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Southern Paranormal - Investigations

Private House Investigation – Chandlers Ford, Hampshire

Saturday 21st March 2009

Attending Investigators – Julie Harwood, Maureen Taylor, Maria Street & Amanda Horley.

Guest Investigator – Lissie McKenzie

Host – Corrie & Mitch

Time of Investigation – 8pm – 12am

Introduction

A private house is always a special investigation as it is so personal to the owners, far more personal than a supposedly haunted museum or castle as these are often just our hosts workplaces as opposed to their homes.

Corrie, the owner of the house had kindly invited a small group from Southern Paranormal UK to investigate after her and her family had experienced what they would class as paranormal activity in the house. Her two sons, who had experienced some of the unexplained happenings including seeing an old lady in the house, were not present on the night of the investigation.

We went into this investigation with a very open plan. The group attending were experienced investigators and so we decided to just attend (without a vigil structure) so we were able to play it by ear at the time.

Thank you to Corrie and Mitch for making us feel so very welcome. I don’t think we came up with as many answers as you would have liked but I hope you found the night as interesting as we did.

One thing we always stress in these situations is, even though our equipment failed to pick up or record anything abnormal, this does not mean we doubt it is happening. Paranormal activity can be sporadic and very unpredictable and we can never expect, if they do exist, spirits to perform on command.

Experiments

Locked off camcorder in the kitchen, facing out towards the hallway: Nothing abnormal caught.
Dictaphone at bottom of the stairs : No abnormal sounds caught
Locked off camcorder outside bathroom, facing towards Corrie’s bedroom: Nothing abnormal caught.

Investigators Personal Reports

Maureen Taylor

The moment I walked into the living room I could sense a presence, which followed us up the stairs as Corrie led us up there. From what I recall Lissie in particular really didn’t like the stairs...

Went out to kitchen to set up camcorder, and was aware of a very strong presence in there. Not sure if it was same as before, don’t think so.

A camcorder was also set up on the landing facing towards Corrie’s bedroom door, that door was kept open during the evening.

Chatted to Corrie about what’s been going on around the house and where the most activity has been and so on. Took us around and showed us active areas.

Spent a while together in living room. On calling out heard various knocks and taps around the house, but couldn’t be absolutely certain whether they were due to the house cooling down from the heating being turned off or whether they were spirit responses to our calling out.

Julie called out again, a single tap was heard in response, then another, then one from upstairs, and after that we all heard a noise from the living end of the room (as opposed to the dining end), from somewhere near the computer area.

8.50 pm – Corrie is suddenly startled by something and says that she clearly saw a light anomaly pass in front of her face, an second or so later Julie also saw it, in more or less the same place.

Maria, throughout the first half of the evening is getting a whole series of names, almost all of which are Biblical – Rachel, Mary, Michael, Samuel, Matthew, Joseph, and two names that though not occurring in the Bible, are the sort of names that one would expect of Catholic or Irish families – Kieran, Patrick.

Lissie is sitting near the French windows, next to the television, and says that she feels that someone is making her want to cry, also says that earlier in the vigil she had seen something near the computer but didn’t comment at the time as she wasn’t absolutely certain of it, but now feels that the two occurrences are connected in some way.

Julie and I then feel that there are at least three entities in the room with us, possibly more, though I get the feeling that they are visiting spirits rather than resident ones, and that suddenly many spirits that have some sort of connection with the place are ranged around us. Julie gets a smell of antiseptic.

What Amanda, Maria and Lissie hadn’t been told was that the house is very close to the site of what used to be Fryern Hill Hospital, which was demolished sometime in the 1970s.

We tried using a pair of dowsing rods, but got very little response. Maria had the feeling that though someone was trying to come through, there was another entity trying to prevent them from doing so.

Amanda senses a young dog, a Labrador, no more than a puppy, felt that it was about four months old when it died.

At about the same time as Amanda became aware of the dog we were setting the coffee table up for glass divination. As we were about to start I ‘saw’ the table tip over quite violently towards Amanda, at precisely the same moment she commented on the same phenomenon. The glass divination session was unsuccessful so was abandoned.

9.30 Julie and Maria are sitting at the top of the stairs, the rest of us still in the living room. We are not listening to what Julie and Maria are saying, but Amanda get the feeling that the is someone coming down the stairs. We ask Julie and Maria if they are getting the same sensation. Their reply is that, though they don’t get quite the same feeling, they are sitting there trying to goad any nearby spirit into walking down the stairs. Two ways of looking at this – either there was a spirit around and all three were sensing it, or alternatively, because we work together so often we are so attuned to one another that we unwittingly almost read one anothers minds...

