IT wasn’t even Halloween and over 40 people turned up to an open ghost hunting night at Downpatrick Railway.
The event run by Ghost Searchers Ireland and headed by Gary Watters and his dedicated team of ghost busters provided a very stimulating and at times definitely nervy four hours communicating in different ways with the spirit world. Special guest for the evening was Barry Fitzgerald, of Syfy reknown, and very well known author and presenter in the parananormal. www.charmstealer.com
I am a natural sceptic as far as ghost stories goes but what I experienced and listened to from the other participants certainly changed my views of what the supernatural really is.
“Supernatural?” asked Gary. “It’s just another extension of where we are at the moment, and where we were in the past. Our approach is really quite scientific in trying to seek out contacts in the ‘spirit’ world. We use different types of very sensitive electronic equipment which can detect sound, vibration, light, and movement changes. We are part of the school that wants to build up an impirical body of data, an indisputable record of evidence, that there is something more to life and being that just what we are aware of in our consciousness.”
As I arrived in the new railway carriage museum, I could see a number of participants had already arrived. I chatted to a few and before long realised that most of them had had different levels of experiences with the spirit world.
The most poignant example being a 15-year old girl and her mother who have a young girl ghost who appears regularly in their home in Belfast. The ghost is a friendly one and everyone seems to be quite happy with the live in arrangement.
Richard Brown from Downpatrick explained that he had worked in the Slieve Donard Resort and Spa and while sleeping over had seen a maid ghost on a number of occasions walking past his bed. He said: “The hotel is very haunted. Staff were quite used to seeing these ghosts from time to time.”
Once the participants were assembled, they broke into four groups and started their paranormal investigations. The groups rotated around the Station House, the Repair Shed, the new Railway Museum and the Signal Box.
Ghost Searchers Ireland – Facebook
My group started off in a carriage where we all held hands, grounded our feet and invoked the spirits. An adjacent carriage had been rescued by the DCDR which had been used as a dwelling. Michael Collins, DCDR Chairman, said earlier on the evening: “We were literally given a day to remove it from a site. It was in poor shape and has since been rebuilt with a new undercarriage, but there is something definitely haunted about it. We got it with all of the living items such as furniture, cooking equipment etc.
“This steam railmotor was disused in 1956 and used as a bungalow until 1986.
“I am delighted to have Ghost Seachers Ireland here tonight. They are a very well organized and responsible group and I hope they find something of interest. In 1945 the steam engine was removed by the then Belfast and CountyDown Railway from these carriages after an accident when 23 people were killed.
“From my own personal experiences and losses of family members very close to me, I now understand the relevance of this spirit world having been in contact with three separate mediums. I was genuinely impressed how each focused on key points that no-one else could have really known about. However, tonight is about a different approach.”
As my group settled down in the carriage, the PX communication box crackled to life as the group asked questions and before long someone called Arthur spoke up who seems to have died by a railway line in suicide or accident. The noise and static of the system took a bit of getting used to but clearly words such as “whisky”, “fifteen” and “George” and “hungry” were heard quite clearly from a frequency not used in ordinary day airwave traffic. The details were recorded and will eventually be processed for further information and put on the Ghost Searchers International website.
We then moved on to the Signal Box and vibration tests were set up along with the electronic dot matrix of the Van der Graf machine. Again there were indications of ‘ghostly’ activity. There were no Caspers suddenly appearing from the wall pulling the signal levers, but there were exhortations from the participants asking for a signal of some description to show there was a connection.
The size of the group may have mitigated against a full contact, but there was definitely something going on with the temperature in the room and someone actually got a set of photographs with similar shadows running through them outside the Signal Box.
Temperature changes and variances are often a signal that of a presence… as well as an open door or window! Could it be a ghost? It all added to the heightened speculation as the evening wore on. The participants were quite receptive so anything could literally have gone bump in the night.
In the Signal Box, my first unexplainable experience occurred when Gary did a temperature test in the room which showed at 29 degreed Celsius, dropped to 14 in a cold spot just off the room centre, then leveled off at 19. When tested by Gary’s temperature meter, I was showing at 13 degrees, and yet feeling very flushed. The room was well sealed from draughts and the door was well fitting, so the variances in the temperatures were a talking point indicating presence.
The group then moved on to the Station House where two activities took place simultaneously. The first group of seven took part in a séance blindfolded but the glass they were all touching did not move denoting contact with the spirit world. However, the last group did make contact and the glass moved around the table.
