WHETHER you like the book or not, you have to admit that the zillion-selling The Da Vinci Code is a ripping page-turner of a thriller.

The same could not be said of the opening day yesterday of a hearing to determine whether, and how much, its author had lifted his plot from another book. Instead of getting on with the story, lawyers spent much of the morning bickering over legal technicalities.

But at least, in the small and crowded courtroom at the High Court in London, the principal cast was present.

For an author who has sold 40 million copies of the blockbuster and earned £45 million in a single year, Dan Brown looks like an unexceptional, mild-mannered, middle-aged American. Sitting motionless and largely expressionless, he did not look like a man who would postulate the theory, even as fiction, that Jesus married Mary Magdalene, that the descendants of their progeny are still alive, and that the Roman Catholic Church is trying to hush it up.

At the other end of the court sat two men who claim that Brown did not postulate the theory; he stole it from them, thus infringing their copyright.

Richard Leigh, a hirsute fellow with a bit of the look of a heavy-metal biker about him, sat with his co-author Michael Baigent, more conventional in a suit. In 1982, along with a third author who is not involved in the hearing, they published The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail, a non-fiction work that examined the Jesus theory and which was itself a bestseller. Now the pair are suing their own publishers, Random House, which also published The Da Vinci Code, for infringement of copyright. If they succeed they could delay the film version of The Da Vinci Code, starring Tom Hanks and Sir Ian McKellen, which is due to be released in May.

Brown acknowledges the existence of HBHG, as the work was referred to in court yesterday for the sake of badly needed brevity. One of the main characters in his own DVC is Sir Leigh Teabing, which, it is suggested, is wordplay on the names of the authors bringing the action.

Every lawyer in court yesterday was equipped with copies of both books. Mr Justice Peter Smith, who exhibits both a refreshing northern accent and a magnificent moustache, disclosed that he had read both - but not, he said, in an analytical way. Jonathan Rayner-James, QC, for the claimants, told the judge that Dan Brown had "appropriated" the central theme of HBHG. "The claimants are not alone in this. Many people all over the world have commented to the same effect since The Da Vinci Code was first published." One who noticed was a letter-writer to The Times.

Brown, however, claims that HBHG was "incidental" to the creation of his book and was consulted only at the very end of its making.

"This is an extraordinary claim that would surprise anyone who has read The Da Vinci Code after reading HBHG," Mr Rayner-James said. "HBHG is a book of historical conjecture setting out the authors' hypothesis. The authors' historical conjecture has spawned many other books that developed aspects of this conjecture in a variety of directions. But none has lifted the central theme of the book."

At one point the judge, who appeared intent on keeping a tight grip on the case and on counsel, interrupted Mr Rayner-James to say: "You couldn't blame Mr Brown for reading HBHG and thinking, 'That's a cracking good story'."

Mr Rayner-James said his clients had invested a great deal of time, effort and skill in their book, while Dan Brown had "appropriated its architecture", and had even copied some of the language. The author's copy of HBHG was heavily annotated, it was alleged.

"It is not as though Brown has simply lifted a discrete series of raw facts from HBHG. He has lifted the connections that join the points up."

Mr Rayer-James went on about "levels of abstraction" as though he were talking about drawing water from an aquifer. The implication, however, was that Brown had abstracted so much from HBHG that he should have gone back to original sources, which were largely the Dossiers Secrets in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, containing narratives on, among other topics, the Merovingians, the Knights Templars and the Tribe of Banjamin.

But by this time it had all become too slow for Brown; he left the court at lunchtime as did his heavy-metal opponent.

The hearing continues today, and is expected to last for up to two weeks.

Thomas Haley was unloading supplies for his job at Hardy's Hardware when he said something odd caught his eye: the face of Jesus Christ on a piece of sheet metal.

Now, Haley and a co-worker are hawking the holy hardware on eBay, hoping potential bidders will agree that the blurry oil stain on the sheet metal does, indeed, resemble Jesus.