9.35 All hear what sound like a knocking on the kitchen wall, but after some investigation this turns out to have been the camcorder turning itself off having reached the end of the tape.

9.38 We take a break, and the smokers head outside – Julie and Corrie called back, asking me if I’d followed them out there. I’d walked across the living room towards the dining table, but hadn’t left the room – Julie and Corrie were quite sure that someone had followed them.

We split into two groups, Corrie, Lissie and I in one, Julie, Amanda and Maria in the other.

On the way up the stairs Lissie felt as if someone was trying to push her over, and about halfway up I could sense someone with us, and Corrie felt something tickle her head.

My group heads upstairs, and we seat ourselves on Corrie’s bed to start with. Corrie can hear what sounds like a swishing of long skirts; I too get it, but much more faintly. Before long we start to feel that the place to be is somewhere near the top of the stairs, so we move out to sit on the landing floor.

Lizzie and I are sitting at the top of the stairs with our feet hanging over the first step, Corrie is to our right. There is a thud that sounded as if it was coming from downstairs, but as the team down there called up to ask us if we’d heard a thud we realised that it wasn’t they who had caused it. The Lissie and I feel a strong draught from our right, on checking there is nowhere that it could be coming from, but it continues all the time we are sitting there. It seems to be confined to the area between Corrie’s bedroom and the top of the stairs. We realise that the flashes of light we have been seeing are likely to have been coming from the smoke alarm, so we now assume that any further flashes are nothing out of the ordinary.

I stand up to take some photographs down the stair well, and in between taking two of them I see a dot of light on the far wall – unfortunately it doesn’t appear on either of the photos I took at the time.

All three of us see a flash of light at the same time, this one definitely not coming from the smoke alarm, and we all feel very cold.

As we had very little in the way of results from the dowsing rods earlier in the evening we decide to try a pendulum instead. We contact a female spirit who tells us that she is here to look after two young boys, after further questioning it turns out that these are actually Corrie’s two sons rather than young lads already in spirit.

Corrie has been told that there was once a fire on the site of her house, but the spirit we are talking to says she knows nothing of this. We ascertain that she was a nurse at Fryern Hill Hospital, possibly from the mid 1800s (Crimean War – 1854, and Corrie had already done a little research and discovered that the figure her youngest son has seen standing at the top of the stairs is wearing what seems to be the uniform of a nurse of that time).

It was nearing midnight by this time and we decided that it was time to call the investigation to a halt, and leave Corrie and Mitch in peace.

Maria Street

To the inexperienced ghost hunter, the words ‘private house’ will usually conjure up visions of a magnificent gothic mansion or a creepy Victorian cottage, or even a lonely cottage on the moors. It is not often they will picture a normal suburban three bedroom house nestling amongst others of the same character in the middle of an unassuming close on the outskirts of town. This is however the case in the majority of our ‘private house’ investigations and so it was again on this cold Saturday night. I travelled with Julie to Maureen’s to meet both her and Amanda, and after a brief chat we made our way to the property. We were met by the owner, her boyfriend and guest, Lizzie. After a quick tour and a set up of our equipment, we started our vigil. I wanted to stand in the kitchen, as this is where many people had felt uneasy, so, joined by Julie, this is where we started our investigation. The others stayed in the living room. I have to say I felt very comfortable in the kitchen and could happily have stayed there. We heard a few taps and bangs, some of which we could put down to electrical noises, but others we could not dismiss so easily. It sounded as if somebody was tapping on the worktops. It is so easy to become complacent about taps, and you do have to differentiate between those that are nothing more than the sound of a building settling or an electrical click, but there are those that come seemingly as the answer to a question and it was these that intrigued us. On asking if the alleged spirit was male (two taps for yes) we distinctly heard two taps from Julie’s right. We were also hearing noises from above, but there was nobody up there. There were two cats in the household, but one was curled up happily on the sofa and the other was outside.

We joined the others in the living room and called out. I had the name of Patrick in my head, and I initially thought it to be a clue to a nationality of the person, but then felt it was the religion. Was this a Roman Catholic with us? I am no psychic, but very often, thoughts come into my head which are very hard to dismiss, and I think this is the case for many an investigator who has been to many a vigil. The name was noted and not long after I got the name of Mary. This was shown to the owner, who confirmed it was also the name she had got. I also then got a strong image of a nurse and, although I didn’t voice it at the time, I have a very strong impression of her wearing a red ribbon but I don’t know why. The owner confirmed that ‘Mary’ was indeed a nurse. I then proceeded to get biblical names in my head (all male) although one was Kieran, which fitted more with my first thought of names connecting to the nationality of the male. Could he have been Irish? Julie was getting a name in her head, but it came three times in succession so she noted it down.

