The final part of the Ghost Hunt evening was the holding of a group séance in the Castle Undercroft.
The medium set the scene by getting everyone to be silent and asking the group to place their feet squarely on the floor. This is something I have learned that psychics do as part of their grounding exercise which protects against bad spirits. She then had the lights lowered until it was pitch black.
It did not take long for the medium to pick up on four different spirits in the room. There was a monk who was a practicing alchemist, a lady lamenting the non-return of her true love from battle, a soldier who was a Captain, and a happy little girl.
According to the medium, the monk was not happy about the group being there. We were seen as invading his territory. The members of the group that sat at the back reported feeling as if someone was striding back and forth, occasionally stopping almost as if displaying agitation at the group being there.
The medium picked up on the soldier who walks across the room from the door to where it is thought the gunpowder was kept. Members of the group reported feeling the bottoms of their jeans or trousers flapping as if someone was passing them. The group members that had previously picked up on a male from the 11th Century using the candle and glass quickly identified this as the spirit that was walking across the room.
The medium also reported a spirit lady standing in the corner of the room next to another section of the group. One of the female members of the group felt the presence near her and had the overwhelming desire to burst into tears. She described the feeling as not just feeling sad but being in a state of deep despair.
The final spirit the medium picked up on was that of a little girl. This little girl was happy and liked to move among the living holding their hands. She has a favourite rhyme which she likes to sing but the medium did not tell us what it was. She asked that we try and pick up on it ourselves.
One experience that took place before the lights went down was feeling a localised cold spot in front of me. The air was ice cold for a radius of about 3 inches but then relatively warmer around it.
I had no experience of the monk or the soldier as I was too far away from their supposed position. Likewise, though the girl who experienced the intense sadness was only four seats away from me, again I felt nothing.
I held my hand out to see if the little girl would hold it but nothing happened. However, the nursery rhyme popped into my head as soon as the medium asked us to think of it. It was Ring-A-Ring-A-Roses. This was confirmed by the medium and picked up on by the majority of the group.
But I also felt I knew how she had died. She had succumbed from the plague but had died with no complaints of her illness. She was brave to the end. I asked the medium after the séance if she knew what the little girl died of and she confirmed the plague!
In trying to analyse the experience afterwards I wonder how much of it was auto suggestion. The tour guide was filling our heads with facts and stories of the Castle and maybe planted the seeds in our minds ready for later. The medium certainly planted the idea of the sad lady in the girl’s head beforehand by asking how she felt when the lady’s presence was felt. She asked if she felt sad but the girl at that stage only reported feeling a little sick. It wasn’t until a few minutes later the girl got upset.
The experience with the little girl was the highlight of the night for me. Picking up on those two things made me feel like I had connected to her. However, again the Plague was mentioned a few times on the tour and as Ring-A-Ring-A-Roses is a song about the Plague the connection might not be as extra ordinary as at first thought. Likewise, it was common for people to die from the Plague then and even more logical that someone so young would succumb to it.
Though not substantiated, is the little girl’s perceived bravery something I have fantasised by not wanting her to have suffered? Does this relate to a separate experience I had in Wales where I picked up on a little girl who had drowned whilst on holiday? Though the girl in Wales is older in my mind, she is a happy, brave spirit too. Is there a pattern here?
My next posting will be a wrap up of my thoughts on the Ghost Hunt and one or two interesting facts I find emerging.
x
