A new venue?

Tonight I am going to check out a new venue.  By new venue I mean a pretty old building with plenty of history in it but as far as we can tell, no one has ever hunted in it before.  If this goes well and there is activity in there as reports suggest then it may even become a regular place to investigate for us.  We have been thinking of setting up workshops there to introduce people to the world of divining and the tech side of the hunt so that may be sorted out tonight too.

I shall have a report from tonight's venue and any information on these workshops up by tomorrow.....provided I don't end up in the wars tonight ;)

Knottingley Town Hall 6/2/15

I had been told that the hall normally has quite a bit of activity but the first time I was here with just the crew on my interview day nothing much happened really.  I was very keen to get back in and see what happened this time.  The hall did not let us down, we had some very interesting results.

We split in to two groups and started in the cellar and the on the 2nd floor, leaving an empty 1st floor between us to reduce sound from each other interfering with our findings.  My group was in the cellar first which is a large room with a door then leading to a corridor.  This then has other smaller rooms sprouting off from it used for storage of various items.  We used the last room at the end to the left, with the room to the right's doorway just opposite.  The first thing we did was to stand in a circle and to do a grounding.  We then had some calling out and lights out time.  Our medium for the evening Susan was picking up on a few things, one being that she felt that someone had hung down there and that there was at one time lower levels under the cellar.  She also picked up on monks and some kind of injuries to someones shoulder.

As we were stood there in the dark, many of us felt that there was someone watching us from the opposite doorway.  There glimpses of shadows and shapes but I don't think there was anything too amazing.  We put some light on and split again in to two groups, one in the same room with the Ouija board and one down the hall with pendulums and dowsing rods.  I stayed with the Ouija board.

There was a lot of various bits came through and I can't even remember it all.  I do remember a young girl and then a man telling us to 'f**k off go away'.  As some of this conversation was going on, the EMF meter was going crazy.  I got some video of it flashing away.

One thing we had a lot of down there was noise from above.  It sounded like heavy tables being dragged on laminate flooring but the 1st floor is mostly carpet.  The dance studio has hard flooring but I don't recall anything heavy in there, plus none of us would be so disrespectful to drag anything around on the beautiful floor of their studio.  We guessed that the sounds must have been made on the 2nd floor and just sounded like they were right over us.  It is an old building so the sound could just carry through.  However at break time when both groups came together for tea on the 2nd floor we both said 'You lot were making some right racket, what the hell were you doing?'  No one could recall doing anything that would make that noise and both groups said that no one had split off and wondered away, yet both groups had heard lots of loud scraping.

We swapped over for the second session, they went off to the cellar and we stayed on the 2nd floor, again keeping the empty floor between us.

We started off with a human pendulum.  We stood in a circle with a girl in the middle.  Then Jane and I stood in front of and behind her.  Susan asked questions and the girl sway forward for yes and backward for no.  Susan and another lady said they could see a mans face showing over the top of the girls face.  The man coming through seemed to be a bad presence, controlling and dominant.  The girl in the middle said she was having trouble opening and then closing her eyes.  She collapsed and burst in to tears and it took a while to calm her.  We had a second pendulum circle with different people and some answers coming through but the previous one was still distracting a few of us.

We played some music on my record player for a while, wanting to try and provoke activity.  I did feel as though people were coming in through the doors of the hall, dressed up and ready to dance.  We shut off the music and sat around the table ready for a seance.  As we sat around there were sounds from all over the room.  Lots of little clicks, taps and creeks which you could argue away with it being an old building but the volume and frequency of them was very unusual.  The dragging noises were back too right below us and people from the cellar kept coming up every now and then to check it wasn't us as they were hearing it down there too.  The strangest sound we heard though was a sound of rushing foot steps towards us.  It came behind me and scared one girl so much she jumped up from her chair and jumped on to her friends lap.  I think we all heard it.

As well as this one of our crew seemed to just fall unconscious at the table and took a long time to come back.  Then a male member of the public said he kept feeling an anger running through him, but it wasn't his anger.   

We all came back together for a break and still no one could figure out how we were all hearing the dragging sound or where it could be coming from.

After the break we all took different rooms on the 1st floor.  A Ouija board, but didn't really bring many results but our time sat in the court room was strange.  A few up on the judges stand said they felt like they had choices to make and that other people in the room didn't agree but they were all wrong.  I had been feeling little tickles all over the sides of my face and back of my neck all night, but in this room it was very intense.

I can't recall much else from the night, I have had problems getting this written with my lap top dying on me so it's been a week since it happened.  I have a small voice recorder on the way in the post now to document everything as it is happening, so I hope to be able to bring back all the goings on with me.

The first Fryston woods investigation report

A second hunt team doesn't now seem likely.  There is a lot going on right now and the weather is against us.  So I have decided to just release the post about what happened in the woods that night.




Fryston woods has a huge amount of history.  I couldn't even begin to try and recall it all.  The grand Fryston Hall once stood on the land and has left behind what is now known as the white wall, a section of wall which now only runs along the ground.  It was also an area used by the Romans and a whole chariot was excavated there, only one of two in the country that was found complete.  There are also links to the Druids and going way back in time, used to be a beach along the coast line.

