Paraforce
UK 2016 has turned out to be a very successful conference. My speech on UFO’s
went down well and the other speakers were excellent, see: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/ben-emlyn-jones-live-at-paraforce-uk.html. The event
included two live paranormal investigations on the Friday and Saturday evenings.
The venue for Paraforce is very appropriate; it is the Galleries of Justice in
Nottingham. This is a location with a long reputation for supernatural
activity. The Galleries of Justice is a partly underground complex that
includes a Victorian courthouse and police station built at ground level, on top
of a much older subterranean prison. The courthouse was in use until the 1980’s
and the prison dates back to the fourteenth century. During the time the
courthouse was operating the prison was used exclusively for capital
punishment. Below the courts are a row of macabre cells for death row convicts
awaiting execution. The cells are connected to a corridor at the end of which
is a gallows where prisoners would be killed by hanging. Beneath the gallows
are some far older prison cells and torture chambers, and below them are ancient
dungeons hewn from the rock, making them part of Nottingham’s mysterious cave
network, see: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/caves-under-nottingham.html. The deepest and
darkest of these is called the “oubliette” where a prisoner sentenced to death
would be locked in the cave and simply left to die, which would be from thirst
and would only take a few days. After that the body would be devoured by rats
and the warders just cleared out the bones every so often. The entire facility
has been carefully restored and preserved as a museum, see: http://www.galleriesofjustice.org.uk/. Because of the
centuries of human death, fear, pain and despair within its walls and tunnels,
the Galleries of Justice is reported to be crawling with ghosts. It is a
popular place for ghost hunts and paranormal investigations. Therefore I was
very keen to take part in one of these, along with my partner Ustane. The trip
down into the cells on Friday night had started late and was interrupted by the
fire alarm (started by whom I wonder?) so it wasn’t very successful. The
Saturday night’s investigation began at around 7.30 PM. Ustane and I joined a
team led by a group of physical mediums from Liverpool. We began by sitting
silently inside one of the medieval prison cells and switching off the light.
We had with us a special meter that reacted to the presence of an electromagnetic field.
One of the mediums asked yes-no questions and the meter lit up immediately
afterwards in response, indicating the presence of a spirit. We worked out this
way that there were several female spirits there and a small boy called William.
After that we moved down to the oubliette and tall people like me had to bow
our heads to get down the tunnel leading to it. We sat in the cold and dusty
dugout and got a few more responses. Some of the team members set up cameras
and audio recorders in the hope of capturing images and electronic voice
phenomena. Later in the evening we climbed back up the staircases to the
criminal courtroom which was wood paneled and full of green leather benches. Ustane
and I sat and watched the others at work, not taking part ourselves, but once
in the courtroom we became more involved.
The
group split up and we were left with just four other people, including some of
the mediums. We switched off the lights in the courtroom and got to work. The
previous evening I had experienced the feeling of gossamer on my face, a sign
of ghostly presence, while sitting at the front of the courtroom, said to be
the most active part of that heavily haunted area. We tried several psychic
tricks like table tipping, which worked very well. This is where participants
place their fingertips lightly on a tabletop and ask the spirits to move the
table. Then we tried divination with a glass on the table, but nothing
happened. At the same time one of the investigators went and sat in the judge’s
chair. This is said to be a place where people are seen to undergo facial
transfiguration, their face transforms into that of a spirit. She said that
there was a malevolent entity present. She held the EMF meter in her hand and
it went wild. She reported that the entity was the ghost of a former judge of
the court who had participated in witch trials and it was angrily putting a
stop to our divination. She eventually recoiled and jumped up from the judge’s
chair. Ustane volunteered to take her place and sat down with the EMF meter in
one hand. The rest of us taunted the recalcitrant ghost. We then noticed that
Ustane had a strange expression on her face. We called her name and she didn’t
reply. I became concerned and ran up onto the judge’s podium. Ustane stood up.
She moved differently to how she normally does, faster and without putting her
hands on the arms of the chair to support herself. One of the investigators
asked: “What’s your name?” She replied “Susan Black”. This is not her real
name. I approached her and took her hand. She turned to stare at me and the
look on her face was a wide-eyed evil grimace, an expression I’ve never seen
her wear before. One of the others described her as looking like a waxwork. She
cackled loudly. Then she quickly recovered and began responding to her name and
talking normally. Far from being scared or upset by her experience she appeared
euphoric. She continued laughing and smiling. We took her to the cafeteria and
made her a cup of tea. One of the team took four group photographs of us and
interestingly the first two were misted over and the last two completely
normal. Ustane and I went home at around eleven PM. The others joked: “Is her
head spinning around?”, “Hope she doesn’t stab you to death in the night!”, but
I wasn’t concerned about that. By now Ustane was behaving completely normally.
The next day she described her feelings in more detail. She literally felt she
was another person and reports that she enjoyed that sensation. It made her
feel powerful. It looks to me like Ustane was momentarily attacked by some kind
of discarnate entity that attempted to “walk in” or possess her. This
experience can be disastrous for the individual affected. It is the theme of
many horror stories. These are, of course, fiction; but some are based on real
events. Even the classic The Exorcist
(Warner Bros 1973) is based on a true story, albeit the situation is highly
exaggerated for dramatic licence I’m pleased to say. Ustane was very lucky. I
was very unnerved by what happened, as were our companions. As her boyfriend, I
naturally feel protective of her and felt I had failed in my duty. She had been
exposed to danger by my negligence and also the irresponsible actions of myself
and the others in the old courtroom. We had egged the ghost on while Ustane was
sitting in the judge’s chair, a place which we had been warned on Friday night
often caused sitters to transfigure. The only person who was not concerned with
the incident is Ustane herself. She is, at the time of writing, still
completely untouched by her attempted possession and, indeed, feels intrigued
and amused by her experience. All’s well that ends well I suppose.
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