This was not the first time I had investigated the property. My journey with this property started over three years ago as a guest with Haunted Evenings. It was then that I learned just how haunted this building was. Now, I have had this opportunity to come back with my own team, Phantom Echoes, and I can certainly say I was excited.
Gresley Old Hall has stood on the land since 1664, and before that, it was a priory dating all the way back to the 1100s. The priory remained until 1556, when Sir Christopher Alleyne bought the building. He used the leftover materials to build the current hall. In the hall’s lifetime, it was rented by farming families in the 1800s and used for earthenware and clothing. Would any of this history interact with us tonight!
We began the investigation of the hall with a walk around all the floors to dowse for any energy hotspots. However, as we walked throughout the property, the energy was quiet. This is a property I have never known to be quiet, so I decided to start in the attic to coax the energy out. We set up an Ouija board in the attic and called out to the spirits to come into the attic and speak with us. There was no response no matter what we tried. We had placed flashing cat balls, REM POD, and K2 metre around the room. Everything remained still. After trying with the Ouija board, we switched to trying automatic writing. Yet again, it yielded no responses.
We promptly moved to the second floor to conduct an experiment I had devised to better pinpoint the current activity. I went up the stairs on the second floor, Nic went into the rooms next to the attic stairs, and Josh went down the stairs to the first-floor landing. I called out to the spirits to make a noise where they were, to make a noise close to the person they wanted to interact with. It remained quiet at first, but then we all heard a knock come from the second-floor stairwell. Then it happened again. You could say it was just the building creaking on a very cold and windy night, but over the entire investigation, that was the only time we heard the knock come from there. In my room, I had set a torch on a table. I asked if any spirits could come and interact with it and turn it off. The torch didn’t turn off, but I noticed the beam of light fluctuated between dim and full brightness for several minutes, and then it stopped and remained a full beam. I believe this was a genuine response.
I had already noticed the energy was different from when we had done the walk around. It was feeling heavier. Based on this, I decided that we should bring all the equipment into the room I was in. See if we can build upon the flickering torch. We set up the REM POD, K2 metre, cat balls, and laser pen around the room and then conducted an Ouija board. Straightaway, the planchette began to move. After establishing how to use the board with the spirit, we asked the spirit to spell its name. The planchette moved to the letters, “C, R, E, R.” Were these their initials we asked with confusion. It wasn’t initials. Then, one of the cat balls in the corner started flashing. We hadn’t moved the slightest bit to have accidentally caused it to wobble and flash. Was it possible Crer was an abbreviation? We asked and the planchette glided with speed across the board to no. I was beginning to think we wouldn’t have any luck with words, so I tried some number questions. When asked how old the spirit was, the planchette moved straight to 54. I suddenly felt curious to ask if there was more than one spirit in the room, with the cat ball continuing to flash in the corner while we had activity on the Ouija board. The board and cat ball were at least eight feet from each other. The response was that there were two spirits in the room with us. The other spirit was six years old and was playing with my cat ball. It didn’t surprise me that it was a child as I know from past investigations here that lots of child spirits roam the floors. They were both female spirits. The lady we spoke with had a certain job in the building. We asked her to spell it, and the planchette moved to the letters “J, U, T, F, E.” This wasn’t clear to us, so we tried to get information about this using numbers. The result was that she had worked here for thirty-four years. We then asked what year you were here, and the response was very surprising. She was here in the year four hundred and twenty-four. That was around the time of the Roman invasion. Was she Roman? It could explain why we couldn’t understand the words.
I changed the focus to the child spirit playing with the cat ball to see if they would roll it across the floor toward us. They responded on the Ouija board, “I’m six.” All three of us thought the spirit was saying I am six years old; why would I roll the ball across the floor? The child’s name was Niush. We were now talking with the older spirit again. She was the mother to the child playing with the cat ball. It turns out she was being protective of her child and wouldn’t allow her to come any closer to us. It explained why only that cat ball went off and none of the others were played with despite asking. Thinking back to the year four hundred and twenty-four, we wanted to find out what was on the land then. We asked, and the response was baffling. The planchette had spelt, “H,O,R,H,3,0,R”.
