Re Spirit Guides…..

……and the identification of….. 👻

Apparently we all have quite a few spirit guides, allotted to us, along the way… by whatever force for good you may or may not believe in. Some of these reputedly stick with us for a long long while, some seem to remain only briefly, before disappearing, possibly to move on to a more worthy, better matched or more entertaining subject (?)

Some of these ethereal advisors seem more capable to the task than others, you just know when you’re in a period of strong safe guardianship, things just seem to tick over so smoothly, whereas if you find yourself with a couldn’t care less guardian it feels like a wheel has come off on your journey, causing a major wobble of turmoil and tribulation for a while….. I’m told by those who know that you can actually ‘fire’ your inefficient spirit guide by asking the “universe” to replace them for a better one, I’ve never gone that far though, luckily mine just seem to rotate around me at intervals, sometimes get a poor one, sometimes a good….. I accept the rough with the smooth!

I usually know when my guide has transitioned to a fresh one as I tend to see them, fleetingly… mostly they are sat looking silently at me in moments of quiet realisation, pasty faced, generally gawping in dismay, obviously thinking “what the heck have I ended up with here?”

The other morning though I woke up to a strange woman in the bedroom…. (spirit woman, naturally)(!) …. who asked me outright… (I kid you not)… “Whats this Google thing that everybody keeps going on about..??” Before sauntering off into the periphery, leaving me wondering what just happened?!

At least she made me laugh. For some reason or other! Never seen her before, couldn’t pick up on a name, I never can, instantly had a good feeling about her though, brown haired, ordinary looking, efficient lady type, neither fat nor thin, appeared dressed in a timeless classic navy blue cardigan/dress ensemble, a quite recently modern day period spirit, (though pre-google obviously), I’ve not been introduced to a spirit guide of historical orientation yet, like a Roman centurion or a native American person like so many seem too get.. mine always come across as ‘of this time’ spirit folks!

Anyway the next particular day I was having to make what’s become a regular trip into the city… ten, twelve miles or so away in distance, I had determined previously I was going to walk it, up onto the tops via Stanage Edge, Stanedge, Redmires reservoirs and the city route passing Stumperlowe Hall on the way… a nice change from public transport using an ancient trackway just as monks, pedlars and travellers have for a thousand or more years, a route I’d fancied taking for ages as it had often been reported to have a very eerie atmosphere by many who walk it so with a great weather day being forecast, I took the opportunity to set off for the smoke of Sheffield at around break of dawn!

I must admit never has an uncertain walk into the unknown gone so well, I felt safe and confident the whole way and I realised then that the comical lady spirit may have taken over spirit guiding duties for me! Not only did the walk and the day, (that I wasn’t looking forward to at all), pass without stress, all went utterly swimmingly! I hadn’t had such a day of pleasant luck and beneficial incidents for ages…. even found a peculiarly obscure coin that I picked up from off the path way called Long Causeway… immediately realising that this coin was a gift from my new spirit guide lady… as they are believed to deliver you an object that holds great symbolic value… you just have to be prepared to look out for it whenever they do!

The coin was a tarnished, rusty little twenty pence shaped coin, though smaller than any in my purse, this black, devoid of lettering coin was only the same size as a modern day round five pence coin, that must have been lying in the gritty subsurface of the hardcore rocky lane for years… I was hoping it was going to be an old groat or a medieval farthing or such like, unfortunately, after a little cleaning, I managed to remove enough grime to find a date of 1999, yes, it was an old, very old twenty pence coin!

Still think it was my lovely guides way of passing information on about herself though! 1999! A long time for a coin to be sat waiting just for me to come by, especially on such a well used busy trackway! And also a long time before Google was even a glint in its fathers eye.

Hints for identifying your own spirit guide. Find a quiet space in which to meditate, visualise your heart as a plump flower bud with the petals of truth and wisdom opening up to accept the warm benevolent light…. imagine yourself sat in a sacred safe place, a place you feel most relaxed and strongest in, when fully immersed in calm and light ask your spirit guide to present themselves to you.

