IN view of your report about the apparition in the Leeman Road underpass ("Tunnel Vision", October 22), and with Halloween coming up, this seems to be the perfect time for another chilling tale. For Leeman Road may have a second ghost.

It was recently proposed that St Barnabas School should be bulldozed to make way for a high profile development. When the consultants, paid by the owners, came to inspect the site, they encountered several strange phenomena.

The building has always been dry, healthy, and well-aired, but on this occasion a cold and watery ectoplasm materialised before their very eyes. Enough ectoplasm, in fact, to give the impression of terminal dampness.

Although the building is in magnificent shape, on inspection-day there appeared a ghastly vision: highly significant and dangerous structural cracks.

Strangest of all, legend has it that the ghost of a property developer walks the halls of St Barnabas. Some say that it is he who has cut neat sections of mortar away from under some of the ridge-tiles, in the hope that they will get blown off. Others say that he is responsible for the strange gap in the drainpipe near the main entrance, and for planting a lawn in one of the top gutters.

Are the members of the Diocesan Board, who own the school, aware of these ghostly goings-on? And will they arrange an exorcism before so much damage is done that one day the school really will have to be demolished?

Or perhaps they could simply invoke the patron saint of protection from bad weather: St Barnabas.

Mark Grahame,

Vanbrugh College,

York University,

Heslington, York.

Updated: 10:32 Friday, October 28, 2005