‘We moved into a haunted house once rented by Benedict Cumberbatch’

Ahmed said the family had undergone two very stressful events before they lived in The Aviaries – divorce and moving house – which could have affected their perception, although she did not deny the truth of their experience.

“It sounds genuinely terrifying and this is something that feels real to the family; it’s something that they’ve lived with and it certainly has transformed them.

“I’m not sure I would see it as a haunting. I think there are lots of things that could be happening,” she said.

“Even if you move house for a happy reason, it’s very, very stressful on the brain and body, and they are trying to make sense of that.

“If somebody’s had something that’s quite negative on top of that, it touches on and almost triggers that negative energy and feelings that they’re trying to escape from.

“It then becomes something that we call emotional contagion – this begins to transfer from one member of the family to another, without people even realising that this is what’s happening,” she said.