As they appear they may be reticent to converse, just as in any new relationship you have to gradually come to terms with each others foibles, they may well offer you a present of your own…a feather, a stone, maybe a trifling little token, whatever it is it will be of great worth to them, just remember to accept this treasure with great grace and you may be able to garner a good deal of value from your guardians gift!

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Another bit of Oddness….

…in the #StrangeWorldofWillcx …!

A quick slice of possible spirit manipulation for your delectation. The last week or so I have been having a couple of electrical items curiously playing up, particularly the television set mysteriously turning itself off. Nothing unusual in that, I thought. It is quite an old set… could be on its last legs…. and the temperature of the room it is set up in has been astronomical during this last few weeks of unbelievably constant heat wave.. I assumed the television was most probably just cutting out owing to the fact that some sort of power short, over heating shut down mode had kicked in. Although… no matter how diligent I was to turn the set off every now and again to allow for cooling… the set still “conked out” at regular intervals…. (twice, occasionally thrice a day)!

The set needed unplugging from the power before I could restart it whenever. The aerial and satellite box didn’t seem affected even though they work off the same plug socket, they weren’t cutting out so no problem with the power point , so I began preparing myself for the inevitable possibility of the set totally dying on me… most probably on World Cup Final day as England are in a penalty shoot off… anyhow, I digress….

Then just the other day I had to go attend an interview in Sheffield, (the nearest city to where I live), something I didn’t want to go through but had no choice, it was at a place I’d never been to and with a person I had never met before and I was dreading it. Luckily the person concerned had a keen interest in all things paranormal, the conversation soon got around to all things otherworldly and the fact that the building we were sat in was incidentally very haunted and the miserable morning I had been expecting was delightfully turned around! We shared tales of ghost hunting encounters and they mentioned that, just like me, their own house was haunted… they knew because whatever was haunting their abode kept turning…… their television set off!

“How longs that been happening” I asked! “Ages, …months and months!“…. they assumed their ghost was definitely turning it off as they had replaced their sets a few times and were still getting the replacement turned off, frequently! And they could only restart them by unplugging the sets!

Of course the similarity with my own recent television problems set my bells ringing…. could, {the spirit} that was connected to that person… (with the manipulation of time and space that spirits seem capable of…) have followed me back home to start playing with my own TV?

(You may recall I also mentioned another electrical item playing up…. vis…. the sound around speaker system had oddly started turning itself off slightly prior to the TV being affected… this was somehow being deactivated by the on/off button on the back of the main speaker being pressed off! That threw me for a while as I didn’t even know it had an on/off button on the back! Took me ages to twig how to turn that back on!

Interview concluded, followed by a walk around the historically haunted streets of Sheffield… I returned home to the village to settle down for the night… turning in at about 1am, my going to bed ritual was disrupted by a cold chill rent the torrid night air and a large formless shadow mass scurried across the room in front of me! Shook me up, I’ve only seen my resident ‘ghost’ manifest in that fashion once before… odd thing was that a day prior to that enforced meeting I had had a vision of some sort of scruffy, mediaeval type dressed bloke peering in at me from outside the window… was very vivid and gave me the creeps actually…. anyway whatever energy had moved through the bungalow that night gave me a very poor nights sleep and I was fit for nothing the following day, totally drained, sapped!

I will be interested to hear if the person I met that day is still having their telly turned off or not…. or if their phantom entertainment spoiler has moved into my place…. Back dating itself by several weeks??

Funny feeling I’ve not seen the last of it! On the morning of scribing this post the television had been on only half an hour before it was extinguished again…. and the sound around speaker system was turned off on the button at exactly the same time…. that was a first, them both going off simultaneously! Then that happened again during the Sweden England match… at the one moment I stepped out of the room to celebrate with a jam butty!

If this peculiar entity doesn’t explain itself rapidly… it’ll be getting well and truly white saged sooner than later! Can’t be having my leisure watching messed around with… even if it’s trying to tell me something!

Baby Blues from Beyond??

