Ghosts of Women Photographed in Abandoned Haunted House

Romanian Phantom May Be Connected to Local Legend

You may think the photo was taken in a remote location in Transylvania. Well, it was not. Actually, the story emerges from the city of Braila in southeast Romania and may be related to the legend of the Ghost House on Ana Aslan Street.

Manuela Chirosca, a local security worker was guarding an old building, no. 29 on Ana Aslan Street, constructed in late 19th century. She was doing routine checks of the house two days ago (July 19). “It was about 7 AM when I was doing the morning tour of the house. I had a strong feeling that I am not alone,” she told Jurnalul National.

“I was going for the window of a room which was probably a bedroom or something like that. I approached the window and then I saw a tall feminine shape that seemed wreathed in a white veil. My first reaction was to get back and run away as fast as I can!”

It is exactly what she did. Wouldn’t you? But then she took a deep breath, calmed down and went back in the room. “Fear made me feel sick, but then I thought there’s nothing that could possibly happen to me and I could not miss the chance to take pictures,” Chirsoca told the Romanian newspaper. She took up her mobile phone and photographed the blurry shape. “I had to take several pictures because the shape was moving from one place to another.”

The security worker is a yoga practitioner for over 14 years and is literate in parapsychology and spiritism. She had previous paranormalexperiences, “but never with such intensity” she said.

House no. 29 on Ana Aslan Street served as a stock exchange market before the Great War. It was busy with people interested in agricultural products, especially in grain. After the Second World War, the building was transformed in a commissary station. The communists would torture and murder political opponents in its basement. Perhaps because the building has its own dark history is why Manuela Chirosca believes that it is the Ghost House of Ana Aslan Street.

However, the legend of the Ghost House belongs to another building about 10 meters away, house no. 27. The owner was a Greek business man who made a fortune selling grain. He was about 60 years old when he met Voica, the beautiful young daughter of a local peasant. As the legend goes, Nicholachi Mavrocordulas fell madly in love with the young woman and bought her from her father. It is said that the Greek married her and took her back to Braila where he ordered the construction of an impressive house.

A few years later, however, he returned from hunting to find his wife in the arms of another man. Voica was laying naked on a bearskin near the chimney. He shot her on the spot! The Greek had her walled in and soldthe house. However, the house was sold and resold, nobody could spend more than three months there. The locals know this stories, but they are news for local authorities.

“There were no reports of paranormal activities in the buildings o Ana Aslan Street until now,” said a Braila Country Counsel secretary. In the next months, the Romanian government will spend at least 10 million lei (over 2.3mil euros) refurbishing the old buildings.


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'Ghost' Appears In Two Photos From Different Tours

The shadowy woman has now shown up in the photographs of two tourists following visits to Mary King's Close


Staff at one of Edinburgh’s spookiest tourist attraction have been left mystified after a ghostly figure showed up in the photographs of two separate tourists.

Bosses at Mary King’s Close say the blond haired woman who appeared in images from two different tours was definitely not a customer.

Both photos appear to show one person more than expected and staff believe that on close inspection, the ghostly figure appears to be the same woman.

Staff were first alerted to their unexpected visitor last October, when a member of the public queried their souvenir photograph. A few weeks later, the same thing happened with a different tourist, and staff say they have been trying to figure out what is going on ever since.

They have now introduced later night tours for the month of August in a bid to get to the bottom of the mystery. And they have asked anyone who sees a strange apparition in their pictures to allow them to be examined.

Lisa Robshaw, spokesperson for The Real Mary King’s Close, said: “We hope that by extending the hours of opening we can get to the bottom of this mystery.

“We’ve long been associated with supernatural and unexplained stories. We’ve had sightings of dark shadowy figures who lurk in the myriad of passageways, rooms and corners of the Closes, and reports of lots of strange noises – these images seem to give us even more evidence.

