Tewkesbury Museum - May & August 2007

May

Nina, Evan and I made an unusual early morning visit to Tewkesbury’s Museum, housed in a fine half-timbered medieval building, probably formed from three original dwellings. We were there to investigate an unknown phenomenon that the curator had told us had occurred, without her giving us any details.

During the brief walk-round Nina experienced headaches in one of the first floor rooms and also felt strange in other parts of the buildings. None of us experienced the smell that is said to be often found in the building first thing on a Monday morning.

We decided it would be worth returning for an overnight investigation

.August - Three reports of the same investigation - from Graham, Steve and the ‘Admag’

Report 1 - Graham

On our return to the museum the three of us were joined by Steve B, Steve A, Harry and Emma (on her first investigation). As well as the curator we were also joined by a museum trustee and his wife, and Admag reporter Peggy Clatworthy. We were granted access to the Tourist Information Centre on the ground floor and set this up as our base.

This time we chose a novel way to start this investigation. Each of the people there went on an individual walk-round of the upper floors of the building (with the lights on) armed with a map and pen to note down any areas they experienced anything or felt uncomfortable in. As much care as possible was taken to avoid contamination of the results. The results immediately showed quite a correlation - this was rather surprising as none of those areas seemed particularly spooky at first glance. A diagram showing those ‘hot-spots’ discovered on the walk-round is shown marked as ‘X’s below, The areas that the curator didn’t like are marked ‘C’ while the two sensitives’ indicated areas are the two shades of blue ‘X’s..

We decided to focus on these areas when carrying out the investigations, but during the night we got chance to visit other parts of the museum including the cellar, which apart from an initially interesting photo by Steve B revealed nothing. A locked off camera was also set up in a small room on the top floor focussed on a suspended crystal to observe any movement taking place.

This time, with roughly equal numbers of the sexes, we split into two gender groups. The men started off on the second floor and the women started on the first, but both groups found the areas to be quiet so we switched. The men experienced little, but Steve had a feeling about the large chair on the first floor - this was a chair brought to the museum from a local magistrates’ court. On rejoining the women it became clear that the curator had become a bit spooked while in the dark on the top floor, probably as this is the area she feels may be haunted by a figure.

Also on the top floor a light was seen outside the window but that could have been related to human activity outside and a very human figure was seen a couple of times in the backyard of the museum, likely to be from an adjacent building.

We decided to join the groups together and try a number of seances with different participants round my ‘seance table’ on the top floor. During one of these two or three bangs were heard to come from elsewhere in the museum (without any apparent cause), but nothing else of note. We now headed down to the first floor and had a massive joint seance round the flat-topped battle display area. Nothing of note happened here apart from a noise which turned out to be more human in origin than paranormal. This caused much humour and meant that the night ended on a flatulent, rather than a flat, note.

Overall it was rather a quiet night for us but we will be carrying out the walk-round experiment again in future.

Report 2 - Steve

After all arriving on time we set up base in the tourist information part of the building.

Graham had decided to send each of us round on our own armed with a map and he had asked us to mark down any areas of the property that we did not feel comfortable in or had a sense of anything. When we had done this he looked at all the maps and made a decision from the results as to where we were going to concentrate on in our investigation.

While we were waiting for the rest to complete their tasks I was standing behind the reception desk and had a headache starting, I informed Nina of this feeling, she joined me and also felt it, she felt this elsewhere in the building and wondered if something had followed her downstairs.

On my walk round I had a feeling of a stabbing pain in my chest in the first floor front room, and while in there I heard a knocking from the next room, I thought that one of the other investigators must be in the room, however the room turned out to be empty. In the Civic Room I had the sense of a woman looking out of the window, she was wearing a grey smock dress and a white cap, and on second floor I had a slight headache and felt a cold spot. Also on my walk round I was drawn to the second set of stairs that were chained off, and I was again drawn to them at the bottom. I asked Nina if she had picked up anything on these stairs; she walked up the stairs and about halfway up she suddenly stopped and complained of a sharp pain in her left ear.  She then turned to sit on the stairs and had sharp pains in both ears. She also was very hot and sweating and when she got up from this position she noticed on the wall a poem that had not been noticed before; “Halfway Down the Stairs” by A.A. Milne, author of Winnie the Pooh books (Nina’s favourite character is Tigger). What was unusual was that it was the only item on the stairs in a building where most walls were filled with items.

When Maggie was asked about the poem, she said although she had put that there she did not like going up them, but did use them as a short cut to get downstairs, in which case she used them quickly.

It was decided that we would go to the first floor and to the room on the left for first vigil , everyone got into position and settled down, there were some noises but pin-pointing them was proving to be difficult as everyone seemed to think they were coming from different directions, there was also a lot of noise coming from outside which everyone was aware of, but the noises did seem to come from within the building.  We then moved up to the top floor and continued to hear strange noises. Nina had located herself on the floor in front of the fairground attraction. In front of this display is a rocking horse (made from fiber glass so not old) and Nina swore that at one stage it was moving and that the head had turned round , I was stood right by this and did not feel or hear it move neither does the video tape support this, but it just goes to show how your eyes can play tricks on you.

We then went back downstairs for a break and discussion and to check that all participants were feeling fine as there were a number of the group who had not experienced an investigation with us.

Graham and myself had set up an experiment in the civic room with a crystal hanging like a pendulum in the air with the hope that a spirit may move it - however on reviewing the tape I discovered that I had not rewound the tape so only got 15 minutes of tape.

We split up into two groups the girls lead by Nina and the boys by Graham. The boys went up to the top floor and all sat down, after a short while we all noticed a light up on the ceiling (looked like the image you get before a flash goes off) this happened a couple of times and upon investigation it was decided that it was outside security lights reflecting into the window as there were some people in the alleyway (however later investigation later found that there is no security light out the back). Nothing much else was heard or felt so we swapped places with the girls and went to the first floor. We all sat around and I chose a large leather chair which was located in the area were information about the Tewkesbury Battle is located, I sat for a while and felt a tingling sensation over my head as if something was being put on my head, and I felt that the chair did not belong there, I mentioned this to Jeff who was sat by me and he informed me that I was correct as this chair had been recently purchased and was originally a chair used by magistrates in court.

After another break we all went to the first floor to carry out a seance, and whilst noises were heard nothing significant, all that wanted to take part did so , we then moved to the top floor, and once the seance started, with different results this time, there was three very loud bangs heard by all sounding like a door being slammed. These noises, which were picked up by the camera, definitely appeared to be coming from inside the building but what caused them remains a mystery.

Two orbs pass over the back of Steve B during the seance.

We rounded off the evening with a large seance with all taking part with the exception of my self , this produced nothing except strange noises coming form our own bodies and I will not embarrass the guilty party any further than she was at the time.

All in all a good night even though nothing conclusive was found.

Report 3 - For the Tewkesbury Admag, as written by Peggy Clatworthy, is here.