Leeds Thackray Medical Museum started life as a workhouse. It was built in 1858 but didn’t open until 1861. By the end of the 19th century, the workhouse had become largely used for medical care for the poor. As the first world war broke out, all remnants of the workhouse had gone and it became the East Leeds War Hospital with the sole duty of caring for the armed services. Later, it became known as the Ashley Wing, remaining a hospital till the 1990s when it was considered unfit for modern medical practices. Since then, it has been a museum. Over its years as a museum, it has had quite some famous artefacts within its walls. One of the more famous would be the skeleton of the witch Mary Bateman who was hanged for murder. With a little background on the property, it’s time to begin the happenings of the paranormal investigation.
In the corridor just outside the room we had just been in, we did a watch-and-wait experiment. This was where I began to see flashing lights. A lot were seen in my peripheral vision, but a couple I was looking directly at when they suddenly flashed right in front of me. This area was very active with the cat balls going off, but the most impressive activity we had was using the Estis method. The Estis method is the name we give to listening to white noise sweeping through radio stations rapidly listening for spirit voices. What impressed me the most was the fact that everyone heard voices, and from what others described, they had all heard the same male and female spirits having a discussion. What I heard very clearly was a male speaking three muffled words. Unfortunately, I couldn’t comprehend the words; if you imagine someone talking with their hand pressed tight over their mouth, you get an idea of how the voice sounded.
Soon the activity began to drop in this area and after a quick walk around the building, we commenced with an Ouija board session in the jar room. It’s known as the jar room simply because a collector who had a fascination for very high-quality porcelain jars went and collected jars from all around the world and presented his collection in this room. To the Oujia board, the planchette began to move almost immediately. What surprised me the most and made it the most challenging Ouija board to conduct was the frequency of change from the first spirit to the next to the third spirit just jumping in at any given time. At first, we had a little girl come through aged ten. She was called Sam. Before we had the chance to find out much else about her, the playful movement of the planchette became sharp and direct movements with a lot more clarity. This was an indicator to me that this was not the same spirit. I began the process again of finding out whoever it was speaking to us. This time it was a male aged twenty-six. His name was Simon Sere. His story was he was a second world war soldier who had survived the war but died in 1945 in a car crash whilst celebrating VE Day near Leeds. Although I didn’t find out, I can only guess his body was brought to the morgue within the hospital. When I asked if he had a message for us, he spelt “Am dead”. I never did find out why he spelt that. Perhaps he was saying to us I am dead, why are you talking to me? Then the movement changed once more and this time it was a doctor speaking to us. He would not tell us what type of doctor he was. I got the feeling he wasn’t too keen on us being here. So we didn’t get much out of him.
From here, we headed to the Victorian streets set up. They could have left the stench of ammonia out! Around the streets, we set up REM PODS, K2s, cat balls, and Alice Box, as well as ourselves, spread out between the different rooms. At first, it was still, but then the temperature sensor on the REM POD began to sound and flicker red. The red flickering light grew to bright constant light, and then, the REM POD lit up bright green. Whoever was playing with it had just touched the metal aerial. This was just the start of the activity. My senses were telling me children spirits were playing with us. They certainly liked to mimic our movement with the REM POD that’s for sure. Now the cat balls were starting to go off too as we headed into different rooms alone. As amazing as this activity was, nothing prepared me for how amazing the activity was about to become! Coming from the corridor on the far side of the next room closest to me, there was the sound of clear footsteps walking towards us. We checked for any natural explanation and there was nothing to explain what a couple of us heard. I asked for the footsteps to happen again and they did, but this time they were louder and they were running towards us now. I stood gobsmacked and stood stock-still. Then I heard them again much closer. The room became much colder after this. I ask who was this running towards us and why? The entire time we were in this room, the Alice Box was spitting out words and a lot seemed to have meaning. Unfortunately, it spat out so many that I can’t remember all that was said.