Now here’s an odd occurrence that just happened to me the other day… pretty well unexpectedly. I had been intending to stay in all day, it had been swelteringly hot and I had earlier made the decision to stay indoors, out of the sun, settled in front of the television watching the last World Cup group matches… but something was niggling at me all afternoon to go out.. I didn’t need to, required no shopping, had nowhere I needed to be, something just kept gnawing at me….. go out….

“OK” I said to myself, looking for any excuse not to have to do so… “if South Korea beat Germany in this match I will go out!”

Two South Korean goals to nil later I was reluctantly tying the laces of my faux suede desert boots and wondering where to head for…. (After a good while of ‘following my intuition’ I’ve found its often more beneficial to ‘go with the flow’ as it were…. and ask questions later)!

So I opted to visit the village ‘local‘, (pub) where at least I could get some complimentary WiFi provision for my internet starved tablet, even though it would mean having to buy a half a pint of exorbitantly priced gaseous ale for the privilege! (I am leaning more toward preferred teetotalism now, no longer enjoy alcohol very much)…. (!)

Everything about the stroll felt wrong, the village felt out of sorts, edgy, probably due to the oppressive heat of the mid summer day, the odd few people who were sauntering by were stranger’s, all emitting a stand offish aura anyway. Saddleworth Moor, some fifteen miles or so away was ablaze and the homeopathic aroma of the smoke pall was detectable over our area as well, perhaps that was what I was picking up on, there was definitely an out of kilter atmosphere all round!

So I bought my half a pint of liquid junk… with my usual disparaging remark of… “Don’t look like rain yet.. but it certainly will taste like it..!” (They love me calling in there)… and settled down to a quiet session on Facebook, which was frustratingly disrupted by the WiFi signal constantly dropping off, then reconnecting, then dropping off again…. I persevered for half an hour or so before throwing the towel in on a bad job! Was probably karma on me for being cynical towards the barmaid… I felt pretty robbed though for the waste of time effort and money the small diversion had cost me!

I sulkily opted to return home via the quiet F_____’s Green, which dropped me down by the old D______ hotel, not really noticing that the air was still… and time itself seemed disjointed… there was no traffic passing anywhere, no persons in sight, all was eerily quiet, until the loudest, lusty shrill wail of a crying baby erupted from an open window in the dentist’s surgery directly over the road…. A pitiful cry of despair and lamentation came again from the unseen infant who must have been occupying one of the rooms, bawling its eyes out and I thought to myself… “I’ve never heard a baby in there before…!” Thinking of it, I’d never seen anyone with a baby going about their business in there before…. it is a dental surgery, has been for years, the large house like building was once a vital village store, the old shops name is still spelt out in ceramic floor tiles in the doorway, you often see patients calling in and out but I’m pretty sure there is no living accommodation above the surgery…. couldn’t be a hundred percent certain if the surgery was open or not but this was eight pm on a midweek evening and this screeching child sounded way too neonatal for teeth!

The chilling thing was that there was no sounds of any adult soothing the babe, nor even reprovingly hushing it, if the babe was so obviously audible over the still night air you would have thought an attending adult would have been heard within clearly; … a third howl of anguish emanated forth ear shatteringly before suddenly there was silence… total silence, for what seemed an age…… before I could hear distant traffic and a far off dog barking on the breeze again… I stood listening and looking towards the open windows for a while afterwards but not a whimper nor a sniffle could be heard, neither did any adult show themselves to gaze wistfully out of the window whilst cradling any tiny infant in caring arms…

Of course there could be several very innocent explanations for these events… and I will be doing some properly discreet detecting work before I publish this post, just in case…. but it seemed an odd turn of spirit driven fate that lead me to be passing that open window well out of my ordinary routine habits, just at the moment that poor child decided to make itself known so vociferously!

I do know it wasn’t a very pleasant experience for me, a distressing enough event that played on my mind the rest of the night….. Hopefully by me hearing its plaintive cries, that may have been all that was required to lead to some manner of a calming conclusion for the child…. wether belonging of this particular time dimension, …….or another?