In another room a ‘scrying’ session was set up. This involved sitting in from of a mirror and focusing on the spirit world with a camera recording the mirror’s image. The aim is to catch a spirit which morph’s with your face in the mirror as you make contact. As you do the rest of the group formed a circle and held hands and exhorted contact with the spirit world. It does not work all the time but when it does, it must be very dramatic and spine-chilling. But the tenor of the evening was as much to cover the methodologies of ghost investigation as to actually unearth a real ghost.
Some people may cynically think holding hands smacks of devilry and even witchcraft, but the scientific logic is that is grounds the group members to the earth and allows their combined energy to channel to invoke contact.
World Class Ghost Buster Barry Fitzgerald Chats to Down News
During the break, I chatted to US-based Syfy Lead Cast Member Barry Fitzgerald, who comes from Dromore, and is a successful author, scriptwriter and photographer. He said: “I have traveled all over the world investigating the paranormal and had many memorable experiences. The most chilling was when in Romania doing an exhibition I went swimming in a lake. Suddenly the whole world seemed to change, my boat blew away and the waves whipped up and I struggled to survive. This was an attack by the spirit world. You really have to fight sometimes with them for your life. It was only later that I discovered that Count Dracula is buried in the lake on an island somewhere. This was quite a harrowing experience.
“Also I once did an investigation in Hitler’s hide out, the Wolf’s Lair. Deep in the concrete bunkers Hitler used to walk around at night and listen to Beethoven. There had been quite a record of spirit activity in the bunker so I decided not to tell my crew what I was going to do in case they intercepted this. We set up the equipment, speaker etc, and I then put on a tape of Beethoven. Immediately the room erupted with furniture and equipment flying violently around. It definitely touched a raw nerve somewhere with Hitler I think
“I have just released my new book, ‘In the Mist of Gods’ about stripping away the mythology of where we as a human race came from to what we are, and the book does beg some very significant questions about us as a species.”
Barry explained that he had traveled extensively over Ireland investigating many ghostly buildings. “Once I stayed at Ross’s Castle. Even the staff won’t stay there overnight. I was there on my own. Late at night as I lay in bed I felt a hand on my foot which folded my toes over. I think they were just letting me know they were there. It was an interesting experience.”
Check out Barry’s Website at: www.charmstealer.com
… and after the witching hour!
Just after witching hour, the group stood in the pitch dark in the Repair Shed and exhorted the spirits once again to make a show. But the real world intervened and turned this session more into a light hearted round of jokes as Arthur was asked to stop the young drivers doing donuts in the car park adjacent behind the bus station. Eventually the screeching or tyres did stop, and I think someone thanked Arthur – raising a few laughs – for his intervention in returning peace to our temporal world.
Interestingly, in the Repair Shed, the group at different stages did experience sudden temperature changes. I felt the back of my neck suddenly become very cold and others said they felt limbs, hands, and their faces becomes quite cold. Again the shed is well sealed from drafts and no doors were open to explain this sudden change over a period of ten minutes. Gary said that it was symptomatic of a presence.
Again, this session demonstrated how a group can invoke contact. It is not always successful, but Arthur, whoever he was, was making an effort to communicate with the participants on the night and appeared to ask for Michael, who is the Chairman of the County Down and Downparick Railway.
Gary explained: “The best time to conduct these sessions is from around 8pm to around 1am as were are most alert at these points. You do get ghosts during the day too, but mostly we are receptive to them around this time.
In the penultimate session, back in a railway carriage, another attempt was made to contact the spirit world and this conversation seemed much more productive with a range of words clearly being heard such as “laughing”. It is really at the analysis stage within a couple of weeks that all of this may become significant. Despite the jokes, the spirit was not THE Arthur Guinness.
The evening ended with an experiment to test the receptiveness of our right brains by playing a CD of that can only be described as quite strange sounds. Had the sound equipment be high powered it could have provided a visual experience of spirits coming down through the ceiling!
Well, maybe thankfully it did not work for everyone but two did see a line of black spots moving across the inner ceiling.
It gives a new meaning to the end of ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’… whatever you do… don’t look at them! There was an expectation that this would produce an emanation but again the method demonstrated was very interesting.
Overall, although there were not huge revelation on the evening, there did appear to be contacts of different sorts, and was I impressed? Definitely. But being a natural sceptic, my curiosity will require further investigations into this grey area of a relatively new science. Religion and spiritualism have been around for a long time, but the technological approach to investigating the beyond is something new, looking into a different world of colour spectrums and sound bands outwith our everyday experience.
Whatever this phenomena is I truly yet do not understand. But my ignorance is no excuse for brushing it all off as ‘housewives tales’.
The technology used was at the leading edge of science and the Ghost Searchers Ireland are a very dedicated and experienced team, quite capable of making objective assessments and analysing the data.
It’s just a matter of time before this new approach reveals something very significant.
