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A GHOST-HUNTING vicar has lifted the lid on Wales’ haunted hotspots – and claimed the nation is the UK’s most haunted.

The Rev Lionel Fanthorpe, a judo black-belt, motorcycling, ex-headteacher has been tracking paranormal mysteries since his retirement.

And now the colourful Fortean Times presenter, from Cardiff, is set to address a cultural debate about his findings.

Most recently, clues have led him to Stratford-upon-Avon where he is trying to uncover fresh mysteries for a new TV show.

Fanthorpe moved to Wales in 1979 and has had a number of strange encounters.

He has spent time on the trail of a sea monster in Pembroke Dock, a monarch’s mistress in Haverfordwest and a Nazi deputy back from the dead.

“I would say Wales has a disproportionate amount of incidents,” he told Wales on Sunday.

“Welsh friends and Welsh mediums seem to have this highly-developed spiritual sense, a high intelligence and sensitivity – it’s a perceptiveness and degree of awareness that you don’t find in other parts of the UK.

“It may well be something inherent, something in the genes of Welsh people that carries this extra power and extra awareness with so many spiritual phenomena.”

Reported phenomena have seen Fanthorpe investigate Roch Castle in Haverfordwest where Charles II’s mistress Lucy Barlow has been seen floating through the rooms.

Elsewhere a number of “credible witnesses” have testified to seeing a Nessie-style monster swimming in Pembroke Dock after an initial sighting from the nearby Shipwright pub.

Meanwhile, Fanthorpe said Rudolf Hess wanders the Skirrid mountain near Abergavenny after his stay in the Maindiff Court Military Hospital after he was taken as a prisoner of war.

Fanthorpe, from Roath, also gets four or five calls a year asking him to exorcise spirits making a nuisance of themselves round the house.

He added: “There was a case in Splott in Cardiff where the house was divided into an upper and lower flat and there were two young tenants living there, each of them had a young family.

“They would go shopping together and when they came back they would see the outline in the upstairs flat of an old woman in Victorian cape and bonnet. As they went up to investigate, they would hear knocking noises from downstairs.

Fanthorpe is guest speaker at an Institute of Welsh Affairs debate entitled Unsolved Mysteries of Wales on Tuesday at Cardiff’s Chapter Arts Centre