Ballinacarriga Castle 17th June 2023

 

Ballinacarriga background

Ballinacarriga Castle has always been a special place for me. I remember visiting here many years ago with my family and of course, it was where Echo Ghosthunters brought me for my first ghost hunt in 2012. 

It's a place that never disappoints me. It is high on a hill and quite breathtaking as you approach it, as it towers over the landscape.

It is a Hurley Castle having been built by Randall Og Hurley in the late 1500s. There is some doubt about the actual date as some history books mention the 1590s but a carved date on a window ledge states 1585. I believe the Castle was built from the mid 1500s onwards as it must surely have taken a fair few years to build.

Along with the date carving there are several other carvings or perhaps based reliefs of note around the building.

On the ground floor again on a window surround, there are five roses and an angel. These are believed to have been ordered to be placed there by Randall Og and are said to represent his wife Catherine and five of their children. 

I think they had eight children but only five survived and perhaps this is why only five roses were added.

On the window surround on the top floor, the old Chapel, there is a scene of the crucifixion. It has been said that one of the three faces depicted here is Catherine's face.

There are numerous other decorative carvings or bas reliefs around the windows and must have been a beautiful sight many years ago.

There is also a Sile na gig high up on the right side of the building above the main door. These fertility symbols often appear on castles of this period.

The investigation

We had invited a paranormal group from the US to accompany us on our investigation. We have worked with this group before so it was nice to meet some old friends.

As it was still light when we arrived, we spent an hour or so talking and checking out the castle and surrounds.

There are the ruins of an old watchtower just beside the castle and there used to be a mill close by as well.

We began our investigation on the top floor. 

It started to rain a little while we were up there and as this part is open to the elements we had to make sure our equipment was protected.

We did some calling out and some live evps to see if we could communicate with any spirits. 

I stood with my back to the doorway and at times I could hear and sense movement behind me and in the little chamber just outside the main room.

I also noticed some orange sprinkles of light near one of the ladies a few times.

We did not catch anything of note so decided to move downstairs.

As there were eight of us in total we decided to do one more group investigation in the large room on the ground floor before splitting into two groups to investigate the smaller rooms.

We began a calling out session and did a few live evps but again, we did not catch anything. This is the room where an amazing evp wad caught by the team a few years back. 

In that evp a woman seems to be asking where her child is. She sounds distraught and it is quite upsetting to hear.

We set up a laser array before calling out but the many bats in the building caused some minor distortions so we can discount any movements noticed at the time.

We then did a spirit box session but although we did have some responses, they were too vague to be noteworthy.

We split up. I took our visitors to investigate the rooms upstairs while the rest of the team went out to check out the ruins of the watchtower. 

One of my group wanted to do a lone vigil in the garderobe. We left him in there with another lad just outside the room on the stairs.

The remaining two of us went back to the old Chapel at the top of the building.

We both had felt the presence of some energy while we were up there earlier and we wanted to check it out.

We did some calling out but nothing was happening. 

The lad who had been on the stairs came up to join us. He told us that he had been having some strange religious thoughts since he had been up here at the beginning. 

I asked him to explain and he said he felt like he was having some kind of struggle over his religious beliefs. He explained that he himself was not particularly religious but these thought were randomly filling his mind.

As he spoke one of the K11s nearest to him started to spike.

We began to ask religious questions. Are you a priest and are you struggling with your faith etc. The K11 continued to spike seemingly in response to our questions.

Eventually, the activity stopped and the atmosphere seemed considerably clearer or lighter - it's hard to explain, it just felt different

The group member who had being doing the lone vigil had joined us during the activity.

As we were all discussing this, I and the guy who had joined us, clearly heard someone coming up the stairs beside us. 

I said that it was the other group but no one entered the room.The guy beside me went to the top of the stairs and called down to the others but got no response.