“By running tours late in to the night with the last one finishing at midnight, we hope that this might make the ghostly image reappear. “

Ms Robshaw insisted the images had not been doctored by staff, adding: “We have spent a long time studying these photographs and cannot come to a satisfactory conclusion. In both these images there appears to be a blurry ghostly image of a blond haired lady which we cannot explain, and we hope that by making the images public that someone might be able to help.

“If there are people in the images who can explain who the lady is we would love to hear from them. We’ve tested the static camera that we use and it appears to be working normally so we really do not have an explanation. We just want to try and understand what has happened.”

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Mary King's Close is said to be one of Scotland's most haunted areas. Situated just off Edinburgh's Royal Mile, Mary King's Close is a real step back in time. The close, or street, has a dark history, and since it reopened, it has become a major tourist attraction. It is a draw not only for ghost hunters, but also for anyone wishing to view a real 17th century street.

Edinburgh itself is a city full of small, winding streets and dark alleyways. It is a historic city, and many of the original buildings date back centuries. Mary King's Close is one of the oldest streets now available for the public to view. It is a dark, winding street full of original shops and houses from the 17th century.

Like many Edinburgh streets in the 17th century, conditions were less than sanitary in Mary King's Close. Human waste was simply thrown out of windows onto the street. The inhabitants of the houses were poor, and illness was rife.

During the time when the plague raged in Britain, Scotland lost over a quarter of its population to the disease. Mary King's Close was rife with plague. City leaders decided to take the inhumane action of sealing off Mary King's Close in order to contain the plague that ravaged the inhabitants. Many experts claim that religion also played a role in this decision, as the street was inhabited mainly by Catholics.

Mary King's Close is mainly situated underground, and both ends were sealed with bricks in 1644, leaving the inhabitants to die inside. It was estimated that almost 600 people were found dead when the street was reopened within a year. Butchers sliced up the bodies, and they were taken through the streets of Edinburgh and buried in huge, mass graves.

Life once again resumed in Mary King's Close, mainly due to the cheap rents offered to new tenants. In the 19th century, the close was emptied and again permanently sealed up. It has been reported that the close was rediscovered by workmen digging above the street.

Since Mary King's Close has reopened, thousands of visitors have flocked to the street. Many have been attracted by stories of ghosts, and it has become a regular site for paranormal investigators. The dark, claustrophobic atmosphere of the streets, houses, and shops has also led many visitors to leave the close minutes after entering.

The most famous spectral inhabitant is said to be the ghost of 10-year-old Annie, who died of the plague. Many people have reported feeling her presence, including psychics who have noted temperature changes when entering her room. Visitors to the close now leave dolls and sweets in the room Annie is supposed to haunt. Ghosts aside, Mary King's Close is an excellent historical tour of a forgotten age.


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Video: The Climbing Entity

"The form suddenly manifests and walks towards a doorway. It then appears, towards the end of the clip, that the entity attempts to climb something."

Flying Apparition

It was a whitish, slightly opaque-like amorphous blob about 10ft by 15ft across. It moved as though it was like a cloud or a mist being blown in a very brisk wind, changing shape constantly.


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Ghostly Apparition

The architect leading the redevelopment of the Bristol Old Vic claims to have seen the theatre manager who worked there 200 years ago.

The ghost of Sarah Macready appeared to Andrzej Blonski as he climbed the back stairs at lunchtime.

He says she was wearing a long, white crinoline dress, had black hair and a pretty face. When he tried to speak to her she vanished.

Mr Blonski told the BBC that he has never believed in ghosts and - prior to their meeting - was not aware of her legacy at the Bristol Old Vic.

"The thing that really got me was that she smiled - she was a friend and then she vanished," he said.

"But then I was really very, very happy - at the moment I'm quite emotional about it because I think that if there is a ghost, it's someone who cares about this building."

The architect believes that her smile is a sign that she approves of the current redevelopment work taking place in the theatre.

Andrzej Blonski says he has sensed ghostly presences on the stairs before, and caught a whiff of lavender perfume.

This distinctive scent has also accompanied some of her previous appearances since her death.

