Stanwix House

I work in this building that is reputedly haunted. I've worked ther now for probably 5 years or so I'd guess. The house was built somewhere around 1830 give or take a year or two and, to my mind, is a beautiful place to work and I'm desperate for the lottery to come up so I can buy it and turn it into a home. I just love it.

Well, my colleagues and I do like our ghost hunts and we've been looking around online to see if there was anything relatively near that we could take part in. Glasgow, Edinburgh, Darlington etc. All a bit of a trek. All of a sudden, Fee suggested that we do the building I work in. So, we got permission from the relevent bod and we've arranged the stopover for this Friday evening. I'm really looking forward to it.

Although I love the building, I don't much care for being there after dark. It's not particularly creepy inside but it's not somewhere you'd feel happy being alone. Perhaps it's just 'cos it's rather big. Who knows? There's something like 25-30 rooms there ranging in size from a small toilet to large rooms over 20ft square any anything in between. There are attics too but sadly, no cellars that I'm aware of although looking at the photo I've attached, it looks like there possibly might be. They could just be vents for under the floor to stop it getting too manky under there I suppose.

The plan for Friday is for us to descend there at 10pm and do a quick recce of the building. We'll then 'go dark'. We're planning on ouija sessions, séances, table tipping, lone vigils and things like that. I'll also be taking recording equipment and having things for the ghost(s) if they exist to play with to let us know they're there. The state of play at the moment is that we're possibly going to be using the attic as our main hangout but we'll see how we feel when we get there... There is a bed settee in the main lounge (now a teaching room).

In my teaching room on more than one occasion, a couple of things have happened albeit nothing much to comment on...

Early on in the beginning of this academic year (beginning of October-ish 2011) during a class with 20 students or so we'd been talking about the place reputedly being haunted and then, a little while later, from nowhere, with no-one standing near it, the projector screen shot up (like a roller blind). It was a relatively new screen that has never done it before or since to my knowledge. With the same group a week or two later, the mouse on the computer screen that's linked up to the projector started moving around the screen on its own. I asked it to stop and it did. I asked it to start again and it did. The poor students were absolutely terrified and still talk about it now. Practical joke? Who knows? I think we'll be concentrating on that room a bit!

As you can see from the picture above, there are two rooms downstairs with large bay windows, originally the one on the left of the picture was my teaching room. It's the exact mirror image of the one on the right which is now my teaching room instead. I didn't like the room on the left. It's colder somehow (as in welcome rather than temperature) and it also feels darker. So, I decided to swap sides and the atmosphere in my new room is so much better but it does feel 'active' rather than the other one just being a bit grim.

Really looking forward to it. Probably because I've got my heart set on a Chinese takeaway!

S

Not so great

It's a little while since I posted on here and I think I broke a promise regarding to letting you know how the ghost hunt in Dumfries went. Well, we had a lovely meal. Moving swiftly on!

Actually, the ghost hunt wasn't quite what we'd expected but for what it was, it was lots of fun. We were shown around the building in a semi-dramatised way with the organisers dressed in Victorian costume telling lots of stories about the history of the theatre, who's seen what, where and when as well as telling us some interesting information about the remodelling of the theatre to make it what it was. Not a lot at all to report ghost-wise despite standing about hoping and waiting with dousing rods, crystals and God knows what else. A fun night was had by all but it was from making our own amusement rather than anything else.

something in the diary

Hello dear reader((s) if I'm being optimistic),

I've not posted anything in here for a little while as to be honest, nothing in particular has happened of late which I'm really pleased about!

I think I'll start to write down a few of my experiences now I've started to get back into 'blogging'. Do have a look at my other blogs too by the way.

So, getting all excited here as we're having another little 'works outing' to go on a ghost hunt. By works outing I mean 5 of us out of a staff of hundreds. It's the elite of the employees... and me. We're off to the Theatre Royal in Dumfries at the end of this month. I believe it's not quite as heavy going as the stuff we've done before and it's only around 3 hours or so as an event but I'm sure we'll have lots and lots of fun regardless! If you're interested to see what the haunted history of that place is just do a google search. There is a little about it on the 'web.

http://www.dgarts.co.uk/2727/events/mostly-ghostly-presents-haunted-theatre-tour/

So, wish us luck. I'll take the camera (of course) and see if anything tries to put the willies up me!

Coming Out

So, today I was sitting in the refectory at work with my friend, Maureen and her close colleague (and my friend too) and Maureen and I were talking about our experience at Chillingham Castle last weekend. I found it really interesting watching Marc's reaction. He was very polite and seemed genuinely interested but slightly skeptical. Marc, I presume, has never had any creepy or spooky experiences. While we were chatting I was almost stepping back and looking on at the situation and thinking what it must sound like to someone who just hasn't had those experiences.

I've certainly found out in the past that you've got to be slightly careful as to whom you speak when you're on about the paranormal. Sometimes people are very dismissive and occasionally very rude about their lack of belief. It is a bit like coming out as gay I guess. It's a sort of secret that you feel you can only share with certain people for fear of their reaction being negative.

