George Inn, St. Briavels - June 2005

This was a special event organised by Lisa McArthy from Port Talbot in South Wales and was planned as a serious investigation into a property that has hitherto never been investigated, despite having a couple of ghost stories associated with it. I had received a special invite (as I knew Lisa from online chats) to bring a small group with me; hence I only issued an invite to those who had been on an investigation before. Alison, Amanda and myself turned up at the fine Medieval Inn at 8:30pm and it was then that I realised that neither group knew what the other looked like, fortunately we eventually found each other. We were then introduced to Scott, a very experienced investigator from UKParanormal and Russ and Trudy (a 'sensitive'), two members of the recently defunct Glamorgan Paranormal Investigations (GPI) - the GPI is involved in the Craig-y-nos investigations, but not these two. After a meal, where we got to know each other better, we headed upstairs to our 'base' in Room 3. I was impressed with the wide range of equipment on show including a fixed infrared camera and video/tv and various meters - also a trigger object experiment was set up. The investigation got off to a slow start as the pub took a while to clear - however we finally got going at 1230 with Amanda and myself being the first people to enter the lower cellar for some time. The amount of cobwebs down there was truly amazing, the floor was muddy and the room was less than five foot in height. Through a hole in the wall we could see an older vaulted room or passage with a blocked off wall at the end - I took a compass reading and found that this aligned with the direction of the neighbouring St. Briavels castle. A passageway is rumoured to have once linked these two buildings, was this evidence of that passageway we wondered. We had to leave the cellar fairly quickly as the manageress wanted to get away and the kitchen area above it had to have the alarm set. This was unfortunate as I knew that Lisa would have liked to see this has she is keen on the history element of investigations. We returned upstairs with Alison for me to be de-cobwebbed and remove our muddy shoes (after walking over the carpet)! At this time Amanda started to act strange (or stranger than normal anyway) and started shaking (a bit like an attack of Parkinson's disease) - she felt this was because she was blocking a spirit was trying to make contact with her. We continued in three groups with Alison, Amanda and myself then doing vigils in Rooms 1 and 4 - I can honestly say that, as far as Alison and myself was concerned, there would be more activity in a bowl of fruit however Amanda continued to feel a presence with her and continued with the shakes.

With nothing in the way of physical phenomena encountered by any of the groups we joined up and moved on to a seance in a part of the bar area that Amanda felt was particularly active. Scott led the seance with Amanda, Alison, Trudy and Russ also participating, Lisa made notes and I just observed from the side whilst the whole of the proceedings were recorded with a fixed camera. This was the first seance I have seen that was carried out properly, and I was impressed with Scott's leading of it as he carefully made sure that all participants would be safe and in a suitable state before asking any spirits to come forward. At this point Amanda came up with a couple of names, I seem to recall a couple of men Daniel and another (one of whom was giving Amanda the shakes), and a child. Trudy also came up with the name Isabella. Presumably any performers of satanic rituals were choosing to wait until TV’s ‘Most Haunted’ and their medium Derek Acorah visits! After a while Scott asked all the spirits to leave - causing Amanda's shaking to cease and closed down the seance.

From where I was sat I could only really see the women at the table well- however now it became clear that both Scott and Russ were dripping in sweat and Russ had to quickly leave the table at the end as he felt unwell- odd as they had both been fine all night and Russ seemed a very down-to-earth jokey character.

It was now quarter past three in the morning and Lisa and Scott went to bed in Room 3 to get a few hours sleep, Amanda crashed out in her sleeping-bag in Room 1 and, with Russ not feeling well Trudy and Russ decided to drive back to Neath. For the next three quarters of an hour Alison and myself carried out a vigil at the seance table, doing calling out (as in 'Most Haunted') - but again the only activity was coming from the various cooling systems behind the bar.

Later examination by Lisa and Trudy of the recorded footage has recorded a couple of interesting phenomena. There is an intriguing photograph taken by Trudy that shows what could be interpreted as the face of a person sat in the corner of the bar at a time when no-one was there (unfortunately I cannot show it here for copyright reasons). Most people seem convinced this is something very unusual - Alison and I revisited the Inn later and took photos of that area to try and determine whether reflections or something else may have caused it. Following this we have come to the conclusion that the most likely explanations is that it was Alison sitting there and that Trudy is mistaken about when the picture was taken. In addition the video from the fixed infra-red camera apparently shows the camera moving position. This clearly occurred while all of us were doing the seance in the bar so again is interesting.

This was probably the place with the least amount of activity that I have experienced in the way of visual or auditory phenomena but with more interesting photo and video phenomena. The seance was also interesting and Amanda picked up on some locations of activity and had an interesting few hours where she believes a spirit was trying to make contact.