I was very excited to get out there, even though I have lived around this area my whole life I do not recall ever going to the woods.  I have heard ghost stories and people talking about the white wall for as long as I can remember.  I think this area and the Mary Pannell woods get mixed up in these stories.  I was always told that the white wall was Mary Pannell's house.  The story I always heard was that she was said to be a witch that was burned alive at her home in the woods by the locals.  The truth is that she wasn't really anything to do with the white wall, that is a different area to where she lived.  She has got a slight link to the hall that stood here, but it was not her home.  The basics of her story can be found in the links below.

On entering the woods in the dark it did feel quite strange.  I wasn't sure if anything would happen, but I had my fingers crossed.  When we first set up and settled in to the spot near the wall it did feel a little like we were being watched.  Like someone was around us, looking at us through the trees.  When the K2 meter was turned on it instantly started to flash brighter than my Christmas tree.  It was going crazy and wild.  We made sure all phones were off but it just kept on going.  For the K2 to register any electro-magnetic impulse from a device, it has to be almost on top of it, but it was reading it like mad just sat on a table in the middle of us with nothing anywhere close to it.  As well as this, Steve who runs events in the woods saw a man stood not too far from us.  He said it is only the second time anything has happened to him that has sent the shivers down his spine.  He said at first he thought it was someone out walking a dog, however they seemed to have no torch and there was now sign or sound of a dog.  The figure just appeared and then vanished with no sound of foot steps.

The K2 kept starting and stopping all night and when it went it really went.  The lights were dancing like crazy and were likened to a graphic equalizer, like someone speaking.  It kept lighting up all the way in to the red light at the top end and staying there sustaining a strong reading.

Steve was worried about using a Ouija board, so we used the small table we had with just a glass and we asked yes no questions.  Angie had her dowsing rods too.  Through the rods and the K2 we were told that spirits were there and we should cross the wall to speak to them.  We went over and as soon as we tried with the glass on the table we had instant very strong movement.  Angie and Shez both had the name Mary in mind and the glass and rods confirmed it.  Angie also got that she was 34.  We knew it would not be Mary Pannell and Steve looked on Google to try and find who it might have been.  I wouldn't recommend doing that while still investigating but he wanted to look.  He found a Mary Constance and said a few things about her, her husbands name, Rev Benjamin Hemsworth.  The spirit we were speaking with said she was called Mary but didn't have a last name and was without a child and unmarried.  When the information came from Google, this changed and she agreed that this was her.  I find this very unreliable but do not rule out the idea that we may still have been conversing with a spirit for real.

Something that I did notice though, was how I had felt a little apprehensive before, but once we started talking with Mary I felt very calm.  I felt relaxed and almost welcome like I had been invited for a chat.  I also feel as though I have been invited back.

Mary told us that she had never had anyone contacting her in this way before and that she was enjoying talking to us.  This does beg the question though: with the reputation the woods and the wall have, has no one ever done this before?  I think someone must have been down there with a Ouija board or something at some point.  Maybe they have but just didn't get through to Mary.  Who knows.

The movements came and went but tended to be very strong and definite.  Shez and Angie both had the glass moving when they were the only one touching it, but it wouldn't happen for me.  We tried back at the other side of the wall where we had set up before, but didn't really get anything so we went back to where the reactions had been good.  Unfortunately nothing much was happening now and we started to ask if anyone else was there instead.  Steve and Chris got on the glass and started to ask for Benjamin.  It took a few moments but they did get some reactions.  He would not agree on yes and no positions and kept pushing the glass off the table.  The K2 was also going like crazy while this was happening.  Steve felt very freaked out as he said he could feel the glass pushing against him when he could see that Chris was hardly touching it.  This is also when I saw something I can't explain.

As I was watching them, I saw that their hands were still, their fingers did not move at all but the glass moved.  I watching it slide across the table under both of them.  I could see no place where any force could have come from, it really did just move beneath them.  Angie said she saw it too, and then just as I was trying to process what I had just seen, I saw it again.  I can think of no way that this was possible other than it being the influence of something unseen.

Things were starting to wind down after this so we took the hint and decided to pack up for the night.

Research

After the investigation I did take to the net to search. I did find Mary Constance, but Constance is her middle name.  We had asked if that was her surname and she said yes, but it had been Duke and became Hemsworth.  She came from Wiltshire.  We had thought she had moved in to Fryston Hall with Benjamin and we saw her as a grand woman.  She was a grand woman and a very artistic woman, however it was not Fryston Hall she lived in, it was Monk Fryston Hall.  This is a different place and is still standing and in use.  Also, Angie had placed her at 34 years old.  I can't see a birth date, but her wedding date is 1894 and her death date is 1940, with 46 years between her wedding and her death we can see she was clearly much older than 34.

Conclusion

It could have been a mix of our imaginations and subconscious actions causing the results we saw, but I still have no explanation for the movement of the glass I saw twice with my own eyes.  The K2 had no reason to keep going as mental as it did either.  Although the information from Google may have thrown off the investigation with suggestion, there is still every possibility that we were speaking with someone else by the name of Mary.  It is a very common name and if it is true that it was her first time making contact with the living, she may have been over excited and maybe a little confused.

Further investigation of the area is needed to try and confirm our results.  I have suggested a separate PP group go and see what they find and then we can compare results to see what happens.  That is why this report has been posted so long after the investigation we did, so our results are not seen by the second group to go in.

I can't wait to see what they come up with and to get back in there with different equipment.  I get the feeling we would do very well down there with a little EVP.

Some links

About Fryston Hall

Monk Fryston Hall History

Fryston Memories website

Mary Pannell

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.