Fryston Woods

Last night we went on a hunt in Fryston woods in Castleford.  I am not going to post my report on it just yet as we are wanting a separate group from the PP crew to go and see if they can find the same information that we did.  We will not be passing on anything that happened down there so it can not get back to the rest of the crew until after they have conducted their investigation.

What I will say now though is that we had some very interesting results and even with my scientific brain (I am VERY hard to convince) I saw something happen that I can't explain at all, and I saw it happen twice.

On doing some research after the hunt, we have found that some of the information we thought we had may have been wrong, but the key things were suggested by us and then agreed to from the other side.  We are unsure if that means we were making the correct assumption about who we were speaking to or if the spirit was confused, but the reactions were very strong.

I can't wait to see what happens in the next investigation.

Fryston Hall as it once.  Now the area is all woodland but a wall of the building can still be seen along the ground.  Known as the white wall.

Newsham Park Hospital

Newsham Park Hospital in Liverpool lies derelict now but was the Liverpool Seamen's Orphan Institution. It is a beautiful grade II listed building in a state of disrepair.

It's taken me a long time to write this because even though the hunt turned out to be quite uneventful, it drained every ounce of energy I have. Be that just an emotional thing linked with lack of sleep or a spiritual thing, I don't know, but I do know I have not been able to sleep properly or concentrate.  So here is the slightly late ghosty report.

The building is wonderful and I really didn't know much about it at all, I didn't look up anything so I could avoid being influenced by any outside information on the hunt.

Area 1

This was the laundry area.  It had a nice feel to it and was full of staff lockers and steam presses.  We sat and did some calling out but nothing came back other than through our medium Susan.  She said there was a young boy and he was saying he was not allowed to play with us, a man was stopping him.

There were plastic bottles put out and the spirits were invited to knock them down, but this didn't happen.  There was a bed pan in the hallway that oddly vanished and then turned up in the room we had just come out of.  We think someone was just playing silly buggers but you never know.

We did have a large cardboard box down there and used it like a table for tipping.  It did get rocking like crazy but didn't tip unfortunately.

Area 2

The only part of the place that bothered me was the naughty boys cupboards.  I felt instantly horrid when I first walked in. I had no idea that was even there until the night, and when it was first mentioned to me I thought it was rooms that they were locked in. As soon as I stepped in the corridor I felt almost panicked, then I opened the first door and saw the tiny space and thought it was just a little storage cubby but then it just hit me that that was it and I wanted to cry. I didn't think I could stay in there to start with and felt like just running off, but I managed to compose myself.  It was just a short corridor with these tiny cubby holes and lockable doors.  I have since been told that a boy died in there after being locked in for a long time.  Susan picked up on a boy with human bite marks, he had been locked in with two other boys for days.  She also spoke to a young girl who was left there by her mother.  She was locked in to give birth alone, not knowing what was happening to her.  The baby was taken away and she was left there for a few more days.  There was a man who would bang on the doors to make sure none of them could sleep.

We walked around some of the wards and tried a Ouija board, but nothing would come through.  A go with the baby monitor did bring some results in the form of feedback that only seemed to come after asking questions.  I am not sure if that might have just been a result of sound going through and then settling down though.  We had a short call out in the dark too in a day room.  It was a room for the mental patients and still had the furniture from those days.  One of the seats had been picked apart, all the foam of the seat pulled to bits.  I could just picture someone sat there pulling at it mindlessly for hours.  During our call out in this room, a few reported a feeling of someone blowing on their face and touching their hair.  Then one of our girls burst in to tears out of nowhere.  She said it was just an overwhelming feeling of sadness.

Area 3

We went on to the kitchen area which had been a mortuary before it was a kitchen.  I know, how lovely.  We tried to table tip but found the room completely flat so moved on quickly.

