The Nunnery in Malvern was a location I had heard tales of many times for its activity, and for that reason, it had been on my list of investigations for a long time. However, I found myself more curious about why a building that had existed only since 1879, built for a convent of two hundred and fifty nuns, would be so active. It was my decision to lead this investigation with a completely free mind, to scope for myself the level of activity within the abandoned nunnery. Unfortunately, I can find little-known history of the property to support my team’s mission. All we know that it was built in 1879, providing a home for 250 nuns at its peak, and in the Second World War, and possibly the First, it was used for orphaned children alongside the nunnery. In the mid-1960s, the intake of more nuns declined due to struggling finances. It later closed in 1980, and the nuns who had lived there were moved to a nunnery in Derby. That is all that is known of the history.
As always, we started the investigation with a walk-around of all accessible areas. Never have I seen a building leak so much, especially the basement, where pools flooded rooms, and you couldn’t hear much more than the sound of the water running down the walls. It could be a reasonable explanation for a lot of the phantom sounds people say they hear. I scoped each room as we passed through, feeling for any localized spots, any sudden, sharp headaches, or if we were drawn to go anywhere. I have to say the atmosphere felt very still. That doesn’t necessarily mean that the investigation will see no activity. Sometimes it can take a while to build the energy high enough to witness something potentially unexplainable. Venturing from the cellars, we headed upstairs to the chambers where the nuns would have slept. We were heading along the corridor into a large room when everyone suddenly froze and fell silent. For a moment, we had heard a sound like footsteps, seemingly above us, on the next floor. As we were still as one large group, we can vouch that no one was up there. We all listened to see if it happened again, but unfortunately, it didn’t. It is impossible to say whether it was paranormal or explainable by the cold night, the very wet conditions, or our sudden disturbance of the floorboards.
Before we split into small teams to cover the whole property, we descended back into the cellar to do a small watch-and-wait vigil. I was quite surprised at how dark the cellars were when we turned off our torches. The only other time I have experienced true darkness like that was when I was deep inside caves. We turned on a few K2 metres and cat balls, which gave a faint glow in the darkness. Then we placed a few haunted dolls around the area, which have been known to move on their own. The cat ball was triggering almost immediately. It was moved to test it, and it didn’t take long for it to start flashing again. In my mind, I wasn’t one hundred percent sure it was paranormal and not a low battery. However, I was impressed when the K2 metre on the mantelpiece, which had sat quietly for quite a while, started to flash. The energy source that had come into contact with it was giving off a lot of energy, causing it to flash to amber, and, given that the building has no power, it really shouldn’t be detecting any EMF. The investigation was already off to a great start.
We divided up into four smaller teams and spread ourselves around the nunnery. By doing this, we maximise our potential of witnessing anything that happens. My team headed upstairs to the middle floor, where we had earlier thought we had heard those footsteps. In this area, we conducted a ghost phone session. It is quite a new experiment in the field of research. It works by opening a call with another phone and leaving the call running. The second phone is then placed in another part of the house where nobody is, in our case, upstairs. We stood in a circle in one room with K2 metres, cat balls, and the phone in the middle. We started calling out to see if any response came through the phone. What was observed first was every K2 metre around the room flashing intensely. Some of that could have been due to an open phone call generating high EMF. However, there were times when some of the K2 metres stopped flashing; had the phone been the source of EMF, the K2s would have been a constant variable for the entirety of the phone call. After a while of asking questions, there seemed to be fragmented speech coming through the phone. I would describe the sound as a child’s voice. We continued to ask questions, and the responses became more frequent, though it was still impossible to make any words from them. We believed, at one point, that we might have heard a hello. Even if there were no words to be made from it, to hear the tone clearly of a child’s voice on the other end of the call was extraordinary and made every hair on the back of my neck stand on end. We set out to find absolute proof of spirits and the afterlife, and it is moments like this that really set it in concrete.
After a short break, we headed up to the top floor and into one of the attic rooms. It was hard to say what this room would have been used for. It looked a little small for a bedroom, but that’s not to say it wasn’t; any furnishings had been stripped from the room, and the window was boarded up. For this vigil, we conducted an ESTES experiment. The person listening to the rapidly sweeping radio was sitting outside the room, wearing headphones so they wouldn’t hear the questions we were asking. The rest of us in the room stood in a circle with trigger objects all around. We began by introducing ourselves. When Sheree introduced herself, the cat ball in front of her flashed. Perceiving that perhaps the spirits would respond to her, we focused our questions on Sheree. However, there was no further decisive evidence to point in her direction. We continued calling out, and a few voices came through on the radio, but none seemed to address any of our questions, so there is not much to learn from these responses. The session was pretty quiet, but one piece of evidence truly stood out. I had set up my MEL REM to detect EMF. As I was watching the LCD screen, I saw the numbers jump to a 3.4 milliGauss spike and then return to zero. This was the only time in the entire investigation that the MEL REM detected a spike in Energy. Also, a 3.4 milliGauss spike is quite a significant fluctuation.
We separated into our own teams after this. The Phantom Echoes team headed to the far side of the property, up a set of stairs, to one of the most secluded rooms. In this room, we planned a watch-and-wait vigil with an Ouija board session. Circling the perimeter of the room, I had placed the music box, K2 metres, MEL REM, cat balls, night vision camera, EVP recorders and mics, and in the little back room, which was probably a dressing room, I set up a laser pen projecting at the back wall with a cat ball placed within the laser beam. The hope was that if any interaction occurred with the cat ball, a shadow would be seen crossing to touch it. We commenced with the calling out, and for what must have been five or ten minutes, the room felt still. Eventually, the planchette started to twitch moments before it slid across the board. What was really interesting was the moment the activity began on the board, both the K2s began to flash strongly, clearly indicating a sudden surge of energy within the room. Is it possible with the connection between the board and the K2 metres that we had witnessed and captured the opening of a porthole? We followed up by asking whether it was the spirits manipulating the lights, and the planchette moved to the ‘yes’ answer. It seemed we might be in contact with a very responsive spirit, so we began building a picture of who they were in life. To our disappointment, they seemed unable to spell. The only clear answer we got was that they were six years old and had lived at the nunnery. Based on the property’s history, I believe they might have been an orphan from one of the world wars.
