This was the first time we had investigated a workhouse like this, but before I begin with our findings of the night, I want to delve a little into the history of Ripon Workhouse. The earliest records of a workhouse on the land go back to 1776. The workhouse stood for those who were penniless and branded lunatics because of mental health troubles. It kept them off the streets and out of the way of the general public. All inmates, the moment they arrived, were stripped and bathed in the same bath water to try and prevent disease in the workhouse; you didn’t want to be last to be bathed! Their clothes were then taken from them and chemically cleaned. For the duration of their time in the workhouse, the inmates, as they were called, were given a uniform. They would not see their own clothes until they left (if they ever got to leave). By 1832, Ripon workhouse was found to have thirty-three inmates: eleven men, eleven boys, nine women, and two girls. This large number of inmates caused concern about the expense of maintaining the poor. So, the inmates were put to work breaking rocks eight hours a day to mend roads. With the workhouse operating at total capacity, it was eventually expanded in 1855 and made entirely self-sufficient with teachers, doctors, and washrooms. It was designed so that there was no reason for an inmate to have to leave the buildings. In case of any unduly violent inmates, the workhouse had purchased a van that would take them from the workhouse to protect the other inmates. It would have not been a kind place to stay. There are even records of births in the workhouse! Conditions didn’t improve until the 1940s, when the welfare state arrived. The workhouse was elaborately decorated to hide the former workhouse. Its name then changed to Sharon View.
We began the investigation with a walk around of the old cells and rooms displayed as they might have once looked. There was undoubtedly a class system going on as we walked between the buildings. The building with the cells in had almost no decoration, yet the other was so elaborately decorated that it felt like a home. I was aware of feeling headaches in certain rooms, which would leave the moment I left. With that in mind for later investigation, we gathered as a large group upstairs in the governor’s room.
As we began a watch-and-wait experiment with trigger objects spread around the room, I noticed my K2 metre and all the others around the room were flashing, almost in sync up to the orange light signifying a significant spike in EMF. I tried to debunk this by moving my EVP recorder around, looking for electrical items on the walls and ceiling, and checking for cables running under the floor. The EMF spike seemed to be floating around chest height in the middle of the room. I have given it a lot of thought, and my conclusion is that rather than being a spirit, it is residual energy strong enough to cause an EMF spike on our metres. If it had just been one EMF metre spiking in one area, I would say it was a spirit.
Moving away from the k2 meters, we focused on some of the other equipment to see if we could get on-command responses. On the mantelpiece, two torches had been placed, and one of them had started to dim and brighten on its own. With our intention focused on those, one of the torches flickered more and more until it turned off. Then it turned back on by itself. The activity was ramping up. We wanted to see if the spirit could do anything else, and it responded, touching one of the cat balls positioned on the governor’s chair. Then, another cat ball flashed on the other side of the room, followed by the REM POD directly next to me. It can only alarm if it is touched. With my eyes flitting around the room, I was starting to wonder how many spirits were actually in this room. The activity was non-stop in this room; even as we were packing up to move to the next area, the torch was turning on and off by itself.
We continued to investigate the same building downstairs by the cells, conducting some table tipping to contact any spirits. It is always good to try and aim for the spirit to walk the table to a particular area they want us to go to. When it works, it really can help build spiritual energy to get some extensive responses. However, downstairs, we tried and tried, and the table did not move at all. The energy felt still, which usually indicates that no spirits are near. We moved the table upstairs and tried again in a small room. For a while, I thought there wasn’t even going to be the slightest of movements; I gave it my all, I really did. I didn’t give up, and I think that paid off as the table eventually started to tip onto two legs. It didn’t stay up for long before it dropped to the floor and remained still for a long while. It only tipped once more. What caught my attention more was I had placed my REM POD at the top of the stairs. The plan was if a spirit went up or down the stairs, they would have to pass close enough to my REM POD and set it off. This is precisely what must have happened as my quiet REM POD suddenly started screaming. It only lasted a few seconds, which made me think, was it the spirit who had tipped our table? It did seem to happen just after the table had finished tipping.
We wanted to use the table downstairs again but do some glass divination this time. We found an empty cell. We indeed had found the right place to be or the preferred method of communication for the spirits, as the glass moved straight away as soon as we called out. It works a little like an Ouija board for those who don’t know what glass divination is. The only difference being that you can only ask yes and no questions. You’re probably thinking, why not just do an Ouija board then? Well, it is a simple case of trying all methods on an investigation because you never know what response you will get from each method. We could have done a board in that cell and got no activity.