We could hear them the mumble of talking somewhere at a distance but on repeatedly asking if they were on the stairs near us, we got no reply. When we went down the stairs we found some of them in the garderobe - two flights below - but they insisted that none of them had come near the last staircase. 

One of their team had made a joke about the puka in the garderobe - known locally as the puka's hole - and had immediately felt he was going to vomit so had left the building to get some air.

This had happened to me several times previously in this area so I was delighted (?!) that someone else has experienced this.

I stayed in the garderobe for a few minutes with the other team but as I have been suffering a strong reaction to some medication lately, I did not relish the idea of risking feeling nauseous or being sick, so I left them there and went back to join my group.

For the last session, we decided to move to the room below the top floor.

I had experienced a lot of energy in there at different times.

Before I followed the others, I decided to brave the garderobe on my own. I switched off my torch and stood in total darkness. My heart was thumping really loud and I was struggling to breathe. I only lasted about five minutes before deciding to join the others.

When I joined them  I found some of the other group in there too, doing a ovulus session, (where words supposedly from spirit are typed on the screen and also spoken by the software).

One of the responses was 'you are so annoying which made us all laugh.

I asked if Randall Og was with us earlier and the response was 'always' and then, not long after, 'come here'.

I asked where but got no response.

I felt the lad standing behind me, tap me on my back to get my attention but when I turned around he was not close enough to touch me.

I asked if he had tapped my back thinking I might not have heard him step back afterwards but he said he had not touched me and his uncle who had been standing beside him the whole time said he definitely did not move.

He reached out towards me and showed me that he could not have touched me from where he was standing.

I had thought he was standing much closer to me the whole time I was in there. In fact, I thought he was standing less than a foot away from me.

Apart from some personal experiences, we did not get anything of note.

We will have to wait for the equipment review to be sure, but to all appearances, we had a fairly quiet but fun evening together. 

Private House Investigation 2022

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.

An Unusual Location

A few months ago the team (Cork Supernatural Society) and I booked into an unusual BnB. This beautifully restored castle seemed like the perfect location for us to do a little ghost hunting mixed in with some fun and relaxation.

The location didn’t disappoint.

We arrived in the early evening and as we pulled up in front of the castle our excitement began to rise.

Inside we found that the whole place had been restored to a very high standard while keeping to the style (and hardships) of the times.

The castle had three floors as well as a seating area on the roof. The ground floor consisted of one room with a table and chairs. The small but beautifully decorated main door dominated the little room and we decided to make our way up the stairs to check out the other floors.

Jackie and I decided we would sleep in the main bedroom. This was on the middle floor and we even had an en-suite in a little room off the bedroom and a bath in our room. The bed was a four-poster double bed and looked comfortable – this did turn out to be the case and Jackie and I managed to get some sleep here in the early hours.

The top floor held the kitchen, a seating area, another toilet and a staircase to the roof. Barrie and Matt decided to spend the night up here – they stayed up all night talking with a warm stove to keep out the night-time chill.

We began the task of getting our gear up the stairs – no easy task! We had to pull ourselves up part of the way with the help of a strong rope as the steps were too tiny to gain a good foothold. It was a bit of a struggle, but we finally got everything upstairs.

After coffee and some food, we began our investigation. Jackie and I started on the ground floor, just inside the main door. The steep staircase was partially concealed by a wall so I placed a sensor light a few steps up where we could see it if it came on.

We began calling out and after a few minutes I felt there was some movement on the stairs. The sensor light came on and stayed on for longer than it normally would, so I assumed that one of the lads had come down the stairs. I called out to them asking if they wanted me to move it. Their muffled answers came from the rooms above us and then we heard Matt coming to the top of the stairs and asking if we wanted something. They hadn’t been near the staircase.

We kept calling out but there was nothing else of note during the session, so we moved up to the top floor to join the lads.

We sat around the table and drank coffee while the wood-burning stove heated the room. We decided to try a séance. We never do things like this as a team, but we all shrugged and said, ‘why not?’