We kept hearing noises from the hallway, so Julie and I decided to sit out on the stairs. We heard lots of noises from above once more, but there was still nobody up there. A light suddenly shone from one of the bedrooms but further investigation showed it to be no more than a security light from a neighbouring property. There were also more noises from the kitchen, but I had a clear view and could see nothing to cause this.

After a short break, we split again and Maureen, the owner and guest, Lizzie, all went upstairs whilst Julie, Amanda, the owner’s boyfriend and I all stayed in the living room. It was here that it all started to get a little strange. Amanda felt the religious spirit was with us and I wondered if he was trapped or was in visitation. I couldn’t decide. Amanda felt he had ‘taken a look’ and didn’t like it as it wasn’t his idea of heaven, so he had decided to stay on earth. I felt there was more to it and he had done something he needed to ‘atone for’. Amanda felt he had coerced ‘Mary’ into doing something that was wrong in the eyes of the law but he felt he had done nothing wrong. I used all my Sunday school knowledge (which isn’t a lot) to try to get a reaction. I quoted a verse from the bible and used simple religious terminology but it all still came down to the fact that he had ‘not liked what he had seen’ and he and Mary kept each other there. One would not cross over without the other as they both felt they needed each other. I wondered if he was a man of the cloth, but Amanda felt this was not the case, but he thought he was. The mood in the room was very serious and it was soon time to stop.

After another short break, Amanda, Julie and I went upstairs to the owner’s bedroom whilst the others stayed downstairs. The mood immediately lifted and we all felt very giggly and light-hearted. I felt like I wanted to dance, in particular, the Viennese Waltz and started humming ‘The Blue Danube’. Amanda felt exactly the same. Strangely the fits of giggles went as quickly as they came and the mood was serious once more. Julie had the name of Emily in her head and immediately the words ‘The exorcism of Emily Rose’ came into my head but I didn’t voice it because I dismissed it as a film title. This is a definite failing of mine! I should realise by now, that no matter what I get in my head, I must voice it, regardless of how silly it sounds, because very soon after Julie got the name of Emily Rose in her head. It was then that Amanda clicked what it all meant. This did not necessarily mean the girl’s name was Emily. This was a clue as to what had happened to her. We think she suffered from a bipolar disorder and the religious man had tried to exorcise her and, in doing so, inadvertently killed her. We felt they were both mentally unwell and had tried to help each other. There was nothing malevolent here, just a sad case. They were, however, happy where they were and did not feel they were missing out on anything better. I also got Psalm 13 in my head, which Amanda confirmed would have been used in an exorcism.

A short vigil downstairs followed, with all of us sat in the living room. It was here that Julie got the name in her head confirmed. She had been getting the name of Mark three times in succession in her head. This related to three people close to the owner, one of which was her boyfriend, although he was known by a completely different name.

We ended by asking the spirits that they did not bother the children of the household, and, to some extent, the adults. We hope this has been the case. I would like to thank the owner for allowing us into her home and hope things are a lot more comfortable for her now. Also thanks to Maureen for arranging it.

Julie Harwood

With no disrespect to our host, the minute I had walked in the front door, I wanted to turn on my heels and walk straight back out again. This was a lovely looking, clean & tidy family home with nothing that made you think “Ewww” I don’t want to be here, but the atmosphere as you walked in the door screamed “leave” at me. I did mention this to the Corrie and she said it was not an unusual feeling to have.

Maria & I started our nights vigils in the kitchen, while the rest of the team & the host stayed in the lounge area. The kitchen was close to the front door and earlier on in the evening Maureen & I had commented how different it felt to the hallway. The minute I crossed the threshold into the kitchen, I had felt dizzy and a little sickly and did feel a bit uncomfortable in there however on returning with Maria, I did not feel quite so bad. We called out and did receive some odd taps, bangs and clunks. The bangs and clunks I am happy to put down to electrics and in most the boiler (and its feed pipes) located in the kitchen however the taps that were seemingly coming from the work surface did intrigue me as they seemed to answer our questions. When we asked for 1 tap we got 1 tap and when we asked for 2 taps we clearly got 2. Several times while calling out we also heard thumps from upstairs, but as we had locked off camcorders up there we left them to record anything unusual. As an after note to this – strangely on viewing the footage after the investigation, even though we heard several very audible thuds from where the camcorder was located, no abnormal sounds were picked up on camcorder.