Since further discreet investigations were carried out around the location and no more information or sounds of a living breathing baby was detected, plus the fact that the atmosphere has never resorted back to that “netherworldly” effect again…. I have decided to record my experience of that night… registering it as one of those #StrangeWorldofWillcx events……..

Going Dark in Cucklet Church……

Eyam…… the plague village…. rife with spirit! Deserving of its haunted reputation which stems possibly from its unfortunate history and the ideal geological combination of energy holding compounds, layered not far beneath the modern day living foundations….. the spirits of the previously departed are usually eager to come forth here… if you ask them nicely!

The moderate, ex human spirits are strong enough… for those that can detect them…. but are there deeper and darker energies waiting latent for their opportunity to turn out to play?

After our paranormal team investigation night recently, in a club house near the dead centre of Eyam, we concluded a moderately intense evening of seances and spirit divination with a stroll to the villages “Cucklet Delf”…. a small tract of typical Derbyshire dale, a stream running through grassy slopes with a limestone based hillock rising from it like a dromedary camel hump, the remnants of a once cave system that had been eroded and opened to the elements now, exposing narrow, deep clefts of fossilized crustaceans laid down as carboniferous lime stone during the Jurassic period!

This was the “church” where the Reverend William Mompesson held his religious services during the plague months, twice a week he would preach from the arched cloisters of the naturally formed pulpit, as the ever dwindling villagers gathered round and listened to his sermons from the slopes below, all the family groups spaced apart at a respectable distance so as to reduce the risk of infection……. we decided as a group to go dark, as midnight of St Johns Eve drew near…. so we could finish the event with a bang!

Now we have some powerful spirit mediums on our team, including one who has studied voodoo in Haiti, so we formed a circle of protective positive strength and invited the dark spirits to come join us if they dared……

And dared they seemed to do. One of our group thought he saw an iconic ‘plague doctor’ character, complete with crows beaked mask come into the circle with us…. another was freaked out by the adverse attention of something menacing stood behind him, molesting him, chilling him to the bone… one of the young ladies with us experienced the sensation of strangulation, several people were unnerved enough to leave the circle and our team leader had a scarf she was wearing, pulled from around her neck and dragged up over her face!

All of a sudden the arm of the lady guest to my right was levitated several times and you could sense some powerful invisible energy toying with the fact it could hoist our hands into the air, then my own left hand started to levitate up and down several times, until incapacitated, with both arms stretched up, the Force literally had me pinned to the limestone wall of the Church, no way could I drop my arms down, though there was no sensation of being gripped by any unseen assailants hands, I was completely at the mercy of some powerful potency and to make matters worse the invisible force began to push me bodily hard against the wall at the same time! Wow! Intense action! Unfortunately for ‘it’, whatever ‘it’ was, I didn’t pick up on enough sense of malevolence to be feared of the thing, in fact I was chuckling merrily at the almost absurd situation I was finding myself in…. so as the spirits impetus waned and the energy in the circle was wound down by the team Medium I was gradually released…. we closed the circle down responsibly and also white saged the area just in case…..

That was the second “man handling” I’ve received at the unseen hands of a sentient energy from a parallel dimension…. {or whatever it is they man handle you with..}!! I was once “escorted” out of the bedroom of some long deceased country Squire who had obviously taken umbrage at me pestering him in his chambers…. he grabbed me by the shoulder and the seat of my pants and frog marched me down a staircase in a very restrained fashion….( I realised later he could have treated me much more roughly had he so desired)!!

You definitely should not provoke the Dark Energies to appear in any circumstances, I was happy to participate in this experiment knowing that our Medium was capable of handling whatever the Elementals could throw at us and safely close them down again…. but given the chance of seeing what exactly the “spirits” are capable of is a real eye opener, that is well worth experiencing every now and again!!

Plaza’s Phantom Projectionist….

Of Old Stockport Town..

