Holiday Days Two and Three - Adventures with the Spirits
Yeay holidays - day two and three are sort of blurred together though, cos on Saturday night we stayed up all night in Bodmin Gaol! Oooh... *g* But before we did that... We went to Berry Pomeroy, which was a very cool ruined castle...
...with a very cool old wall painting still on one wall.
And then we wandered the funkiness that is Totnes and bought fudge (yummy) and cheese (yummy) and...
...then we headed to Cornwall for our Bodmin Gaol Ghost Walk... *g*
...watched by the crows when we arrived...
So - it started around 11pm with a tour of the gaol, and an explanation of the "short drop" (sort of the "ordinary" way of hanging people where it can take 25 minutes dangling at the end of the rope for them to die) and the new-fangled "long drop" which was devised so as to snap the neck quickly and cleanly at the 2nd and 3rd vertebrate, killing someone almost instantly... They actually took a volunteer from the audience (the woman who was most annoying from the large group of 13 who'd come over from Wales to celebrate someone's birthday - though she was actually from Liverpool, and in full LFC regalia under her shellsuit (no, really a shellsuit), carrying a watergun and a constant supply of alcohol and with a massive strop on if she wasn't centre of attention...) and bound her hands behind her back with a thick leather strap, then took her to stand on the drop, bound her legs together, put the white hood on her and then put the noose around her neck - eeep! Once they'd let her go (I'm saying nothing - but then she was all for bringing back the death penalty, as she made sure to let us know later *headdesk*) they demonstrated the drop with a couple of weighted bags - eep! You could see that it would have been very quick...
Anyway - next we did some "energy work" with one of our psychic mediums, S. We went down to the "Long Room"...
...and stood in a circle with just S's torch to start with, and then she turned that off too and she asked us to visual white light above our heads, which would flow down through our neck and shoulders to our hands, so that we could feel it there, and we did a little partner work (Foxcat's energy was fizzy) and then another visualisation where we imagined rooms and corridors, and met a being who'd love us and share their energy with us and so on - not for protection, S hastened to say, because in years and years of being a medium at the gaol she'd never been hurt, but for any time when we might feel nervous or frightened. Then we stood in the dark a little longer - and poor F momentarily felt all queasy and sick with it - and she explained how the spirits might try to communicate with us, and that there were alot of children around who might tug at our trousers, or touch our hands, or we might feel tingly sensations, or suddenly cold or hot or smell things. We tried communicating then, using ourselves as sort of "pendulums", but although F swayed in specific directions for "Yes" and "No" answers, I didn't... *sighs sadly*
We then went off to spend time in some of the rooms, as a large group (did I say there were 22 of us?) and in smaller groups. First we went to the Naval Prison, where the mediums (S and M) saw flickery lights and felt presences, but neither F nor I did (though (you'll need to enlarge it) - is that a face looking around that doorway...?)
It was absolutely dark, and we just had our torches, so now and then if we passed a doorway I'd just aim my camera inside and take a pic - I was a bit startled when this showed up in the flash one time:
Eep! *g*
We all went down to the basement as a big group, and S started to tell us about a man holding a knife who'd come into the room, but the Wales 13 had been getting noisier and gigglier and then one of them took out her mobile, which glowed blue and shed alot of light, and was looking at photos on it and giggling - all while S was speaking. S then said that the spirits (and, I suspect, herself - and definitely the seven of us not in the Wales 13) were getting fed up and didn't feel there was any point in staying, and then M actually asked the W13 to calm down and pointed out that we'd all paid for a reason, which was to spend time with the spirits of the gaol, and that's what their nights were for, and... to be fair they did calm down a bit after that, but I was so relieved when we went back upstairs and it turned out S and M had decided to split into two groups for the next workshops...
While they were presumably chatting about that, we were all let loose to go wandering again and F and I went down to the Long Room. F discovered that if you shone your torch the right way over the pillory at the end, you could make it go taller and shorter and taller and shorter... which made us giggle a bit, cos it did look very silly and not at all scary. Then she turned away and I took one more pic at that end of the room...
...and the interesting thing about that is that there was absolutely nothing between the flash and what was in the pic to make that shadow - and it wasn't there on any other picture either... and there was no light behind me so that I could have been the shadow, and F had her torch off and was standing somewhere else anyway, and... ooooh... M was quite excited about it, and it turned out that it was at that end of the room that there was a more malevolent spirit - that often made people feel queasy and ill... oooh... *g* Anyway, he's asked me to send him a copy of it!