A security guard in the 1980s smelled lavender in the air while on patrol along the passageways below the auditorium. The Alsatian dog by his side froze and started barking.

The guard also says he heard a woman's voice tell him to "get out" and he felt her breath on his face.

Andrew Stocker, who gives tours of the Bristol Old Vic, said Sarah Macready's hard work was part of the key to the theatre's early success.

"She was an actress originally - she had an affair with William Charles Macready. He married her and he basically gave her the keys to the theatre and she worked here for over 10 years.

"She was a lady that ran this building seven days a week and she was an incredible lady."

The project manager from the team redesigning the Bristol Old Vic had a more shocking experience. Mr Blonski says that he was physically pushed. He ran away and now will not use the "haunted" staircase.

Sarah Macready is not the only spirit said to haunt this old playhouse. The ghost of a boy who died in an accident in the paint shop in the 1950s has been spotted as well as the 18th Century West End actress Sarah Siddons.

Mr Blonski says he feels the building is alive with its past: "It's got a very strong spirit - the spirit of the people who have passed through it and I connect to that. Somehow this place has got to me."


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Washington Irving's Home Has A New Mystery

<-- Is this a ghost? Could it be the apparition of Washington Irving?

On June 26, 14-year-old Rachel Lambert saw something a bit unusual in a photograph she took earlier during her trip to Washington Irving's Sunnyside.

After seeing Tim Burton's film, "Sleepy Hollow," Rachel pursued her interest in the paranormal and convinced her family to take a trip from Rotterdam, N.Y. to see what the town of the horseman is really like.

They ended up wandering the estate of Tarrytown's Sunnyside and as they did, Rachel saw something strange in a window of Irving's cottage. She snapped a picture and moved on, as not to miss any of their tour guide's fascinating historical speech. When Rachel got home the next night and viewed the picture on the 27-inch screen of her computer, she found that the creator of the Legend of Sleepy Hollow had not let her down (see attached video).

She and her family were able to make out a figure that looks like the head and upper body of a ghost holding a quill pen. Rachel determined that before her eyes was a picture of the ghost of Washington Irving.

Rachel's father Ed believes that his daughter's sighting of the spirit may not have been a sheer streak of luck. Just before the family stopped outside the cottage, they were having a conversation with the guide about Rachel's achievements as an English honors student and her dream of becoming a writer. They additionally spoke about her interest in Sleepy Hollow and how she had planned out sights to see and goals for the trip, which included stopping at Washington Irving's grave in the Sleepy Hollow cemetery beforehand. The family thinks that Irving's spirit may have overheard this conversation and acted. Perhaps Irving's thoughts were, "I'm gonna let her see this and do this for an aspiring author," as Rachel's father put it.

When Historic Hudson Valley, the organization entrusted to maintain the estate, was contacted, spokesperson Rob Schweitzer said he was "unaware" of any ghosts at the estate.

But some ghost enthusiasts maintain the Sunnyside is known for holding the spirit of Washington Irving.

"The legend says he still haunts the house," said Donna Davies, of Haunted Hudson Valley. "He passed away in the house. If he was going to haunt any place he would haunt Sunnyside."

Another ghost hunter, Linda Zimmermann, has written many books on the Hauntings in the Hudson Valley and agrees with Davies' assessment in her book Ghost Investigator: Hauntings of the Hudson Valley, Volume 1:

* "Irving made his home at Sunnyside in Tarrytown. Some people claim that to this day, he still resides in his beautiful mansion. That are reports that Irving's spirit walks the halls and rooms of Sunnyside, and that he particularly favors the tower know as the Pagoda. It seems to be poetic justice that the man most know for his ghost story would pass on and create one of his own."

Rachel was certainly excited by this sighting and claims that she is now even more interested in Sleepy Hollow, Irving and ghost stories. As for her parents, Rachel's mother emphasized that they have always been open about the paranormal with their children and allowed them to explore its possibility rather than fear it.

Ed however, stated that he always thought there could be a potential for the spirit world, but that there are also other scientific ways to explain such mystical events. "Do we make these things up in our minds or are they there?" he initially thought. But after taking several close looks at the photograph he said, "I think it's there."