Then was ward G which is meant to be the most haunted area of the whole building.  I had been told this before the night, but did not actually realise that the area I was in was ward G until the day after.  In this area I did start to feel as though someone was near me when I knew there was no one.  We tried the franks box and got a few answers that seemed to be in context.  We asked how many were there and it said a very clear 46.  On looking up information in the following days, I saw that in the first year of the orphanage being open, it housed 14 girls and 46 boys.  Might we have been in what was in the early days the boys dorm?

We did have a quick visit to the morgue where it had been relocated outside the main building.  It was quite small and had the body trays still in the fridges and the rusted trolley for moving them around.  The cremation/incinerator was more like a mid sized room than a chamber like I would have expected, and was only accessible through a small hatch low to the ground.

There is probably a few things I have missed out but my head has been that fuzzy that it's hard to pull it all together.  I will add things in later if I find they are noteworthy.

I found a story from a lady who spent time in the orphanage.  She painted a bleak picture.

Lady who lived in the orphanage

I took this photo in the same hall as the above two photos

Inside the naughty boy cupboards 

The naughty boy corridor

The kitchen that was once a morgue

The mortuary

Our House

I thought I might take a little time to tell you about a few things that I have experienced in my house over the 9-10 years we have lived here.

When we first moved in, I felt like we were not alone.  It took me a while to settle in to the place.  As I started to get to know the house and it's resident, I did start to feel much more comfortable.  It was an old woman and she would always fuss around me on the stairs.  Not in a bad way, she was just there and made a fuss as if she was worried you would fall, almost like she was holding you as you went up or down.  This did stop after a few years and I do believe she has been gone now for quite some time.  From what I was told, there was an older woman who lived here but had to go in to a home after having a fall.  She died in the home.  I think she fell on the stairs in the house.

In the early days of living here, I also felt a strange sense of peace when touching the fireplace when the fire was lit.  There are two open fires here, and this didn't happen with the fire in the middle room, only the one in the living room.  I felt calm and could picture elderly people sat by the fire.

My brother in law claims to have seen a woman holding a baby in the living room, they were there and then vanished.  I have also caught a quick glimpse of a young boy in the hallway.  I once felt a bad presence of a man chasing after the young boy upstairs.  The boy was afraid and the man was angry.  I could just feel them and their emotions as if they were living people right in front of me.  I wasn't expecting it.  The man had never been there before and never since, the boy only the twice.

Once, my little boy was crying for his bottle.  As I was filling it up, I heard a woman's voice, plain as day say to him "Aww are you hungry?"  I though it was my mum or sister in law, who both had a key to the house.  I went to see which one of them it was that had turned up at this odd time of night without calling first.  There was no one there.

The bathroom mirror once flew off the wall.  This was a time I was out, my sister in law was in with our friends when they heard a loud crash.  When the went to see what it was, the mirror had not just fallen down from the wall, but was on the floor at the other side of the room.

There have been other things that won't come to mind right now.  These are just things from my current house.  In time I shall add stories from my former home and work as well as some other spots.

Psychics

I want to believe in them but I can never make up my mind for sure how much I believe.  Even though I feel things and am sure there is something there, I am not so sure about exactly what it is.  Even when I have moments of thinking it's not quite real, I don't think they are all fakers by any means.  It might be that some people are just very intuitive and mistake this for a supernatural ability. 

I have been leaning more about scrying and have had a go with the pendulum and wax in water.  At the moment I don't think I have faith in it at all, however, I am going to keep at it and see if anything happens to make me think otherwise.  The table tipping has already thrown me a curve ball so maybe scrying will as well.

The second hunt

Nothing too much seemed to be happening tonight but then when it did it really did.

As I said I would, I checked on the tables used for the table tipping.  The angle they were held at seemed to be very odd.  It tipped so far to one side that you would have thought the legs would slip out from under it and it would just crash to the floor.  I tested this by tipping the table up and trying to keep it from falling by only touching the top.  I couldn't do it.  It would only tip so far and then fell.  I couldn't get it to the angle it had been in the table tipping session at all so even though I said I hold on faith in it, this has got me wondering.

