It had been a year already since the first private investigation of Gresley Old Hall. On that investigation, I had captured some of the best evidence in my many years as a paranormal investigator. When the opportunity came to lead a team of investigators at Gresley Old Hall, I was excited to see if I could capture what I caught the last time I was there. Since the last time, I have researched the property extensively and have found a much more detailed history. The site of Gresley Priory was purchased in 1556 by Sir Christopher Alleyn (died 1586). He was the son of Sir John Alleyn (died 1545), twice Lord Mayor of London. The priory buildings were demolished, and the stone was reused to build Gresley Hall. He married Audrey, the daughter of the 1st Lord Paget, who had estates in Staffordshire. It is said that Christopher had eight children, which are very little known of, but his eldest son, Charles Alleyn (died 1592), made Gresley Hall his principal home after selling Ightham Mote in 1591. After Ashby-de-la-Zouch Castle surrendered to siege in 1646 by Crowell’s parliamentarian forces, Gresley Hall was rebuilt by John Alleyn. The present house dates to 1664. John’s grandson, Samuel Stephenson Alleyn (died 1734), who died unmarried and suspected to have suffered from mental health problems, was the last of his line. The Meynell family of Meynell Langley Hall bought the estate following his death. By 1789, the house was rapidly decaying, and the property was taken over for coal mining; the house was tenanted as a farm, and the outbuildings were converted for use as a pottery in 1794. In 1895, when the mining had destroyed too much of the estate for farming to be viable, it was converted into tenements. It then lay derelict for some time.
The investigation began immediately, with the team’s dedication palpable as we headed to the area I felt most active. Leading the team on a tour of the building, we experienced subtle changes in the energy; no two rooms felt the same. The second-floor bedrooms seemed to hold the strongest energy. One of these rooms has become famous with a ghost story of a maid in charge of the family’s children. It is said that she burnt to death when the hem of her dress caught fire as she sat too close to the fire. Is this the reason for feeling the strongest energy in this area? We started with a watch-and-wait experiment, placing flashing cat balls, K2 metres, REM Bear, laser pen, and EVP recorders in the two bedrooms and REM POD and music box out in the corridor. None of us could quite work out where the sound came from, but as we were setting up, we heard a low rumble from outside the room. It sounded almost like a dragging sound. It had happened so suddenly that none of us were prepared to see if we could find what it was. We cracked on with the calling out to see if what we just heard would interact with our equipment. There seemed to be no response within the room, but the REM POD outside the room started to detect a sharp temperature change, indicating it was getting colder. The REM POD’s siren grew louder as the minutes rolled past. I went to check it and recalibrate the temperature sensor just in case it was acclimatising from coming out of the warm base room into the much colder upper floors. Now that it was recalibrated to the ambient temperature of the house, it shouldn’t go off. However, a short while later, it started to go off again, meaning that there must be an energy around it. I called out trying to get something to touch the metal aerial on the REM POD to set the other lights and sirens off. There was no response.
We moved from here into the attic for a spirit box session. As we went up into the attic, I decided to place the music box on the bottom step so that anything moving on the stairs or past the bottom of the stairs would trigger it. The first thing we noticed in the attic was the much lighter feeling and the icy breeze that suddenly rushed upon us. Being a very draftee building, I can’t say for certain that all the cold breezes we felt were paranormal, but a few sat directly on our hands, and nowhere else could a direction to the flow of cold be found. In some rooms, we could see our own breath forming clouds. What seemed odd to me was that it was only certain rooms in which we could see our breath; it was a reasonably mild night, too.
The spirit box swept rapidly through the stations. For quite a while, it just picked up radio stations and spit out a few words with little meaning to our investigation. The spirit box works by sweeping through the radio stations on a continuous loop at a high speed, which differs from a radio as a radio will only choose one radio station at a time. It is believed that spirits can manipulate and speak through the white noise. A while later, I asked how many spirits were there with us? We heard a faint two come from the spirit box almost immediately. A few minutes later, it spoke a few sentences that seemed to relate to our question. Trying to encourage the spirits to be vocal, we heard ‘later we will’ on the spirit box, and then ‘he’s gonna come.’ If these were Indeed spirits talking to us, then who was he? Getting no more responses, we turned off the spirit box and tried some automatic writing. As much as we tried, the planchette did not move. Matt suddenly shushed us, saying he thought he could hear the rustle of clothing on the stairs. The rest of us hadn’t heard anything, but then the music box at the bottom of the stairs started playing, confirming Matt had heard movement. That was incredible. I shot down the stairs to see if anything was moving or if anyone had snuck into the building. I didn’t find anyone, but I saw a white mist float around the corner of a door into the first bedroom. Despite the eerie circumstances, the team remained resolute and continued the investigation.
We gathered up our gear and made our way to that bedroom quickly. The REM POD continued to be active outside in the corridor, its temperature sensor alarming. We placed the music box in the corridor. With trigger objects around us, we tried an Ouija board to make contact with the entity I had just seen. We felt the planchette almost vibrating, but there was no movement. With very little activity detected, we headed to the third floor to investigate a new area.
