Week 8, Thursday day 53
It was old man Jenkins! The swine, he was wearing a costume to scare people away from his goldmine! We unmasked him and he was carted off by the police, though he'll probably just do community service.
So that's how our ghost investigation went, which is of course utter lies. What really happened was as follows, and no great danes were involved, though there was a ginger cat and some questionable types from around Middlesbrough, namely the NGI members :P
When we arrived at the pub in Stockton it was pretty quiet apart from a few people watching the Germany - Spain match on TV. After that it pretty much emptied and after the staff had locked up we sat down and got started.
I'd brought along a digital recorder to let the NGI members make a podcast of the event, so we started with an intro to their organisation and to the members present as well as a little bit about the investigation we were conducting that evening. While we sat around and did this bit of the podcast, the pub cat paid us a visit and got to know a few of the members too, most friendly he was.
Following that, John and Mark, the two sensitives (they avoid the word medium as they feel it has all sorts of stigma attached) did separate walkarounds of the pub to see if they could pick up any energies or sensations from the location. While they did their thing most of us just stood about in the back yard and had a cig or sat and chatted in the corner. Both John and Mark recorded what they'd managed to pick up for the podcast.
Once they'd got a feel for what might be hanging around, we started some experiments that they had put together to see if we could glean more information regarding what the presence might be or wish to communicate.
The first involved us splitting into 3 teams, one was the two sensitives trying to pick up on vibrations and energies at certain points of the pub, another was attempting to communicate using the old favourite of mediums, the Ouija board, while the third was using automatic writing. Each group would try to answer the same group of questions and the answers would then be compared at the end of 15-20 minutes to see if there was any correlation. This experiment was repeated twice with the groups being different both times. The results were a little scatter shot with some information that could be related but nothing conclusive that could be said to be anything definite.
A group, including the two sensitives did head down into the wet cellar, where they keep the beer and that seemed to give them some evidence of a presence as well as some sense of there being an unpleasant even having taken place down there at some point in the past.
A final experiment involved several objects that were kept away from the group as we sat around the Ouija board again. One person asked the 'spirit' that was suspected to be present in the pub to accompany him to the table with the objects and take note of which one he picked up. He then returned to us and the spirit was asked to spell out the name of the item that had been brought back but kept hidden from us.
This turned out to be quite an interesting experiment as the presence seemed to enjoy taking part and managed to spell out the names of the first 2 objects correctly. The third time the person picking up the objects decided to pull a double bluff and didn't return with anything at all so despite one of the objects being spelled out, it was incorrect.
After this the presence seemed to take the huff and refused to play any more so that was the end of that. It was interesting, though I do wonder if one of the two sat around the board with me were perhaps manipulating the planchette, the 3 cornered device that moves around to pick out letters and numbers on the board. This is just the skeptic in me, but I am assured by the NGI members that they don't do such things as they aren't out to create interesting investigations and most are skeptics to a certain extent like myself.
After a round up for the podcast we left the pub around 3am and made our ways home, I felt quite charged up when I was heading home having enjoyed the evening but once I got to bed I was out like a light until around 9am.
I'm sure there will be a full report on the whole investigation posted up on the NGI website soon, and hopefully we'll get invited along to more of them to make more podcasts and join in the fun.
I'll link the podcast once it's edited for public listening and online.
Better days people
Shaun
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