Dennis, is that you again? I told you I'll talk to you later,' sighs Annette.
The glass stops moving. Dennis has been pestering us from the world of the
dead for about 40 minutes, but it appears someone else has finally entered
the room. 'This one seems to be a girl,' whispers seance leader Mark. 'I'm
sensing a totally different spirit'.
'Are you a girl?' asks Annette hopefully.
'Are you Denise?' asks the lady to my right. A snort from one of the group
gives way to a chorus of giggles from everyone. Except Annette. She's
storming out
of the room, away from her less-than-serious seance companions. And from
Dennis.
It's 2.30am on a frosty Saturday morning at the Baskerville Hall Hotel, the
setting for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's infamous murder mystery. Thirty
paranormal enthusiasts have made the journey to this manor house deep in the
Welsh countryside for a Haunting Break - an overnight journey to the other
realm, run by Peter Turner, Mark and their psychic sidekicks, sisters Mel
and Michele, who will act as mediums for the night. We're an odd bunch,
divided between the non-believers (mostly indulgent husbands humouring their
Most Haunted-fan wives) and the believers (the pale lot, staring into space,
shuddering dramatically with every creaking floorboard and flickering
light).
Peter was a non-believer once. 'I thought this was all nonsense,' he says. 'I
only started Haunting Breaks when I saw how successful the Most Haunted TV
programme was and thought "I could do that".' One year later, his
weekends are booked up months in advance, and he's seen things that suggest
something is out there. 'I hesitate to guarantee something will happen on
every investigation,' he adds. 'But nothing's not happened yet.'
Between 10pm and 4am we'll be holding vigils in various parts of the hotel.
But before we begin, there's
a crash course on communication with the spirits in the faded grandeur of the
Great Hall. Holding up crystals, we're told to concentrate really hard and
ask a yes or no question. 'Is my cat's name Josephine?' whispers one lady as
her pendant oscillates wildly. Despite there being a huge clue to my
question ('Am I called Amanda?') in my sticky name badge, my crystal stays
resolutely still. I'm beginning to think I don't have the knack until I move
on to dowsing. Picking up my metal sticks 10 paces from my ghost-hunting
partner Sue, I walk forward slowly and watch as they begin to move from side
to side. There's a violent twitch as they turn a full 90 degrees. 'What does
this show?' I wonder aloud.
'It shows that Sue's alive,' says Mel the psychic.
Right. I knew that. But now I've demonstrated I have demon dowsing skills, I'm
allowed to communicate with the spirits in the room. As I walk about
clutching my sticks, they judder this way and that, according to where the
ghosts are, apparently. I search my mind for the dusty file marked 'Science
GCSE' - there must be a logical explanation.
When I arrived that afternoon, Baskerville Hall Hotel didn't look that scary.
Horses frolicked by the driveway as the sun streamed down over the hills.
But as evening drew in, mist shrouded the mountains, birds screeched above
the Hall's grim gothic facade, and I remembered that civilisation was 30km
away in Hereford. My room, which hitherto had resembled a 1970s granny flat,
began to darken with dancing shadows. Artificial flowers glowed in the
moonshine. The mirrored wardrobe flickered with the suggestion of an
other-worldly presence.
Then fellow Haunted Breaker Aled told me about the dog graveyard outside.
'There are hundreds of tiny gravestones. I thought they were children,' he
said, raising an eyebrow. Could the giant mutt that inspired Sir Arthur be
buried here too? I gulp. Right on queue, there are screams from the garden
and we rush out into the darkness. Mel is sprinting across the lawn,
flapping her arms wildly. 'Something's chasing me!' she screeches, as Peter
snaps away on his digital camera. They both seem to have gone mad. But, when
the pictures are projected on a screen back inside, flutes of grey smoke and
steam appear to be winding their way around Mel and into the distance.
'Ectoplasm,' she says gravely.
More pictures follow, each dotted with tiny circles of light. 'Orbs,' cries
Peter. 'The earliest manifestations of spirits.' When he zooms in, the group
shudders. What looks like shadowy skulls are etched in their centres.
'There's been orbs in here tonight already,' pipes up a larger-than-life
guest in a voluminous purple kaftan. 'I know because I see things.'
'She's a medium,' adds her husband proudly.
'Looks more like an XXL to me,' whispers Aled.
Purple Woman is not the only guest to think she has psychic powers. Annette
claims to have seen two ghosts as soon as she stepped over the hotel's
threshold.
As a chill moves through the air (a sure-fire indication of a ghostly
presence, according to Mark), I nip back to my room to get a jumper. The
hallway spirals upwards below an ornate dome, its red carpet splitting into
two staircases. Far above, I hear footsteps, and a door slams. I'm seriously
spooked. But it's only Mel doing some initial ghost hunting before we start
our vigil. 'Stand on the landing and I'll take a picture,' she says. She
snaps and I peek over her shoulder at the shot. There's an orb hovering
above my head.
'I don't want you to think I do this because I enjoy it. I do it to prove to
myself I'm not going mad,' she says. 'For years, I tried to silence the
voices in my head.' Then she saw an advert for Haunting Breaks in the paper
and took her mum for the weekend. 'I was scared, but when I arrived and saw
others picking up on the same things as me, it was a huge relief.'
She may be feeling saner, but after two seances in which half of us have
summoned a dead relative, the rest of us are going the other way. By 3am,
even the most devout non-believers begin to waiver. For the final vigil of
the evening, we each put a finger on a glass at the centre of a table and
wait for a spirit to arrive. Soon, the glass is whirring in circles, and a
boy called Edward who died at the Hall in the 1850s is spelling out his name
across the wood. When Mel asks him to knock on the door to signal his
presence, there's a tap-tap that sends us all into shivers.
Back home, the internet tells me there's a scientific explanation for
everything: the glass moves due to 'ideomotor action', or the unconscious
motor behaviour of the body; orbs and ectoplasm might be dust particles, the
glare of the flash, or pockets of heat; we were all so keyed up we would
have believed any noise to be Edward from beyond the grave. Feeling like a
real Sherlock Holmes, I give myself a congratulatory pat on the back. But
for every spectre-sceptic, there's a devout believer like Annette and Purple
Woman, looking for faces in shadows and hearing voices despite the silence.
I'm not exactly converted, but
if I go back to Baskerville Hall, I won't be going alone.
Haunting Breaks (01686 420301, www.hauntingbreaks.co.uk) runs
paranormal investigations at different venues throughout the year. A
one-night break at Baskerville Hall Hotel starts from £115pp.