This wasn’t getting us anywhere, so I asked if the spirit could bring forward another spirit to speak to us, who we might be able to understand better. The planchette moved to yes, and then I asked the spirit to move the planchette to goodbye to let us know they had gone and were letting in the new spirit. As soon as the planchette had moved to goodbye, it started moving again. The planchette shot across the board with a new eagerness. With the strength of each movement, I knew it was a different spirit. This spirit’s name was Rinla, and he was sixty-three years old. We asked if the spirit had any messages for us, and it spelt, “D, O, E, 4, 5, R, O, E, N.” So, we tried to break down what this meant. Was it a place we needed to go? We got a yes response. Was it on the ground floor? It responded no. Was it on the first floor? We got a yes. Nic then asked is it the room with the pigeon in? The planchette shot to yes. The spirit told us to tell the owner they want the pigeon out of the building. I asked for the spirit’s name. It responded with the initials P.B. I suddenly noticed a warm energy around the planchette. It was like the planchette had become a mini radiator. That we had no explanation for with how windy and cold it was. Then we all heard very loud creaks coming from the stairs, which initially sounded like footsteps. We couldn’t be sure it was footsteps with all this wind. So we asked the spirit what those loud creaks were, and it told us it was the wind. I started to think of closing this Ouija board session to experiment in another part of the building. I asked the spirit to tell us which room to go to next and just before we left, it spelt hall on the board. We packed up and headed for the hall.
We began with some table tipping in the hall. If the table moved at all, it was too slight to say if it was our gentle pressure on the table or a spirit. So we placed a piece of paper on the table and tried some automatic writing. There was clearly a spirit with us as the planchette moved across the paper. We asked if the spirit had anything it wanted to tell us. The planchette slowly crept and twisted across the paper, drawing precise marks. It took a long time for the planchette to stop moving. I have often studied the finished drawing from all angles, and it almost has a person-like appearance. We tried to get more answers to what the drawing was, but the spirit seemed to have gone; the energy was now still. While we were still in the hall, I tried an EVP session to learn more about why we were told to come here. Listening back to the recording, there was no evidence that could be heard over the wind noise. I tried again, but before I did, I went upstairs to the first floor, which we adopted as our base room, to get my microphone to boost the recording frequency. As I reached the first-floor landing, the energy had completely changed from the calmness that resided throughout the house. Now, it felt heavy and oppressive. It felt like it didn’t want me there. I took my microphone back downstairs and tried again with the EVP. Still, we didn’t capture any voices.
We headed back to the base room for a quick break. Where the first floor had felt really oppressive, it was now completely calm. I was starting to see the energy floating around the building, and the night’s investigation would be a search for the moving energy. We investigated it next since I had felt this strong feeling on this floor. Other than the temperature sensor on my REM POD being triggered, showing it was getting hotter in the area, nothing else happened, so we moved on to an experiment I had had an idea for quite some time ago. It was just a case of waiting for an opportunity to try it; this was it. Since it is close to Christmas, I pre-recorded some well-known Christmas Carols that were popular in the 1800s. In the back rooms on the second floor, we waited patiently and quietly while playing the Christmas Carols to see if they would invoke a response from the spirits. Not long after I started playing them, one of my cat balls in the room started to flash, and then the most amazing thing started to happen. When I recorded the carols, I listened to them before the investigation to ensure the audio quality was just so; I am very particular when it comes to making sure something sounds right. However, as the carols resonated through the hall, the audio on my phone fluctuated and made loud popping and banging noises like someone flicking the top of a microphone. At one point, I was sure I could hear a voice trying to come through on the recording. Had we captured a spirit singing? The response to the experiment was that good that I shall now be thinking of ways to enhance the recording quality and to project it more around different properties. I think I could be onto a way to capture something big!