Just been on The Manchester Ghost Walkers new guided ghost walk around very haunted Stockport…. (south of the city!) Flecky Bennett goes as mad as a hatter, he should call it…. owing to the local milinery industry and the consequential insanity the hat trade inflicted on its workforce, through it’s usage of mercury in the manufacturing process!

A great walk up and down the steep town steps and cobbled brows, following the eerie route of Satan’s own devilishly romantic Stockportian appearance…we heard also of the disappeared skeletal remains of a gibbetted murderers remains and a shot Peace Officer who lingered on for years with a musket ball in him…. (he’s fine now…he haunts the pub he used to live in…)

Some great tales very well researched and related fervently by Flecky in his inimitable style…. (brilliant piece of impromptu ad libbing in the heady church yard when a ghost rider motorcyclist made the mistake of parking his bike in there)! Definitely won’t be long until the haunted public houses on the route start opening their doors to the event… I saw at least one landlady blubber as our walking party passed her haunted establishment without a second glance… (well…. they were offered a chance to partake…… none of them were interested apparently…)!!

Same with Stockports Most Haunted Staircase House… a tourist information and market place museum. Closed at night. The Dungeons… the town lock-up… (which unfortunately remains locked most of the time), probably hold some dark little secrets that a paranormal investigation might unleash as well….. what a night if they could be accessed!!

Flecky Bennett spun some good gruesome facts about these sites though…. from outside them at least!

Another place that is well haunted, the Plaza Cinema, is a busy entertainment centre with at least two spirits roaming its plush flock lined interiors … I know one is very powerful as I met him a couple of nights before the walk…. in one of those odd spirit dreams I sometimes get before going off on these adventures..!!

He was strong enough to lift my psychic shutters, strut up and down the foyer of his cinema interpretation he was projecting at me and left me with no doubt we were in a cinema as he kept morphing into old film style characters.. keystone cops, ‘the kid’, a gangster in a trilby, as he promenaded, smiling…. weird I know, these things usually are!

Why did he come to me? I’ve never been in the Stockport Plaza before… Maybe he just wanted me to let Flecky Bennett know that the spirit is happy with the relating of his particular story…..(turns out he could be the old original manager)… and that, with his blessing; the new Stockport ghost walk is going to be a rip roaring success!!

For great walks with a macabre slant in Manchester and district… visit

www.manchesterghostwalk.co.uk

👻🎥👻

Hiking Hazelbadge

Reuniting an old connection?

For years I’ve been driving past Hazelbadge Hall… coming down the long way through Tideswell from Buxton to clean the tourist toilets in the Hope Valley… (such fun).

I’ve always been drawn to the small square hall standing in the mucky farmyard at the bottom of the steep hill just as the village of Bradwell was approached…. with mullioned windows and its highly weathered symbolically stone carved heraldric device set high on the eaves, the barn sized structure oozed a sense of forgotten grandeur, an indication of formidable authority with it’s wolf head carved above a medieval, (worn smooth by the travails of time), stone sheild, signifying the badge of ancient office of Forester Royal, guardian of the Kings hunting forest which covered most of the hills surrounding the Peak Land….

The actual hall was long gone, I eventually discovered, a family called Strelley held the substantial stately building from the 1100’s until the 1420’s, when the Vernon’s moved in, the hall that remains is actually just a wing that the Vernon’s built in Tudor times, the rest of the derelict hall being demolished and the stones robbed to build the later farm buildings; but the attraction to me was always the ghostly history of the last of the Vernon’s…. Margaret, and her spectral ride from Hope to Hazelbadge!

