expecting a very special Halloween competition right here on this very blog.

Rest assured, it is coming soon. It'll be here sometime this weekend, just as soon as we've polished to perfection the unique, special prize, fine-tuned the wording of the challenging competition question, and ... er ... been to the toilet a few times, picked our noses and watched a few movies.

In the meantime, you could do worse than read our third mention (no less) by Martin Dawes in The Star newspaper in Sheffield - check it out here. Thanks, Martin!

You can also listen to us on the latest edition of The Paul and Spike Show. We're 22 minutes in (ish) ... but the rest of the show's quite good as well! Also, big thanks to the good folks at radio six international who will be running promos for our competition all the way through October.

The Paul And Spike Show: Friday October 9th, 2009.


Click here to download the show mp3.

And click here to subscribe to the Paul And Spike Show, using iTunes or any feedreader.

The 2MG team discover … appliances! (by Andrew Wooding, with a bit of Mike at the end)

Our previous nocturnal excursion to Graves Park in Sheffield had been anti-climactic, to say the least. You can read about it here. The aim was to check out the boating lake where two dejected ladies had drowned themselves independently of each other … then subsequently popped up in people’s snapshots wearing Victorian dresses (as you do).

It sounded like a promising evening of ghost hunting, except it took us over an hour to find Graves Park, and when we finally got there, we couldn’t locate the bloody boating lake! It was pitch black in there, and the light from our mobile phones and iPods did little to illuminate the way.

But good things can come from bad, as they say, and the whole sad experience has forced us to rethink our methods. Two weeks later we have bounced back fighting fit, armed with a surefire strategy that will take us to the next level … appliances!

Turns out that all self-respecting ghost hunting teams worth their salt go forth armed with gadgets and gizmos to aid them in their quest. Ultra-sensitive recording equipment. Finely-adjusted cameras. Radiation detectors and the like. All sorts of technological wizardry, with the single aim of proving to the world that ghosts are more than just pygmies of our imaginations.

Mike and I don’t have much of a budget yet (for some reason, Sheffield Council have declined our request to fund our vital scientific experiments), but we’re proud of our very first dip into the metaphorical pond of paranormal paraphernalia.

For our return visit to Graves Park, we each took a ‘para-luminator’ (mine was a torch from Poundland; Mike’s was one of those wind-up non-electrical torches that doesn't need batteries), and we shared a handy ‘moisture manipulator’ (a fold-up umbrella from Oxfam down the road).

Turns out the moisture manipulator was a must – it was chucking it down this evening. And the para-luminators meant that we stumbled across the boating lake within minutes … although it was a little off-putting hearing Mike whizzing his para-luminator round like a egg whisk each time he felt like shedding some light on things.

Plodding towards the boating lake, I could have sworn I saw the outline of a giraffe. It was dark, it was raining, and my glasses were drenched, but it was undeniably a giraffe. Could we have found the first reported case of a spectral safari animal? I pointed it out to Mike, and since the batteries in my torch had already run out of juice (good old Poundland), Mike obliged by powering up his para-luminator.

Whizz! Whoosh! Whirr! (This should be good for at least ten seconds of light.)

It wasn’t long before Mike’s para-luminator revealed that what I was seeing was indeed a jungle creature of the long-necked variety. But it wasn’t a ghostly giraffe. It was flat and cut out of wood and turned out to be part of a jungle-themed play area for kiddies. Ah well. Like so many of our potential ghost discoveries … so near, and yet so far. It makes you think, doesn’t it?

The best thing I can say about the boating lake was … we didn’t fall in. The path winding round it was dark and slippery, and that can of Irn-Bru I’d imbibed an hour before was getting to my head.

We walked round the lake once … didn’t see a ghost. We walked round the lake again … still didn’t see a ghost. We walked round the lake a third time … guess what? Our optical perception of a watery ghoul was still most firmly in the negative.

On the way out of the park, though, I received my biggest fright since we started this ghost hunting lark: a blood-curdling high-pitched scream that chilled us both to the very bone.

Mike did his powering up again…

(frenzied egg whisk sounds)

…and the resultant beam of light revealed that the shriek originated from a nearby peacock. Maybe the poor thing had been frightened (like us) by the imposing silhouette of a fake wooden giraffe.

Folding the moisture manipulator away so that we could consume a bag of Monster Munch in Mike’s car, we resolved to be armed with even more ghostly gadgets on our next foray into night-time Sheffield.

Helpfully, Mike emailed me the next day with his proposal for further appliances. Considering our lack of funds, we have to be realistic about what we can afford. But I think this list looks promising. What do you think?

Professional teams' appliances

Table tipping
Automatic writing experiments
Trigger objects
Motion detectors
EMF meters
K2 meter
White noise experiments
EVP recorders
Lone vigil


2MG's appliances

Chair wobbling
A pen
Tigger toys
Prunes
An 'AA' battery
K9 model of Doctor Who's dog
Blow up paper bag and burst it
Wooden recorders and odd flute
Lonely Scott, John, Alan and Gordon Tracy

The wit and wisdom of Reggie Droppings

2MG (short for 'Two Men and a Ghost') is pleased to present the first of a semi-regular feature on this august blog, collecting (exclusively here) the pithy yet profound sayings of our colleague and mentor, Sir Reginald Droppings (Reggie to his friends).

You won't find sayings any pithier than these ... we are proud to take his pith and post it for all to see.

More sayings to come, once we've managed to retrieve them from the circular metal receptacle on the floor of our office.