After this, we tried a watch-and-wait experiment with trigger objects spread out amongst different rooms to capture the frequently moving energy best. As we set up, we heard the door slam to the main stairwell. With how windy it was, it was hard to say if it was the wind or not. I can only say that the door is fairly heavy, and it was the only time we heard it bang. Unfortunately, having not actually seen it shut, I do not have enough evidence to say whether it is paranormal. After this, I stood next to the stairs to the attic, looking at the door. Josh and Nic were in the other rooms along the short corridor. All around us, I set up trigger objects. All remained quiet no matter what I tried to get a response. But then, Josh had a very unexplainable experience. He felt a very warm blast of air move across his face. There was no natural explanation for this, with it being a cold December night and very windy too. Then, I had an experience that, I have to admit, sent a slight shiver down my spine. This time, I knew it wasn’t the wind! As I stood right next to the attic stairs, we all heard a very loud creak of a footstep pressing down upon one of the lower steps. With how loud it was and only ever happening once in the night, in my mind, I was in no doubt it was a spirit. I was glad it happened. I just wish they wouldn’t do it right behind your back. I went into the attic after this by myself to feel the energy up there. Sure enough, it was heavier than it had been when we first started investigating. Perhaps the spirit we had just heard on the stairs had entered the attic? So, I led the team into the attic to see if we could contact it.
We conducted another Ouija board in the attic, and the planchette moved immediately with confidence. I asked if the spirit could spell, and although we did not hear it then, on later review listening back to the recording, there seems to be a high-pitched female voice response. We could hear people talking outside and had captured them talking on previous recordings we did that night. However, this response was so clear and loud that it sounded like it came from our attic room. It sounds quite like a woman saying no in response to my question. If it was a female spirit responding, it certainly wasn’t the spirit currently talking to us on the board as they told us they were male. He said his name was “BMAE.” He was thirteen years old and connected to Gresley Hall. I built upon this amazing information by asking the year he was here. He responded 1823. Then we asked what he did in the building. The planchette moved over the letters, stopping over every selected letter to spell lodger. He had farmed the land here in his lifetime. For me, this was one of the most enjoyable Ouija board sessions I had done for quite some time with how the evidence matched that of the history books.
It seemed the spirit had come just to tell us who he was and why he was there because, after this, the planchette stopped dead on the board and did not move again. The energy in the attic also seemed to immediately rush from the room. With that, we packed the equipment up and headed downstairs.
In the hall on the ground floor, we set several trigger objects around the area and tried table tipping one last time. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem to be the night for table tipping. So we tried the Ouija board again. I know we use many Ouija boards, but when you use them correctly, an Ouija board is one of the best ways to speak with spirits. The proof was in the pudding, as when we tried the table tipping, absolutely nothing happened, yet the activity on the board was immediate. It goes to show that spirits will choose how they want to communicate. I even asked on the board if the spirits would rock the table for us, and they said no.
There were currently three spirits talking to us on the board. We have not spoken to any of them yet on this investigation. We asked them to give their names one at a time. Their names were Earded, Catherine, and Sarah. Earded was sixty-two years old, Catherine was forty-three years old, and Sarah was forty-one. The fact that all three of them were speaking to us simultaneously made it seem likely they were a family. Sure enough, when we asked, the planchette moved to the letters to spell family. He was the father of the two ladies. We found out they were here in 1354, which meant they were here when the priory stood on the land. That really sparked our interest. They had been visiting the priory for worship for fifty-six years, like a religious pilgrimage. They were local to the area. In the hope of being able to trace the names, we asked them for their surname. The planchette moved over the letters once more and spelt David. Before I moved on to find out why they had come to speak to us, I wanted to confirm if the building materials from the priory were used to build the current hall. The spirits told us they were, which didn’t surprise me since we had been talking to spirits from the time of the priory. The energy print of the priory shall remain as long as the brickwork of Gresley Old Hall remains.