Poor Margaret, so the tale goes, had met the love of her life but a rival had stolen his heart and he married that lady instead. Margaret had gone to the church at Hope to witness the happy event, possibly in pretence of maintaining a dignified composure, though inside she was desolate…. driven insane by her emotions she rode back from Hope at breakneck speed, thrashing her horse as if bulbous eyed fiends were chasing her, by the time she had ridden back to her home up through Bradwell Dale she was a gibbering wreck, inconsolable. Though apparently the love shown to her by her servant’s pulled her from the brink as they nursed the lady Margaret through her oppressive depression…. how long she lived after that traumatic tryst I know not, there must be some history of her demise but I’ve not found any evidence of it yet, a tour of the church and grave yard at Hope has not revealed her resting place, the date must have been 1720ish, since the Vernon’s only lasted 300 years and she was the last of the line; the man she loved would have most likely been a Balguy or a Woodroofe, these families being the prominent landed gentry in the Valley at that stage of history… the Eyres were starting to fall into poverty so perhaps they wouldn’t have figured in this particular tale…. there will no doubt be some parish record that places the event in time even though the sorry little drama has been more or less forgotten, except for the ghostly tale that to this day, when the night howls with wind and rain the spectre of Margaret Vernon is seen riding insanely up through Bradwell Dale towards Hazelbadge Hall… forever repeating her upsetting journey home from that Hope Valley wedding ceremony……

Margaret is one of those folkloric tales of the Peak District that has stood the test of time, though wether anyone has ever actually seen Margaret performing her residual ride on a ghostly horse is probably speculative to say the least, possibly some over imaginative superstitious lead miner, traipsing down the hill in the depths of winter dreamt her up, gleaning the details from the gossipy tittle tattle of the Bradwell peasantry!

When I eventually moved into the Valley to reside there, I kept getting drawn to the Hazelbadge, Hartle Dale, Jennings Dale area for some reason or other, having that eerie sense of déjà vu that often crops up in these scenarios!

Oddly I had previously found a sad little grave in Hope church yard that was occupied by a young, apparently very pious daughter of the Hartle’s family… (there is still a Hartle’s farm in Hartle Dale to this day…) in my search for the grave of Margaret, she may have lived around the time of Margaret, would have known people that held theliving memory of the story anyhow…. imagining now how spirits seem to operate…. could she have been reaching out from the ether towards me?

Very recently, with the improved spring weather I have been able to get back into the walking habit again, and, not for the first time, have been able to communicate by pendulum with a gentle spirit energy that seems to wander that particular locality, she seems to think she is Margaret Vernon, if she is or isn’t I couldn’t fundamentally say… but if she is, I have a weird feeling our paths may have crossed previously….. if only in the way that I was once some member of the peasantry from Bradwell or Hazelbadge that perhaps she recognised as a familiar face…. who knows, seems to be some sort of old connection there that may resurface sometime again.

A wander round Bakewell Old House Museum

With Fright Nites; investigating the paranormal

April 27th 2018:

Another fantastic nights investigation with Fright Nites… the spirits didn’t disappoint with appearances from the usual dark entity that lurks amongst the exhibits…. (John?)… at least three different lady spirits eerily transposing themselves over the mannequin in the decidedly creepy cellar… spirit children still occupy the school room, though that particular room may have had a different purpose when they were in the world of the living, and a peculiar set of spirits were encountered in the smithy’s shop that may have emanated from whatever lay below the Tudor foundations…. they curiously interacted with us during a circle seance, fascinated that they were able to levitate our clasped hands they spent ages raising and pulling Cameron (one of our guests) hand, then followed him back into the cellar, where they continued their game, launching his arm up towards the ceiling!

That cellar has an atmosphere all of its own, many of the guests were wary of the place and Shelly, (co team leader) had an experience where she had found herself locked in and molested, was seeing floating light anomalies, and caught a very interesting orb on video! The female spirits that were showing up on the mannequin were giving some weirdly coherent responses on an Alice box device, we also got some very distinct names from them that could possibly have linked them with an historic travesty of justice that occurred in the early 17th century…. I’m not going to reveal the names, they may hopefully crop up again in future investigations.

A chance to visit All Saints Church yard was offered to the guests so that they may stand within the ancient stone coffins aligned by the door….. wether anything ethereal was stirred from those sarcophagus or not, no one was saying….. who knew what followed you back??

Spirit boards and pendulum diviniation were effective on the night with most of the guests experiencing events that challenged their perspectives though frustratingly the dominant spirit of the night decided to thwart us on the table tipping experiment, I guess we were overstaying our welcome at this stage of the night, sulky John was becoming decidedly petulant with the mediums!!

