Rhymney House Hotel - January & October 2007

January

On Saturday 6th January, Alison, Evan and myself returned to the Rhymney House Hotel together with Steve and Nina to attend the inaugural Ghostknights event. The first part of the evening was a clairvoyance show followed by an investigation.

The clairvoyance show featured Andy Matthews, the paranormal investigator from the second series of Haunted Homes together with Marion Goodfellow, a well-known medium who has appeared on many TV shows including ITV’s ‘Haunted Halloween’. Unfortunately there was a poorer than anticipated turnout for the event and after a short demonstration of paranormal equipment by Andy Matthews and John Sutton, Marion decided on giving personal spirit readings to each member of the audience. This was a very brave move as it is a lot easier to ask if anyone knows a particular name and then homing in on a person who obviously wants to hear from that person in spirit - so I couldn’t help but admire her for this. Her initial contact provoked an emotional response from the audience member who clearly believed that a relative who had passed away was in touch with Marion. However after that things progressed less well. Marion gave a number of less than convincing readings including picking out a member of the Welsh audience that did not know a ‘David’ that she was supposed to - remarkable in itself!

When she moved onto the table we were all sitting at (and identified as the minority non-believers by a show of hands at a start) I thought this would not get any better - Nina recorded Marion’s comments so we could refer to them later. However her readings for Evan and then Steve proved amazingly accurate and much better than chance would suggest. Both of them rated her readings as 90% correct, including some very specific and personal information. Nina’s reading was more about her than any of her relatives and identified characteristics about her that could have been derived by cold reading. Alison’s reading started off very well with a good hit but then trailed off. My own had a variety of hits and misses which appeared no better than guesswork - maybe my lack of dead relatives hindered Marion. After this she went round the rest of the room, but there seemed to be very little that couldn’t be put down to a knowledge of statistics or cold reading. In any case this approach was a brave move by Marion, who was charming throughout.

After this we split into small groups with more experienced practitioners (us) with the first-timers. Hence Steve and Nina were together as was Alison and I, whereas Evan paired off with a lady who knew the hotel well. We started off outside and then moved inside and split up on the different floors. It was during this time that myself and Alison joined John and Andy in a room where they reckoned an evil presence was; well at least unttil we arrived when it left - they claimed to exorcise this spirit later.

After a while this structure broke up and Alison and myself joined forces with Steve and Nina again to carry out further vigils. Neither Alison nor myself (unlike last time) experienced anything unusual, but neither did Evan, but we did make a surprise and welcome reunion with the ‘Eiffel Tower’ which we had used as a trigger object on our last visit. However Nina and Steve had a more productive evening as can be seen from Nina’s account:

“In Room 5 we felt the bedroom part was fine but the bathroom had a strange feeling about it. We sat for about 15 minutes silently and quickly running through things with Ross and Hayley (the first-timers we were looking after) making sure they were comfortable with the situation before asking if they were ok if we called out - on the video during this time we have now noticed light anomalies during this time but not noticed at the time. I started asking if there was anyone in the room and we had a few light anomalies coming towards or around me at this time - ee had no noises at all. Steve then asked and got movements around the bathroom area. A little later after more chatting and noises in the corridor stopping from others swapping rooms, I called out and we had larger anomalies which appeared to come from the bathroom. I then specifically asked that if there was someone in the bathroom would they please come out and show us. At this point (exactly) we had an anomaly come out of the bathroom sweep across the room and back into the bathroom. Another two were seen below this one as it went back into the bathroom. We were then interrupted by John coming into the room. He left and we apologised for the interruption and asked if the spirit was still there and could show itself at which point we got further anomalies across from the bathroom to the bed where Hayley and I were sat. I also had tingling on my fingers as though they were being stroked very gently.

Is this a video of an orb responding to instructions?

Not longer afterwards we were called out to go to room 3 where we had nothing at all but it was a colder room.

We then joined with Graham and Alison and the only things of significance were:

In the Laundry/Airing cupboard my heart was pounding and I found it difficult to breath (as did Steve) and when calling out I asked if there was a little girl with us.

On level 2 I was drawn into room 10 (after checking it was no other room or the corridor that was pulling me) and checked around the room and bathroom but was drawn to the window but only wanted to stand and stare out. I did not feel like I wanted to jump or anything, just look down (Note: Later it was discovered that a figure has been seen at that window).

At the beginning when we all went outside, on the way back up the drive Steve felt like he wanted to move out of the way of a horse and cart. (Note: The sound of a horse and carriage has been heard outside before).

Steve was drawn to the curtains covering the entrance to the conservatory and felt like a young cheeky boy would poke his head through at any point. He also had the name Tommy come into his mind very strongly in that room. Steve also felt his face was tingling during the seance we all held in room 6.

We then all returned to the ground floor and after an uneventful visit to the cellar most of those remaining took part in a seance led by Marion on three tables pushed together. Nina and Marion felt that the end of the table they were touching vibrated continuously almost from the start even when we just had fingertips on it. At one point Nina felt it was rocking left to right and other times backwards and forwards but rhythmically - I had one of my hands on the same table but failed to feel anything.

Yet again this investigation shows that certain people appear to connect with a place at a particular time more than others - this time is was Steve and Nina’s turn.

October

On Saturday 27th , Alison, Nina, Steve and myself returned to the Rhymney House Hotel - this time we met up with Lyn and a number of other people that we had met on previous occasions, Austin, Chris, Natalie and Paul, as well as John from Ghostknights.. This time we were based in the flat on the first floor and were only able to investigate the upper floors, including most of the bedrooms..

We started investigating at near to 8pm with us splitting into various groups and carried out vigils in various rooms. changing groups as we went along. A number of people seemed to be reporting seeing red dots at times with a particular active zone for this being near the top of the door-frame to the bathroom in Room 9 - interestingly a later scan of this area with the EMF meter revealed this to have a strong electromagnetic field, as a result of a cable being buried in the wall.

Nothing of any real note happened until Lyn, Natalie and Chris were carrying out a vigil in Room 6 and experienced a shadow, in the shape of a man, suddenly appearing in the bathroom door - this distressed Lyn in particular. However a later vigil by Steve and myself in the same room found a likely explanation, when a person walking past the room caused interference with the light shining under the door and caused the sudden appearance of a dark shadow in the bathroom. Originally this explanation was thought unlikely as all members of the team were accounted for at the time of the incident, however it could have been the other guest in the hotel moving around (as he was heard to do several times).

On one visit to Room 5 Alison and Paul both felt a presence in its entrance hall. On a further visit by Alison and myself we did feel a bit uneasy, and on another we enjoyed a kaleidoscope of green and purple as some trick was played on our eyes in the dark (with this been put down to blood pressure changes after eating). But at other times the room seemed fine to us and others had no problems with the room.

Some of the non-3CPO participants had experiences in other rooms but I have not covered them in this report.

A final seance in Room 9 revealed nothing, and the investigation was wound up at 2am.

Ghostknights are no longer running investigations..