Next, and much to the relief of at least seven of us, we split into two groups and M took the W13 away with him, and the rest of us went to do some "glass work". This involved us, and a table with an upside down glass on it...
...but no lights again, cos they'd all been turned off at the master switch long ago (I took this pic when we saw the room set up when we'd just got in). The seven of us stood at the table with just a fingertip on the glass, and S stood a little bit away from us, and then asked if there were spirits who'd like to speak with us - and what happened next was the coollest thing of the night! The glass actually did move, quite definitely and quite violently, and both F and I swear that it didn't feel as if any one person was pushing it, the movement seemed to come from the bottom of the glass, where it met the table, rather than from the top. In fact it did fall over at one point, and the impression I got was that it fell not at all because it was pushed, but because our fingers on the top weren't keeping up with the speed of it, and we sort of all pulled it over by being too slow... Interesting, that was, and I'm not saying there's no more practical explanation for it, but it was interesting...
S asked "yes" and "no" questions, based on her previous experience and what was coming to be known about the "spirit" - for instance the first question was "Are you a spirit from the gaol" (the first one wasn't), then "Are you connected to someone around the table" (the first one was, and turned out to be the great grandmother of someone - "are you female?", "are you a grandmother?" etc - but because that someone had never known her great grandmother and couldn't think of what to ask, it sort of petered out. So it all went still for a bit, and then the glass just started moving in circles and we started the questions again. It was a female again, but this time from the gaol, though she wanted to talk to H who was at the opposite side of the table from me - H had asked if it was a child, because she'd felt a tugging at her trousers, and it was. She wrote the first letter of her name for us - a P - but couldn't write any more, so S tried to guess some names. The glass didn't move for any of them, but oddly enough it suddenly shot towards me and then back to H again. S suggested a couple more names and finally got the right one, Penny. Which was the name I'd been thinking of, cos it was the only "P" name I could come up with cos I've a friend called Penny, when the glass shot towards me. Ooooh... *g*
We then tried to narrow down what Penny wanted to tell H, by getting Penny to spell it - but she couldn't spell apart from the P, and she couldn't do numbers either. She turned out to be 9 years old, when we narrowed it down via yes/no. She did try drawing something - a long line with a squiggly curvey thing around the top, which we thought at first was a letter but couldn't work out which. Then S asked if it was a symbol of some kind, and we all tried to think what it might be - no idea (they suggested lollipop, but no). Then I thought maybe it was a pole with a snake curved around it, and asked if it was something to do with medicine (the Rod of Asclepius is traditional symbol of healing/medicine) and again the glass shot towards me - the only two times it did in the whole session. And then H's friends joined in and asked whether she needed to see the doctor, and it sounded like she'd had an ongoing worry, and then we got into more H-specific questions and answers, and she and her friends were all a bit freaked out by how accurate it all was... Which would make you think that perhaps they were controlling the glass, but it really didn't feel as if they were...
Anyway - then we began to hear the other group coming down from where ever they'd been and that kind of broke everything up, and they came to join us and we tried using a table on wheels as a much bigger facilitator. Actually I just watched, but F took part in the first round - the table barely moved though, and eventually they swapped people and another six took over. This time the table tried to go through one of the walls (and to be honest I was all a bit dubious about this cos it was people from the W13 group) and eventually they let it go out into the corridor to see if anything would happen, but again it didn't really...
Another little wander as a break - is that a head sticking through that wall..?
So we split up groups again, and our proper group went upstairs with M to a room with a mirror all along one side, which you can just see below. It was started to get light while we were in there, but it wasn't as light as in this pic, taken later!
So we all stood opposite the mirror, and M gathered energy between his hands as we all had downstairs when we first arrived - he's a Reiki healer - and as he did this we watched in the mirror with just his torch lighting the room, and you actually could see a misty white glow between his hands as he moved them around - like playing with a ball of light - and he stretched it out between his fingers, and you could see that too, and again it may have been an optical illusion of some kind, but it was a very good one if so. I asked him why it was only visible in the mirror rather than when we were looking at him, and he said it was to do with focal length. Anyway, that was rather cool too! Then we stood there to see if anyone wanted to communicate with us and the room started to get lighter. At one point, as I was looking to see how well I could see people now, I realised that I could see the white of the wall by the mirror, and that actually I couldn't see the people standing in front of it - eeep! I was just trying to look more, to see how I was imagining that, when M said "And now I'm looking at the people to the right of me, and you've all vanished..." - eep! Just what I'd experienced! *g* And he explained that they hadn't of course, it was just to do with the spirit energies in the room... Anyway, not much else happened in there, and it got lighter and lighter and there was a rooster crowing, and eventually we went downstairs again...