The night came to it’s inevitable end and alone on the heady upper floor, Vicky, (co team leader), sensed the need to take one last photograph…. and caught an extremely curious image of someone watching her from the ether as she looked along the deserted landing……!!

A great night of interaction with spirit was enjoyed by all, I don’t know what it is about the Bakewell Old House Museum that lures the otherworldly in, but it never fails to turn something superbly supernatural up!

Visit the Fright Nites Facebook page for forthcoming events.

If visiting the Peak District the museum is @

www.oldhousemuseum.org.uk

Hathersage Church….

Wrong day to go?

Hathersage church and haunted Vicarage

Decided to have an impromptu walk around Hathersage church the other day…. being a cold showery Spring Tuesday there was nobody much around and I fancied taking a few pictures of the Eyre brass memorials whilst it was quiet.

The large heavy doors were shut but unlocked, so I turned the black iron latch and stepped in… to an invisible but perceivable force stood in the doorway! The lights were off inside so the interior was dingy… and heavily atmospheric, though neither cold nor warm, suddenly the slightly imposing force had felt as though it had stepped aside, so undeterred, I ventured in.

Luckily the lights obviously work off some movement sensor as they flickered on and I strolled round the interior, not uncomfortably, but nevertheless having the feeling of being watched all the while.

Thre was definitely nobody else in the church, I stood still for a moment or two and the lights went off, only to re light on my approach to the chapel where the Eyre family Brasses and tomb stand. A bit of inane banter directed to the occupants of the tombs was more to put me at ease as much as anything, though I soon stopped that as I swear blind that at one stage I heard a distinct *rap* coming from within the marble sarcophagus… (of course this was most likely my imagination, or perchance a loose flagstone underfoot….)?

Photos taken, not all together successfully as the tablet camera I was using seemed to have developed an out of focused mist about it… {perhaps affected by the temperature of the day?}…. I strolled back towards the closed wooden doors, uneasily. Thanked whatever was in there and left. Knowing full well I had had an experience!

Wasn’t until I was sat reading a Peak District almanac of folk lore that night I realised it had been Saint Mark’s eve… the day when the shades of ailing villagers of the parish are said to parade into church to attend ghostly congregations with spectral Rectors…. the shades that leave the church at the end of the service will supposedly reunite with their host villager, thus ensuring a longer spell of life…. the shades that find themselves locked in the inner sanctum will wither and perish during the coming year.

Did I walk in to an otherworldly ceremonial rite of the moribund that day? I can’t say… I just hope I didn’t disturb some phantom Vicar conducting his service for the damned!

Lathkill Lodge… The Return!

Lathkill Lodge is the small ‘gate house’ to a country estate between Bakewell and Rowsley in the White Peak District…. in my own opinion, exceedingly haunted…..

What a place for spirit energy Lathkill Lodge is…. passing spirits seem drawn to the place like a magnet, perhaps something to do with the old stone bridge that stands astride the river crossing the land.

This bridge has an aura all of its own, a little girl spirit called Emily seemed to be playing around this location with only one shoe and a doll in her hand, wanting a guest she had taken a liking to to come join her in play…. spirits affected many of us by relating pains and stories of their passing to us, a sensitive guest picked up on a youth that may have lost his life in a lead mining accident, maybe near by, he gave a few of us his head ache, lets hope this sharing helped him on his journey.

The oldest part of the Lodge, a five hundred year old Chapel generated three very curious probably residential spirits during a seance in the stone walled confines, transposing themselves over three very brave guests who allowed the shades to appear through them, one I think, I had met on my previous visit, scowled at me menacingly and a very old spirit, possibly connected to the chapel, amazed Martyn, (the teams historian), as the phantom face of the spirit man visibly morphed and contorted over the (lovely) face of a lady guest…. projecting itself out towards him several times! The third spirit in the seance circle was quiet but darker.. I think I had encountered him earlier in the evening, to my cost! During this vigil, Vicky, one of the team leaders , was having her necklace amulet toyed with, as if something was trying to remove it!