I asked if they had any messages for us, and the planchette slid to yes and then to the letters, where it began to spell something. We quickly realised what was being spelt. It was, “Get away!” Did they mean us to get away? We thought to ourselves, rapidly trying to interpret the meaning? Not until we asked if there was more to the message did we start to understand. Next, they spelt Sarad and told us it was someone living. I asked who the message was for, and the planchette slid to the very edge of the Ouija board next to Nic. We delve for more details into the message, and they spell, “Ardger.” I have just researched the word order as I write this, and larger popped up, which means anger. It then spelt, “BFG.” This BFG was related to a place that it spelt as Sard. Curious, we asked if the place had a new modern name. It spelt Redding. It turned out these spirits were telling Nic not to go to Redding in twelve years to avoid something bad from happening with someone called Sarad.
Then it was my time to receive a message, at which point I think they decided to have a laugh with me. The planchette moved across the board and spelt, “Are no sexy.” I would love to say this didn’t happen, but it did. As to why they were saying it and what they meant by it, I have no idea. I tried to get more information on what they meant and they spelt, “Are no sexkeetft.” At this, I asked if they were just messing, and the planchette shot straight to yes. I then asked if you actually had a serious message for me. The planchette moved to yes and then started to spell, “Set paper.” A few thoughts crossed my mind at the time, and I still wonder about them now. I thought were they referring to the pieces of paper and chalk I had dotted around the building as an experiment, or did they mean to set a piece of paper on the table now and do automatic writing? Nic, however, questioned if they meant to send paper rather than set. The planchette moved to yes. With a few more questions, we got to the message about applying for a new job and where. It is hard to say if they were being serious or not.
To finish off the Ouija board, I turned the focus to try and get some answers on what awaits when we die. The planchette spelt a full sentence this time, “Bed the nocebed.” We tried to make sense of the word nocebed but got nowhere until we asked if we had read the message wrong. After every completed word, Nic asked the spirits to move the planchette to yes. Now we got a sentence that said, “Bed the no cebed.” We probed for more detail as it still wasn’t clear. Then, we were told it had something to do with accepting death. The planchette spelt “Kikab” when we asked if there was an English spelling of cebed. Again, kikab wasn’t very clear. I even researched the word after the investigation and found very little. We asked if there was another word we might understand. The planchette slid over the words once more, spelling “Cegar.” Later research discovered that cegar is a Portuguese word meaning to blind. If this was how the spirits intended to use the word cegar, then I am unsure how to apply it to what we were told. However, I have heard so many speak of near-death experiences where they saw a bright white light. Perhaps cegar is connected to that? After several questions, we got somewhere. The spirits told us, using the Ouija board, that they were trying to tell us there is a spirit that greets you when you pass over. It is a spirit that acts like a counselor to guide you and help you come to terms with passing over, especially if your death happened very fast. It is a human spirit that has risen through the different energy planes of the afterlife to become a higher form. The job he does, guiding and helping the departed, is a job he chose to do. Like in this life, there is a job sector in the afterlife, so to speak, but all the jobs are spiritually related. I then asked about the gods, and the planchette slid to yes, confirming that there are gods. With that, I brought the Ouija board to a close.
With the remaining time, we walked around the building, taking photos to see if we could capture any of the spirits we had spoken to on camera. Unfortunately, we didn’t have any success this time. We headed back to the base room and packed up. Just before we left, I thanked the spirits and wished them a safe rest.
This investigation was one I had been waiting for such a long time. It certainly didn’t disappoint. I have been trying to discover answers to the afterlife for years, and I think I made a breakthrough. This was the exact reason I formed the Phantom Echoes team. Having investigated with companies like Haunted Evenings for years as a guest, I wanted to take it further with a professional team of my own. Forming the team has allowed me to focus more on the investigation. With the information I have now, the future of investigating could really be eye-opening. The music experiment and the information that connected to the history of the place proves it. This is a location I will look to come back to when the weather is warmer and calm. I thank the owners for allowing us to investigate this amazing property.
Phantom Echoes Paranormal 
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