This is definitely not a ghost hunt. I don’t believe in ghosts – but that doesn't mean I don’t find the prospect of coming face-to-face with a spectral figure faintly terrifying. I’m certainly not in the business of actively tempting the realm of the supernatural to reveal itself to me.

And yet, and yet. On a damp and breezy October morning I find myself alighting a train at Pluckley, reputed to be the most-haunted village in all the land. I’m headed for Dering Wood, a couple of miles from the village itself, which also goes by a more blood-chilling name: the ‘screaming woods’.

As I walk along the country roads from the railway station towards the ancient woodland, my rational, non-believing brain is in conflict with the wilder realms of my imagination. Look, I’ve seen my fair share of scary movies. If our protagonist is walking purposefully, alone, into the ‘screaming woods’, things tend not to end all that well.

I had used the train journey to Pluckley to conduct some light online research on the subject of Dering Wood and it provided ample fuel for my more fevered imaginings of what may be lying in wait. One website suggests there have been “many reports of people hearing terrifying screams” emerging from the trees. Another cheerily recounts how “many lone wayfarers who have come this way have been scared witless by a sudden loud, anguished scream”.

Thankfully – for my nerves – the website of the Woodland Trust, which manages this ancient habitat, makes no mention of tormented wails from souls trapped for eternity in the netherworld between this life and the next. Instead it’s all ‘rare flea beetle’ this, and ‘elusive hazel dormouse’ that. Perfectly enticing for fans of native fauna – less promising for those in search for a blood-curdling brush with chilling paranormal phenomena.

What is genuinely terrifying, however, is my insistence on navigating in the countryside using only a very vague digital map on my phone. Almost every walk I take out in the sticks leads me to promise I’ll invest in proper OS maps. I never do. And this is how I find myself being torn at by brambles as I fight my way, in the most undignified manner imaginable, through a thicket in search of the footpath I appear to have wandered from. Less ‘screaming’, more ‘swearing like a docker’.

Back on track with only a few visible scratches, it’s not long before I reach the stile that will take me into the trees. According to the Woodland Trust, Dering Wood has been continually wooded since at least the early medieval period and is mentioned in the Domesday Book. That’s a lot of history – a lot of time in which people could have been meeting unfortunate and grisly ends within the woods.

I have to admit there is something slightly eerie about my first steps through the trees. Despite my enduring scepticism about the supernatural, my senses are definitely heightened. Every sudden bird call or sound of creaking or cracking in the undergrowth feels amplified. Do I really believe Dering Wood is haunted? No. Would I want to spend a night alone in the woods? Absolutely not. There’s a reason European folklore leans so heavily on tales of strange and terrible goings-on deep in the forest, and that cultural baggage still weighs heavily on the imagination.

The truth is, as the families and dog walkers I cross paths with could testify, these woods are – at least in the autumnal light of midday – a delightful place to get a little lost in nature. The most frightening part of my walk is navigating the deep, boggy puddles which had appeared after the morning’s downpours. Ghost hunters, remember those wellies!

I emerge on the other side of the woods with thoughts of a stop for lunch. The obvious place to look would be Pluckley itself, but my interest is piqued by The Rose and Crown at Mundy Bois, a short walk north of Dering Wood. I’m definitely of the mind that if rural pubs in properly out-of-the-way places are surviving when so many boozers are shutting their doors for good then they must be doing something right.

The Rose and Crown seems to be doing a healthy lunchtime trade as I make my way to the bar shortly before 1pm and enquire about food. I am shown a table by an incredibly cheery and welcoming barmaid and soon furnished with a pint of Sussex Best and a hearty fish goujon roll, accompanied by some proper chunky chips.

In a stroke of luck, my table is immediately below a decent, if a little dated, map of the countryside outside Ashford. Given my earlier navigational issues, I’m tempted to make an offer for it, frame and all. But I settle for cross-referencing my planned route east towards Pluckley before sinking the last of my pint and heading off across the fields.

The route heads slightly upwards, gradually giving me a wide-reaching view back across the woods after crossing the site of the First World War Pluckley airfield. After traversing a field of sheep, who seem rather nonplussed by my sudden, uninvited presence in their midst, I find myself all of a sudden emerging in the centre of Pluckley, the most-haunted real estate in Britain.

Any trepidation ahead of my wander through the ‘screaming woods’ has well and truly evaporated and bold as brass I’m straight into the churchyard of St Nicholas, as good as goading the spirit world to come and do its worst. But no such luck. Neither of the two ghostly women – or the small white dog – said to haunt this spot reveal themselves. I remain distinctly untroubled by the supernatural – vastly more haunted by the prospect of missing my train home.

So I take myself off back down the hill to the station – sceptical as ever, but charmed by this quite lovely corner of the county.