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Source: The Times Title: Britain's most haunted cottage The author went to live in a haunted cottage, where a ghostly figure has been seen by several visitors. One night during his stay there, he finally saw the man. The following is his description.

Unnerved, I lay awake listening to the sound of owls scratching in the roof. And at 4.48am, he appeared: the silent staring man. A freezing flush passed through my entire body, and - I'm not sure that this is a psychic phenomenon - my testicles tightened. I lay silently under the duvet, disorientated with exhaustion and anxiety. It wasn't until dawn that I dared reach for my glasses and a first clear sight of the ghoul. It wasn't my finest hour. I had been terrified by a silver 14in portable TV. Before leaving I chatted to Daryll, a local dairy farmer. He hadn't heard about Mellingray's haunting, but said that “if there's anything, it's probably a farmer who committed suicide. They get isolated and depressed and end it in the barn with a shotgun or rope”.

I don't know how to read the sentence in bold? Why did he mention a portable TV here?

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    It's not very clear, but apparently when he put his spectacles on he realised that the 'ghost' was an image on the TV screen. (Why? Was it a reflection, or had the set somehow been switched on?)
    – Kate Bunting
    Commented Feb 12, 2022 at 14:35
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    His sight isn't great. What he mistook for a ghost was a blurry silhouette of the TV in his room at dawn.
    – Andrew
    Commented Feb 12, 2022 at 14:44
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    The putting on of his glasses is a great big clue. Also, we say that an occasion 'wasn't our finest hour' when it was something that we feel shame or embarrassment about.
    – Michael Harvey
    Commented Feb 12, 2022 at 15:03

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It wasn't until dawn that I dared reach for my glasses and a first clear sight of the ghoul. It wasn't my finest hour. I had been terrified by a silver 14 in portable TV.

The fact the author needed to reach for his glasses to get his "first clear sight of the ghoul" indicates that previously his vision was blurry. This was producing an optical illusion of a ghoul. When he put his glasses on, his vision sharpened and he could see what was causing the illusion - a silver 14 inch portable TV. The incomplete picture formed by his blurry eyesight in the dark had turned the TV into a ghost in his mind.

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