Another wee rest and wander around, and it really was daytime outside by now - around 6am...
...and then we gathered for what M and S called "the big seance" down in the Long Room - another big circle, this time holding hands, and we had to imagine the white light for extra energy, and then S called to any spirits who were around... but no, it was apparently all very quiet. She said she saw three children, and one of the W13 did a big jump and gasp and said she'd felt something tug at her trousers, but... again, I didn't feel anything or see anything, and S and M both said it felt all very happy, and S described the kiddies a bit, but... I wasn't convinced. *g* And people were very sleepy by now, and I'd made the mistake of eating a piece of fudge just before we came in, and sugar seems to make me sleepier now, so... it didn't even feel as if people were trying, to me... But that could have been the W13 back with us again too...
And then a bit more of a wander - F and I went upstairs this time, now that there was some light!
And then we were given breakfast and then sent off home - I stopped to take pics of the rather fab spiders webs on the scaffolding - and then we drove home, and ohhhhh then we got to go to bed, yeay!
It was all very interesting and rather fab, and the two things I didn't feel at all were bored and scared, at any time! I did think the hours might seem rather long, but they didn't at all. And I also thought that cos I jump so easily at things, and don't like horror movies I might be nerve-y wandering around, but again - nope, not at all. No bad feelings, no nerves, nothing scary about it at all - rather like the other two occasions I've been "ghosthunting" - what that says about me, I have no idea!
Anyway - I did try to write this long and rambley post last night, but was too lazy and blurry to manage it... Feel much more awake now that I've caught up with what day it is again, after not just a sleep on Sunday but a good night's sleep last night too - yeay! And today we're off to Cornwall to stay with cornishcat for a few days - yeay and yeay again! I do like being on holiday... *sighs happily and wanders off to find some breakfast...*
...with a very cool old wall painting still on one wall.
And then we wandered the funkiness that is Totnes and bought fudge (yummy) and cheese (yummy) and...
...then we headed to Cornwall for our Bodmin Gaol Ghost Walk... *g*
...watched by the crows when we arrived...
So - it started around 11pm with a tour of the gaol, and an explanation of the "short drop" (sort of the "ordinary" way of hanging people where it can take 25 minutes dangling at the end of the rope for them to die) and the new-fangled "long drop" which was devised so as to snap the neck quickly and cleanly at the 2nd and 3rd vertebrate, killing someone almost instantly... They actually took a volunteer from the audience (the woman who was most annoying from the large group of 13 who'd come over from Wales to celebrate someone's birthday - though she was actually from Liverpool, and in full LFC regalia under her shellsuit (no, really a shellsuit), carrying a watergun and a constant supply of alcohol and with a massive strop on if she wasn't centre of attention...) and bound her hands behind her back with a thick leather strap, then took her to stand on the drop, bound her legs together, put the white hood on her and then put the noose around her neck - eeep! Once they'd let her go (I'm saying nothing - but then she was all for bringing back the death penalty, as she made sure to let us know later *headdesk*) they demonstrated the drop with a couple of weighted bags - eep! You could see that it would have been very quick...
Anyway - next we did some "energy work" with one of our psychic mediums, S. We went down to the "Long Room"...
...and stood in a circle with just S's torch to start with, and then she turned that off too and she asked us to visual white light above our heads, which would flow down through our neck and shoulders to our hands, so that we could feel it there, and we did a little partner work (Foxcat's energy was fizzy) and then another visualisation where we imagined rooms and corridors, and met a being who'd love us and share their energy with us and so on - not for protection, S hastened to say, because in years and years of being a medium at the gaol she'd never been hurt, but for any time when we might feel nervous or frightened. Then we stood in the dark a little longer - and poor F momentarily felt all queasy and sick with it - and she explained how the spirits might try to communicate with us, and that there were alot of children around who might tug at our trousers, or touch our hands, or we might feel tingly sensations, or suddenly cold or hot or smell things. We tried communicating then, using ourselves as sort of "pendulums", but although F swayed in specific directions for "Yes" and "No" answers, I didn't... *sighs sadly*
We then went off to spend time in some of the rooms, as a large group (did I say there were 22 of us?) and in smaller groups. First we went to the Naval Prison, where the mediums (S and M) saw flickery lights and felt presences, but neither F nor I did (though (you'll need to enlarge it) - is that a face looking around that doorway...?)
