Hubble bubble, toil and trouble. It's the ghostliest time of the year as long-departed spirits traditionally prepare to make contact with loved ones as the "veil" linking the "other world" is at its thinnest for Halloween.

So how will our witches and pagans celebrate this Sunday?

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Sheppey psychic and top witch Charlotte Clark is planning a quiet ceremony in the back garden of her home in Minster after a busy diary.

The grandmother of seven - "they call me Nanny Witch" - spent last week being tailed by two reporters from The Sun newspaper as she probed the 500-year-old haunted Woolpack village pub at Coggeshall across the water in Essex.

On Tuesday she was due to be special guest on Heart FM's breakfast show being quizzed by Jamie Theakston and Amanda Holden. She's also expecting to be featured in the new edition of Closer magazine.

On Thursday she was at Lang's cocktail bar in Sittingbourne and this Friday she will be hosting a Halloween workshop and ghost walk at Queenborough's Flying Dutchman pub. Spirits of every kind seem to be a recurring theme.

She quipped: "I've been so busy. At this time of the year, everyone wants a witch. I'm so tired I'll fall off me blinking broomstick."

But she warned: "Witches aren’t just for Halloween, they are for always. There may be one in your street. You never know."

Charlotte, 58, who also goes by the name of The Lady of the Light, says she has been talking to "the other side" since a schoolgirl when spirits would wake her in her bedroom.

"My mum still doesn’t understand it but my nan and grandad were into it. And my great nan did it all the time and read tea leaves," she said.

“Going back a few hundred years we were persecuted. I know of places on the Island where mystical women were drowned or burnt at the stake. There’s a very old pond at Warden where this took place. If you venture there after dark it’s very spooky."

She ended up being taken to a spiritualist church where a medium spotted her hiding at the back of the hall and predicted she would return. She went on the run the place.

She has performed thousands of readings to friends and strangers and for a while was a regular TV medium on Sky’s Psychic Today.

Since being featured on Kent Online and her local newspaper the Sheerness Times Guardian two years ago casting spells and holding mysterious magical rites on the beach at Minster dressed in flowing robes, pointed hats and wielding broomsticks, she has been in demand with the media.

The 'witches of Eastchurch', as they were dubbed, turned up on ITV's This Morning with Holly Willoughby and Phil Schofield and cast a spell for snow at Christmas by hurling ice cubes into a cauldron of eerie mist.

She has held seances at the haunted Royal Hotel in Sheerness, and on Thursday, November 11, is organising a psychic Christmas gift fair at Minster Working Men's Club. It seems even ghosts like presents.

Charlotte added: “We are all white witches so we don’t do anything horrible. It’s not like you see on TV. We only use spells to help people. But sometimes I get some strange requests. A chap phoned the other day asking if I could magic up a woman for him.

"I told him I could only offer a love potion but he seemed most put out. He insisted: 'She's got to be blonde, busty and wearing stockings. And I want her for Friday.' I said I only do love spells. He thought for a minute and then said: 'I live with my dad. Could you turn him into a woman?' I put the phone down on him."

Another called to enquire if she could turn back time.

"Of course I can't," she replied. "You need a Tardis or a DeLorian for that."

Another chap asked for a potion to enlarge a certain part of his body. Her answer is probably best not repeated here.

Some of her fellow witches have fallen by the wayside as Covid lockdowns took their toll, which is why it's likely to be a quiet affair for Charlotte on October 31.

Sheppey witch Charlotte Clark at home

But she added: "There will be plenty of voices coming from the other side. I live in a house near the demolished former Sheppey General Hospital, workhouse and cemetery. I call it Spook Central."

At her side will be her trusty crystal ball, coloured 'spell candles', a deck of Tarot cards, a ouija board, a five-pointed star made by her daughter, a selection of 'magic' crystals for protection and a 'smudge stick' made of white sage.

"It's very good at cleansing a house but the problem is, it stinks!" she explained.

Hanging by her fireplace are not one but two broomsticks (made by a man in Sheerness, apparently) and what looks suspiciously like a stuffed crow.

Kent's pagans will also be celebrating Halloween which is the Sabbat of their Samhain festival.

Tony Stubley, 57, who goes by the name Albion Gray and is also from Sheppey, has been a pagan for 45 years and is the regional coordinator of the Pagan Federation for the ME postcode.

He said: "It is the time we remember and honour The Ancestors. It usually involves lighting candles and telling stories around fires about our departed family and friends and even pets, keeping their memories alive and letting them know they are revered and not forgotten."

Samhain is one of the two main Celtic fire festivals. The other is Beltane on May Day. They are when the 'veil' is said to be at it's thinnest and communication with the departed at it's strongest.

There are an estimated 700 pagans in Kent. Some, like the Maidstone group, will hold rituals at sacred sites such as Kits Coty, the Countless Stones, the White Horse Stone and the Coffin Stone. Paganism is recognised by the Home Office as an approved religion.

On Sheppey, Tony's circle will be having a meal and a remembrance ritual at one of their homes.

Tony, who presents the Monday Night Cult Rock Show on his local community radio station Sheppey FM, added: "Every other week I play a lot of Pagan-related music on it. I started off as a Wiccan but now follow an eclectic path mainly focussing on Norse and traditional witchcraft."

However you celebrate, it's likely to be a spell-binding time...

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