Tewkesbury Shop - November/December 2006 & July 2007

First Investigation

After a ghost-walk 9 of the group carried out a mini-vigil in a shop in Tewkesbury that is closed for renovations - this was mainly aimed at those who were new to such activities to give them a brief example of the sorts of things we usually do in a supposedly haunted building. I described the usual stuff and equipment and Evan and Alison were there as more experienced members of the group.

We carried out a couple of vigils at the rear of the shop and did a 'glass-moving' at the front of the shop - as expected there was nothing unusual happening and the glass didn't move an inch. Just before I moved on to a seance Alison did an EMF sweep and found that the entire front area of the shop where we were was giving a high reading with no obvious source - this was puzzling but I put it down to weird electrics (later investigation suggests this is associated with the High Street lighting supply giving off a strong electric field).

I led a seance and nothing was happening after 7 minutes so I closed it down. I asked if anyone else wanted a turn and two of the five round the table swapped with two who had been watching. I opened another session and again after 5 minutes it was still dead (if that's an appropriate word). Then I handed over to Nina on my left to lead with the questions. Almost immediately draughts started being felt on the hands of the seance participants. Then we got a large 'tap' from the table - at first I thought it was just settling down, despite it not having made a single noise the rest of the time - then we got more 'taps'. Some appeared to come in response to questions, but then there were gaps. There were also two types - one felt as though it came from within the table and was quite loud, others were just like someone was tapping the table-top with their fingers, but everyone's hands were flat on the table and visible to the participants and the observers.

The taps went on for about 15 minutes, then we stopped as we had run out of questions and we were getting tired
- you can see and hear the first 10 minutes by clicking on the pictures below. Some of the early soft taps can be heard on the tape but not all of them - the louder noises are pretty obvious. I'm sure you can guess what the noise at the end was!

                                     First Part of Video                           Second Part of Video

Fortunately I own the table used so will be investigating it further to see if I can replicate what happened. I should point out that neither the floor (thick chipboard) nor other features of the building seem likely to responsible. Why not watch the videos and see what you think.

Location of participants in seance when the taps occurred

Second Investigation

This time seven of us returned to the same shop - five of whom were on the original investigation, and this time including the previous tenant of the building, Elaine.

Despite a couple of attempts at repeating the seance nothing of any note happened. We used the same table and three of the previous 5 around the table including Nina who seemed to be getting good responses before. Nothing of note at all happened in the shop.

This time, however, we had also gained access to the cellar, an obviously very old part of the building that has not been used for some time. A few initial sessions revealed nothing other than a couple of unusual noises, including a loud sigh which two of us heard - however on returning there later it was a different story.

I am not sure of the exact timing, but I would guess our second visit to the cellar would be about the same time as the seance took place on our last visit. Five of us held hands in a circle round a candle on the floor, as the only light source, and did the usual calling out. Nina found that her right hand was starting to shake. Altering the position of her arms seemed to make no difference at all and all of us, including Nina, found this very odd. As we continued we noticed that as Nina asked questions the shaking became worse and the hand I was holding felt extremely hot, so hot that my arm started sweating. We rested and started again. On resuming not just Nina's arms but my left leg were affected - very odd - this then spread to Elaine, now holding Nina's other hand.

After this we held a few other sessions like this in another part of the cellar with no effect. When three of us returned to the area of the cellar we had been in initially Elaine's hands and arms started to shake even more violently. We later did some singing and our arms seemed to swing, but we believe this may be down to the movement in Elaine's arms by now. Then suddenly everything stopped.

We had a few other sounds and a possible shirt-pull but nothing of any great note. Throughout all of us felt fine and were quite amused by what happened - all of us tried to mentally stop ourselves from shaking but with no luck.

Third Investigation

Four of us returned to the shop this time - further seances and vigils were held but nothing unusual occurred.

Fourth Investigation

Eight of us returned to the shop this time - further seances and vigils were held but nothing unusual occurred apart from a repeating orb passing behind one of first seance participants.

Fifth Investigation

Seven of us returned to the shop this time, four of the regular team, the former tenant Elaine, and Richard and Steve B on their first visit with us.

It had been quite a break since our last visit and as it was still daylight when we arrived we started with a session of holding hands in a circle in the basement. Most of us participated in this with Steve filming. In this Richard and Elaine experienced their arms being raised slowly to the horizontal - also Richard felt a presence of a child which others had noted on a previous visit. A few draughts were felt, but nothing substantial, and temperature readings seemed little affected.

We now held a seance in the shop area. During this Elaine felt she was being influenced to shake the table. Unfortunately repeated requests to show other signs or move the table more dramatically weren’t answered. Further questioning may have suggested that an old friend of Elaine’s who used to visit her in the shop, and towards the end developed a similar shaking condition, may have been influencing her. We changed participants round the table with Elaine taking a break and the next seance revealed nothing.

We then returned to the cellar and Richard again experienced his arms slowly raising to the horizontal. A later attempt with Nina, Elaine and myself failed to elicit any significant response.