It was time to get back to work; this time, the location was Stratford Upon Avon’s Falstaffs Museum, also known today as Tudor World. Stratford Upon Avon is well known for being the birthplace of one William Shakespeare, and saw play to much of his work. It’s said he even visited the Falstaffs museum. There is written evidence that his daughter, Suzannah, visited the Falstaffs regularly as she was friends with William Rogers’s daughter, Elizabeth. William Rogers owned the property at the time and was the man who inspired Shakespeare’s comic Falstaffs character. Before I continue onto the night’s hauntings, I will say a bit more about the background history of Falstaffs, the foundations of which date back to 1196. The house was named for William Shrieve in 1536, who served as an archer to King Henry VIII. He was the first recorded tenant of Shrieve house, as it was called then. There are rumors that he also served as an assassin for King Henry VIII. Could this explain his strange disappearance three years later?
In a relatively short space of time, the house saw a very turbulent period of history; it was hit by the black plague in 1563, and then a large fire did great damage to the street the property stands on, as well as other streets in 1596. Much needed to be rebuilt. Evidence of priest holes have been found, which were most likely used to hide in if Cromwell’s forces came knocking looking for royalists. Quite often, when the parliamentary forces came knocking, they would take days to search the house, by which time those who were loyal to the crown and had hidden had died from starvation in the priest holes and other hiding places. Parliamentary soldiers were billeted at the house during the Civil War at the Battle of Edgehill in 1641. Then, after the war, it was used as a hospital for the soldiers. Many died from infection. With all I have experienced on my paranormal journey, I can quite confidently say that this turbulent history is why Falstaffs Museum is so haunted.
Before arriving at the property, I had researched the house’s recorded hauntings. I found a few, and of those few, a couple were of greater interest. The first speak of an archer from the time of King Henry VIII. Could this be William Shrieve? The other that was of interest was talk of a spirit that only appears at certain times of the year as a black figure with red eyes watching from the corners. Was this a sighting of a spirit or something more sinister? These were but a few of the hauntings and perhaps why a lot of people will not return there. It was my mission to find answers to these stories and maybe even add to them with documented evidence.
The investigation began with a walk around, but strange things were already starting; before we had even entered the building, the lights had gone out in the entire building. The Haunted Happenings team members confirmed that the lights had been on not two minutes before. After this, we got straight into the investigation as one big team at the bottom of the ladders to the attic. We set up a watch-and-wait experiment with K2 metres, REM PODS, music box, and cat balls. Everything seemed quiet until we heard a knocking, scraping sound coming from the next room. I didn’t jump to the conclusion that this was paranormal as the building is very old and creaky, and a lot of noise pollution could be heard from outside. However, this was not the end of things happening whilst we were in a large group. A cold breeze had manifested in the room, which had clearly not been there before, and was moving around the room. I can confirm that it was a very localized spot of ice-cold air as I felt it only on my left hand and nowhere else. Within a few minutes, the cold had gone, and my hand was warm. Several people around the room felt very similar cold spots. Whilst this cold spot had been felt, my REM PODs temperature sensor started to detect an increase in temperature, which was growing rapidly around the sensor; I knew this because of how frequent and loud the siren was becoming. This may have been explainable by our own body heat raising the temperature in the room. But it doesn’t explain the tapping we heard on the top of the REM POD, and then the green LED lighting up, indicating that the metal aerial had just been touched. I can rule out a fault with the REM POD as the REM POD belongs to me, was tested before use, and had a new battery put in it. So something with a strong energy had touched it. Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye to my right, a ball of light appeared floating behind a few people for no more than a second and then disappeared. Having only seen it from the corner of my eye and not directly, I may have debunked it as my mind playing tricks, but fortunately, another guest had seen it whilst looking straight at it. What I saw was about the size of a cricket ball and pure white floating at about the head height of someone six feet tall. It moved from left to right at a gentle walking pace. It stood out clearly against the darkness of the back corner. What followed this seemed more sinister as one of the women it had passed behind suddenly felt dizzy and very uncomfortable. She said she had an unpleasant tingling sensation all over her. Then, the music box in the corner behind her started playing. Was everything that was happening in this room one spirit or more? I personally felt like there were two spirits. One was in the centre of the room playing with the REM POD, and another not so friendly man was lurking in the shadows watching us. I believe it was this inhospitable man who was affecting this woman. One story I heard of in my research of the property was a male spirit that likes to touch women. I could quite easily believe it to be that spirit that was inflicting her. With her feeling very uncomfortable and the time pressing on, we had to leave this area to investigate the other rooms.