Many family members and friends that were shown Rachel's photographwere similarly shocked by the image and questioned their ideas about the spiritual world.

"I think it made some people believers," said Ed Lambert.

Some even said that it looks like there are several ghosts in the image, besides Irving's spirit. The Lambert family believes that some kind ofparanormal investigation should be done to determine what is really in the photograph and at Sunnyside.

The Lambert family plans to return to Sleepy Hollow and Tarrytown in the fall to see the scenery of the season, and perhaps to further explore the possibility of the supernatural in the villages.

Although Rachel is likely to also pursue her interest in the paranormalelsewhere, her recent experience and haunting souvenir caused her to admit, "I think there's something special about Sleepy Hollow.

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The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

Ichabod Crane, a Connecticut schoolteacher, arrives in Sleepy Hollow in 1790 and is immediately attracted to the supernatural tales told by the area’s Dutch housewives, particularly the tale of a headless horseman. According to the story, he is a Hessian cavalryman who was decapitated during a battle in the American Revolution. Each night he rides out searching for his lost head.

Crane also spends his time pursuing a young woman, Katrina Van Tassel, the "plump," 18 year-old daughter and sole child of a wealthy farmer. This infuriates a rival for Katrina’s hand, “Brom Bones" Van Brunt, a handsome but rather rowdy and brutish man who subjects Crane to ridicule.

One Autumn night after attending a party at the Van Tassel home, Crane encounters the headless horseman near a bridge and the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. A pursuit through the countryside follows during which the spectral horseman hurls his “head” at Crane. The next day the schoolteacher is missing, leaving behind a riderless horse, a trampled saddle, Crane’s hat, and a smashed pumpkin.

Irving leaves it to the reader to decide if the horseman was an actual specter or Van Brunt in disguise.

The Sleepy Hollow Cemetery

The cemetery in Sleepy Hollow is a beautiful Victorian era cemetery with many hills and valleys in a gothic park-like atmosphere, situated on the east side of the Hudson River. It contains the final resting place ofWashington Irving, the author of the Legend of Sleepy Hollow – Ichabod Crane's encounter with the Headless Horseman. Washington Irving wrote, in a letter addressed to the editor of Knickerbocker Magazine, “I send you herewith a plan of a rural cemetery projected by some of the worthies of Tarrytown, on the woody hills adjacent to the Sleepy Hollow Church. I have no pecuniary interest in it, yet I hope it may succeed, as it will keep that beautiful and umbrageous neighborhood sacred from the anti-poetical and all-leveling axe. Besides, I trust that I shall one day lay my bones there.” Washington Irving’s gothic revival home, known as Sunnyside, is situated not far from his gravesite, along the Hudson River.

Also buried at the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery are other luminaries such as: Andrew Carnegie, Walter Chrysler, William Rockefeller, and Elizabeth Arden. The television series “Dark Shadows”, which featured vampire Barnabas Collins, witches, ghosts, and other supernatural creatures, inspired a film, “House of Dark Shadows”. In the film, Lyndhurst, a gothic revival mansion in nearby Tarrytown, was the Collinwood estate and a mausoleum in the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery was shown as the Collins family tomb. The cemetery is rather renowned and guided tours are offered in October. It is also adjacent to the cemetery of the Old Dutch Church, which is the resting place of those who inspired Irving's characters of Katrina Van Tassel, Brom Bones, and the headless Hessian soldier.

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Scientific evidence of poltergeist knocking?

Has science finally established a paranormal effect?

Paranormal rappings associated with apparent poltergeist activity have been described for many hundreds of years. It is only now that an interesting pattern has been discovered within the fine detail of the paranormal rapping sounds. No explanation can be found for this pattern at present.

The current edition of the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR), a learned publication dating back to 1882, carries an article by scientist Dr Barrie Colvin B.Sc., Ph.D., showing instrumental evidence for an inexplicable and objective banging sound detected in recordings made during alleged poltergeist activity.

