Some Recent Investigations

The long bright evenings can make paranormal investigations difficult. Too many tourists, teenagers or hikers out and about. Too much noise - traffic, music, talking - makes it hard to sift the everyday from the paranormal.

Despite this I have been lucky enough to have taken part in a lot of investigations in very different locations.

Blackwater Castle

This beautiful castle has seen many famous and not so famous faces pass through its doors. At the side of the main building, an abandoned tower stands, quiet, lonely and holding its own secrets.

It is said that the mistress of the house in bygone times - Lady Roach - spent years locked up in this tower. People claim to have seen a woman's ghost on the upper floor of the main castle and in the adjoining room in the tower.

Even though I carried out a solo investigation of the 'spiral room' (named for stones on the floor set in a spiral pattern) I did not see or hear anything unusual.

The only events worth mentioning over the course of the night happened on the ground floor of the main castle.

I and two other members of the team were seated in the living room when we all heard noises on the floor above us. I thought the rest of the team were up there walking along the corridor but the guys with me assured me that the rest of the team were in the tower not in the main building.

A quick check via walkie talkie conformed that we were alone in the building at the time of the noises. I assumed that the noise must be caused by plumbing  - perhaps caused by air in the pipes along the first floor corridor. However, when I checked this out later on, I found that the upstairs heating was electric and there was no plumbing along the corridor.

The only other thing that captured my interest was when we were leaving the sitting room. I came out by a different door to the rest of the team. The two lads were chatting and laughing together and as I came into the corridor, I heard a child join in with them.

Unfortunately, this was not captured on any of our recorders even though I had mine running in my hand at the time. Therefore, I have to dismiss this as I have no evidence of the event.

The rest of the night passed all too quickly and although we did not capture anything of note, we were all sad to leave this beautiful place.

The Spiral Room - Pic by Matthew Clarke, CSS

A Hill Fort

This investigation was carried out by a large group of investigators but as it was such a massive place, this did not cause any problems.

Several evps were captured during the long night at this magnificent place, the best one being as follows:

We were in a part of the fort that had been used to store gunpowder many years before. One of the team lit a cigarette. On listening back to the audio a voice is heard saying 'they're smoking'.

Another moment of interest happened when we were in a room which had been used by officers. I was seated with my back to the door. Suddenly, I felt something rush in behind me and bite the top of my thigh. I jumped and nearly fell off the chair but there was nothing there. Later, I did find a red mark on my leg but no broken skin nor bruising.

We did get a lot of K2 hits around one indoor area but can not rule out phone signals as the group had all joined up at that point and someone may have inadvertently left their phone on.

The Black Gates

We joined up with some investigators from another group up the country. Unfortunately, there was loud music playing nearby and this made the audio recorders almost redundant.

The gates themselves lead into a ruined church and graveyard. Inside the church it felt very peaceful. It was a beautiful summer's night and, apart from the music in the background, it was idyllic.

One of our guests had a pair of divining rods with her. I got to try these out. My overall impression of these is that they are rather like Ouija boards, table tipping and so on. Fun to try but no real evidence to back up anything that 'comes through'.

The only thing of note that evening was when we gathered down at the gates themselves. One of our guests began to feel very sick and I soon noticed that I felt nauseous too. I started to feel quite dizzy and faint and was glad when my team leader suggested that the guest and I should return to the church where we had felt perfectly well.

As soon as I left the gates, I began to feel better and by the time I was back in the church - less than one minute - the nausea had passed and I felt fine again.

Later, as we were leaving, I had a brief feeling of nausea as I passed the gates once more.

Some of the graves - Pic by Matthew Clarke CSS