AS he takes to the stage in two spooky tales, Jack Shepherd admits that he's slightly haunted himself ... by the character he played in the long-running police drama, Wycliffe.

Detective Superintendent Charles Wycliffe is, says his alter ego, "a shadow that follows you around. It won't go away". Reflecting on the part, Jack reveals that being on the right side of the law can be a challenge for an actor. "It's quite difficult to play a good man. Wycliffe was like one of those heroes of cowboy films who become the sheriff. It's much easier to play villains.

"When I was younger I couldn't conceive of playing a policeman, but I enjoyed the challenge of it and I enjoy the fact that it refuses to go away - I still get paid for it! It was received very badly when it came out but in retrospect it's got better and better.

Jack is currently starring in Middle Ground Theatre's double bill of unsettling plays, Classic Ghosts, which comes to The Courtyard next week, and he'll be interested to see how a Hereford audience reacts to the pair of dramas.

"Audiences are very different depending on where we're playing. The best responses we've had were in Cardiff - I think that's because it's a place where a belief in the other worldly and a Celtic spirit still seems to exist so they are happier to suspend disbelief," he says. "They're more taciturn in the north - it's where I'm from so I understand that. You can sense them thinking 'come on, show us what you've got'.

"The closer you are to believing in the ideas, the more likely you are to enter into the spirit of it. I remember when I first saw The Exorcist - we took an afternoon off thinking it would be fun and arrived at the cinema to see dozens of Red Cross people standing by. The collective experience scared people out of their wits and built up an atmosphere. It's also to do with the sheer number of people and the expectation of being horrified.

"I was in a post-modernist production of Dracula years ago at the Bush Theatre and the set was all painted black with piano frames on the walls, so whenever we brushed past them they let out a sickening noise which scared audiences - there's a primitive delight in doing that to people."

Classic Ghosts features Charles Dickens's The Signalman and Oh, Whistle and I'll Come to You, My Lad by the master of the chiller, M.R. James. "They're very different pieces," says Jack. "The Signalman is a pyschological drama and you have to pull people in to his mental state. But the characters in both could be having nervous breakdowns and both are very cleverly written. In the M.R. James, the professor could be going crazy as a result of being alone and by denying the possibility of the supernatural actually opens himself to it.

"The Signalman is based on Dickens's own experience of a train crash. He'd been coming back from Paris and the train he was on crashed down a viaduct. There a theory that he felt guilty that he didn't get more involved in the aftermath - he didn't go to the subsequent hearing - and wrote the piece just before his death to assuage that guilt. But there's an underlying level of the spirity world and mysterious happenings."

The tour of Classic Ghosts continues until March, and invited to compare theatre to film, Jack admits that the former is more satisfying as an actor. "Going on stage is much more cathartic than filming. On stage, you're the one in control, whereas with anything that's filmed you have no control whatsoever."

Classic Ghosts runs at The Courtyard from Wednesday, February 11 to Saturday, February 14.