Fairies photographed in Cheltenham

If you go down to the woods with Maxine Mustoe, you should prepare for a big surprise.

At first glance, there appears to be nothing unusual about the mum-of-two from Charlton Kings – but the 46-year-old claims to photograph fairies.

Her home in Beaufort Road is covered in glossy photos, spattered with inexplicable white orbs and mysterious shapes, which she believes to be spirits.

"I know people might find this strange. But the people I have told about this have responded positively," she said.

"I'm not an airy fairy type. I'm totally grounded. I go to the pub and do normal everyday things. My grandfather was an engineer at Dowty. I'm a healthy sceptic.

"I've loved fairies since I was a girl and they're definitely fairies. There's a spirit world out there and that's the only possible explanation."

Over the past year, Maxine has been out at all times of the day and night, armed with a digital camera and accompanied by her dog Enya, a Japanese Akita.

The orb photos are piled up in a corner of her modest living room, along with hundreds of CDs holding the fruits of her photography.

Some reveal ghostly shapes in swirls of mist – a woman, a bird, a Roman soldier and a Greek god rising from the undergrowth, according to Maxine. Others show huge circles of white paint.

The pictures were taken in her garden, her front room – full of fairy ornaments, and in the woods near her home.

She doesn't see the fairies with her naked eye, but when she looks at the camera viewfinder and produces prints, there are dozens of white orbs and mysterious misty shapes.

"I recognise that it might be a trick of the camera. But I do experiments. I've been back to the same places at all times of the day and night. And whatever I do, it's the same," she said.

Maxine was brought up in Cheltenham, left school at 16, trained as a sign writer, has worked as a florist and a school cleaner and once worked in her mum's wedding shop in town.

She trained as a clairvoyant when she was a single parent in her 20s, runs workshops on spiritual development and is a minister in the spiritualist church.

The orbs, she says, are spheres of light which are manifestations of beings from another dimension, or nature spirits. The particles coalesce and separate, forming mists. And it's in the mists that the fairies show themselves in many different forms.

She is now writing a book about her mysterious photos, though she still needs a publisher.

"Whacky as it sounds, this has changed my life," she said.

"For years I felt there was something empty inside. But I feel I've tapped into something unique. I've lost that sense of emptiness. Every morning I wake up and I can face the world with a smile."

Maxine is also giving a talk on Friday, January 29, at 7pm, at the Isbourne Centre, Cheltenham, called The Science and Spirituality of Orbs, Mists and Plasma Energy, with orb expert Paul Muir from Wales. For tickets, contact the Isbourne Centre on 01242 254321 or book online at www.isb ourne.org.