It was time for the Phantom Echoes Paranormal Research Team to explore a location they had never investigated before. There is a great deal of excitement in walking into a building completely blind to anything that may haunt it, and, from a scientific point of view, there is no preset mindset from previous investigations or from others’ stories about the place that could cause false positives. Our minds were open and ready to experience whatever the Bakewell Old House Museum had to give. Joining the team on the investigation were a few select friends, all with experience of the paranormal. Before I delve into the findings of our investigation of the museum, I will provide a brief account of the building’s history.
Bakewell Old House Museum was constructed in 1534 in the reign of King Henry VIII as a dwelling for tithes (tax collectors). Ralph Gel of Hopton had taken over the collection of tithes and needed a house for his steward, Christopher Plant. In later years, the house grew vastly to become a gentleman’s residence. This phase of the building came during the reign of Elizabeth I. No expense was cut in this development of the building, built from the local Derbyshire gritstone—a stone well known for its durability and hardness. The house was once much larger than it is today, with a large east wing that was sadly lost a very long time ago. In its time, it would have been one of the grandest buildings in Bakewell. Then we come to the Industrial Revolution. In 1777, Richard Arkwright bought the house and immediately turned it into six workers’ cottages for the Lumford Mill, less than a mile away, dividing it with cheap false walls. The accommodation was very small, with each worker having two rooms. It remained like this right up to the 1950s, when it was deemed unfit for human habitation. The building was luckily saved from destruction by the Bakewell and District Historical Society, which restored it as close to its original state and opened its doors to the public to celebrate local history.
In the daytime, before our guests arrived, we visited the museum to get a feel for the building’s energy and to see if any activity was experienced whilst it was open to the public. I walked through each room slowly, tuning in with all my senses for any sounds, changes in temperature, changes in my emotional state, and any areas that drew me strongly. I observed two main areas where I felt a strong presence. There was the kitchen area, which felt very busy, with rushing energy back and forth from the cellar, and I would say it brought a feeling of hostility. The next area was upstairs in the space between the dolls’ room and the dolls’ house room. This had a completely different feel; there was a strong presence, the air was dense with energy that made my hair on my neck prickle, but nothing about it felt unwelcoming. These areas, as we went into the investigation, were a priority. Just before the guests arrived, I did another walk-through of the building to see if there were any new spots of interest and whether the energy had moved at all from the previous areas of interest. Both areas felt the same, but there was also a new area just above the kitchen. I do have a couple of theories for this: one, I had started to relax more and naturally tune into the energy more now a few hours had passed since driving to Bakewell, two, there is an open stairwell and garderobe connecting between the kitchen and the room above, which could create flow for the same energy to bleed upstairs. The third option is the more interesting option and what we hope for, a spirit walking into the area!
As soon as the guests arrived, I launched the investigation into a watch-and-wait vigil upstairs in the doll’s room to assess the level of activity and boost everyone’s energy. In the room, I placed a MELREM, flashing cat balls, a REM bear, and an EVP recorder. Also, I placed a music box in the corridor, and in the room with the doll houses, I placed another EVP recorder. I wasted no time in introducing ourselves to the spirits and testing for any reactions. We did not have to wait long for our first bit of activity, which happened on the REM bear. The REM bear had been placed leaning against a child’s toy pram to keep it upright. When it went off, the first thing I did was check that the pram it leaned against was not touching any of the sensors that cause it to illuminate, and make sure any sources of EMF, such as mobile phones, were taken out of the equation. It was alarming and exciting to see how quickly the bear lit up after it was set up. It continued to light up whilst we all observed it, a little speechless. I decided to test the response through the bear to see if we had an intelligent spirit that would respond to questions on command. I did wonder whether there was a connection to the pram and asked the spirit if they could light the bear up if there was. The bear did not light up. Feeling that it was likely a child, I changed my approach and asked if the spirit would like to play some games. The bear lit up straight away! I asked if they were a girl, but there was no response. I then asked if they were a boy, and the bear flashed. The level of intelligent communication was outstanding and incredibly rare. We did not change our method of communication, and we learned through the bear lighting up that it was a little boy connected to the ship in the room. To test whether the spirit preferred to respond to any of the others, I asked whether it preferred the women in the room. The bear lit up in response. One of the guests had started using a word-generating app on her phone, which is said to be manipulated by spirits to produce specific words. It’s not a tool I normally use, but on this occasion it produced an intelligent response to a series of incredible events that unfolded within a couple of minutes. First was the bear lighting up in response to preferring the women in the room. I had followed this, asking for the spirit to go and let your favorite person know your presence. This was followed by the phone app saying, “Red hair.” Sheree was standing in the doorway when she suddenly felt a tingling right behind her that hadn’t been there before. Sheree has red hair! Shortly after this, there was a loud bang on the upper floor which sounded very close to the top of the stairs. On investigation, no obvious cause was found. There had been creaks from the timbers throughout the night, but this I would describe as similar to a heavy ornament falling from a height onto a hard floor. Click link to see the footage of the bear responding to our questions. REM Bear at Bakewell Old House Museum
The current activity that had been centered around the bear faded, so we left that room and headed to the far side of the building, above the kitchen, to conduct an Ouija board. We opened the session, and after a short while, the planchette crept across the board. However, after questioning, we got very little in terms of a legible response about who they were. Our findings indicated that they were male and possibly named Ewum. There seemed to be a change in the energy after this, and every question we asked, the planchette moved to no. I decided not to waste energy and time and closed this session. A couple of minutes later, I gave it another try to get some intelligent responses. This time, the spirit told us they had been in the other room with us, and that they were six years old. So it seemed we may have had a spirit that was the source of most of the night’s activity. It was then that one of the female guests had their trouser leg pulled. Is it a coincidence that they also had red hair? We confirmed that indeed her trousers were pulled by asking the spirit on the board. So my focus was now to try to prove it as hard evidence by asking the spirit to do it again or affect someone else. When it didn’t happen again, through questioning, we learned that spirit would affect someone else tonight but would not do it on command nor say who they would affect. A short while later, another of the female guests around the table felt what she could only describe as a light tickle on the back of her hand. Was it paranormal? I cannot say for definite either way. The activity ceased on the board suddenly, and as I did so, I felt a strong cold wind shoot behind me in the direction of the opposite end of the house. For a couple of minutes, I asked the board questions to see if there was any activity, but the planchette did not budge.
