The End of an Era

I have recently had the news that my ghost hunting team will no longer be holding public hunts.  Private ones should still be going ahead but with being self funded, I am not sure how many of these I will be able to afford to attend.  Here, in honor of Haunted Britannia, are the three most compelling pieces of evidence I have personally experienced while hunting with the team.  The inspiration to write these up comes from conversation with a fellow horror Youtuber Hollowkeez, who is going to narrate these in the coming weeks.

Enjoy.

I have been on many paranormal investigations, but they are nothing like the shows on TV.  They always make it seem that ghosts are all around and will make themselves very known at every possible opportunity.  The truth could not be further from their works of entertainment fiction, most hunts are very quiet and nothing really happens all night.  Most of the time it's just feelings and small sounds.  However, there is that odd time when something happens that makes your blood run cold and your spine tingle.  Here, I present to you the three times I have personally experienced something that was beyond my explanation.

Two of these events occurred on the same night, Halloween night.  The team were in the cellar of Nostal Priory in West Yorkshire, England.  Do you know about table tipping?  It's when a small group of people gather around a table and all place their finger tips on it's top.  They then call out to the spirits to use their energy to make the table move.  There are many theories as to how it works, and for the most part I am of the belief that it's the ideomotor affect, people making small movements that can build up the momentum of the table even though they have no idea they are doing it.  I have seen more tables tipping and dancing around than I can count, but it never convinces me that spirits are present.  Save for this one time.  A group of four gathered around our little Ikea table in that cold cellar and place finger tips on it's surface.  The table started to rock upon request, it started to tip this way and that.  Then it slowly tipped over to one side, slowly, slowly, more and more.  Now normally when the table tips so far it will crash to the ground, they have light legs and a heavy top.  With just fingers rested on it's top there is nothing to really hold it up.  But this just kept tipping gradually over without falling.  It's top was only 4 or 5 inches from the ground and it still didn't fall.  It never fell, it held there and then came back up to standing.  I wasn't quite sure how it was possible so I had to investigate this further.  After everyone had moved on to another room, I took the table and tried in as many ways as I could to replicate what had just happened.  I failed.

I would like to move on to a different night and location now, and leave Nostal Priory's second offering til last.  I would like to re-visit the events of a seance that took place again in West Yorkshire, but this time in Knottingley town hall.  I'm sure everyone is familiar with a good old fashioned Victorian style seance.  We had large round tables in the old dance hall, located on the 1st floor of the building.  The 1st floor was also the top floor so there was no other level above us.  No one else was on our floor, everyone who was there was sat around the table in that large dark room.  The lights were out and we had a little torch light on the table.  We held hands and called out many times over.  We had little sounds in the room here and there which is normal and can mostly be attributed to the old building settling in the night.  It was very sudden and out of nowhere.  It was loud and clear.  Heavy footsteps sprinted towards us from across the room and stopped right next to the table. It was behind me but I managed to hold myself enough to stay put.  All heads turned and gasps sprang from everyone's lungs.  One girl who had the footsteps stop directly behind her chair, shot up and landed on the knee of the woman next to her as she screamed.  We all heard it, it shocked and freaked us out.  Even our resident skeptic of the team still says to this day that he can't explain it and will recall how it scared him.  And this is a firm none believer.

Ok, let's take a trip back to that night at Nostal Priory.  At the time the team were working with a guy who was very into his gadgets, all the tech stuff.  One of the things he had was a modified baby monitor.  It gave a constant sound of low, white noise.  We gathered as a large group in one of the big rooms in the cellar.  The monitor was set up and the lights switched out.  In the darkness the white noise quietly mumbled away as our medium called out and started to describe to us what he could see and hear.  He told us that a large man was stood in the room with us.  He was well dressed and thought of himself as being better than us, that he was above us. The man apparently thought we were all stupid and wasting our time.  As the medium had a little conversation with the spirit man, we heard him reasoning that we were not stupid, just curious and wanted to talk to him and see proof from the other side of death.  Then the medium said to the man "Oh no no, don't laugh at us". Immediately after the sentence slipped from his lips, the monitor made a very loud sound.  It was all in static but sounded like laughing.  It's hard to express in text what it was like.  It was six short bursts of loud static that was like a chuckle.  Everyone was astonished and right after, the monitor cut dead and the room fell in to silence.  A torch was put on and the monitor checked but there was no evidence as to why it was not working.  It would not even switch back on again.  All of a sudden it just sprang back to life and continued to make the same low white noise as before.  It didn't do anything else and the medium said the man was gone.

