Ghost Hunting!

Ok - probably a side of me not many at TORA know about but when I'm not runngin this place or at work I'm researching the paranormal.
I expect very few people to believe in this sort of stuff which is totally understandable. Even my wife is a sceptic but open minded enough to appreciate that when (if) things do kick off that no one can explain (and there are explainations for 9/10 'hauntings') she does get genuinely interested.

So with that in mind we headed to Fulford Manor in Devon for a night to explore the 900 year old manor house on the edge of Dartmoor. The place has lots of history, nothing extraordinary. No murderings or things like that, just a really nice family home which fell on hard times in the nineteeth century. Durign the English Civil War the house was a royalist stronghold and it is thought the basement was used as a temporary hospital area. Sadly due to the poor condition of the stairway it was felt it would not be safe to enter that particular area.
As such we were able to explore roughly half of the house that consisted of a dance hall up a grand staircase, the Great Hall (probably one of the oldest parts of the house - the wood panelling dating from the 1500s), adjacent rooms and corridors were open to explore and also the White Room, whcih acts as a location for weddings and would probably have been one of the main reception rooms.

With roughly 20 people exploring, hopes were high that at least someone would experience something! Little did we know how much would happen to us, let alone the rest of the group.
We all headed for the dance hall first. Various hundred+ year old paintings adorn the walls and a piano sits in one corner. All the windows were closed and there was no perceived breezes upon arrival. Forming a circle and with EV readers and recording equiment set up in the centre it didn't take long before readings went through the roof. I had icy blasts flowing past me quite early on and my wife commented on the difference in temperature between me on her right and her sister on her left.
The room also produced bumps and bangs, small things possibly coals from the fireplace being thrown and the wierdest thing I've yet seen. Mag lights flickered like candles and were then being 'blown out' and relit almost on demand. Steph fired up the 'spirit box' or white noise machine depending on your viewpoint. For those who don't know, the 'spirit box' is essentially a radio that scans through loads of frequencies a second creating a stream of white noise. It is thought that spirits can communicate through this. The frequencies scan so fast that no individual words or tunes can be heard. This means that words that come through, particularly with multiple syllables usually have crossed over several different radio frequencies which would be virtually impossible to fake.
The most interesting part here was when Steph asked whether the 'spirit' she was communicating with knew her name, sure enough a clear 'Steph-a-nie' came through. This was then followed shortly after by her sisters name too! Absolutely brilliant! Her sister was then asked to say hello, which she did, followed by a near instantaneous 'hello' back! We were all buzzing after that.
We tried some table tipping and glasswork. We received several scratches and knocks on the table and it did move several times, always toward me which was disconcerting! The glass twisted and moved slowly initially before really moving strongly across the table. As it was generally moving away from me and due to the size of the glass it would only have been me with the right amount of force to get it to move as much as it did and I certainly wasn't pushing it. Is it paranormal? I'll leave it up to you to decide.

We then went into the great hall which felt completely different. Very flat with no negitive feeling at all. It literally just felt like sitting or standing in a dark room. After a little while we decided to move on. At this point two things happened in quick succession. I had been stood by the large fireplace and as I commented on how flat it was and how nothing would happen until we left I felt a very clear hand squeeze my shoulder. This obviously made me react and at the same moment, as had happened upstairs, a mag light placed on a window seat lit up.
As people began to come back in following this, Steph asked for the light to be blown out and sure enough, out it went!

In the White Room, we initially received no responses to questions but did have the Ovulus which allows 'spirits' or energies to speak through it using a preloaded dictionary.
Words such as highway, tree, cross led us to believe we were delaing with someone who had be hanged at a crossroads which was a typical punishment in the region for centuries.
Asking for a name we received 'Pat'. This, in line with glasswork for 'yes/no' questions worked well for us. We also had clear, intelligent responses from a mag light in a similar fashion to the dance hall. Asking about the gentleman's death the ovulus said 'enough' and 'change' which seemed abundantly apparent to us that 'Pat' wanted to talk about something else.
When asked if he had been tried unjustly the mag light lit up extremely brightly.
This was an excellent session if purely based on responses we received and the intelligence behind them. It would be interesting to go back and see if 'Pat' remembers us! This was also the most activity captured by any of the groups in this particular room. The waves of emotion that came over some in the group when talking to Pat, in particular about his children was tangible. This could be put down to the lateness of the hour or some group mentality but the focussed coldness and intelligent responses seem hard to ignore.

Did we experience paranormal activity? Well certainly a lot of things happened that many of us can't explain. Some of the more personal happenings could be put down to the psychology of the situation and/or tiredness, environmental conditions and so on. Having said that, the activity of the mag lights and hearing your name called through white noise not once but twice is really exciting. We didn't capture anything on any photographs aside from a few odd shapes on two pictures which could be due to the lighting. Nothign was caught on my dictaphone either.

Is Fulford Manor haunted? Well, certainly we had some interesting experiences but ultimately I'll leave it up to you to decide..

I'm not sure "haunted" would be the proper term, but it does seem that spirits like to hang out there. Cool stuff Matt.

Very cool man!! I've always been interested in the paranormal and even the occult myself. I've read many books on the subject over the years, and have viewed countless TV shows and documentaries as well. One of my favorites is Ghost Hunters, a show on the sci-fi channel here in the U.S. I believe them to be credible, as like you say, they "explain" more "hauntings" than not. Other shows are obvious trash.

My daughter and her boyfriend were actually sharing an apartment with one of the guys from Ghost Hunters for a while. While he was no longer with the show at the time, he was still doing "investigations" on his own. They went with him for several of these. She told me they had some unique experiences, much like yours. On one such adventure, her boyfriend was actually assaulted (for lack of a better word) by "something", and had a visible physical mark to prove it.

Unless you are totally pulling our legs, which I have no reason to think, I believe you experienced some level of paranormal activity. While I won't go so far as to say I believe in ghost per se, I do believe there are still things in this world that we do not yet have the capability to explain through science or other means.

Mako - check out Ghost Adventures on the Travet Channel. Zak Bagans is by far one of the most believable sources I have come across.
Like Ghost Hunters he likes to debunk stuff but they have caught some excellent stuff over the years. I highly recommend it.

3spoopy5me

love things like this, i'm a big believer of things paranormal