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JASON Love has been dealing with paranormal activity for 24 years, working on over 847 cases across the UK, Europe and USA. The story of the poltergeist attack in South Lanarkshire caught his eye due to the officials involved, saying: "The testimonies from the police strengthens the case that this was poltergeist activity."

Working in his job as a psychiatric nurse, Jason knows that many of these incidents can be caused by medications. When he is asked to investigate activity - which he does free of charge - it is one of the first questions he asks.

"The first thing I usually check for is physical or mental activities in the background, to see if there's a history of psychiatry involved. There are quite a lot of medications which can make you hallucinate."

This is one of the three main types of activities Jason has found, saying: "If you have a parent who says they're hearing and seeing things, soon the child will pick up on that and begin to 'feel' these things too. The first thing I do at a property is check if it could be caused by natural reasons first.

"The second is a residual energy. This is when visual ghosts actually manifest on the property and are usually connected to the house or the land. It could be that the property was built on an old graveyard, battlefield or even a convent.

"The last is human based - connected to one person and feeding off their energy. In this case you have to think outside the box, especially if there's a young person involved. It could be from physical, mental or sexual abuse which creates this vortex of negative energy that a poltergeist feeds off."

In fact, Jason said that children are the biggest reason for poltergeist activity.

"One of the most common triggers for this sort of activity is children in their early teens. Manifestations tend to be triggered most by prepubescent or teens going through puberty, because they are giving off the purest life energy.

"This is the life force which feeds poltergeists. It's the most typical background as to why this activity exists. It is very rare to come across a case where there aren't children involved."

Jason has a ritual which he carries out to cleanse the affected properties, which is very similar to an exorcism which is carried out by the Catholic church.

"The Church is very limited in what they do to help. They will send priests to give blessings. I've seen cases where things are thrown at the priest and they'll still walk away. There is a stigma attached to the Church, with how much they're willing to help.

"I have my own procedure that I carry out. It is a form of blessing, but much more potent. It's technically a minor rite of exorcism - minor because I'm not ordained. But it is very similar to a Catholic exorcism. I invoke St Michael and St Benedict to draw out whatever is in the house so I can then banish them. It is roughly a 15 minute procedure, where I walk from each room in the house to bless them until they are clean."

Much like the Rutherglen family, the incidents are generally quite mild. But Jason said there have been a handful of violent infestations.

"I have worked on some very violent cases - you know the expression 'could cut the tension with a knife'? There have been some cases where the energy is that heavy. On cases like that I take a small team of photographers and videographers with me, that I have worked with for years. It's good to capture evidence so we can use it as research later. We use digital cameras and infrared to capture the residual energy."

So should you be scared? Jason thinks probably not.

"It is more common than you would think - I'm contacted on an almost weekly basis. Sometimes people will contact me and they decide they can just live with it, or it dies off. Most cases are not really severe - it is very rare to get anything violent."