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.