I didn't feel for a second that Marc was being dismissive or scoffing in any way but just think how weird it must seem to someone when two people are simply certain that strange things that go bump in the night when all common sense says that they don't. Luckily for us, neither Maureen or I are what you'd call normal so we're safe on that score!

Fantastic picture, eh?

Curious Images

Last Friday evening, some friends and I went to Chillingham Castle on an organised ghost hunt. I've got to be really honest and admit that I was looking forward very much to going. While we were there, I got into the habit of just snapping pictures rather than composing them. I felt the best was to potentially catch anything that may be there was to point and press to see what I came up with.

At the time of taking this photograph, I was not aware of anything out of the ordinary. You'll see that there were several other people in the room and no-one reported seeing anything. Although I'd looked at this image myself more than once afterwards, it was only late last night that the smoke or steam or mist or whatever you want to call it, came into my vision. There was no fire lit in the room and there was no-one smoking. I can also promise you that it's not a hoax.

Hardly hugely dramatic, I know, but nevertheless it wasn't visible to anyone there. I've also discovered a few other things on other photographs taken that night.

So, presuming that it could be something that's not paranormal, what could it be? Could it be some smear on the camera lens? Possible but very unlikely as there were no smears on the preceeding or following images. I realise that there is someone just in front of the lens (you can just see the top of their head) so maybe it might be their breath as it was quite a cold night. Possible. However, why was no breath visible in any of the other well over 100 images I took that night? I guess the skeptic might argue that if there were that many images taken that evening it was easily possible that there would be a problem with at least one image despite it being modern digital photography.

What do I think it is? Genuinely, I'm just not sure. All I can say is that the first time we went into that room I took a picture (I'll post later) in the same spot but looking in a slightly different direction and also had something slightly unusual appear on the screen. The hopeful and enthusiastic ghosthunters out there and those with the inclination to believe would call it 'an orb'. You'll see what I mean when I post it later.

I do have one or two reservations regarding orbs though. They could easily be dust particles reflecting the flash back when a picture is taken or, as I showed outside that same evening with the picture below, it could even be a drop of water.

If I chose to, I guess I could say that the light anomalies in the image to the left here are all orbs, they're not. They're simply raindrops reflecting the light from the camera flash back at the lens. Looks really spooky though!

It's interesting to think that in a setting with a castle that's internationally acknowledged to be VERY haunted, that a photo as simple as this one could be interpreted by the hopeful believers as being irrefutable proof of the afterlife or paranormal or ghosts or whatever you'd like to link it to. I'm using this particular image as an example. We know that rain exists. We see it happen all of the time. If someone takes a photo of rain and says it's something else, are we obliged to disprove or are we just obliged to take their word on it being fact? We're hurtling towards theology here... Do you have enough faith in the photographer to believe that he says it's paranormal? Do you have enough faith in your understanding of the world as it's seen to believe that the paranormal doesn't exist? Deep, eh?

First Instalment

I bet you're thinking "ghosts? yeah, right". I suppose my answer is "yeah, right, ghosts". Ever since my first memories I've been aware of 'guests' being around me. From playing with a little girl on the stairs who used to come and visit me who I genuinely thought was real until years later it turned out to be a cousin of mine who had died several years before due to encepholitis through to being the victim of what I guess those who believe in the paranormal, as a poltergeist attack.

After a full lifetime knowing, not just believing but KNOWING that there's such things as the paranormal in the ghostly context and working very hard indeed to try to block it out and wanting nothing to do with it, I've found that during the last two years or so I've had no option but to embrace the fact that I seem to attract 'em!

I don't really know where to start this blog, should it be most recent experiences first or should it be the earliest experiences first?

What I do want to discuss is the very basic point of whether any experience that could be referred to as paranormal is actually that or just perfectly natural electromagnetic fields affecting the brain. Isn't there a lot of research regarding sensory depravation and tests on the sensitivity of people's temporal lobes? It seems to ring a bell with me somewhere from the dim and distant.


Now, I'm not a scientist,.. at all! What does interest me primarily is whether there is a way to explain away all of the many hundreds of experiences I've had throughout my 34 years of life. Without exception, whenever I've just had or am having a psychic encounter, I try to think if there's a more rational reason for it. Being absolutley honest, there have been several instances that I could and did easily explain away and was able to realise that I was just spooking myself. By far the most overwhelming thing is that I can't explain most of the experiences. I can appreciate that you might feel as though someone's watching you or you might feel as though you're not alone. I'm sure you can pick up those feelings from suggestion, group hysteria, group dynamics, individual suggestion and the list goes on as well as the hypersensitivity of the temporal lobes. What I do need to try to work out is how you can go into a house, have no knowledge or pre-suppositions of haunting or not and then not only sense something but be able to describe the appearance and/or character of a perceived entity and even be able to communicate with it and pick up accurate information from that.

I'll stop here for now and as the days, weeks, months or years go by, I'll add more thoughts and theories and try to show evidence both for AND against the existence of ghosts and leave it to you to decide whether I'm psychic on some level, easily deluded, nuts, or something else. I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything; I'm just discussing my personal experiences.