Whereas raps and knocking sounds produced by ordinary means exhibit a normal acoustic pattern, those recorded in alleged poltergeist cases show quite a different sound signature. 

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Ghosts recorded at railway museum

Paranormal investigators reveal audio recordings of ghosts recorded at the Brunswick Railroad Museum.

Daryll Keller with the Mason Dixon Paranormal Society, says there are 14 unexplained EVPs (Electronic Voice Phenomenon).

"It sounds like it says have a nice day," he said about one of the recordings.

He investigated the museum after people reported hearing voices, footsteps, and seeing a ghost in a white dress.

Keller says most of the voices came from the second floor, where historic items are on display.

"There's one thing called object attachment. Where a spirit can attach itself to an object," Keller said.

Curator Rebecca O'Leary listened closely to hear whether she knew any of the names. One sounded like 'Smith.'

"That makes sense," she said pointing to a display case, "because everything in this case here belonged to Dr. J. G. Smith who was a physician in Brunswick."

During the investigation, the elevator doors opened six times on the second floor. Keller says he tries to find reasonable explanations and suggests getting the elevator checked out by professionals.

The only thing he can't explain are the voices.

O'Leary says she'll do some research to see if any of the other names match up. She's excited-- not scared.

"They haven't bothered me so far. If we continue that relationship in the future, I will probably be a happy curator," O'Leary said.

Investigators were unable to make out all of the voices they heard. They say because of the museum's history, it's possible that some of the ghosts are speaking foreign language.

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Have scientists found proof that ghosts exist?

Professor David Fontana took a deep breath and opened a side-door into the mechanic’s workshop. He peeked inside but could see virtually nothing through the murky gloom.

“Well, here goes,” he mumbled as he stepped into the workshop.

An icy chill rippled slowly down his spine. He looked up, momentarily startled by what he saw. A small piece of engine casing appeared to be levitating a few feet in front of his nose. It tilted slightly to the side and then flew directly towards him. He ducked aside as it whizzed past his head and smashed into the wall behind him. 

“There you are,” said John Matthews, the workshop owner, “He’s welcoming you.”

As their eyes adjusted to the gloom, it was obvious that Pete, as the poltergeist had been affectionately dubbed, had been up to his tricks again. The floor was littered with stones and small coins. The normally well-organised shelves had been piled high with randomly selected engine parts, boxes of stationery, and bits of paper. A child’s teddy bear lay in the corner.

“Watch this,” said John as he gently threw a small stone into a corner. Moments later, the stone came flying back at him. It hadn’t bounced, it seemed to disappear into the wall and then re-materialise in mid-air as it flew back at them.

“And this,” said John as he tossed a penny into the corner. A two pence piece came flying back.

Over the following two years, the poltergeist was exhaustively investigated by Professor David Fontana, a Fellow of the British Psychological Society. He became convinced that the so-called ‘Cardiff Poltergeist Case’ was a genuine haunting.

Unlike most hauntings, which seem to involve angry or malevolent spirits, Pete was playful and only occasionally mischievous. In fact, everyone involved in the case became convinced that Pete was the ghost of a seven-year-old child who had been killed by a car near to the haunted workshop.

The family grew so fond of Pete that they adopted him as a part of their family and refused to have him exorcised or chased away by psychic mediums.

“There was no malice in him at all,” says Professor Fontana. “The family felt privileged to be in his presence. They saw him as evidence of an afterlife. He changed their whole outlook on life.

“It was most definitely not a hoax.”

It is fashionable in certain circles to dismiss hauntings such as the Cardiff Poltergeist Case as either pranks or delusions. But new scientific research to be published in the respected Journal of the Society for Psychical Research suggests that at least some hauntings may be genuine.

These startling conclusions have been drawn by Dr Barrie Colvin, a scientist who has spent the past five years analysing the knocks, raps and bangs produced by poltergeists. Dr Colvin used some of the most advanced acoustic technology available to ‘fingerprint’ the ghostly sounds. He has discovered that they are fundamentally different to the normal sounds produced by people, animals, or indeed anything in our physical world. They are, for the want of a better term, ‘ghostly’.

