Ashbourne Town Hall paranormal investigation, Saturday 24 October 2015

Ashbourne Town Hall, or more correctly the old Market Hall, is located in the heart of Ashbourne. Built in 1861 it is a fine example of one of the few Victorian buildings still in existence in the town. It is faced with ashlar stone and its decorations including balcony and stone pediment which bares the date 1861 and the names of the trustees; are typical mid-Victorian.

Formerly the site of the old Talbot Inn which is mentioned in Izaak Walton’s and Charles Cotton’s ‘The Complete Angler’ the Town Hall is the civic home of Ashbourne Town Council.

A purpose-built meeting room was first suggested in 1852, and was combined with a proposal to build a Market Hall. Subscriptions were collected and various premises in the market place were considered.

The project went ahead when a property was purchased in the market place and rebuilt as the Market Hall.

On the ground floor is the main hall while situated on the first floor the historic ballroom is conveniently accessible from the front of the building; with mid-Victorian architraves and a minstrel’s gallery to boot.

Next to the ballroom is the Marion Abbott suite which was respectfully named after a missed and well-loved member of the community, Town Councillor, character and ardent Shrovetider.

We also had the opportunity to investigate the cellars which had never before been investigated.

We are reliably informed that the caretakers and others regularly seem to experience apparent paranormal activity including footsteps walking around when nobody else is in the building also other unexplained sounds and tapping. Mysteriously, the electric fans in toilets often start up again when the building is empty (clearly they are not faulty!)

A private investigation was conducted a while ago and it was reported that several unexplained phenomena were witnessed including, knocks on doors, footsteps, creaks, temperature drops, an “angry” presence was felt in one particular area and we wonder whether we will make contact again. Dowsing rods were also very active. Voices were heard over electronic equipment. Light anomalies and a purple mist were also witnessed.

Brian noted that before even beginning the investigation he and Christopher went to the ballroom where they immediately encountered what appeared to be a knock/tap in which we had to respond to. We asked for this to be repeated and we were met with the same response.

At the opening group vigil in the ballroom we encountered the same knock/tap sound which appeared to happen in the same location as before. Although when some members asked for a response it sometimes had a short delay, it did appear to be intelligent in nature.

Several people saw dark shadow people in the minstrel’s gallery and others saw the light go on and off in the toilet area off the other end of the room.

We also appeared to have made connection with some form of spirit activity. We used K-II meters all spread out across the ballroom. All instantly went to orange. This could mean something was affecting them. When asked to do so, the K-IIs began to change from orange back to green, meaning we may have encountered some form of spiritual presence.

We also tried a human pendulum in the ballroom and instantly we appeared to get results from some of the guests in the group. The energies made it clear that we weren’t alone and that there was more than one spirit energy with us, some of which appeared to want help.

At this point the Rev Tim Baker felt that he needed to assist the one very angry spirit to pass to the light and this was confirmed by knocks from the wall and K2 spiking. Using his own methods this seemed to be completed satisfactorily and prior to that the K2 spiking was frantic including considerable full spiking simultaneously on all five meters.

Correspondingly, the Mel Meter had been reading around 1mg, spiked to 10.5mg and then returned to 1mg.

After this all the meters returned to a single green light.

The first group in the council chamber was led by Veronica. She picked up on two spirit energies, one not so positive and Brian and a couple of other guests also picked up on this. The room appeared to get darker and lighter, with sharp drops in temperature and dark shadows and figures also seen by several. At one point, Brian and one other male guest began to feel oppressed and Veronica and he picked up on a dark energy between him and the male guest.

A couple of members also tried scrying in the mirror in a small toilet cubicle within the same area, where they felt a dark energy with them. One lady in particular felt she was being rocked, so we used this lady to perform a human pendulum where we were able to learn more on the apparent dark energy.

On a subsequent vigil in this room, Chris also spent time in the WC and started to sway and also had his knees “kicked or pushed” from behind causing him to stumble. On exiting the WC to explain what had happened he had his posterior touched or slapped too.

The spirit here gave a lot of swearing in peoples’ heads and a few heard growls when using sound enhancers.

In the council chamber there is a display cabinet containing the old fire alarm bell which apparently fell and killed a gentleman some time ago. Here a lady felt head pains and sensed fire and smoke.

We had a connection from two groups including Donna about sailing, boats, and a Navy connection.

We had lots of taps in the chamber and taps to answer Rev Tim’s questions to his uncle.

At Chris’s first vigil in the ballroom there were lots of explained knocks and on one occasion a loud bang near the rear door was accompanied by the Mel Meter spiking to 6.5mg from the norm of around 1mg.

We then developed in to creaking and tapping of the table and then table tipping/dancing.

For a brief time Brian lead a vigil in the ballroom and tried many experiments. They began to see dark shadowy figures and also heard strange tapping noises coming from different parts of the ballroom, much different to the ones heard in the opening vigil. They also heard a couple of very strange banging noises coming from the neighbouring bar area.

After the interval Rev Tim felt the need to ask for Veronica’s assistance to help a disturbed spirit in the council chamber pass to the light. This took much longer than anticipated and a lot of energy was expended but it is believed that it was successful.

In the ground floor hall some members appeared to have some fantastic table tipping.

In the same room, we received some excellent responses through the spirit box. One spirit certainly had the last word when using one unpleasant word to describe Brian!

Nigel noted that he and his group and started on the balcony in the second half of the night with some guests taking photos convinced there were orbs but it could have been dust too.

Nigel took a picture with his phone which produced a strange light anomaly above the door at the far end of the ballroom.

Chris had also taken a picture with his DSLR camera from a no doubt slightly different angle which also produced a similar anomaly. Subsequent attempts have failed to recreate this!

Back on the ballroom floor Brian set the grid pens up on three occasions they dimmed at the same time the k2 spiked.