Daniel LaPlante was sixteen in 1986 when he became obsessed with two teenage girls in his home town of Townsend, Massachusetts in the US. Their mother had recently died of cancer and they were living with their father.

LaPlante went on a date with one of the girls but it didn’t work out and she dumped him. He then began stalking her and one day managed to sneak into her home when it was empty. The story goes that while searching through a built-in wardrobe below the stairs he discovered a hidden gap that gave access to an empty space between the walls. He decided to hide and spy on the girls.

It was widely reported that he inserted several peepholes in the walls and lived in the space for about two months without the family knowing. However, during that time he saw an opportunity to torment the girl who had rejected him and spent weeks creepily tapping on the walls, causing the girl and her younger sister to think that the ghost of their dead mother was haunting the house. LaPlante eventually got caught by police after a confrontation with the girls’ father.

He was arrested and spent time in a juvenile detention centre.

James couldn’t be sure how much of the story was true and how much was urban legend. But it was impossible to ignore the fact that the elements that made it so spine-chilling were replicated at Oaktree Farm – the hidden wall space, the peephole, the fact that Mary Bateman claimed she heard noises coming from behind the walls, which led her to believe that the farmhouse was haunted.

James went on to read what LaPlante did after he was released from the juvenile detention centre, and it sent a cold rush of blood through his veins.

The bastard went on to rape and murder a mother before drowning her two young children in the bath. And for that he was still in prison serving multiple life sentences.

When James was ready to continue the briefing, he pushed the ghoulish story of Daniel LaPlante to the back of his mind. But he had an idea it would resurface again in the days ahead.

The team had managed to achieve quite a lot in half an hour and the first to provide an update was DS Stevens, who had followed up on the text message sent by Dean Foreman to Robert Bateman.

‘Foreman lives in Penrith where he runs a food wholesale company,’ Stevens said. ‘He’s not visible on social media, but his company does have a website that includes a photo of him, and he looks to be in his late forties or early fifties.’