Receiving no further communication in this area, we packed up and, for the rest of this session, walked around the building for a photography session. After the investigation on a large screen in a dark room, I analysed each photo for any potential interest. I had already noted the building’s dusty condition, so any orb photos I automatically debunked as dust orbs disturbed by our movement. When taking photos during investigations, there’s a rule I always follow: stand as still as possible and take three or more shots of the same scene as quickly as possible, using both flash and no flash. The reason for doing so is to build a timeline of photos, and if something unexplainable happens in your pictures, there’s a high chance it won’t be the same in all three pictures. With only one photo, there is no comparison and therefore cannot be presented as evidence. Also, when reviewing photo evidence, I adjust the exposure and contrast so the shadows in the depths of the picture are lifted enough to see into the darkness, making sure I haven’t missed anything. On this investigation, standing in the cloister, I captured in two photos what appears to be a blue ball of light that moves down the corridor and changes size and shape as it reaches the end. However, on this corridor was a cone with a high-visibility reflective collar. It seemed that shooting with flash reflected off the reflective surface, generating a lens flare. To further test this after the investigation, I draped a high-visibility vest over a pyramid of boxes and tried to recreate the same shot down a corridor. Yes, I was able to recreate lens flare of a similar colour to what I captured at the nunnery, but I wasn’t able to recreate the vast jump in movement between shots without drastically moving my hand. It is a photo that requires further analysis, and for that reason, I may have to return to the nunnery to recreate the shot in the corridor. I will include the two pictures for reference, but not as paranormal evidence!
We gathered in our groups again in the huge chapel. In this vigil, we planned to see what responses we would get from table tipping. Given how large the chapel was, we divided the team, sending half to the far end whilst a few others and I went up by the altar. What would follow was one of the most responsive table tipping sessions I have seen in a very long time. As always, we began by introducing ourselves and opening the session, building the energy. Then I started calling out, hoping to get a response. Within a minute or so, the table began to creak and rock back and forth. It kept moving faster and faster as we continued to call out, and then, on command, it stood on two legs, with only the tips of our fingers lightly touching the top of the table. We continued to build the energy, more so, encouraging the spirit to lift the table onto one leg. I put as much energy into table tipping to test the true strength of spirit and see if the table can actually levitate. That would prove the stories of tables levitating over the decades since the rise of table tipping in 1852-1853 to be true, and it would also prove that it wasn’t the ideomotor effect moving the tables. In my personal experience, I believe it is the spirit communicating through the table, as I have seen tables move on many occasions; sometimes they have moved so fast that they have slid from beneath people’s fingers.
We were trying to get the table to start spinning on one leg or walking around the chapel; be that as it may, there was a definite reluctance. I felt it was reluctance because the responses had been so strong so far, and I felt sure the spirit had the energy to spin the table on one leg. One of the others then suggested trying to use the table to answer yes and no questions, rocking one way for yes and the other for no. I asked the spirit if it was okay if we asked them questions through the table, and if it was, could they move the table. We didn’t expect the table to jump sideways as if someone had just kicked the leg of the table. As amazed as we were, we wasted no time in asking our questions. The table rocked back and forth until we asked a question, and in response, the table tipped cleanly onto two legs and held in that position for a couple of seconds. It would sink back to the floor and commence rocking until our next question came. From this, we learnt that we were speaking with a mother who had lost her son and had taken up the order of a nun in desperate hope of finding consolation. There is a story of a nun who died in the bell tower at the nunnery, but little else is known about her. Following that story, we asked if she had died here. Through several questions, we learnt that she had died in the bell tower. It then became apparent that the reason she hadn’t moved on after her death was that she couldn’t find her son. As best we could, we guided her towards the light so she could be with her son again. As we were passing her over, the table fell completely still. To test whether she had gone, we asked her to rock the table several times. There was no response, and the air felt very still, telling us she had gone.
For the last vigil, we attempted glass divination upstairs, in what would have been the nuns’ sleeping quarters and possibly the orphaned children’s. Eventually, the glass did move, but not without great persuasion. It seemed to move when it wanted to, and did not respond to the men. I tested this by getting everyone around the table to ask the same question and see if the glass moved for anyone. It would only move for the females. Even though it was moving for the women, the responses were still very unclear, and unfortunately, we learnt very little, other than that this was the spirit’s bedroom.
Having now investigated the nunnery, I speculate that a lot of the stories of activity are likely residual energy. Then again, it could have just been a quiet night. There are a million and one reasons a location may be more active on some nights than others, and, unfortunately, at the moment we can’t truly support the theories with factual evidence. Having said this, there were a few special moments that really left me ecstatic, like the child’s voice coming through the phone. Hearing the clear tone and exact sound of someone’s voice who used to live here when they were alive is genuinely incredible. I have already patterned a few experiments of my own, and now I shall add the ghost phone experiment to all future private investigations in the hope of having a full conversation with a spirit in the future. As for the nunnery, to test the stories of activity and to try and recreate the photos taken in the cloister, it maybe that I decide to private hire the location in the warmer months to see how the change in weather effects the sounds and feelings in the property.
Phantom Echoes Paranormal 
Leave a comment