We set up our trigger objects on the third floor and began with another Ouija board. The plan for the night was to conduct an Ouija board on every floor to see if there were different spirits in different areas of the house or whether the spirits were free to roam. The activity on the Ouija board was slow, twisting aimlessly across the board. As we were trying to build stronger activity on the board, the laser pen facing the back wall started to dim. It had a freshly charged battery and had not been used for that long for it to have used the battery up, so there was no natural reason for this. As we watched, it continued to drain until it went out. This happened within the space of a couple of minutes. We hoped this meant the spirit had drained its power to communicate. I suggested we try table tipping to see if this was true. The table felt like it was trying to twist slightly but did nothing more. However, one of the cat balls did start to flash. This was the only room of the entire night where a cat ball flashed. It would have happened in all areas if it had been a fault with the cat ball. I also thought I had heard faint movement outside the room on the stairs. I couldn’t say for certain that it was a spirit or just the floorboards creaking; however, I started taking photos to see if anything appeared, and in one photo, there was a perfectly spherical ball of light at the bottom of the stairs. During that investigation, I had captured a lot of dust orbs on camera in most of my photos. What interested me about this one photo was how it looked nothing like the dust orbs. Could it possibly be proof of what I had heard? Whilst we were still in this room, Matt wandered off into the back room, thinking he had seen a mist. Later on, I captured more unexplainable photos in that room. In one, there seems to be a column of light. Was this what Matt saw? When the activity seemed to diminish in this area, we headed for a short break.
After our break, as one team, we went to the bedrooms on the second floor to try a music experiment that I was most excited about. It was an experiment I had tried the last time I was here that resulted in phenomenal activity. With it being mid-December like that last time, I played some popular Victorian Christmas Carols in the hope of capturing singing again. To improve the experiment, we boosted the volume through speakers so it could be heard throughout the house. As the music played, I called out to the spirits to come and join us and sing. There wasn’t any singing captured, but I believe it had worked to create a spike in energy with the alarming events that followed! The first thing we noticed was the sound of something moving quite loudly in the corner of the room. Nobody was near the corner, and everyone was standing still. We can also confirm nothing had fallen over. To describe the sound, it was like someone standing up from a chair rapidly and hearing the pressure change in the floorboards and the sharp rustle of clothing. We hoped the energy spike would help get some great results on the Ouija board, so we quickly set up and began. The planchette moved at a faster speed this time and gave us a few letters and numbers. The one thing we learned was that the spirit talking to us was four years old. But then something happened that took our attention from the Ouija board and left us all speechless. As we were asking our questions to try and get answers, the table suddenly tipped right up, nearly throwing the planchette, Ouija board, and us to the floor. I had no words for what I had just experienced. In all my years as an investigator, it still completely shocks me. Never have I seen anything like that or felt anything that strong. We do these investigations to try and capture 100% proof of spirits and the afterlife. I think we got more than that! After this, we got rid of the Ouija board and tried table tipping since we had just had such strong activity. The air around the table grew much colder, and the light seemed to drain from the room to the point we couldn’t see the table our hands were touching. We could feel it vibrate slightly, almost as if it were trying to twist, but it did not tip again. I cannot help but think whoever the spirit was did not want us trying to use an Ouija board or was trying to scare us out of the building. We never go into a building to offend or upset the spirits. We are simply there to try to learn from them. Whilst we remained in this room, the music box outside in the corridor also went off as we were looking at it so we could rule out rodents or large bugs. The playful activity on the music box wouldn’t happen on command. This made me feel it was most likely the child spirits I know to haunt Gresley Hall.
The activity settled after a little while, so I moved on to the final experiment of the night. I split the four of us up and sent each person into the depths of the house alone. My thinking was that if the spirits just wanted to play and not come to us to communicate, we would cover a much larger area to try to capture any activity in the house. Once everyone was in their areas, armed with a cat ball and K2 metre, I did a sound test to ensure we could still hear each other and then commenced the experiment. I called out loud enough for my voice to be heard throughout the house for the spirits to go and interact with the equipment in the room they were in. It was met with silence for a while. I continued to call out until I heard Matt calling about hearing a knock and it going icy cold. Not long after this, the cat ball in my room started to flash, and the Laser pen I pointed at the back wall started to dim again before going out completely. That was two full batteries I had lost now. Once the cat ball had started to flash in my room, it didn’t stop. Footsteps were also heard, but on later analysis, I was able to debunk them. Sheree had been walking around in the attic. Luckily, two sound recordings had been taken, one in the attic and one in the rooms on the second floor. All I had to do was listen to the movement and see if the movement sounds were synchronised, which they were. Compared to how the house had felt earlier, it now felt very quiet, and no more activity on the music box would add to the conclusion of the energy having gone. At this point, we closed the investigation.
Returning to such a beautiful old building had been a real joy. It is like a friend to me. Like the many times before, it remains to be quite active. What I will take from this investigation is the music experiment, and from now on, I will use music as an investigation technique to raise the energy at least. Now, having used music on several investigations, I have been able to see a clear, conclusive result that it works. At Beaumanor Hall, I used the air raid siren and songs popular in the Second World War, and we heard a woman speak and had lots of activity with table tipping. At Gresley Hall, I used Christmas Carols from the 1800s both times. The first time, I heard singing, and this time, we heard loud movement, then the table lifting suddenly, nearly throwing us to the floor, followed by the room growing much darker. There is a clear connection between the experiments and the strength of the activity that followed. Going forward, I will play around with this method. Playing three pieces of music on an investigation is a good idea; one at the start, one in the middle, and one close to the end to see what results follow. Could we make a breakthrough of a guarantee of a really active investigation on every private investigation we do? With a lot of energy, we would most likely see more conclusive evidence of names and dates relating to the property. For this reason, I chose to return to this location to put these plans to the test.
Phantom Echoes Paranormal 
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