While we were still gazing at the swinging lamps, there was a sudden thud near the bookcase. Angus jumped and turned towards the noise. ‘Did you hear that?’ he said. ‘Like a thud on the floor.’ Everyone had heard it.
Danniella was still looking at the miner’s lamp, screwing her eyes up. ‘That really is moving, isn’t it? It’s not just me, is it?’
We could all see the base of the miner’s lamp moving slowly from side to side.
Then Trisha noticed something else. ‘That book, that’s just moved out as well.’
‘It has!’ I cried. ‘It has! You are right!’
A book on the top shelf had moved forward, just as if a hand had pulled it towards the edge of the shelf.
‘That was totally unexpected. You don’t expect books to move out of line when they’ve all been in a perfect line… Yeah, that was strange, very strange.’
Trisha
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘Thank you for doing that.’ The old sailor was really showing us that he was still around!
All this time the lamps were still moving. The first lamp was now moving randomly round and back again rather than swinging from side to side.
‘I just had to smile. I knew that the old captain, as I call him, was going to show that he was still around.’
Honda
Danniella was curious. ‘Neil, how does that make you feel? You live here.’
Neil wasn’t bothered by it. ‘It’s fine,’ he said. He smiled and shrugged. ‘He’s never done anything to me.’
I knew he never would.
Having succeeded in communicating with the spirit, we decided to finish the séance. I thanked everyone for their participation and closed the circle down.
When we looked up again, the lamps had stopped moving.
I was thrilled. In all my years I had never been in an investigation where I had got three responses like that in a matter of minutes. And, as Danniella said, the fact that the phenomena stopped once the séance was over was also interesting, as it showed that the energy had just backed right away.
Neil was amazed at what had happened in his pub. ‘It was totally unexpected, because I’ve lived here for so long now and nothing’s ever happened like that, ever, and it was amazing. I couldn’t believe it.’
I found out afterwards that according to local legend, one Christmas Eve the captain of an old Dutch barge had been taken ill and had come banging on the door of the Shipwright’s Arms. The bar manager at the time had thought it was a punter trying to get back into the pub and hadn’t opened the door. When he did open it the following morning, he found the captain’s body lying there. He had frozen to death during the night.
‘We can tell them the real story now,’ Trisha said, laughing.
The parapsychologist’s view
Dr Simon Sherwood from the University of Northampton has been examining our results from a scientific perspective.
‘There was no question that the lantern was definitely moving from side to side. One possible explanation is that the wooden beam that the lantern was suspended on was contracting due to the temperature cooling down and this may have caused it to move from side to side. So that’s something that we would need to rule out. I actually measured the temperature along the beam that it was suspended on and found that there was indeed a temperature difference along it.’
‘As for the book, I spoke to the landlord earlier and he said that very often when he goes to bed at night and locks the place up everything’s in order and he comes down in the morning and finds that some of the books have been taken off the shelves and arranged in particular formations on the table. So it’s interesting that that happened on the same shelf. I don’t have a definite explanation.’
The local historian’s view
‘When we are doing our initial research into a town we will always come across the name of a noted local historian, and usually they are glad to help. We try to get the main local authority if we can, or if not, someone they have recommended. They come from a variety of backgrounds – they can be people who run museums, retired academics, and so on – but their local knowledge is always invaluable to us.’
Natalie
In the case of Faversham, the local historian was a gentleman called Dr Arthur Percival. He told us:
‘The building was opened by a shipwright who had a yard there building sailing barges and, partly for his workforce and partly for people living in the area, he decided to open a beer house. Undoubtedly he did a very good trade with seafarers of various kinds and therefore it’s possible that somebody, some seafarer, turned up and was turned away. You know, it’s a feasible thing, certainly.’
The Crouch Family Home (#ulink_7f6032b6-16a6-5e65-8bac-3ab4f9b1e1d6)
‘My name’s Jo and I live in Faversham. And I believe our house is haunted.’
Jo Crouch
Mother and daughter Janet and Jo Crouch are part of a local Spiritualist circle, so are familiar with spirits – they even have several at home! They told us their house was haunted by a little girl and three boys. ‘Tommy’s a bit mischievous,’ Janet explained, ‘and he runs up and down stairs and shakes stepladders.’
‘And their father’s there as well,’ Jo went on, ‘and there’s a lady in the bathroom. She’s rather strict sometimes.’ This definitely seemed a place worth investigating!
We met Janet and Jo in their dolls’ house shop and as they led Danniella and me through to their home, I was hit by the atmosphere. A whole congregation of energies was coming in! We went up the stairs to the first floor and as we paused outside the bathroom I was aware that a lot of psychic activity had been going on there.
As the ladies themselves were so sensitive to spirit, Danniella suggested that we went straight into a circle to see what we could pick up. I thought that was an excellent idea. There were so many spiritual energies there that someone was bound to communicate in one way or another.
Spirit communication
The spirit world is on a much faster vibration than ours – that’s why most people can’t pick spirits up. A medium has learned how to slow these vibrations down so that they can see and hear spirits more clearly. Spirits, too, have to learn how to slow down their vibrations in order to communicate. Those who have recently passed may not have learned how to do it yet and in these cases Sam passes their messages to me.
Spirits who are not able to communicate directly for one reason or another may be able to show their presence by a particular smell, perhaps a favourite perfume or the smell of something they were associated with – such as the tobacco and tar of Frederick Symes at the Shipwright’s Arms – or by sending a ‘psychic breeze’ swirling past.
Some spirits can only pass on odd phrases. These can sound like snatches of conversation and you have to try to piece them together. Others can’t express themselves in words at all, so they pass on emotions and sensations instead. Sometimes these can be highly unpleasant, especially if the spirit is showing how they died, but they all have a purpose, and that is to communicate with the living.
At the Crouchs’home, the first spirit that came through made himself known initially by a tight feeling across my chest. It was really painful. Then I saw him working with a hammer and metal. He was a proud and hardworking man, a strong man with thick-set arms.
‘I had a strong vision of barrels, so we’re pretty sure he must have worked in the brewery at some point.’
Janet
He had passed to spirit after a sudden heart attack at work. The pain I had felt was his way of showing me what had happened. I knew he was at the Crouchs’ home regularly but he was a spirit in visitation, not a grounded spirit.
Spirits in visitation
Some spirits aren’t in this world all the time but just pop in now and again for a visit. They often come to see loved ones or to visit places that were important to them in life.
Grounded spirits
Grounded or ‘earthbound’ spirits are those who stay on Earth after they have left their physical bodies rather than move on to the spirit realms.
There are many reasons why this can happen. Sometimes spirits don’t realize they have passed. They may have died very suddenly, perhaps in an accident, and not understand what has happened to them. They may be very young and confused and so they don’t go into the light. They remain here, often in a very bewildered state. They can’t understand why people aren’t taking any notice of them, so they make noises or move objects and try to draw attention to themselves.
