An Abergavenny man claims he has boldly gone where no Beatles fan has gone before and summoned up the spirit of John Lennon during an arcane ceremony in a New York hotel room.

“It was touch and go trying to persuade him to manifest in this realm at first,” explained semi-paranormal investigator Johnny Turnip.

“You know what scousers can be like at the best of times. A bit awkward and surly. But as soon as we mentioned the word pot, he arrived on the scene like a being of pure light!’

Turnip told the Chronicle that he was forced to carry out an occult ceremony and summon the spirit of the dead legend on the advice of F. Scott Fitzgerald.”

“It’s been a mad 24 hours!” Explained Turnip. “I didn’t know who the Fitz was, but it turns out he’s also dead and used to write a lot of famous books.

“It was him that told us that Lennon was our only hope of finding Potato Creek Johnny’s pot of fairy gold. But the invocation was a complicated affair. The Fitz didn’t seem to know too much about it.

“When we asked him what we had to chant or if we needed incense sticks or anything like that, he just shrugged and said, ‘How in darnation should I know. I’m just a writer. My role is to simply observe and bring order to the chaos. Besides, the paranormal is not my genre, baby! I may be dead, but I know next to nothing about the supernatural. You fellas are on your own with this witchy stuff. What do I look like, Edgar Allen Poe?’”

Turnip explained that when he had finished telling them off, out of nowhere, a mysterious doorway with what looked like green mist coming out of it mysteriously appeared behind Fitzgerald. The dead writer then drained his Gin Rickey in one gulp, discard the empty glass, sighed, and announced, “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

But just before Fitz stepped through the door into the hallways of always, he turned back and said, “Good luck in finding the gold fellas. The world always needs a little bit of magic. I’m off to be reborn, but if I pass John in the ether, I’ll let him know you’re looking for him.’”

“And with that, he was gone!” Explained Turnip. “Vanished in a puff of green smoke. A bit like that witch Grotbags who used to be on that TV show with Rod Hull and Emu. Terrible time for children’s entertainment back then. No wonder we all took drugs when we grew up.”

Turnip told the Chronicle that after a quick Google search on what you’d need to hold a seance, they prepared to reach out to infinity in search of John Lennon.

“Apparently, if you had several people, a quiet and dim space, and maybe a medium who knew what they were doing, you could create a connection with the spirit world,” explained Turnip.

“Well, we had the bodies, Big Tony drew the curtains, and although I’m not technically a professional medium, I have dabbled. I was confident I could break on through to the other side and grill Lennon on what he knows about the fairy gold.”

Turnip added, “After we had cleared a space on the floor and Puerto Rico Paul had drawn a huge magic circle with the pink neon permanent marker he carries everywhere to deface billboards and public notices with, we had a massive row about whether we needed to sit inside or outside the circle of power.

“Because Puerto Rico Paul’s mother is a witch, and he had once read a book by Aleister Crowley when he was a teenager, he started acting like the authority on seances and insisted we needed to sit outside the circle. Whereas I was of the opinion that if we were outside of the circle, we could trap whatever we conjured forth within.

“‘Look, you absolute bellends!’ He said. ‘The purpose of the circle of power is to protect the magi who are doing the summoning from the demonic entities that lurk in other dimensions.

“If one of those bad boys gets through instead of John, they’ll see us as the green-gilled apprentice summoners we are, before turning us inside out and swallowing our souls. However, if we bind them from within a position of strength within the circle of power, they will have no power or authority in our domain.’

“‘All sounds a bit backwards to me,’ Said Big Tony, who had taken to drinking straight from one of the bottles of gin. ‘I’m not about to sit in a magic circle and chant like some dickhead from the nerd herd and hope that a dead Beatle instead of something foul with horns turns up. This is a new low, JT, even for you!’

“‘There’s no place for cynics here!’ I warned Big Tony. ‘After all the things we’ve dared to dream and experience together, and yet you still doubt me? Take my hand Tone’ I urged the big guy.

“As I held out my hand and Tony’s unsightly sausage fingers slowly embraced mine, I winked and said, ‘Attaboy! When we go into the mystic, we go as a team. Now who is with me?’

“‘We stand as one!’ Roared Big Tony. Who can always be won over with a bit of male bonding tactics.”

Turnip added, “Purely because his mother is a well-respected figure witch in Abergavenny, I opted to concede to Puerto Rico Paul’s idea to cast our spells of summoning from within the circle of power rather than outside, and as we took our places on the floor with quite a concerning amount of huffing and puffing, we were finally ready to connect with the infinite.”

“Except!” Explained Turnip, they had no idea what to do next.

“We sat there for a while in an embarrassed silence, and then Puerto Rico Paul said, ‘Maybe we should look at pictures of John Lennon on our phone and try to visualise his spirit form manifesting in front of us.

“‘It’s a good idea Paul,’ I said. ‘But too obvious. But we need to think a little more outside of the box. We need to focus on something the great man was connected closely with.’

“‘Like a strawberry?’ Said Big Tony hopefully.

“’A what?’ Spat a contemptuous Paul.

“‘A strawberry! You know. Like the song he sang about fields full of them.’

“‘That’s a great idea, Anthony!’ I said like a benevolent primary school teacher, before turning to Paul and saying, ‘Let’s play a song. Fire up your Bluetooth speaker. And find that tune on Spotify where he recites from the Tibetan Book of the Dead. That should do it.’

“‘You mean ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ Said Paul, the resident Beatles expert.

“’That’s the one! Let’s get this seance party started.’ I said.”

Turnip said that as the classic track from Revolver kicked in at a deafening volume, they chanted in union, “Spirits of the medium, particularly John Lennon, who used to be in The Beatles, are you there?”

For a while nothing happened. But on the ninth time of playing the track, they heard a disembodied voice roar, “For Christ’s sake, soft lad. Turn that racket off. I’m trying to get some kip! And by the way, you’re on the wrong side of the circle!”

The Manifest Trials And Tribulations Of Johnny Turnip is now available on Amazon.