It was time to venture off alone to do our investigation work. We headed to the Morgue. We did not waste any time setting up the laser pen, REM POD, k2 metre, cat balls, and Ouija board. Before we had even begun to truly investigate the area, one of the cat balls had started flashing. It seemed once more we were going to have a successful visual. Promptly, we got the Ouija board going. It did not take long for the planchette to move. I was quite surprised by who it was who had come to speak with us. It was a slave from South Africa. He told us that he had been a slave in a workhouse, but not the workhouse that the current building once was. It was a workhouse that had stood on the land previous to this, possibly predating the Victorians. We focused a lot of time on trying to discover what the job of that workhouse was, but unfortunately, we didn’t get any results. He was 23 years old. Before we finished the investigation in this room, I thought I would try something since he was responding so well. I asked if he could show himself in the green dots of the laser pen. As we all watched the green dots mapped out on the back wall, they suddenly flashed on and off. Was this him responding to our question and quickly passing in front of the laser? I personally think it was. Before the end of the lone visual time, we walked around the floors taking photos. Out of all of them, there was a couple that caught my attention. I will include them in the report.
It was now time to rejoin as a group. We headed for the nurses’ ward upstairs for a table-tipping session. We rubbed our hands together building up the energy and then opened up the session. As I drove my commanding energy asking the spirit to rock the table, the table soon began to creak and then gently start to tilt onto two legs. It didn’t take much to instruct the spirit to lift the table onto one leg. Then the table started to spin on command. Since the spirit was responding so well and certainly had a lot of energy, I decided to see if we could learn anything from the spirit using the table. I asked the spirit to take us on a walk to where we needed to go. Soon the table was up on two legs moving at a time walking across the room and out into the corridor. At some points, the table shot across the floor and almost out of our hands. A lot of you may think we faked it but I can promise you all of it was real. If you saw how it moved taking us for a walk you would see it was not faked. The table walked right across the corridor and stopped right in front of a display case. We could not find any reason for why it had stopped here and eventually put it down to the spirit having some fun with us. It was at this point one of the Haunted Happenings team members Emily joined us and asked the spirit to take the table to where the skeleton was. The table moved violently and parked itself right in a corner between a display case and a wall. This was not where the skeleton was that Emily meant, however, she had only asked the spirit to take us to where the skeleton was. Emily had meant the Skeleton of Mary Bateman. Had we perhaps discovered another yet unknown skeleton buried beneath the floor? Did this skeleton belong to the spirit talking to us? The way the table moved was unbelievable. It left me shocked for words. There is no doubt in my mind that the afterlife is real. We had a few minutes left of this session, so I asked the spirit to walk the table back to where we first started and it did. We wrapped up the session and got ready for the final session of the night.
For the final session of the night, we headed to the Victorian surgery gallery. These surgeries always sit uneasily with me from the fact people were invited to come and watch the surgery take place making the patient seem just a subject of entertainment. The energy in here seemed to be very quiet. I felt that the moment I sat down. We tried in many ways to get the spirits to come and talk to us but they weren’t having it. Occasionally the K2s would flash and a cat ball would flash but not a lot else. The best of the activity in the room happened just before we left. We asked the spirits to give us something really big before we had to leave. As we asked, three of the K2s lit up to orange around the room all at the same time. That was amazing. Why they wouldn’t respond to previous questions I am not too sure. But now it was time to go.
This investigation had really shown just how strong spirits can respond with the right energy. I believe it to be a mixture of having the right energy as a group as well as the spirits’ energy. What I have clearly seen and documented over my many years of investigating is if there is even just one opposing person in the group that is enough to block the positive energy. This was something I wondered about for quite a few investigations. It always struck me when I had investigated the same place multiple times how the activity could differ so much. That was when I realised it wasn’t the spirits’ energy changing, it was the people who were investigating bringing the wrong energy which didn’t work together. One of the most important rules when investigating the paranormal is to bring positive energy and no negative energy. Positive energy attracts positive spirits. Need I say anything about negative energy! So if you have troubles on your mind, mediate before the investigation to clear your head and to ground yourself. Don’t bring these troubles into an investigation. Most of the activity that happened during this investigation had been stuff I have seen before. What really had me curious was how Nic responded to the different energies from each room. In one room she had a headache just behind her right eye, then in another room, the headache would have moved to the complete other side of her head. When she returned to the previous room, the headache moved straight back. I had not seen such a strong reaction before. This is now something that I will research more in the coming investigations. As for Leeds Thackray Medical Museum, I will be back.
Phantom Echoes Paranormal 
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