I do sometimes feel that spirits are not real, but when I think about these events, I can't help but to continue to question it.

Live Ghost Hunt Tonight

I am just getting all set up and ready for our first ghost hunt live.  It's going to be a small and simple investigation but we hope it will be effective.  Please do join us and see if you can spot anything we miss.

Base Line Testing the K2

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Spooky Thursday with Haunted Britannia - 21 grams

This post is something I have shared before but it defiantly deserves to be brought back up for spooky Thursday.

I'm not going to say anything about this as the video here explains everything you need to know.  It's a heavy subject so let's make it light on the reading.  As light as the soul perhaps.

Is the soul a real and measurable thing?  Does it really weigh 21 grams?

Live Stream Right Now - Ghost Watch

This is a first test to see how well ghost watch goes over Facebook live.  Please do come and join the stream and let us know if you spot anything.

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Spooky Thursday with Haunted Britannia - Ouija Boards: Kids toy or a gateway to hell?

The feelings on Ouija boards are like the feelings for Marmite, only it's less of a love/hate thing and more of a love/fear thing.  I am not going to go through the full history and origin of the board, but if you are interested in reading about it then click here.  I will just say it has been around since the mid to late 1800's and sprang up from the love of all things spiritual in that era.  One unconfirmed story I really like is about the name Ouija which is said to have come from the board itself being asked what it should be called, it was then asked what Ouija meant and the board replied "good luck".

So why are so many people scared of the Ouija board?  This is just my view on it but it seems to be mostly from stories and films, rumours and urban legend.  The boards were around and widely used for such a long time with very few people having a problem with them.  Then they were used in horror films as an obvious choice because they are very visual and can give accurate messages plus the added factor of the audience being able to do it at home with a home made board and very little know how.  This was fuel for the fear and the urban legends got more graphic in people's minds because of the movies.  When you hear about how someone did a Ouija board in real life and it said they would all die then the dog freaked out and the light bulbs all exploded, who did it happen to?  That's right, a friend of a friend.  You don't often find someone telling you this stuff first hand, and the excitement of telling a scary real life story naturally brings on over exaggeration and embellishment.  Even if it doesn't it ends up with the Chinese whispers effect of altering each time it is told.  So are the stories of Ouija boards greatly over exaggerated?  Yes, I would say they are.  Big time.

Ouija boards are just one of many ways to try and contact spirits, others including a seance, pendulums and calling out for sounds in return.  It all boils down to the same thing.  The only difference is what you are asking the spirit or energies to effect, a glass on a board or pendulum in your hand.  The board is just the one that has a bad rap.  Some people are also quite hesitant when it comes to a seance as they have been shown to be scary in films and stories too but what about the poor little pendulum?  Or the dowsing rods?  No one bats an eyelid at them because they are famous for finding water underground which is more interesting that scary.

So in conclusion I would say that you have no reason at all to be scared of the board and it can't be used to open portals or summon demons, it won't kill you or curse you.  I know some people will still disagree and say they are to never be used for fear of death and destruction but honestly I have used them on investigations so many times I have lost count and you know what?  I have never had a good, clear, straightforward message from one yet, never mind a curse placed on me and I am fine as are the rest of the crew.

There is another question about the boards though, a big one.  How do they work?  Sometimes they really do work and you manage to get correct answers from them, so how do you think this happens? Let's look at that one next week.  For now, let us know what you think of the Ouija board.  Are you scared of it?  Do you have a good story?  Let us know on the Haunted Britannia post comments.

Ouija at Toys R Us, fun for ages 8 and up.

Spooky Thursday with Haunted Britannia - Disneyland Ghost

Hello and welcome to the new Spooky Thursday which I am doing in partnership with Haunted Britannia.  The ghost hunting team are a new, more wide spread venture from the long standing local group Pontefract Paranormal.  I have been a member of PP for quite some time now, well over a year I think, maybe nearly two, and I am also now a crew member with HB.  I have a separate blog called Finding Slimer in which I enter my report as I see it from investigations I go on and I have a couple of personal spooky experiences on there too.  I am aiming to have something related to the paranormal world on here every Thursday for the purposes of debate among Haunted Britannia patrons and fans, so without further ado, let's get on to the first one and let's make it a big one to celebrate this newness.