Whilst we were conducting the Ouija session, one of the team was conducting a baseline sweep for EMF spikes. He walked the entire building and found no spikes. When he returned upstairs, he remained in the room next to ours. He suddenly spoke up halfway through the Ouija session, saying he had heard a whimper or cry. Unfortunately, no one else heard it.
After a short break, we took the investigation to the ground floor, starting in the great hall. In my preparation for this investigation, I had planned a music experiment to try in the great hall. Even though I had not visited before, I knew it must have had a hall because it was a Tudor building that had been lived in by a wealthy family. Great halls were, and are to this day, places of entertainment and socializing for friends and family. That bustle and happiness over the years create a lot of energy that soaks into the building’s fabric, and on occasion that energy can still be felt to this day. This was my reason for choosing this room to conduct my planned experiment in. I was pleased when we walked into the room to set up for the experiment that there was a sense of presence that had not been there earlier. I have been experimenting with music for several years now, and I have enough evidence to say that the experiments we do increase energy and often cause a spike in activity.
Once everything was set up, I started playing the pre-recorded period music. There was straightaway K2 activity on the table; however, there was also a large switch box in the room that controlled all the building’s lights and probably other things too. It is a likely cause of EMF, so the K2 activity indeed might not be paranormal. Nonetheless, I continued with the music experiment and called out to the spirits to join us and feast, trying to recreate the energy of a banquet. As soon as the music stopped, I used a Ouija board to see if the music would elicit a strong reaction through the board. Straight away, there was movement on the board, so I wasted no time in trying to find out who the spirit was. Unfortunately, despite my best efforts, it didn’t yield much response to any names, messages, or dates. The interesting thing we learned was that the spirit confirmed, by sliding the planchette to the yes answer, that it had been drawn to the room by the music, which confirms that my music experiments work. For anyone interested in reading about previous music experiments, I recommend a read of our private investigation of Gresley Old Hall Gresley Old Hall Investigation, Saturday the 14th of December 2024 – Phantom Echoes Paranormal and Beaumanor Hall Beaumanor Hall Private Investigation 20th of September 2024 – Phantom Echoes Paranormal. It wasn’t long after the movement on the planchette had started that it stopped again. We tried techniques to increase the energy, but they fell short. It was only when a guest made a brilliant suggestion to play the music again that the activity commenced on the Ouija board. There was evidently a deeper connection to the music than simply liking it. To prove this, I will conduct a series of investigations to assess the consistency of my research.
