A FORMER lawyer cast aside her briefcase and took up the pen after receiving advice on bringing up her firstborn child from her dead mother. Born in Belfast and brought up in Northern Ireland, Rosemary Furber escaped the troubles' by reading law and moving to England.

But in her heart she was always a writer and a couple of spooky experiences were all it took to give her the excuse to pack up her day job and follow her dreams.

The first encounter came soon after her first child, Elizabeth, was born around 20 years ago.

She said: "When she was three months old, my mother died of cancer and for about the next six months I could hear her in my head giving me advice about looking after the baby.

"Then one day, I was in the garden with Elizabeth and I could clearly hear my mother say that's fine' I never heard from her again."

The next encounter with the supernatural came when Furber was with her youngest son Charlie in the family house in Westcombe Park.

Charlie was about four weeks old when she became aware of something at the foot of her bed at night.

She said: "To begin with, it was nothing more than a sensation but I had the distinct feeling when I woke up to feed the baby an old woman was sitting in a chair watching me, in a place where we had no chair."

She dismissed it but gradually the feeling grew and the lady grew clearer she had her arms crossed and wore long, dark Victorian clothing and a bonnet.

"As she grew clearer, so did the sense she was anything but benign," said Furber.

"One night I had a sharp sense she wanted the baby. I put all the lights on immediately and moved myself and the baby out of the room and we slept next door from then on."

Later, when Furber started work on her first book, What You See Is What You Get, she set up her study in that same room and soon began to get the feeling she was not alone once more.

"One evening I looked up from the computer and there she was in the corner again," she said.

She asked Charlie to set up his drum kit in the corner.

"He bashed out his favourite rhythms for a couple of hours and this did the trick! We haven't seen her since.

"It has made me wonder if there are more things in the world than science can explain not yet anyway."

Furber has drawn upon that creepy feeling throughout What You See Is What You Get, which was published last Thursday by Wolfhound Press at a launch party at Ottakar's, Church Street, Greenwich.

The book, set in Greenwich and Blackheath, follows the experiences of Tim, very much the young scientist, who finds himself the subject of unwelcome attention from a malicious medieval monk.