The spirit who came through on the board was male and was one of the residents from 1823. Sadly, he worked at the workhouse all his life and also passed away in the workhouse. I had an idea to find out his initials by asking him to move the glass when I said the correct letters. The letters he gave were M.D. We were able to check this the moment we received those letters from the board of residents who worked in the workhouse. The only man whose name began with an M on the board was Michael Gollacher, who was 18 months old and died on the 20th of January, 1858. Could it be possible that we were speaking with him? It is highly likely his spelling wouldn’t be perfect if he was that young, which could explain the initials M.D. The next thing I felt was an icy cold blast of air pass behind me. So we questioned this feeling with the spirit on the table, asking if he was trying to touch me, look out the window, or trying to see the table better. He confirmed he wanted to see the board more, so I moved to one side to allow him to see the table clearly. It was then that the glass moved to the hello that was written on the board. Nic then had the idea of playing some games rather than asking constant questions. She asked the spirit to circle around the lights on the table. Sure enough, the glass moved in a figure-of-eight pattern, circling the lights quickly. We next tried to see if the spirit would turn the lights off, which did come with an exciting result even if the lights didn’t actually turn off. The glass circled around the lights again until it aligned with the torches’ button. It then slid forward and bumped into the button on the torch in an attempt to turn it off. Usually, when something is turned off, such as a torch, you don’t see the finger pushing it when it is a spirit. In this instance, in some respects, you could see the finger that attempted to turn it off. I was then struck with an idea. I asked the spirit if he had a message for any of us. He answered yes. I explained my idea, asking the spirit to push the lights on the table to the person for whom the spirit had a message. The glass started to move, circling the lights until it was in position. The first light was pushed towards me and stopped right before the edge of the table, then the glass returned to the centre of the table to where the other light was and started to push that one towards me. What I loved most about this experiment was the position of the spirit returning to the centre of the table to make sure it pushed both the lights clearly towards me. That takes a lot of energy! With it established, he wanted to speak to me, but it was now the challenge of finding out why. We established quickly that it was because I reminded him of someone he used to know, but there was also more. Finding out what else he wanted to say really challenged us. All we had at the moment was that it had something to do with my appearance. To be really specific, we began the process of breaking it down by asking about every feature that was visible on my face. Was it my hair? No. Was it my ears? No. Was it my skin? No. Was it my eyes, nose, or mouth? No. Was it my forehead? Yes. I felt a little uncomfortable but, at the same time, curious to know why my forehead was of such interest. We asked every question we could think of, from the appearance of my skin and furrows on my forehead to whether my forehead looked clean or not. None of these were confirmed with a yes on the board. Nic then thought more along the spiritual side of things and asked if I had something on my forehead. The spirit said yes. She then asked if it was my third eye. He responded, moving the glass to yes. After several more questions, we concluded that he was interested in my third eye because of how big it was and the fact that he described it as being pink. For those who don’t know, the third eye is usually purple or indigo. I have yet to discover the importance of my third eye being pink at that moment in time. I asked if he could see Nic’s third eye while still on the subject. The spirit said he couldn’t. She was wearing a head torch. Clearly, he couldn’t see through material objects. This brought the investigation of this area to a close, so we said goodbye to the spirit and moved to the next area.
My team and I headed off alone to the school room. In the school room we set up several trigger objects around the room to try and capture any movement or sounds. Then, we set up an automatic writing experiment on one of the old school desks. The connection we were about to make was set to blow our minds! The planchette moved on the paper almost instantly the moment I called out. The planchette snaked and twisted across the paper with an exact path. We just waited and let it do its own thing. When the planchette finally stopped, we gasped, and all three of us could clearly see a woman’s face with curly hair. We asked if she had drawn herself. The planchette made a minimal curve on the paper and then drew a long curving line from the curve. It continued to move with the same precision, and when we looked after the planchette had stopped, the word yes was written on the paper. After this, the spirit underlined the yes written on the paper for every question that was a yes answer. So, to make it easier, we asked the spirit to write no on the paper to help us with the wrong questions. We then got a name. Her name was Anna. This is where it gets even more interesting as we asked if we had spoken to her before. She said yes. I asked if you could spell the city where we talked to you. On the paper, she wrote Leeds. We have only done one investigation in Leeds, which was at Leeds Thackeray Medical Museum. So, who had she followed? When we asked, the planchette slid across the paper to me. It seemed that my face had reminded her of someone she liked. We then found out she had someone else’s message to give me. This was when she started drawing what looked like the classic thumbs-up emoji big on the paper, followed by a load of hearts. Quite a bizarre message, I thought. So I asked could you write the first letter of that person’s name. She clearly wrote the letter D. That was all I needed to know to understand the message and who it was from. It was my grandfather. It’s lovely to know that our friends and family are still here and talking to us from the next life.
