Station Hotel, Dudley - June 2006

On Friday 30th June, Alison and myself joined a Ghostly Stay UK Event at the Station Hotel in Dudley (another former ‘Most Haunted’ location). As well as the organisers, Becky and CJ we were joined by Steph who was also at our previous investigation and at Dudley Castle (just above the hotel) and three others who we had not met previously. After checking in and grabbing some food we headed up to one of the rooms, rather than attend the readings by psychics going on in the Ballroom! Although this room wasn’t reputed to be one of the most haunted in the hotel it gave everyone the opportunity to read the ‘Spook Book’, a record kept at the hotel of paranormal activity noted down by guests. From this it could be seen that most of the activity was centred on a string of rooms on the second floor and a few on the first floor, with a wide range of observations such as furniture moving, scratches and the perennial favourite, orbs. It also provided an opportunity for CJ to regale us with some of the theories that Becky and him have about the phenomena observed at the hotel. After extensive research Becky believes that the hotel is not haunted. Whilst there we carried out a small vigil including observations on the bathroom door which just served to demonstrate how difficult it is to agree on whether an object is moving in poor light - which even it was could have been explained by the draught through the open window.

Once the activity downstairs had died down we headed down and carried out our first investigation in the Ballroom. We carried out a ‘fingers on the glass’ experiment. At first nothing happened but then the glass started to show clear movement, oddly initially when a question about the World Cup was asked! After that clear movement of a few inches was observed in response to a number of questions, particularly with regard to Alison, which the ‘glass mover’ had obviously taken a shine to. Other questions revealed that it was neither male or female and had never lived - maybe the first recorded haunting by a rock! Sadly no concrete answers could be elicited and eventually the movement stopped. Throughout those people touching the glass were changed by CJ to try to minimise the chance of deliberate fraud, however it seems likely that a mix of conscious and sub-conscious movement of the glass had been occurring. Following this an attempt at table-tipping was made without any luck.

We now entered the restaurant area, an area claimed to be haunted by a character who medium Derek Acorah, during his visit, described as ‘George’. Whilst there we bumped into one of the hotel’s residents who claimed to have sensed a ghostly presence that inhabited the restaurant and the second floor of the hotel. We carried out a short vigil with nothing of note happening.

After 4am we all decided to turn in for the night, but sadly no-one reported any strange experiences in their rooms during the night when we met up again after breakfast. During our stay we had been hoping to visit the most haunted bedrooms and the cellar, but for various reasons we were unable to, thus limiting us to just a small area of the hotel.

Nothing of any note was recorded on this visit, but the glass movement did provide an interesting diversion