We then joined the rest of the team in the lounge and Amanda came out to the kitchen in our place. For some reason I had the nationality “Irish” in my head and again it teaches me for not practicing what I preach as I did not mention this. Maria then started getting some names, quite a few in succession. As she was saying them I was thinking “quite a lot of those sound Irish” but still for some reason I did not mention it! I think it was in this vigil that I got the name Mark, said three times in a row in my head. I jotted it down on Maureens note pad and did not mention this again until the end of the night. As another note – strangely when I did check this name with Corrie and asked her if the name Mark (said 3 times) had any meaning to her she told me that 1) Mark was Mitch’s real name 2) Mark was also her ex husbands name and 3) a Mark used to own the house. 3 Marks! I am not sure if this has any relevance or is indeed anything more than a coincidence. Either way, I found it quite amusing as there was no way I knew any of those facts. Maria and I then decided to go into the hallway as we could still all hear noises above us and knowing no one was up there we wanted to get close to the sound without disturbing it. When we did the noises did continue and also started again in the kitchen. Maria and I stood at the bottom of the stairs and we could clearly see there was no one in the kitchen to make the noises.

While the others went up stairs Maria, Amanda and I stayed in the lounge and from then on the night took a bizarre twist. Maria started talking in a way I have never heard her talk before. She sounded almost arrogant (sorry Maria) and also very stern and religious. Amanda was picking up on a religious man and also I think Maria and Amanda also picked up on Mary, a woman that had been picked up on earlier in the evening. They felt that the religious man had coerced Mary into some sort of illegal activity. It was all very confusing and at time we did not know what was happening. I felt very somber in this vigil and actually spoke very little, leaving Maria and Amanda in most to conduct the vigil. I have no idea why I felt like this, I just did not want to talk much at all. I seemed to slip off into a dream like state even though I was wide awake. I have very little knowledge of the rest of this vigil so will let Amanda and Maria tell it in their reports. The only other thing I remember is Maria quoting something from the bible.

Our last vigil was upstairs in the main bedroom. I had come to a bit now and was really looking forward to this vigil. On the tour the owner had told us how people had felt pushed either in or out of this room. With no disrespect to myself or Amanda or Maria, I was intrigued to see how a spirit would move one of us three somewhere we did not want to go. The mood in this room was a lot lighter and a little while into the vigil we were having to remind ourselves that this was an investigation and there was a group downstairs trying to conduct a vigil as we had got giggly and a bit silly. Maria & Amanda wanted to dance around the room and I just felt like I wanted to watch them and clap in time to music. After ten minutes of this the mood suddenly switched again and it became all too serious. I got the name Emily in my head. I did not think this was any spirits name as it did not feel like I should be calling anyone that however Amanda did feel like there was a lady with us. Things were picked up left right and centre here and the general feeling was this woman had some sort of mental disorder and the religious man had tried to exorcise her but because of some sort of mishap had accidentally killed her. Maria then said minutes before we picked all of this up she had had the film title “The exorcist of Emily Rose” in her head, but did not say anything, just dismissing it because I had said the name Emily. Lesson number 2! In hazy conclusion we felt like both of the people being picked up on had mental disorders making one (the woman) very flighty with changeable moods and the other (man) making him masquerade as a priest. It was all very bizarre and very surreal.

Thank you so much to Corrie for opening her house up to us. I know that the activity in the house still continues but I am sure in my own mind who ever or whatever is there has no intention of hurting you or your family. My only advice would be that if it does become too much to live with, then it may be your choice (if you believe and think it would be beneficial) to have your house cleansed or blessed.

Amanda Horley

Our investigation started with us having to dig out our torches before we even got into the house as there were no working street lights, and we had great difficulty trying to read the house numbers and find the right one. This did however prove useful during the investigation, as once the house lights were off, the building was much darker than it would have been with strong outside lighting.

The owner made us very welcome, and after a brief discussion on what we were going to do, we had a short walk-round during which I picked up on a proud/arrogant man in the kitchen who was maybe about 60 years old and was Italian. I also found standing near the top of the stairs very difficult. About four steps from the top I felt that I was going to fall/be pushed down the stairs, and had to brace myself between the two walls to feel safe. I also found that if I looked down to the hallway, it seemed like a very long drop.

When we settled down to the vigils the whole team were initially working downstairs. Maureen, Lizzie and I started in the lounge whilst Maria and Julie concentrated on the kitchen and bottom of the stairs. Initially I didn’t pick up on anything in the lounge, so went out into the kitchen where I felt the presence of the man again. I felt that he didn’t mean any harm to the family and came from the late 1800’s, but could get little additional information. I returned to the lounge where I sat on the floor and felt there was a small dog or puppy trying to get me to notice it. It felt like a young Labrador, and I think it had died young. After a time we decided to try a glass divination, but as I sat on the floor next to the coffee table it felt as if the table was being tipped over in my direction. I couldn’t concentrate on the glass as I felt that the dog was still around, wanting attention, so I sat back and watched the divination. The glass didn’t seem to move, but there were several knocks and bangs in the lounge as well as the kitchen and upstairs. None of them were specifically in response to questions being asked, so there is a possibility that they could have come from the house itself.

