Ghost Report from Dudley Castle

 

This investigation happened with the help of one of our top fans, Joanne who told us about this 6 hour investigation and who also suggested accommodation and even invited us to dinner before the tour.

Joining us was also Callum, Joanne's son and his girlfriend Danielle and the five of us made our way to the Castle which was about 45 minutes away from Cannock Chase where we were staying.

When we reached the Castle it was still light and we all met out the front, shown where to park and then taken into the break out room which was situated in a small Cafe in what used to be the old stables.

There were about 30 of us and we were broken up into two groups which would rotate between 4 different experiments.

Our first task took us into a room that had walls which contained a time line of events in the castle and we conducted a vigil to see if we could make a connection with a spirit named Alice. She was allegedly an old hag she had a bit of a temper. Callum was pointed out, as the only man in our group, and the Spirit of Alice seemed to take a liking to him making cat balls flash and getting some responses when he talked. 

We then moved into the famously haunted undercroft which lay sort of under what might have been the chapel. This area was distinctly different and we got a very quick view of the area and lights went out for our second vigil which was to make contact with the Spirit of a man who was within that area who was very nasty and did not like women.

We stood in a circle and held hands and Susan, our guide started to talk about how this energy was a nasty person and how she really didn't like him. She started to be quite liberal with her thoughts about his character and many people in the circle stated to feel as though this energy was walking around the outside of the circle, watching and judging. There were a few prods and pokes and temperatures were going up and down People were reporting seeing dark shadows moving between us and being held down or pushed forward. 

This was an intense experience for many and Anne who was with me, of course, started to agitate the spirit along with our guide Susan who was pretty relentless in asking him to show himself.

We all needed a break and came back to the break out area for coffee and then we continued with our next series of experiments.

We returned to the first room with the time line on the wall and used the ouija board.

We connected with a Spirit named Anna who, through using the board, communicated that she was 48 when she passed and had 6 children. She was a lady at the Castle and her husband had not treated her well.

She asked us for help and she wanted to leave so we took time to explain to her that it was OK and that she would not be judged and that she could leave with those she wanted to take with her. We asked her to reach out to someone she knew to help her have confidence to leave this plane and in the end her energy faded.

We also talked briefly to Alice and asked if Anna had left and she said that she had indeed gone. We asked Alice if she was old and she told us that she was 28 and that she was pretty and not a hag at all.

This chat when on for a little while as we joked and got very clear responses to questions.

But it was time to move to our next experiment.

This was was held outdoors in front of an old cottage that stood just outside the gates of the Castle. We think it was the groundsman's cottage and the story was that the groundsman had murdered his daughter who had fallen in love with a worker on the property - someone her father did not approve of and after her death he hanged himself in one of the rooms of the cottage. Both the daughter has been seen and so has the father, who appears through one of the windows.

The guide, who tried so very hard to make activity happen did get a few results with cat balls and the Spirit Talker App but it was had going.

I was not a fan of this experiment but I have to give it to the guide for being tenacious and not giving up.

We then took part in a Spirit Box Session using the Estes method where one person is put onto headphones and is listening to the Spirit Box chatter whilst someone else is calling out questions that the person on the headphones cannot hear.

Anne decided to give this a go and she ended up making sense with her responses as at the end of her session one of the guides mentioned that Anne had referred to someone buy name who had died several months ago in an accident at the site and Anne had said that this person had referred to someone as a 'tool' which is exactly what the deceased person had said to the guide in their last conversation before his death.

We then had free time and we decided to go back to the undercroft to see in we could communicate further with the help of a new device called the Tracer Light Wire which is made up of long lengths of LED lights that flash when the sense movement. We also had cat balls, REM pods and K2 meters set up.

This ended up being a very quiet session with not a lot of activity from any of the devices set up. We did ask the spirit if he wanted us to go into the stone coffin that was in one of the corners (there was one in each corner) and one of only a handful of reactions was received and so I stepped into the very tight and very uncomfortable coffin on one side and Anne stepped into the other coffin.

All still remained quite unremarkable after that even though we did try to aggravate the spirit further. This was led by Susan who had joined the group by this stage and was ready to wage war against the spirit who she believed was a really terrible person and she did not like him at all.

In the end we finished at 3am and we got home at 4pm totally exhausted.

I really had a great time. It was a joy to just be part of an investigation instead of leading it for a change. I enjoyed the area we got to see. The guides were awesome and really tried very hard to create activity and to get everyone to join in. I think they did an exceptional job on a night when some groups had more activity than others and in some places it was very quiet. ( actually quite the usual as is the normal way things tend to go in investigations).

Would I go back? Yes I would.

Would I recommend it? Yes for sure.

I wish that more of the Castle was open but a huge part of it had succumbed to a fire which burnt down a substantial part of the accommodation side of the buildings and they were just an empty shell. I would have liked to go up to the Keep which I did not go up to as it was too dark and cold for me and I would have enjoyed exploring the site a little longer.