The Red Lion
Location - Pontefract, West YorkshireProperty - 16th Century Public House & Coaching Inn
Team Members - 7
Firstly we would like to thank Lynn & Tony for allowing us to carry out our investigation at The Red Lion.
The investigation was led by Andrea who conducted the initial pre investigation visit with team leader Lindsey. They were shown around the property and given details of its history and previous investigation results including investigations carried out by the owners. This was fascinating as the property had a chequered history of prostitution, illegal abortion clinic and temporary use as a morgue in one room! The property is three storey with an attic area too. Due to the size of the property and the amount of rooms on the upper floors it was decided to take 7 team members along on the night.
We set our equipment up in the attic, ballroom & corridor as they were areas reputedly to have a lot of paranormal activity.
The Ballroom - We had two locked off cameras to enable filming of both ends of the room plus a digital recorder placed on the fire surround. We arranged chairs in a semi circle in front of the fireplace as chairs being mysteriously moved around when nobody was there had been reported.
The Corridor
One locked off camera filming the length of the corridor where a male figure has been reported to be seen standing on several occasions.
The Attic
We placed a locked off camera to film down the centre of the attic area and set up a camcorder filming the chair at the very end where we had placed a balloon in the hope that it would have been disturbed at some point in the night. Activity of a spirit child has been experienced in this area. Both the attic and the ballroom were locked off after the equipment was set to avoid any accidental interference with the experiments.
The investigation
We carried out our base tests and started the investigation at 2am. We divided into two teams and planned to do vigils in rooms on the first and second floor. We carried Camcorders, digital recorders and K2 (EMF reader).
Team A started on the first floor rooms and team B the second floor. Team A had some reaction to their questions with the K2 meter in the little girl’s room which was interesting but apart from that there was little happening. We set trigger objects in some of the rooms but nothing had been disturbed.
Team B had also had very little happening in the beginning but as we were coming to the end of the vigils in the accommodation area, team member Lindsey had a personal experience which we had hoped was caught on the camcorder but unfortunately it wasn’t. Because the team were leaving the room the position of the cam had been moved!
The incident happened in the little boys room. As the team were moving out of room the door and the stool which is used to prop open the door both suddenly closed as Lindsey was passing through, such was the force that it knocked her against the wall. Lindsey was not hurt and the rest of the team established that the door swinging too by itself at that force was unlikely but as the incident wasn’t caught on camera its impossible to establish whether or not it moved on its own or if Lindsey had inadvertently caught her leg against the stool. Lindsey is quite adamant that she didn’t and felt she would definitely have been aware if she had. I have complete faith in our investigators as they are looking for hard and irrefutable evidence of paranormal activity.
Things were just starting to hot up and we were looking forward to the rest of the investigation but unfortunately as you are aware the night was cut short due to illness and we had to leave at this point!. We were disappointed obviously because things were starting to happen but that’s how it goes sometimes and we will hopefully be given the opportunity to go back and continue were we left off. The footage : On examining the footage we didn’t catch anything unusual on either the cameras or the audio save for a couple of unaccountable bangs in the attic area.