We were invited to investigate a private house to debunk the haunted reputation of the house.
The building, though abandoned for many years, was in fairly good condition. Vandals haven't yet destroyed it as they have so many fine old buildings.
The house is a large two storey house set back a little from the road with a large garden.
The front door opens into a good sized hallway with a staircase to the left and two reception rooms opening off either side of the hall.
One of the reception rooms leads into a twisting corridor and then into the kitchen area - which can be reached through a separate door further along the hallway.
Upstairs the stairs branch into three areas. The first area was probably the bathroom but is in a poor state of repair. The second branch leads into a small, separate bedroom while the third leads to the bedrooms at the front of the house.
We decided to start our investigation downstairs in one of the reception rooms.
We set up our equipment and immediately my motion sensor light, which I had placed in the doorway of the other room facing away from us, kept switching on.
I asked our team leader to put one of his there instead as I believed mine must have developed a fault.
This motion sensor also kept switching on.
We tried jumping up and down and walking around our room to see if we were somehow triggering it but we were unable to set it off ourselves.
Another team member had received some new toys for Christmas. Among these was a K11 meter - used to detect changes in emf.
He had tried out his new equipment before the investigation and it all seemed to be working perfectly.
As we were trying to figure our why the motion sensor was going off, this team member suddenly mentioned that his new K11 meter had just registered a reading.
We put this down to one of the team not having switched her phone off as she was trying to set up a separate motion detector over the fireplace.
She was having trouble with this sensor as it kept going off. We were laughing at her and telling her she was doing it wrong although she has often set this up without any problem on previous investigations.
We also set up 'cat balls' around the room and on the stairs. These are simply cat toys that flash in different colours when they are touched or rolled.
We began our investigation, as we always do, by introducing ourselves and explaining the equipment. We always say that the equipment is only there to help any spirit to contact us and will not cause them any harm.
We also say that we are not there to harm or remove any spirit and that we are simply there to make contact.
All during our calling out the cat ball on the window ledge kept lighting up and the newest K11 - being held - kept showing small but sudden bursts of energy. None of the other K11s in the room went off during this session.
The motion sensor in the other room continued to light up randomly and the cat ball on the stairs also went off.
We switched the cat ball on the window ledge to another ball as it was going off almost continuously and we thought it might be faulty.
The new cat ball immediately started to flash and the original one - now on the fireplace - did not go off again.
I began to feel very sick and at first thought it was due to medication that I'm on. However, this medication usually causes nausea that comes and goes in waves and if I try to speak I normally start retching. This sick feeling usually only lasts a few minutes and passes off quite quickly.
The sick feeling I had now was very different. I was able to speak to the team without retching but the sick feeling wasn't going away.
The team asked me if I wanted to go outside for some fresh air but I refused as I didn't feel faint and I didn't feel I needed to vomit.
After half an hour or so, we decided to move to the other reception room.
While in this room I continued to feel sick and once again, one of the cat balls kept going off. The motion sensor, now facing the room we had vacated, continued to light up randomly and some equipment left in that room also flashed up from time to time.
The K11, still being held by the same team member, kept flashing up consistently.
Two of us heard a clear sound that we thought may have been a cat or bird. I personally thought it sounded like a child playing.
We continued to call out here for some time and eventually moved to the kitchen area.
I began to feel a lot better in this area but put this down to the back door being open with plenty of fresh air here.
We didn't do a lot of calling out in this area. We spent most of the time telling jokes and having a good laugh. We did get quite a few K11 hits while we were laughing and, as we have often noted in previous investigations, nothing when we stopped to pay attention and start calling out again.
We agreed to move upstairs. As we went up the stairs a different K11 meter - this one with sound - began to go off in a team member's hand.
We went into the small bedroom at the back of the house first.
In here, as downstairs, one of the cat balls kept going off and the first K11 meter kept giving small but definite readings. We all laughed as we realised that the K11 only seemed to go off as the guy holding it looked away from it.
He saw the flash each time in his peripheral vision but never saw it directly.