It was absolutely dark, and we just had our torches, so now and then if we passed a doorway I'd just aim my camera inside and take a pic - I was a bit startled when this showed up in the flash one time:
Eep! *g*
We all went down to the basement as a big group, and S started to tell us about a man holding a knife who'd come into the room, but the Wales 13 had been getting noisier and gigglier and then one of them took out her mobile, which glowed blue and shed alot of light, and was looking at photos on it and giggling - all while S was speaking. S then said that the spirits (and, I suspect, herself - and definitely the seven of us not in the Wales 13) were getting fed up and didn't feel there was any point in staying, and then M actually asked the W13 to calm down and pointed out that we'd all paid for a reason, which was to spend time with the spirits of the gaol, and that's what their nights were for, and... to be fair they did calm down a bit after that, but I was so relieved when we went back upstairs and it turned out S and M had decided to split into two groups for the next workshops...
While they were presumably chatting about that, we were all let loose to go wandering again and F and I went down to the Long Room. F discovered that if you shone your torch the right way over the pillory at the end, you could make it go taller and shorter and taller and shorter... which made us giggle a bit, cos it did look very silly and not at all scary. Then she turned away and I took one more pic at that end of the room...
...and the interesting thing about that is that there was absolutely nothing between the flash and what was in the pic to make that shadow - and it wasn't there on any other picture either... and there was no light behind me so that I could have been the shadow, and F had her torch off and was standing somewhere else anyway, and... ooooh... M was quite excited about it, and it turned out that it was at that end of the room that there was a more malevolent spirit - that often made people feel queasy and ill... oooh... *g* Anyway, he's asked me to send him a copy of it!
Next, and much to the relief of at least seven of us, we split into two groups and M took the W13 away with him, and the rest of us went to do some "glass work". This involved us, and a table with an upside down glass on it...
...but no lights again, cos they'd all been turned off at the master switch long ago (I took this pic when we saw the room set up when we'd just got in). The seven of us stood at the table with just a fingertip on the glass, and S stood a little bit away from us, and then asked if there were spirits who'd like to speak with us - and what happened next was the coollest thing of the night! The glass actually did move, quite definitely and quite violently, and both F and I swear that it didn't feel as if any one person was pushing it, the movement seemed to come from the bottom of the glass, where it met the table, rather than from the top. In fact it did fall over at one point, and the impression I got was that it fell not at all because it was pushed, but because our fingers on the top weren't keeping up with the speed of it, and we sort of all pulled it over by being too slow... Interesting, that was, and I'm not saying there's no more practical explanation for it, but it was interesting...
S asked "yes" and "no" questions, based on her previous experience and what was coming to be known about the "spirit" - for instance the first question was "Are you a spirit from the gaol" (the first one wasn't), then "Are you connected to someone around the table" (the first one was, and turned out to be the great grandmother of someone - "are you female?", "are you a grandmother?" etc - but because that someone had never known her great grandmother and couldn't think of what to ask, it sort of petered out. So it all went still for a bit, and then the glass just started moving in circles and we started the questions again. It was a female again, but this time from the gaol, though she wanted to talk to H who was at the opposite side of the table from me - H had asked if it was a child, because she'd felt a tugging at her trousers, and it was. She wrote the first letter of her name for us - a P - but couldn't write any more, so S tried to guess some names. The glass didn't move for any of them, but oddly enough it suddenly shot towards me and then back to H again. S suggested a couple more names and finally got the right one, Penny. Which was the name I'd been thinking of, cos it was the only "P" name I could come up with cos I've a friend called Penny, when the glass shot towards me. Ooooh... *g*
We then tried to narrow down what Penny wanted to tell H, by getting Penny to spell it - but she couldn't spell apart from the P, and she couldn't do numbers either. She turned out to be 9 years old, when we narrowed it down via yes/no. She did try drawing something - a long line with a squiggly curvey thing around the top, which we thought at first was a letter but couldn't work out which. Then S asked if it was a symbol of some kind, and we all tried to think what it might be - no idea (they suggested lollipop, but no). Then I thought maybe it was a pole with a snake curved around it, and asked if it was something to do with medicine (the Rod of Asclepius is traditional symbol of healing/medicine) and again the glass shot towards me - the only two times it did in the whole session. And then H's friends joined in and asked whether she needed to see the doctor, and it sounded like she'd had an ongoing worry, and then we got into more H-specific questions and answers, and she and her friends were all a bit freaked out by how accurate it all was... Which would make you think that perhaps they were controlling the glass, but it really didn't feel as if they were...