"I mean, it hasn't done anything miraculous as of yet, but seeing it is kind of groovy," said Haley, 23. "Just seeing it brightens people's day."

Haley said he was unloading a supply truck two weeks ago at the Manchester hardware store when he turned a corner and was awe-struck by the holy likeness gazing back at him from the $15.49 piece of sheet metal.

Since then, Haley and 18-year-old co-worker Jonathan Jackson have shown the piece to a few other workers and customers, and even took it on a short pilgrimage to a nearby hair salon. They say several people agreed with their assessment, although a few suggested it looks more like legendary rock singer Jim Morrison of The Doors.

"Some people said, 'Are you sure it's Jesus?' and I think, 'Who else would come to give us a sign, Groucho Marx?' " Jackson said. "I think it's a good thing. Maybe it's trying to give some people hope."

The online eBay auction for the potentially pious sheet of metal started Wednesday, but no potential buyers had placed the minimum $19.95 bid as of Saturday afternoon.

The auction is scheduled to end March 1 unless someone pays the "buy it now" price: $10,000.

Haley said that whatever money is raised will be split between him, Jackson, another worker, and two customers. But he's still a little ambivalent about the sale.

"I feel kind of bad just pawning off Christ," Haley said.

Riverwalk Fellowship Church is a charismatic church in Haltom City. The services aren't exactly traditional and neither are some of the reported phenomena happening there lately.

The church's senior pastor Steve Solomon, a Messianic Jew (a Jew who believes Jesus is his/her messiah) has reported, among other things, an oil substance manifesting on the balcony and on the baptismal and the pulpit of the sanctuary.

One of the church's prayer intercessors, Velma Alexander, was the first person to discover the oil when entering the sanctuary one day and simply touching one of the columns in the church. She says her initial reaction was, "Somebody better call Pastor Steve, 'cause oil don't come outta wood and brass!" Alexander said when the pastor first heard about it he thought something had broken, thus their investigation into the matter began.

Solomon said that as people began taking pictures of the oil, something else began to appear in the pictures. He said, "We'd started taking pictures at church and almost everyone would just take a picture and these orbs of light would show up."

We decided to pay a visit to the church and take our own picture. It revealed a very large blue orb hovering over a woman's head as she was being prayed over.

It all looked very compelling but we needed an expert opinion. Most photography experts said light can reflect in many different ways and there are so many variables, it can be difficult to explain in scientific terms.

One thing that intrigued all the experts was a video shot by a 13-year-old boy at this church. According to the pastor, the teenager was visiting the church and was videotaping the service. The pastor says the power went out during the service, but despite the darkness in the sanctuary, they kept going. Later, when they replayed the boy's videotape, they saw an orb of light moving through a church member. Pastor Solomon said, "…starts at her feet and goes right through her body out her head."

We contacted an expert in paranormal psychology and director of the Office of Paranormal Investigations in Berkeley, California. We told Loyd Auerbach about the videotape and about what we had seen at the church. Aurebach said, "Orbs on video and photography are said to be all kinds of things from energetic effects to ghosts to even UFO's." But, he said, this sounded like psychokinetic energy "...energy from the person or energy between the people; if it's a healing situation, affecting the film, the digital media." In other words, the orbs might have been that energy caught on tape.

Auerbach said once you eliminate the photographic possibilities like other light sources, dust on the lenses, tampering, etc. – and someone is physically affected, then it bears watching. He said that since, in this case, the power had gone out, we had checked our lens and the tape was viewed immediately, "something is 'probably' going on."

According to Auerbach, there have been many experimental studies on orbs done in the past two decades and they have concluded that some people do exhibit the ability to affect film and other human beings merely with their thoughts or energy.

Pastor Solomon pointed to the orbs of light depicted in very old paintings behind Jesus and the Saints and said, "how did they know to do that; where did that come from?" Solomon added, "I believe it's a sign from the Lord. There's nothing wrong with supernatural signs."