The medium tonight was Wayne and he picked up on quite a few spirits.  I had felt someone in the corner watching us last time, and this time I felt someone there again.  I think it was a different spirit and this time I had a strong feeling. It tingled down my back almost as if being touched.  Wayne confirmed that there was someone there called Gerard.  He did come through on the Ouija a little, as well as Charlie and another who's name escapes me now.   

The main event of the night came towards the end.  We had the lights out and two K2 boxes (electro magnetic field reader) next to yes and no signs, nothing much came from these.  There was an adapted baby monitor and a Franks Box (scans through de-tuned radio waves).  I don't think there was a huge amount of evidence from the Franks Box either, but the baby monitor was spooky.  As Wayne was speaking to a gentleman on the other side, the monitor was lighting up and as Wayne asked the man to not laugh at him, the monitor lit up like a Christmas tree and the sound of a crackly wave like laughing came through.  Right after, it went off for about 3 seconds then came back on.  While we were in there, there was a feeling that someone was stood right with me, but not a living person.  Wayne confirmed this again.

There were other things noted during the night from the others, but these are my experiences for tonight.  I can't wait for the next hunt and I will be doing some more reading and learning in between.  If I find anything really interesting then I will post it up on here, until then......happy hunting.

The first hunt

Tonight was my first actual ghost hunt at Nostell Priory.  I had a mini hunt with the team at Knottingley town hall on interview night which was pretty good but didn't have a lot going on.  This one didn't bring massive results but there were a few things going on.

I had my first try with dowsing rods.  I had only really heard of them being used to find water before but now I know how to use them to talk to the dead.  For those like me that don't know, you ask them to show you their positions for yes and for no, then you can ask yes/no questions.  I didn't get anything from them and I am not convinced that this works, however I will be having a play with these some more and am happy to be proven wrong.

I also had my first play with a pendulum crystal.  I was unsure about how this worked too, but it's much the same as with the rods.  I had what seemed to be some communication with this method.  I had felt as though there was someone in the corner of the room watching us, so went there with the crystal.  I found it going side to side for yes and circular for no.  I then found that there was someone there that lived in the house and had been watching us.  There was no answer as to if this was a male or female.  I am not sure if this was real, coincidental movement or me doing it without knowing.  This is also something I am going to have a play with to see how it goes and what happens.

The table tipping interests me a lot.  I personally hold no faith in this at all but tonight had a bit of something that was very odd.  While I am sure I did see at least one person moving the table (not on purpose I am sure) there was a moment the table was tipping over to one side to the most insane angle without falling over.  It looked like even with someone touching the top to hold it, it was so far over that the weight would have caused the legs to slip out from under it.  I want to have a mess about with the tables they use on the next hunt just to get a feel for the weight and how much pressure it takes to move it in certain ways. 

There was some interesting response on the K2 device (something I need to learn more about, but I believe it picks  up on electro-magnetic activity).  There were answers to questions being called out in the form of lights flashing on the device.  They were going pretty crazy.  I can't wait to see if anything shows up on the recordings. 

Let's get hunting!

Hi.  My name is Nikki but I am also known as Violet in some circles.  I answer to both these days so either works.  

I am starting this fresh new blog to document my journey on becoming a ghost hunter.  I have always been very interested in the paranormal and all things unusual and supernatural and when I was given the chance to work with Pontefract Paranormal, I jumped at it.  I have basic working knowledge of most of the things they do, but am about to delve deeper in and learn a whole lot more.  The gadgets are something that really interest me even though I have no idea what most of them do.  I do have a very scientific mind so the idea of having hard evidence is something that I like.

I am going to be posting things here from time to time about hunts I go on and experiences I have.  Things I see and my thoughts about it.  I will also post anything I find interesting or useful along the way.

So feel free to come with me on the ghost train for a spooky journey.