Nottingham Galleries of Justice - September 2007

This was a joint event organised by 3CPO together with GhostlyStay UK. This meant that we were able to have exclusive usage of the venue as well as keeping costs down. From 3CPO Amanda, Alison, Evan and myself attended.

The day started with a visit to Derby Gaol and the Olde Trip to Jerusalem before the main event. On arrival at the venue at 8pm we met up with everyone, there been twenty-one of us in total. We were to make our base in an upstairs room in the building and there divided into two groups. The 3CPO group joined up with Michelle, Mel, Nicola and Vanessa from Coventry, and also Steph and Rene, all of whom we knew from previous investigations - and we also added Paul to our half.

First of all we went on a walk round of the venue with the night guard who was very helpful and informative. The lights and, rather chilling, noises were switched on for this, as we heard about the often harsh treatment meted out to offenders. It became obvious that this was a very large venue - the ground floor consisted of two large courtrooms with the the lower levels being various prison areas with the lowest levels having been hollowed out of the rock itself. It was quite clear that this was going to be a very atmospheric place to investigate.

After regrouping it was decided that the two groups would investigate different parts of the building at different times. With the lights and atmospheric noises switched off we headed off to our first area - the women’s prison. this consisted of a general area including the bath for prisoners, a women’s bedroom and the women’s exercise yard - though the latter was not looked at much. The group split in two and examined the general area and the bedroom separately before swapping over. There was some sensing of spirits in the area with the bath and in the bedroom Rene picked up some interesting EMF readings.

After this we carried out an investigation of various other areas of the venue without anything of any particular note including the entrance hall, the exercise yards, and the male cells including the night cell, where many prisoners spent the night prior to being moved. Even the chapel in the caves did not produce anything of interest, despite being extremely dark and atmospheric.

However other areas proved more interesting. The main courtroom seemed to produce a number of interesting effects - with a notable increase of ‘orb’ photos especially over the galleries of the courtroom. The courtroom has a number of mannequin figures in it, especially on the galleries (which were not accessible to us) - with both groups having a feeling that they were being watched from the galleries, and not just by the dummies! Amanda had an interesting result from crystal divination in this area. Initially I felt I could detect whispering but became more convinced that this was an effect of the pipes.

However the most interesting effects occurred as day was breaking, in ‘the pits’ area and a cave area just before the chapel, as some of the group were taking a nap in the base room.

‘The Pits’ was an area where the most severe prison conditions were to be found. A few of us were doing a vigil in a cell in this area and started to hear a few faint taps. Mel took a photo which revealed a very unusual white cloudy shape, apparently by the door frame. Further pictures by Mel and myself failed to elicit the same effect. There was no condensation in the air, so this was a puzzling artifact to observe, and keeps up Mel’s good record of producing interesting photographs at investigations.

Just before the lights were switched on at 5:50am Paul and Amanda, who had spent much of the night investigating together, experienced what sounded like dragging sounds in a cave before the chapel - with it appearing that these noises were being produced on demand.

We left the venue at 6am after over nine hours of investigating and even so we had far from exhausted the venue - even if several of us by this time were. We split up and all prepared for the long journey home - Evan was kind enough to take Steph and Rene home, though it did turn out that Rene didn’t know where that was!