This video was captured at Disneyland in 2009.  It is a recording of the security monitors as a ghostly figure roams around the closed park in the night.  Some people say it is a ghost, maybe even Walt himself, and others have rather different explanations.  I am going to try and go through some theories and ideas to see what I can make of this.  When doing any kind of paranormal investigation you need to try and debunk everything in as many ways as you can, otherwise you just end up believing anything and everything is a ghost.  Eg the cat fell off a table in the next room "ohh it was a ghost".  That kind of thing.  And that proves nothing.  Only once you have ruled out as much as possible can you then begin to really look at something as a real candidate for para normality.

So this video I have chosen because it is pretty clear to see what we are talking about and it is compelling.  You can see the figure is very human in some of the shots, not just a strange mass.  It walks across different cameras which all line up perfectly and passes through some closed gates and does a Jesus impression over the boat lake.  So what are the possible explanations for this?

Someone on the net has mentioned the idea of screen burn, the image has been shown on the screen for so long that it has burned in.  So the background would be burned in, not the figure.  I think the person was suggesting that there really is a person walking through the park but they didn't show properly through the burnt images.  This should not really make any difference to the image of people on the screen, they should still show up fine not like a white transparent figure.  If this was the case then all people would show like this all the time on that screen.  That would be creepy to look at but unfortunately there are no other people in the shot to confirm this.  Having watched old TV screens in my youth with screen burn though, I'm not buying this one at all.  If it is a real image of someone walking through, how do they walk through closed gates and over a boat lake?

Old VHS tapes being reused with the 'ghost' image still hanging around.  I buy this one more as that does happen.  Like a double exposure, you can see a little of what was on the tape before you recorded over it with something else.  I do have a little niggle with it.  This does explain how the figure walks through closed gates and I am guessing all the tapes will be recording the same cameras all the time over and over.  The figure walks the path perfectly but then walks over the lake?  It could be that the tape was changed from recording another location before BUT we are talking about this same image crossing over four different screens which are either A those same 4 cameras are on a constant feed to one tape so it would have meant someone did walk over the lake or B that 4 different tapes record each camera feed and this same image is on ALL of them separately at the same time which seems very unlikely.

It was suggested it might be a reflection on the screen.  This one I am not buying either because it's very human looking and it shows on 2 screens at once walking between cameras which perfectly sync up.

After all that you are left with the question of it being a hoax.  If this is a hoax then it's quite a good one and must have taken a bit of skill and time.  It was uploaded on a YouTube channel called ghostatdisneyland on the 15th September 2009 and was followed by another video on the 23rd and a final one on the 29th.  The channel has no real information on it and just these 3 videos all as from the security cameras.  So what can we get from this?

These were put here anonymously on a channel that was made just for them with the look of the name and the fact it was created on the same day as the first upload.  So it could be someone who works there leaking footage they have found or they have taken the basic footage and manipulated it digitally.  That could be just for fun as the videos do not seem to have been monetised for viewer revenue.  Seems like a lot of trouble to make content that you will not have credit or money for creating but some people do still do these things.  Another idea is that it was a viral ad created by Disneyland to promote Halloween events.  The date would check out on this one with it being mid to late September.

If you take a look at the other 2 videos on there you have this Tower of Terror one which shows flashes of someone sitting first behind and then to the side of this maintenance worker going through the ride.  Someone said this was images of the same man repeated and reflected but it clearly isn't the case as you can see from my still shots below.  This ride does however use screens and holograms to scare the riders.  I can't help but feel that the ghosts in this video look quite conveniently like holograms in a place where hologram projection is installed.

The final video does look to me like a good candidate for ghost image on VHS as it is one camera view of one spot.  It could be someone getting in the train before imprinted on the new recording.

So personally I am going with this being a Disneyland viral ad.  I think anonymous channel creation ties in to that well.  Not monetised so no links to another account for payments and no other advert interruptions over their videos which are in themselves adverts, well timed for Halloween and pretty good images like it might have had some real thought and money put in to it to make it quite convincing.  It does look from a quick search that they had a 2009 Halloween festival so that links in well too.

This is just my thoughts on it all and my personal conclusion but as with all things ghost, it is open to interpretation and it can be hard to truly pinpoint an exact right answer.  It is possible I am wrong and it really is a security guard who wanted to show the spooks without getting fired for releasing Disneyland security footage.  They could be real or there could be another explanation for them.

The main question is, what do you think?