ASKING your neighbour about the meaning of life over the garden fence is not an everyday experience for most. But for Paul Bach it was perfectly normal; in fact, nothing in his life, including the strange things that went bump in the night, ever seemed that unusual.

Paul's mum was a spiritualist. From his early years Paul can recount stories of bottle tops flying off and landing on top of light-bulbs, plates simultaneously falling off walls and people (mediums) from the spiritualist group "knowing things you can't know".

But as Paul settles into a sofa at his home, the Jesus Fellowship community house, Cornerstone, he insists, "The spiritualist experience wasn't spooky."

Paul grew up in the Lickey Hills in the West Midlands, an idyllic kind of a place: rolling hills and wooded glades. Now a man in his early twenties, you can still see in Paul's face the flush of red-cheeked vigour that boys get when they spend many days in the open air. Hours were wiled away roaming the hills with friends. Paul was a self-confessed fishing addict too; there was a lake at the bottom of his garden - it was that kind of life.

Cornerstone was just up the road from Paul's childhood home. He had often visited the Christian community's gardens on the village open day, but he didn't know much about the people there or why they all lived in the same big house.

But his life did have this extra otherworldly dimension.

Paul describes a time when his grandmother played the piano - but, when she sang the word "angel", the piano keys were slammed by an invisible hand.

The unearthly realm his mum tapped into with her spiritualist friends was having an effect at home and it shaped Paul's beliefs. "I was quite aware there was a lot more than many people believe in," he explains.

And yet, in all of Paul's stories of strange happenings, there is a startlingly obvious detail which is missing: "I didn't believe in God," he admits, "though from an early age I had a firm belief in supernatural things."

Yet, at 17, something happened that shook Paul's understanding of absolutely everything: tragically, his mum died of cancer. "I knew Mum would die," Paul relates, "her parents had died from cancer." But the supernatural experiences didn't stop. "When the bad news came from the hospital the light flickered on and off. Later, I went to the computer screen and the cursor was moving around all by itself." This didn't amaze Paul, "I believed in life after death. I believed in spiritual things."

But that belief wasn't going to stop Paul's life falling apart.

Paul lost his enthusiasm for normal life. His dad tried to advise him: "Keep going, don't stop!" But he explains, "It felt like someone had stabbed me in my soul." Instead he began experimenting with drugs and lost himself in the rave scene. "I was just messing with my mates. But in the end my mind started getting really bad; I was getting quite anxious, short tempered, confused. I couldn't really concentrate at all. I didn't know what to do." He knew the "happy" drug induced unity of the raves was false but what else was there?

The only thing in his favour it seems was that his mum's best mate was a Christian. "She was praying for me. And that was influencing things."

Returning home late from a party one night Paul describes how terrible he felt. Yet, despite having had no sleep he found himself reading a book his mum had given him. Dramatically, it changed his world. "It was all about the concept of God and eternity." The effect was mind blowing. "It introduced me to the idea of faith."

As he opened himself up, Paul felt himself being filled with supernatural energy and life. "It was God! I think since then Jesus was in my life - though I didn't realise it; but I began to change."

From that first moment he could feel something entirely different from the effect of the drugs: "excitement, energy, a sense of hope." Immediately things began to go right: he set up a leafleting business the very next day, and God began to work on healing Paul's mind.

"It was still a battle. It would get to the point where I couldn't work and sometimes I'd be struggling with a real simple task, losing concentration and getting all panicky about stuff, but other times things were really good."

Paul wasn't going to any church, but each time he walked past Cornerstone he knew God was calling him to walk down the drive. It was on one of those occasions that Paul just found himself discussing the meaning of life with Colin, a Cornerstone resident.

Paul was invited for a meal but he was hesitant. And then, "One day, coming back from a job interview, still wearing my suit, I went down there to find them working in the grounds and, because I do a bit of gardening, I asked them, 'Do you want any help?' I got involved that way."

Paul loved the Christian fellowship he discovered at Cornerstone and eventually he decided to move in. There were more God-experiences: at one point he had "a real clear vision of Jesus on the cross."

But the familiar spirits of Paul's youth didn't give up either. Waking up in Cornerstone one night Paul remembers seeing a black figure in the room. The figure came back again the next night. But Paul's faith in God was winning through, he prayed with some other Christian residents around his bed and the figure has never returned again.

For Paul there is now meaning to life, even when death makes it seem like a great mystery. "It's great to know that God is there all the time. There's real security in that."

Security indeed. For now Paul knows the One who has power over life and death.