“The sounds produced by ‘ghosts’ during hauntings are paranormal,” says Dr Colvin. “Their acoustic waveforms are completely different. I can’t find a conventional explanation for my results at all. Nor can any of the other scientists who’ve reviewed my work. To be honest, we’re all completely stumped. We did not expect to find these results.”

“I do not believe in life after death. I believe that most things labeled as ‘paranormal’ are simply delusions, hoaxes or the result of drunkenness or drug-taking. Having said that, my results show that at least one part of the paranormal, which relates to the noises produced by ghosts and poltergeists, appears to be true. They are most definitely not human or natural.”

When Dr Colvin’s results are published later this month, they are expected to re-ignite the debate over the origins of ghosts and poltergeists. Some researchers claim that ghosts are either spirits of the dead or result from the violent release of pent-up psychic energy, usually by adolescent girls.

Many more researchers, of course, say that ghosts and poltergeists do not exist. They are either hoaxes perpetrated by attention seekers or simply spooky stories that become exaggerated with every re-telling.

Professor Chris French, a parapsychologist at Goldsmiths, University of London, and editor of The Skeptic magazine, says he has yet to hear of a single convincing haunting.

“Just because we cannot explain these phenomena does not mean that ghosts are the souls of the dead or even that something paranormal is occurring,” says Professor French.

“It’s very difficult to investigate hauntings in a scientific manner. They often rely on eyewitness testimony, which can be unreliable. They also tend to be investigated by people with an agenda. They want to see ghosts in action - or at least something paranormal - so that’s what they tend to see. When you add all these factors together, you have to be sceptical. I certainly wouldn’t bet my house on the existence of ghosts or poltergeists. But then again, I might be wrong.”

Professor French points to famous hoaxes such as the Amityville Horror to dispute not only the Cardiff case, but hauntings in general. So does this mean that poltergeists are pure hokum? It seems unlikely.

To my mind, Professor French’s arguments are entirely reasonable and logical but there are simply too many recorded poltergeist cases for all of them to be dismissed out of hand. A great many have been investigated by diligent researchers and the results suggest that ghosts may indeed be a real phenomena.

A good example is the Enfield Poltergeist, a haunting every bit as perplexing as the Cardiff case investigated by Professor Fontana in the mid-1990s. The Enfield Poltergeist turned the lives of Peggy Hodgson and her four children upside down. It first manifested as a mysterious invisible force that began by hurling toys, plates and cutlery around their home. Books and pictures would inexplicably fly across the room. Objects miraculously appeared and disappeared before the eyes of terrified onlookers. Strange knocking sounds were heard inside walls. And on several occasions, Peggy’s 12-year-old daughter Janet appeared to be ‘possessed’ by the poltergeist.

The strange events were exhaustively investigated by the respected paranormal researchers Guy Lyon Playfair and Maurice Grosse and was documented in the book This House is Haunted. And perhaps uniquely, the extraordinary events were witnessed by police officers and a BBC journalist.

On one occasion, a sitting room chair was seen to levitate off the carpet and move slowly across the room.

"It came off the floor nearly half an inch,” said WPC Carolyn Heeps, one of the Metropolitan Police officers sent to investigate the haunting. “I saw it slide off to the right about four feet before it came to rest.”

Guy Lyon Playfair and Maurice Grosse spent 14 months investigating the case before coming to the conclusion that a genuine poltergeist was haunting the family home. They themselves witnessed a range of inexplicable phenomena such as boxes flying across rooms, ornaments floating in mid-air, and books mysteriously appearing and disappearing. All told, hundreds of different phenomena were witnessed by over 30 people.

Of course, if there were only a handful of cases like the Enfield and Cardiff hauntings, sceptics could dismiss them as aberrations. But ghosts may be more common than previously thought.