We closed our eyes and held hands. Jackie began to call out to any spirits who may have been present. She invited them to come towards the light – meaning the candlelight – but this was too much for us and we all burst out laughing.

We spent the next hour or so relaxing, laughing and chatting and just enjoying being together as a team. We did do a calling out session as the night drew on but nothing of note happened. Jackie and I decided to try to get some sleep, so we struggled our way back down the steep staircase to our welcoming bed.

We were awakened in the morning by a loud bang outside our bedroom door. We assumed it was the lads – we had heard them talking, laughing and doing more investigations during the night and we thought they were coming back upstairs and had dropped something outside our door. Jackie stuck her head out of the door, and we could hear the lads talking from upstairs. We asked them about the noise, and they said they thought it was us.

When we listened back on the audio, the sound came through loud and clear, but we were unable to find any cause for it.

On the review, Matt picked up an amazing Class A EVP from the upstairs room when we were all sitting around laughing. Have a listen and see if you can make out what it says. The recording has been slowed down from normal speed to make it a little clearer – please post suggestions in the comments as I would love to know what you hear.

I'm wondering if it's worth going downstairs again!

Our trusty rope!

The easy bit

EMF? What has this got to do with Ghosts?

What is EMF?

EMF is the abbreviation for electromagnetic fields. According to the WHO, these fields are around us all the time but are invisible to the human eye. (WHO web link)

Sources

Natural sources include thunderstorms and the earth's magnetic field.

Man-made sources include x-rays, electricity and mobile phones.

Possible ill effects of high EMF

• fatigue, stress and sleep disturbances
• skin rashes
• depression
• sore throats
• digestive disorders
• infertility
• cancer clusters

Research is ongoing and although these effects are often reported, no conclusive link has been found between them and high EMF levels.

So what has this to do with Ghost Hunting?

Most paranormal investigators carry at least one EMF meter with them. The meters' flashing lights are well-known to most paranormal fans.

But why do they flash? What does it all mean?

For years, paranormal researchers have believed that bursts of EMF signal the possible manifestation of a spirit.

There is no proof to state that this is the case but conversely, there is no proof that this is NOT the case!

Confusing? Yes.

These days, most paranormal investigators use these meters as, simply, another tool to point them in the right direction. Unexplained readings (flashing lights) guide us to spend a little more time in the area, perhaps taking more photographs or calling out.

Sometimes the pulsing of the lights seems to be intelligent. They seem to flash on demand or in response to questions. While this can be interesting, it does not prove the existence of spirits.

Things that can affect EMF

Sometimes, on a ghost hunt, the EMF meters flash throughout the investigation. We have to rule out natural or normal causes such as;

• mobile phones not switched off
• passing taxis or police cars (the radios send out waves that can affect our meters)
• other items of gear too close to the meters - my audio recorder sets mine off if I hold them too close together
• electricity meters

These are the most obvious things we have to look out for but there may well be other things that we do not notice at the time (thunder, overhead power lines).

If we have a lot of activity with the EMF meters but no other items of interest during the investigation, we make a point of returning at a later date to see if we get the same response.

If, on the other hand, we pick up EVPs (electronic voice phenomena), unexplained mists or shadows on photographs or film and have some personal experiences around the time of the high EMF readings, we are inclined to say that they may be of a paranormal nature.

In conclusion

High EMF readings are always of interest. Shorts bursts may simply mean that we have inadvertently contaminated our investigation or that a spirt is trying to manifest or that a taxi has just driven past close by.

Longer, more sustained, high readings suggest that there may be a source of electricity, WIFI, cordless or mobile phone or other radio wave producing element in our vicinity. In this case (especially in a private house investigation), we will try to locate the source so that we can advise the homeowners that this may be a potential health issue.

EMF readings are interesting but not conclusive. No self-respecting paranormal investigator would rely solely on these little flashing lights - but, they are still fun!