We conducted a table tipping session in what is now a gift shop. On this occasion, the table didn’t move. We didn’t give up. It’s not always about a lack of energy. Sometimes, it’s about finding the right tool to communicate with them. With that said, we tried our hands at glass divination. It took so much persuasion and charging of energy before the glass moved just the slightest bit. It then didn’t move again for another good five minutes. We had ruled out finding any answers on this occasion since the glass wouldn’t move more than an inch. The one thing that did happen in this area that slightly concerned me was that I suddenly had a very dizzy feeling as if something was trying to channel through me or use my energy. From my years of experience, getting manipulated like that can be a sign of something not friendly. Why I was chosen can only be guessed amongst the many different reasons. Fortunately, I was able to focus my mind and shake it off. Receiving no more unexplainable activity in this area, we moved on.
Now, we headed upstairs to the first-floor corridor. At first, we thought that the activity was starting with the music box on the stairs. However, I was able to debunk this pretty quickly. We had noticed it seemed to be going off most of the time just after someone had walked along the landing. So, I tried an experiment to see if I could set it off. I stood close to the banister and walked quickly towards the top of the stairs where the music box sat. As I thought it would, the music box went off, revealing that its area of sensitivity was triangular in shape and not just a straight column pointing in the direction it was facing. As I have mentioned before, part of being a great investigator is trying to debunk what you have just experienced. In doing so, you can add more credibility to what you have experienced, or you just give yourself clarity to take from an investigation that what you experienced could be explained. At the end of the day, we are there to prove what we are experiencing is truly paranormal.
What was weird was a knocking and moving sound we could hear coming from the dark rooms to our right. The only other people were in the attic at the far end. We knew we were far enough away from them to not pollute our investigation. These sounds continued, and then those who stood closest to where the sounds were coming from had a cold spot envelop them. This was when true paranormal activity started as the HH team member suddenly jumped forward, describing that he had just felt a finger run down his arm. He also said it had gotten colder around him when it happened. So I went and stood where he had stood when he got touched. I can confirm that it was icy-cold where he had been standing. There were no open windows or vents or doors to explain it. I asked for the spirit to touch me like it had just touched him. I didn’t get touched. Standing here, however, I could hear the movement sounds even clearer. I was even sure I could hear a faint whisper. I have had a feeling on many investigations now that spirits like to watch from a distance. Following this feeling, I went into the next rooms along the corridor by myself. There was a TV screen on the wall, and I noticed the light from one of our pieces of equipment was reflected in it. But as I was looking at the screen, I couldn’t always see the light. It kept disappearing and reappearing like something was shooting back and forth in front of the screen, blocking the reflection. As a test, I asked the others in the next room where the equipment was casting the reflection to move about and wave their arms around to see if they were blocking the reflection. It wasn’t! So, a shadow dark enough to block the reflection had been moving back and forth in front of the screen. At this point, Sheree came to join me to hear what I was hearing and see what I was seeing. I was not prepared for what happened then! As soon as she entered the room, I saw the shadow that had been moving in front of the screen stop and disappear. This is not exaggerated, I promise you, but I guess it was the same shadow I had been seeing when, all of a sudden, a solid black figure appeared, definitely more than a shadow, and it shot straight toward Sheree. I can easily describe it. It was a good six feet tall, if not taller, and what made me realise this was a full apparition was that it was 3D and not just moving along a wall. It had mass; you could not see any light or objects through it. This was in the centre of the room. I have never seen a figure move so fast in all my life. I felt all the hairs on my neck stand up on end. Unfortunately, Sheree had been