Two years ago, Alan Murdie, at the behest of the Society of Psychical Research, began an exhaustive census of hauntings reported across the UK. He discovered that around 260 new hauntings are reported in Britain each year. This is in addition to the thousands of ghosts witnessed in traditionally haunted locations such as castles and dungeons. Around half of these newly reported ghosts involved violent and persistent poltergeists. In 43 percent of cases, a ghostly apparition was seen by observers.

It is no doubt possible to dismiss many of these cases as mere bunkum. But what of those witnessed by staunchly level-headed observers? Anwar Rashid’s experience at Clifton Hall, Nottinghamshire, is a case in point. Mr. Rashid, a millionaire businessman, bought the 52 room hall in 2006 as a family home. But they had barely moved in when they began to hear mysterious voices whispering inside the walls of their ancient house.

“There was a knock on the wall,” he said. “We heard a voice asking, ‘Hello, is anyone there?’ We were like the family in Nicole Kidman’s film The Others.”

“Two minutes later we heard the man's voice again. I got up to have a look but the doors were locked and the windows were closed.'

During the eight months that the family lived at Clifton Hall, Mr. Rashid said they were haunted by mysterious figures and found unexplained blood stains on bedclothes.

“I fell for its beauty,” said Mr. Rashid. “But behind the facade it is haunted. The ghosts didn't want us to be there and we could not fight them because we couldn't see them."

It eventually came to light that tunnels in the grounds had been used by Satanists and, according to legend, a woman dressed in white committed suicide by jumping from an upstairs window. At that point, Mr. Rashid decided to flee the property with his family and hand they keys back to the bank.

Nor were Mr. Rashid’s experiences at Clifton Hall unique. Darren Brookes, whose firm Sovereign Security guarded the hall for five years, said some of his staff “refused point-blank” to work there. They reported sightings such as a monk walking through the grounds and a ghostly woman stalking through the graveyard. On other occasions, security guards saw chairs moving as if they were being rocked by an invisible hand.

“I've often put officers who know absolutely nothing about the house in there  -  and after a night on duty they have quit,” said Mr. Brookes.

For me, these cases are not just anecdotes, they bear a striking resemblance to a poltergeist that haunted my mother when she was a teenager working at Belvoir Castle in Rutland. Soon after starting work at the castle, a poltergeist – who spoke only French – attached itself to her. On one occasion she was walking down one of the long corridors when all of the ornaments on a cabinet mysteriously levitated into the air and smashed themselves on the opposite wall. From then on, the poltergeist made her life a terrifying ordeal.

Crockery would unexpectedly fly from shelves and footsteps would follow her along corridors. And on occasion, ghostly voice could be heard cursing in French from an empty room. She left the castle the following morning.

Not all ghosts are evil and malevolent, as the Cardiff case shows. Many appear to be confused souls condemned to walk the earth as a form of purgatory. Others want to help the living. Hospitals up and down the land are testaments to this. Many have stories of resident ghosts, usually of doctors or nurses who periodically return to help the sick and dying.

A good example is the ghost that patrolled the corridors of the now defunct Mothers Hospital in Hackney, east London. Here, drowsy nurses complained of feeling a startling tap on the shoulder. According to legend, a nurse who was bottle-feeding a newborn baby dozed off and slumped forward in her sleep, smothering the baby. In a fit of remorse, she killed herself and was condemned to walk the wards, tapping young nurses on the shoulder to keep them awake.

These cases, and the thousands like them, are leading some researchers to conclude that ghosts really are the souls of the dead. To test this theory, Dr Colvin will soon start recording and fingerprinting the sounds ostensibly made by spirits during séances using state-of-the-art equipment.

If these sounds also prove to be unearthly, then it will provide even stronger evidence that ghosts and spirits really do exist. And if these ‘spirits’ should then prove capable of answering questions and acting with intelligence, then his work may finally prove that they really are the souls of the dead.

“I genuinely do not know what we’ll discover,” says Dr Colvin. “We’re in uncharted waters. That’s the beauty of science.” 

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