The feeling seemed to be echoed by Velma Alexander, the woman who discovered the oil in the church. She was still reeling from her experience. She said, "it was awesome. I haven't been the same since…I don't care what they say, I know God is real."

Although there are no true experts on orb photography, experts like Auerbach give us at least a glimpse into the possibilities they might present. There are many Websites devoted to the orb phenomena. One site we found, prairieghosts.com, gives a thorough layout of how to discern between what it terms real orbs-ones that are actually paranormal in nature-and flukes, such as reflections. The Website says that although most orbs are not paranormal in nature it is wise to take a closer look at orbs which "move" while on camera.

In January 2004, a retired policewoman and her husband reported seeing what looked like a Lancaster bomber flying impossibly low over the Rolls-Royce site at Bankfield.

Eerily, the craft made no noise and the two witnesses were so shocked by what they saw that they almost crashed their car.

Soon after, a Skipton aerial phenomena expert was inundated with phone calls from people all over Craven who reported similar sightings.

Most described what they saw as a low-flying Second World War bomber, grey in colour and with no markings. Several said they had seen it on the same day.

And this week, another man called the Craven Herald to say he had seen exactly the same thing flying towards the site of a small airstrip in Barnoldswick - which is rumoured to have been used for an emergency landing during World War II.

The resident of Sackville Street, Skipton, who asked for his name to be withheld, said: "I didn't think anything about it at the time - it wasn't until I remembered the reports in the papers from two years ago that it clicked.

"I was standing on the canal bank near Gargrave on Saturday and I saw what looked exactly like a Lancaster at around 400 feet. It didn't seem to be making a sound and it was heading north towards Gargrave and the Greenberfield strip where they sometimes fly microlights from."

At the time of the original sightings, it was suggested that RAF training flights involving large propeller-powered aircraft such as Hercules transporters could be to blame.

However, the 70-year-old man said: "I saw them during the war so I know what they look like - this wasn't a modern plane."

It was also suggested the reports could actually be flights of historical aircraft or commemorative events organised by Rolls-Royce, but there is just one airworthy Lancaster left in Europe - based at RAF Coningsby in Lincolnshire.

A Rolls-Royce source confirmed the company does own and fly a Spitfire, but it is much smaller than a Lancaster and its last flight in the Barnoldswick area was on October 1 2004. However, she added that RAF training and memorial flights in the area were quite common and could well fly over or "salute" the Bankfield site because of its aviation connections.

Aviation enthusiast Donald Cooper said the reports followed a familiar pattern and could tie in with theories of "time slips" - supposed replays or images of events which have taken place in the past - and could be connected with energy fields around industrial plants.

After an appeal in the Craven Herald in 2004, one man came forward to say he remembered a Lancaster making an emergency landing near Greenberfield Lane in Barnoldswick, adding that the Army and police quickly sealed the area off to prevent curious locals getting a better look.

Another caller believed a landing strip had been reinforced with cork to make it a suitable site for heavy wartime aircraft to use in an emergency.

Mr Cooper said: "Lancaster bombers make a hell of a racket, but all of these people say they are silent. Was there a Lancaster that landed there during the war or did one try and didn't make it?

"I've shown all the witnesses I've spoken to pictures of modern RAF Hercules aeroplanes and they say it wasn't what they saw.

"They are quite different aircraft - the Hercules' wings are much higher in the fuselage and it only has a single tail-fin, whereas Lancasters have two. Besides, the RAF can't go below a certain altitude due to aviation regulations - especially not over a town of 10,000 people."

He added: "I'm keeping an open mind, but I have to believe the witnesses who all seem to be balanced, professional people and not people coming out of the pub after one too many."

Mr Cooper also has a cutting from a 1956 edition of the Craven Herald which shows a plane landing in Barnoldswick to deliver engineering components to Rolls-Royce.