looking in the wrong direction. It appeared and disappeared so quickly that unless you were looking right at it, you wouldn’t see it. What she did feel then was a sudden icy wind around her, and she noticed the room getting much darker. Was this the spirit I had seen less than a second beforehand? I walked farther into the next rooms where the light really had been drawn from the rooms, and still, it was continuing to grow darker. In this room, I just stood still and listened. I think this was the room where the sounds I had been hearing were coming from. Sheree came to join me, and we both stood aghast as all of a sudden, the far room lit up bright white for less than a second. We went to investigate it. We found on the ceiling a spotlight turned off, but it was from that direction the light seemed to appear. We checked with the group in the attic to see if they had turned a torch on at all, but they hadn’t. However, they also reported seeing a light shine up the ladder to the attic. None of us knew the exact time we had seen the light, but it seems likely we saw the same light. As we made our way back to the rest of the group to finish this part of the night, we noticed a huge drop in temperature and atmosphere; until we stood with the others, we hadn’t realised fully how oppressive the atmosphere had been where we were. Standing with the others, the air was icy cold and much more relaxed.
Sheree and I now ventured off to investigate on our own, heading for the attic. We set up and watch-and-wait and Ouija board. Sadly, we had no activity on the Ouija board or with any of our equipment. But the vigil wasn’t without anything odd happened. As Sheree sat in her chair as we tried to contact the spirits through the Ouija board, she suddenly felt the seat pad she was sitting on depress as if something else had sat on it. Could this be explained by perhaps the stuffing in the seat shifting or the old fabric of the seat pad stretching? Even saying this, for a seat pad to suddenly change pressure without having anyone first moved or adding any more weight to it is strange. I will let you make up your own mind about that one. We also happened to capture a weird crying followed by a guttural grumbling sound on my EVP recorder. We can’t say for certain it is paranormal, with the recorder clearly picking up everyone else’s voices on the floors below as well as outside sounds. I have mentioned it in this report because when I listened to it, I noticed that it happened at a different sound frequency to us, to those downstairs, and from what we could hear, the outside sound pollution. Follow this link to listen to the recording https://youtu.be/6xexYhH2Tjs. I would love to hear what my readers think. For the rest of the alone vigil, Sheree and I took photographs hoping to catch what we had experienced on camera. Only in the attic was anything captured that seemed odd, a very bright orb.
For the last vigil, we headed back to the attic in a larger group. It would be interesting to see if a larger group of people would manifest enough energy for the spirits to come through. We replicated the experiment as closely as possible by using an Ouija board with a watch-and-wait experiment. I can say there was some success with this experiment as the planchette started to move after a little effort, and the K2 closest to the board started to flash, detecting the gain in EMF. We tried to find a name for who was speaking to us, but all the planchette spelled out to us was “daed.” Were they trying to tell us they were dead? After this, the activity ceased, bringing the investigation to a close.
Given the history of this building, I found myself quite surprised that we didn’t have a single name to take away from the investigation to research. However, the stories of frequently seen figures that even have the owner so scared he won’t walk around the property at night are definitely of interest; the balls of light, the shadow figure, and the full apparition would support these recorded sightings. I wonder who the spirit that I saw was? Could it be one of the spirits that are spoken about residing within the walls, or was this a spirit visiting from somewhere else? Stratford Upon Avon is such a haunted place that a spirit could come from anywhere within its streets. Whether a sinister presence resides or not at Falstaffs Museum, I am going to have to return to try and find some names and hopefully communicate with the archer from King Henry VIII’s time. It would be interesting to see if I could capture what I saw in this investigation on camera.
Phantom Echoes Paranormal 
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