We remained in this room for the next session to do a watch-and-wait experiment. The moment the equipment was set up, the equipment was responding to what was clearly a spirit with us in the room. I suspect there was more than one spirit in the room with how the activity was spread around. At the front of the room, we had a torch turning on and off and knocks on command, and next to me, an ice-cold blast of air suddenly appeared. There were pieces of chalk on the desks, and we asked the spirit to throw them on the floor. What was strange was that we did hear a sound that sounded like a piece of chalk had hit the floor, but as we looked around the floor to find the chalk, we couldn’t find any chalk. I can confidently say the sound was a piece of chalk, though. The activity continued to spike around the room. At one point in my peripheral vision, I was sure I saw a mist float from the back of the classroom to the front. However, I don’t usually go on what you see in your peripheral. It doesn’t take a lot for the mind to imagine you saw something more that could probably be explained as an insect. But it wasn’t the only thing I noticed. Very clearly, to my right, a flash of red light hovered just above the floor. A few people claimed to have heard what might have been some hushed footsteps, but I didn’t hear much to make me say yes, they were footsteps. You have to remember it takes a lot of energy for a spirit to respond to any request, and when or if they do, the response may be very faint. The activity that impressed me most on this watch-and-wait experiment was the moment we asked if the spirit could show us where they were standing. The moment we asked, the REM POD on the sideboard to the right of the room triggered. It was the only time that that REM POD triggered. This confirmed to me that there was a spirit in the room. I believe with some pieces of equipment, if the EMF in the room was high enough, it could cause a malfunction. This is why it is good to use a mix of EMF emitters and receivers. An EMF emitter such as a REM POD would not be affected by high EMF readings because a REM POD is not built to read the energy in the air but emits its own EMF to feed spirits. It can only be set off when touched. A K2 metre, being a receiver, is more likely to read the energy in the air. So when you do get a spike on a K2, it is always good to try and get on-command responses asking the spirits to flash the lights for yes and no questions. That is a good way to prove what your K2 is reacting to.
With great activity throughout the building, we decided it was time to do an Ouija board. We moved rooms to see what the activity was like in other rooms. Again, the activity was quick to get going on the board. We started off asking if we were talking to a male spirit, and the planchette moved instantly to yes. We then found out that he worked here. When we asked if he helped people, the planchette began to spell a sentence. It spelt, “I am not.” There was more to what the spirit was saying, but after this, the word or words became a jumble of letters we couldn’t decipher. The spirit was only twenty-three years old when they died, he told us. He wasn’t born here but was a doctor here in 1850.
With no more legible activity from this spirit, we tried to make contact with another spirit. We did get another spirit to come through, who said we had spoken to them already tonight. So we asked for their name. The response was a jumble of letters again. This got us wondering why the yes and no questions were yielding good responses, and yet words and sentences were a mangle of letters. We asked if there was more than one spirit trying to talk to us. The planchette moved to yes. Then, we asked the spirit to move the planchette to the number of spirits talking to us on the board. The planchette slid to the number 9! This certainly explained the sporadic words. We weren’t going to get great responses with that many spirits fighting to talk to us. We asked if some of the spirits could go and join the Ouija board that was going on at the far end of the building, and they said they would. I then asked for the spirits that remained with us to speak one at a time. Now, we were starting to get good responses as I asked them to spell their name. The spirit we were talking to was called Anna, and she confirmed it was the same Anna we had spoken to previously. At this point, I felt a little prod on the back of my head. So I asked if it was Anna who was touching me. She said yes. I asked her to do it again, but a bit stronger this time. Instantly, I felt what felt like fingers lightly tickling the hairs on the back of my neck. To confirm it definitely was the same spirit we spoke to earlier, we asked if she could spell out what she drew for us earlier. The planchette slid over the letters F…A…C…E. Now we were certain it was her, we asked if she had any messages for us. Oddly, she spelt, “Order book.” Curiously, I asked if it had to do with my published novel. The planchette slid to yes. I then asked if the spirit knew the name of my book. The planchette slowly moved over the letters and spelt, “Prophecy.” With not having mentioned the name of my book throughout the entire investigation, that was some of the best paranormal evidence I have received. Just before we closed the Ouija board, it is possible I might have been given some guidance to achieve success with my book writing. For now, that stays with me.
For the last session of the night, we gathered in the kitchen as one big group. With all of the kitchen covered with our trigger objects, we watched on as, one by one, the torches flickered and went off, the K2s flashed, and REM POD screamed as something touched it. Typically, the energy slumps by the night’s end at any location, and it is hard to get any activity. This was not like that at all, to the point we didn’t even need to put any energy into it. I think the spirits were enjoying the company. The Alice box kept spitting out names, most of which were names of spirits that people had spoken to throughout the night. The activity continued like this for the rest of the investigation, and we just watched in amazement until it was time to finish for the night.
To conclude this investigation, my most impressive evidence was the connection with Anna and Leeds Thackeray Medical Museum. The detail she gave with the automatic writing I have never seen before, opening up my vision more to the amount of detail automatic writing can be used for. The K2 activity could be explained as high EMF spikes in the air, but there was undoubtedly some activity on the equipment that directly responded to questions confirming the presence of a spirit. Will we return to this location? I definitely think so. I feel there is a lot more the spirits would like to say. If I can, I would like to try and work on helping any of the spirits that might be trapped there.
Phantom Echoes Paranormal 
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