Whilst we were investigating downstairs, it was decided that we should place some trigger objects upstairs. As the music box alarms when activated, I took that upstairs and placed it in the corridor between the dolls’ room and the dolls’ houses room. We continued with the Ouija board downstairs and calling out to see if anything else would happen in the charged room. We froze to the spot in that moment with our ears pricked as the music box upstairs had just started playing. For the music to sound, a physical object continuously has to be placed directly in front of it, no further than a metre from the sensor. When I set it up, I checked that the sensor’s perimeters were clear of objects that could cause it to fluctuate and that the device was calibrated. There was no explainable reason why that music box would be going off. It continued to play, stopping briefly before resuming for a few minutes. We quickly closed the Ouija board session and made our way upstairs. It was amazing to see the music box did not stop when we made our presence known. Half of us went to the dolls’ room and the other half to the dolls’ houses room. We set up a static night-vision camera to film the music box, hoping to capture it on camera. I launched straight into testing the music box for intelligent responses. I was gobsmacked to see that with every question we asked, there was barely a minute’s wait for the music box to play, confirming what we asked to be true. After asking the spirit whether they were male, the music box played immediately in a short burst. I further tested it by asking if the spirit had been following us around the building, and the music box did not play. I asked then if the spirit had been following us between the two rooms, and straight away the music box started playing. This was proof of spirit activity in the house, and I suspect it may have been the same child spirit that had communicated through the REM bear earlier. The big question is, had the spirit used the music box to draw us upstairs and back into the area where we had first communicated with it? There was definite evidence to believe so. Unbelievably, the music box continued to respond for the next ten to fifteen minutes. Click the link to see the footage of the music box responding to our questions. Music Box Activity at the Bakewell Old House Museum
We remained around the music box until the activity started to die down. At this point, I was standing in the corridor and could see the full length of the upper floor. I happened to be standing in the right place at the right time when my attention suddenly shot over to the other side of the building, where I saw a shadowy figure shoot from the direction of the garderobe towards the stairs. I shot over there to try to capture on camera what I had just seen, but unfortunately, I captured no photographic evidence. So I decided to try something a little different to try and communicate with what I had just seen. I went downstairs and used the Tudor dress-up they have for visitors to experience the period’s costumes. I dressed as a wealthy Tudor gentleman wearing a doublet, ruff, and bonnet. Trying not to focus on the comments about looking like Edmund Blackadder, I went upstairs, sat quietly, and entered a meditative state to try to open a psychic link and see if a name, message, or even an image of a person came to mind. The period dress was an attempt to manipulate the Stone Tape Recorder effect by presenting myself as a familiar sight to them. There is a chance that a spirit from the Tudor period may be more attracted to communicate with someone who dresses like themselves. As the room and any sound tuned out as I sank deeper into the meditation, I felt like I could hear very faint period music at no more than a whisper. That was the first thing I noticed. Then I felt a pain in my right arm that hadn’t been there before. I just let anything that happened happen without disturbing my relaxed mind, allowing me to sink deeper into the meditation. My throat and mouth became exceptionally dry after a while, and there was pressure on my voice box like words were trying to form, but there wasn’t the energy there for the words to be voiced. This is a personal account of what I was feeling and not a claim that what I was experiencing was paranormal. After having that feeling like words were trying to form, I pulled myself out of the meditation and back to the now to be safe. I had a short break after this and told the others what I had felt. I also asked them whether they had been playing or hearing any music. None of them had been playing any music or had heard any. So that is definitely a point of interest.
When I came back from my short break, my energy renewed, I brought the team into the kitchen for a watch-and-wait experiment. One of my guests took a seat by the fireplace and tried meditation themselves. He felt the presence of a man and saw a lot of green. He also described the same feeling as words that wanted to be voiced. So once he had finished, I sat exactly where he sat, and almost immediately, a great wave of sadness came over me, almost as if I wanted to cry. It felt like a female’s presence. For the rest of the session, I put trigger objects around the room. A cat ball was placed between the cellar and kitchen, and it started triggering continuously for a while. It was checked to make sure it was stable and not us making it wobble. Stamping my foot next to it made no difference. We allowed it to continue. Again, I was affected by something standing there. I had a sudden dizziness come over me, making me feel a little faint and sick. There was also a rapid drop in temperature around me. A guest standing next to me felt the temperature drop and also said I didn’t look well. When I moved from that spot, I felt a little better, but where I had felt sick in my chest, there was a loud gurgling sound. It was the only time my body had made any gurgling sounds during the investigation. Again, I am not claiming it is paranormal, but it is worth noting. A short while later, another guest was taken by surprise by a similar feeling of sickness, which caused them to panic.
The time had flown by, and we just had time for one more vigil. We decided to try one more watch-and-wait and table tipping session upstairs around the dolls and dolls’ houses as we felt that had been the most active area of the night. The energy in the rooms felt very quiet and still now, which is quite often at the end of an investigation. We still tried with the investigation, but our trigger objects did not detect anything present. So we switched to table tipping, trying to get the spirits to communicate by rocking the table we had brought. In the area of the doll houses, there was nothing. Perhaps this was something we should have tried earlier when all the activity was happening. As a last attempt, I had a walk on the upper floor to have a feel for any different feelings, and I came across feeling pressure around my head in the little side room next to the display cabinets. As I was standing there alerting the others to what I could feel, a cold blast of air raced past me from within that room. We started straight away with the table tipping. After much persuasion, the table started to creak and rock ever so slightly, but that was about as much as it moved. Feeling that energy had gone, we brought the investigation to a close.
In my opinion, the building is haunted by a couple of spirits, but not necessarily by those who once lived or worked there. I have always been a believer in personal belongings holding a lot of energy, which the spirit can latch onto and move wherever it goes. I believe we found proof of that tonight with the REM bear’s response to which item the spirit was connected, telling us they were connected to the ship and not the dolls. There were many similarities between the communication through the bear and the music box. Above all else, this hardens my belief that we experienced the same child spirit moving between the two rooms. It could well mean that there were multiple items between these two rooms that the child was connected to or simply liked. Perhaps it was these items acting as conduits of energy that were fuelling the activity we experienced; in all my years as an investigator, that stands as some of the most direct and strongest responses I have witnessed in an investigation. It was a shame we did not pick up on any names or dates to see if there were any spirits actually connected to the property, but hopefully my team’s research will help others investigate the property and expand on what we discovered. All in all, an incredible, hair-raising investigation.
Phantom Echoes Paranormal 
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