The Mediums on the team were connecting to spirit energy all night and intelligent responses to questions were being answered through activation of EMF meters…. the ouija boards and pendulum diviniation were throwing up their usual cryptic entertainment and wandering shadow figures were noticed around the grounds of the Lodge.

The night fast running its course, a table tipping was attempted with the entire team and guests standing around the large dining room table, finger tips linked to try and provide energy for the weary spirits, sadly without result though the K2 meters were registering anomalies.. and eventually the frustrated spirits managed to impress us by knocking two solid raps on the conservatory door in response to a request to please knock!

That pleasant scare sent the guests home contentedly buzzing!

Oddly enough, after they had gone, the team and Sarah, (the lucky guest who had won a chance to slreep over at the Lodge), managed to get a positive result as the dominant spirit energy of Lathkill, stirred up by the Mediums, vibrated, rocked, and shunted the table around the floor!

Luckily for those of us sleeping over we were left to enjoy a comfortable, pleasantly undisturbed cosy night at the very atmospheric Lathkill Lodge.

Thanks to Vicky Ford and Shelly Bramley for gathering us all together as “Fright Nites…..”

A paranormal event enjoyed by all!

The old stone bridge, a conduit for spirit?

Lathkill Lodge

Bakewell Old House Museum Investigation

In which we ventured somewhere dark, though not so fusty.

This was my experience on a paranormal investigation undertaken by the Haunted Company team from Derbyshire, sadly they have wound down their events now, but another local team have taken on the venue, keeping the haunted site in the county para family!!

Museums are by their very nature prime locations for a haunting, being chock full of artefacts oozing possible spirit energy attachment and all…. but Bakewells old Tudor House museum, {that was built by the lawyer Ralph Gell for his Steward to live and work from}, seems to hold some powerful local entities that emanate from the history laden lanes of the renowned pudding producing market town itself…..

The museum has a definite air of heaviness when you gather within its confines…. the small cellar area seemed to hold a slightly dark energy that carried a morbid secret or other, which many seemed to find overwhelming…. perhaps that was the seat of the strong energies that rose up to convene with us that night as we roamed amongst the informative exhibits, attempting to root out the hidden tales from the archaic fabric of the building for ourselves.

Various vigils and seance techniques soon drew up a lot of activity, the air was electric, rapidly we picked up intelligent responses to our questions that could have been leading us down the persecuted wise woman route… we were encountering spirits that seemed to allude that they may have been convicted of witchcraft… of course there is the well known story of the two Bakewell witches, sisters, who were tried and executed on the fanciful ramblings of a Scottish peddlar who condemned them falsely of practising magic after the pair seized his goods in lieu of unpaid rent for lodgings. Could these two maltreated women be coming through with their story…. something dark and witchy was messing with us in one way or another… took a strong dislike to a masculine member of our group as he seemed to resemble the executioner that the spirit had fatally come across in the final moments of life…. this, turned out, to be a rather chilling spirit force as the night wore on, not only did it manipulate the glass planchette of a spirit board with incredible vigour…. eventually smashing this glass asunder… I also watched this entity push and slide a rather solidly built medium and his heavy wooden chair along the floorboards and into a glass exhibition cabinet… luckily for us all not breaking said cabinet…. but its intention was fairly obvious….

At this stage of the night I was starting to realise that all of us in the event were being affected… patience was strained, groups of usually friendly investigators were getting ever so slightly strained in each others company, people were drained and emotional. I got the impression we were in the company of something that deserved respect… though eventually a mutual level of understanding seemed to have been reached as the evening became slightly less intense.

The residual spirits of the old Stewards house and the Arkwright mill workers cottages hadn’t shown themselves to us that night but they are there, of that there is no doubt, going about their daily routine….

Dare you visit the Old House Museum to see which spirits of the past turn up for you on your visit to this very rewarding haunted historical hot spot?

www.oldhousemuseum.org.uk