After a break we decided to split into two groups, with Maureen, Lizzie and the owner starting upstairs whilst Maria, Julie and I stayed in the lounge with the owner’s friend. Very quickly Maria took over the asking of questions, and her manner and voice were quite unlike how she would normally be on an investigation. She became very stern and definite in the questions she was asking and felt that she was talking to a religious man. I would suggest that her manner was almost that of a priest or other religious person. I found that I was sensing answers to the questions she was asking, but rather than say them out loud, I wrote them down and we then looked at them at the end of the session. That way I didn’t influence the direction the questioning went. We all felt the presence of a man, and I feel that it was the man from the kitchen. My immediate feeling was that he was almost behaving like an over-protective father towards the owner.

The answers that I received to Maria’s questions were as follows:

  • No, he doesn’t mean to frighten the owner and her family.
  • No, he isn’t a bully, and isn’t trying to bully them.
  • He does not want to move on as this is his home. He is not unhappy, and wants to be there. (at this point I felt he stood very erect).
  • He didn’t get to cleanse himself of his sins before dying. (I got a distinct feeling of unrest and guilt).
  • He was let down, by his beliefs. They were wrong and misled him.
  • He cannot go to the light as God isn’t there.
  • He was intensely religious, but was not a priest.
  • No, he cannot go to the light. (I felt he was scared).
  • He does not want to leave, he is happy here. Why should he go anywhere else? (I felt that this was wrong, and that he wasn’t as happy as he was making out).
  • He didn’t die suddenly, it was an illness.
  • He has looked at the light and beyond and didn’t like it, so he is not going there.
  • (I got the distinct impression that he liked Maria and respected her, but couldn’t fathom out why exactly. Julie said at this point that maybe Maria reminded him of someone he knew and liked. She was “his kind of girl”.)
  • Maria started asking about his religious convictions, but as soon as she said the word “conviction” I felt that he had spent time in prison. Not long, and not for anything really bad.
  • He doesn’t need to atone for his sins as he has already done that. He did time.

Maria finished by asking him to be mindful of the family living in the house and not to go stomping around. His response to which was that he “doesn’t stomp!”

W

e then had another short break and Maria, Julie and I went upstairs whilst the others remained in the lounge for the final vigil. Within minutes of starting the vigil, we all became very giggly and both Maria and I felt that we wanted to dance. Maria in fact started humming the Blue Danube. This was a totally different Maria to the one we had had in the lounge only half an hour earlier. All seriousness was completely gone. Despite trying to compose ourselves, we really struggled. Not helped by one of the owner’s cats (who was on the bed with us) deciding to bite Julie. We all felt that there was a lady with us and it was her who was making us so light-headed. I felt that she was in the late 30s and had lived in the late 1800s. She was wearing an outfit that had a tight-fitting bodice and a long fairly straight skirt. Because of the way we felt, we discussed that her manner seemed almost manic rather than naturally jolly. Julie (who by now had decided it was safer to stroke a toy monkey than the cat) came up with the name Emily Rose. Maria immediately came up with a film title, “The exorcism of Emily Rose”. We felt that this lady was connected to the man downstairs and began discussing whether he had maybe tried to exorcise her because she was mentally ill. As soon as this discussion started our manner changed completely and became the usual serious manner that we have on investigations. It was almost a sombre atmosphere. It felt as is the attempted exorcism had in fact sent her over the edge and made her completely mad. We also got the feeling that she didn’t like being sombre and serious and wanted to go back to the manic state where she was much happier. I felt that she really liked the owner, her family and her boyfriend. We did ask her about going to the light and moving on, to give the family some peace, but although she finds the light “pretty” she didn’t want to go there. Shortly before the end of the vigil I suddenly felt that she died because she fell down or was thrown down a set of stairs. Not the stairs that are in the house at present, but a much longer flight that was in approximately the same place. I think this would account for the big drop that I felt on what was not a very long flight of stairs. Before we left we tried to explain to her that she should not approach the children that lived in the house, as she was frightening them.

Big thanks have to go to the owner for allowing us into her home. It was a truly fascinating evening, and hopefully we have convinced the spirits in her house to give her and her family a bit more space and not intrude on their lives quite so much.