Anyway - then we began to hear the other group coming down from where ever they'd been and that kind of broke everything up, and they came to join us and we tried using a table on wheels as a much bigger facilitator. Actually I just watched, but F took part in the first round - the table barely moved though, and eventually they swapped people and another six took over. This time the table tried to go through one of the walls (and to be honest I was all a bit dubious about this cos it was people from the W13 group) and eventually they let it go out into the corridor to see if anything would happen, but again it didn't really...
Another little wander as a break - is that a head sticking through that wall..?
So we split up groups again, and our proper group went upstairs with M to a room with a mirror all along one side, which you can just see below. It was started to get light while we were in there, but it wasn't as light as in this pic, taken later!
So we all stood opposite the mirror, and M gathered energy between his hands as we all had downstairs when we first arrived - he's a Reiki healer - and as he did this we watched in the mirror with just his torch lighting the room, and you actually could see a misty white glow between his hands as he moved them around - like playing with a ball of light - and he stretched it out between his fingers, and you could see that too, and again it may have been an optical illusion of some kind, but it was a very good one if so. I asked him why it was only visible in the mirror rather than when we were looking at him, and he said it was to do with focal length. Anyway, that was rather cool too! Then we stood there to see if anyone wanted to communicate with us and the room started to get lighter. At one point, as I was looking to see how well I could see people now, I realised that I could see the white of the wall by the mirror, and that actually I couldn't see the people standing in front of it - eeep! I was just trying to look more, to see how I was imagining that, when M said "And now I'm looking at the people to the right of me, and you've all vanished..." - eep! Just what I'd experienced! *g* And he explained that they hadn't of course, it was just to do with the spirit energies in the room... Anyway, not much else happened in there, and it got lighter and lighter and there was a rooster crowing, and eventually we went downstairs again...
Another wee rest and wander around, and it really was daytime outside by now - around 6am...
...and then we gathered for what M and S called "the big seance" down in the Long Room - another big circle, this time holding hands, and we had to imagine the white light for extra energy, and then S called to any spirits who were around... but no, it was apparently all very quiet. She said she saw three children, and one of the W13 did a big jump and gasp and said she'd felt something tug at her trousers, but... again, I didn't feel anything or see anything, and S and M both said it felt all very happy, and S described the kiddies a bit, but... I wasn't convinced. *g* And people were very sleepy by now, and I'd made the mistake of eating a piece of fudge just before we came in, and sugar seems to make me sleepier now, so... it didn't even feel as if people were trying, to me... But that could have been the W13 back with us again too...
And then a bit more of a wander - F and I went upstairs this time, now that there was some light!
And then we were given breakfast and then sent off home - I stopped to take pics of the rather fab spiders webs on the scaffolding - and then we drove home, and ohhhhh then we got to go to bed, yeay!
It was all very interesting and rather fab, and the two things I didn't feel at all were bored and scared, at any time! I did think the hours might seem rather long, but they didn't at all. And I also thought that cos I jump so easily at things, and don't like horror movies I might be nerve-y wandering around, but again - nope, not at all. No bad feelings, no nerves, nothing scary about it at all - rather like the other two occasions I've been "ghosthunting" - what that says about me, I have no idea!
Anyway - I did try to write this long and rambley post last night, but was too lazy and blurry to manage it... Feel much more awake now that I've caught up with what day it is again, after not just a sleep on Sunday but a good night's sleep last night too - yeay! And today we're off to Cornwall to stay with cornishcat for a few days - yeay and yeay again! I do like being on holiday... *sighs happily and wanders off to find some breakfast...*