I saw a light anomaly low down near the floor shoot from where our guy was holding the K11 out of the door beside me. It sort of looked like a fast moving smoke ball and I have seen something like this before on an investigation many years ago.
I was standing nearest to the door and began to feel like we were being watched. I also heard what sounded like movement on the landing.
One of the other investigators mentioned that she kept seeing flashes of blue light in the room. She said she wasn't sure if this was just her eyes reacting to the sensors going off but felt it was worth a mention.
We finally moved to the bedrooms in the front of the house.
Three of us stayed in one room while our team leader went into another room with a spirit box and headphones.
We have been trying an experiment lately where the person with the headphones cannot hear what we are calling out or what questions we are asking. He listens to the spirit box and calls back anything that comes through and we can check if it is relevant to anything we have said.
We have had some possibly interesting results previously but tonight we did not get a thing.
However, we got something we didn't expect.
As we were calling out we heard a few loud bangs. I thought it was the guy in the other room and dismissed it without really thinking about it.
I suddenly thought I heard voices downstairs and some movement. The guy with us told us to keep quiet. We could just about hear faint sound from the spirit box in the other room. Suddenly, the three of us heard whistling coming from downstairs.
We kept very still and quiet and clearly heard someone whistling a tune. It seemed to go on for ages but was probably just the verse of a song.
One of the team had been asking if any spirit present would like to hear a song. She said she would play it for them if they could let her know what they wanted to hear.
At the time, we didn't pay much attention to this as we thought people had entered the house without us knowing and we were thinking of our own safety.
We managed to attract our team leader's attention and gesture for him to come to us. He asked what was wrong and we told him there was someone downstairs.
He thought he saw a light shoot up through a hole in the floorboards and after listening for a few more minutes, the two lads said they would go downstairs and check it out.
They came back up to us after having a good look around and said they didn't find anything to suggest someone had been there.
We decided to wrap up for the night as it was late and we were worried that if someone had been there they were clearly not worried about seeing our gear and also not afraid to advertise their presence with the whistling.
We didn't want anyone spreading the word that we were investigating and risking them coming back with more people.
On the way home we discussed the night. We couldn't really believe that someone would enter a house not knowing how many people were there and walk around whistling in the middle of the night.
On the other hand, the whistling was so clear and went on so long it couldn't possibly be a spirit. Could it?
We were dying to get home and start reviewing the cameras and audio.
Our team leader had not heard the whistling and kept asking us if it could have been the wind or creaking floorboards. We assured him that it was someone whistling.
We also asked him about the bangs we heard and he said he had heard them and felt the vibrations along the floorboards but assumed we were trying out something in the nearby room.
By 7.30am I got the first message from our team leader. He had spent the rest of the night going through most of the footage.
He had hoped to have captured the whistling on some of the audio recorders throughout the house.
One of the audio recorders had a corrupted file so none of the recording had been captured. This same recorder was now working perfectly again and all older files were complete and not damaged in any way.
Another of the audio recorders was in the same room as the whistling but this recorder simply hadn't recorded anything.
We have never had problems with either of these devices before this and both were working perfectly again by morning.
The whistling was picked up faintly by the camera but there was a bit of sound pollution as the team leader had this camera with him at the time and had no idea what we were hearing so wasn't keeping particularly silent as he was listening to the spirit box through the headphones.
Our other investigator, the one who seemed to attract all the K11 hits is currently reviewing his equipment.
He says he caught the whistling and also a possible evp (electronic voice phenomenon).
We are eagerly waiting to see what else he has captured.
The other thing of note is that the motion detector camera downstairs did not pick up anyone entering the house nor were the motion sensors triggered during the time we heard the whistling coming from the same room.
On reviewing the initial footage, we are not sure if the whistling is a ringtone rather than actual whistling.
We will have to experiment with similar conditions before we can decide if we could have heard a ringtone coming from the road.
Personally, I am positive I heard someone whistling but as I know from long experience, nothing is proven in this field and I will keep an open mind.
We have picked up some evps and also caught a light anomaly on camera in the same room that I saw one.
Reviewing is ongoing and I will update this post with any other findings.
