The first hour at the museum was spent taking publicity photos, and showing around the venue the kind people that had come to visit. But all too soon midnight rolled around, and it was time to stop chatting with the security guard, descend into the cells, and turn off the lights.
I had a strong LED torch and another mounted on a headband, and (I’m not ashamed to admit) one or other of these was switched on all night. I also had two videocams, one with night-vision, plus my phone, although that was only useful as a clock because there was no signal down in the cells.
I chose for a base the cell nearest the entrance on the female corridor (where the women inmates were formerly incarcerated, often with their children). On my previous visit I’d noticed how this area has the least sinister atmosphere, so it seemed a good choice. Little did I suspect that my selection would later be called seriously into question.
The pattern for the evening, I’d decided, would be to sit in meditation for as long as possible in the base cell, making forays with the night-vision camera to explore each other area at least once, and taking short but regular comfort-breaks to use the toilet and drink cups of strong green tea from the flask I’d left upstairs in the town hall waiting-area. To begin, I took a good long meditation sit, hoping to build up a solid head of concentration and calmness.
'Good consternoon, Afternable...'
There was no point during the entire evening that I didn’t feel at least slightly anxious. During that first sit, I noticed how much noise there was in the ‘silence’ of the museum. There were layers upon layers of vibratory sound: electrical systems, piping, and noises from outside the building: people shouting on their way between town centre bars. Another advantage of the female cells was they had windows – albeit mostly opaque, and at basement level – but they weren’t as cut off from the world as the rest of the site.
What I noticed, however, was that all these sounds were fuelling my imagination. If I listened deeply into the noise, I heard voices moaning and mumbling. To my ear (or rather, my mind) they were women’s voices. I wondered how I could be so sure that screams from outside in the street weren’t actually noises from inside the other cells.
Unsettling though this was, it seemed clearly the workings of imagination, which I could easily suppress. Apart from this, there was the odd creak or crack from walls and furniture, but this was obviously the natural settling of an old building and no cause for alarm.
Sometime after 2 a.m., anxiety turned into outright fear for the first time, as I began to hear clear and physical sounds from somewhere close, for which I had no explanation.
The first one caught me off-guard whilst I speaking a progress report into the videocam. I heard footsteps coming down the stairs to the cells, and assumed it was the security guard needing to tell me something. Instead of entering the cells, the footsteps stopped short and there was a noise like someone trying a door handle and pushing against a door. Part of this is heard quite clearly on the video soundtrack. It was so loud and unexpected that it stopped me in mid-sentence.
My heart hammered in my mouth, and I was holding my breath to stop myself panting with fear. I still half-expected the security guard to open the door and call out. Instead, the sounds just stopped. There was no noise of anyone retreating back up the stairs.
A short while later, panic hit me again as I heard the soft but clear sound of something sizeable moving unhurriedly along the corridor outside my cell. I wasn’t recording at the time.
Luckily, my meditation practice was seeing me through. It’s not that I wasn’t scared – indeed, I was really, really scared – but the practice was for recognising and accepting fear. Once you’re afraid, it helps to recognise that fear has now had its way with you. That’s it; once scared, there’s nothing left other than to be scared. Feeling fear as clearly as possible helps us (in a way) to deal with it.
But this is easier said than done, of course. And I was tested to my limits when, a while later, again I heard someone approaching, and once more I wondered if it were the security guard. This time it terminated in a sound like rattling keys, or someone trying keys repeatedly in a lock, looking for one that fitted. It went on for quite some time, before stopping short.
At this point I realised the meditator in me was in conflict with the paranormal investigator. From the investigator’s perspective, by meditating I was neglecting the opportunity to discover the actual cause of the noise. Whereas from the meditator’s perspective, the investigator was allowing the fear to dictate his actions, rather than simply accepting things for what they were.
My 'Blair Witch' moment. Really, really scared.
I couldn’t suppress my curiosity and decided that if the noise came back then I’d flip on the night-vision camera and dart outside to see what was there. If it were truly paranormal, then that would give the meditator something to suck on all he liked!
The next time I heard the tell-tale sounds of its approach I was waiting at the door, camera in trembling hand and heart in mouth. But oddly, it faded away and seemed to retreat back up the stairs. I wondered if it had heard me, or somehow knew I was waiting for it.
It was past 4 a.m. when the next opportunity arose. I heard it approach, and the sound of rattling keys was loud as I snapped on the camera and cautiously opened my cell door. And then I received the most horrible shock of the night – the noise was coming from inside the cell right next to mine!
I’d chosen for my place of safety a position next to the only permanently locked cell in the museum. It had a sign on the door that said ‘Staff Only’, and was secured by a sturdy-looking modern lock. But the strange noises I’d been hearing were definitely coming from inside.
Now that I was up close, the noise was less like ‘rattling keys’, more like someone riffling through packaging or plastic. It was so weird and desperate, a sound like that at 4.20 a.m., as if someone were searching frantically for something they couldn’t find.
I knocked on the door. ‘Hello,’ I said, and offered to help, if help were wanted. I expected the noise might stop, but the sound of desperate riffling continued. It’s quite faint on the video soundtrack, but can definitely be heard. Then I noticed the top portion of the door had open bars, so reaching up with the night-vision camera and torch I pointed both into the interior of the cell, to take a peep where I couldn’t. Again, I expected the noise would stop at this intrusion, but it continued as loud as before.
What the hell was doing that? At first I supposed it was a draught, but a draught would have caused sounds throughout the night and this was definitely episodic. My next guess was rats or mice, but surely my knocking, my movements, and the flash-light over the door would have scared rodents away. Maybe it was a large insect or a spider scuttling amongst papers or trash, but it would have to be a whopper to make that much noise.
Here I was in the dead of night, alone and in the dark, in a haunted place, with clear and inexplicable noises coming from right next to me. It may sound as if I wasn’t all that scared. Believe me, I was terrified, which the video footage perhaps does a better job of conveying. But even so, what was there left to do? If it were a spirit then I’d offered help and received no reply. So I went back into the cell, sat back on my cushion and carried on meditating, even as my limbs continued to shake, and my mind continued to recoil from the weird images that the sounds next door continued to evoke.
What the videocam revealed during the noises from the haunted cell.
It was a good half-hour before the noises finally stopped. I felt a lot better once they had. The aim of the meditation was to focus on fear, and I was amazed to find myself actually following the instructions for the practice and purposely thinking of scary things in order to keep myself scared. I never imagined I’d do that, but I knew that without the practice I would never have lasted, and without any fear to focus upon I wouldn’t be able to keep it going.
The time was inching now towards 5 a.m. Nothing strange happened from that point on, but I was wary of relaxing. I’d had so many odd experiences in the museum I wasn’t about to underestimate it. But even the anxiously-awaited foray into the male cells, the most haunted part, failed to throw up any further weirdness.
At 6 a.m. I heard seagulls and the city waking up outside. I turned on all the lights and made a final tour of the site. I put a chair by the door of the locked cell and stood upon it to take a good look inside. It was a storeroom for assorted junk, and it did indeed contain the kind of plastic sheeting and packaging that the sounds suggested. But all was now quiet, and I couldn’t see any obvious cause for the noise.
Upstairs, I was surprised to find lights blazing and staff already arriving for work. A new security guard was on duty. ‘Are there ever mice or rats downstairs?’ I asked.
‘I’ve worked here for twenty years,’ he replied, ‘and there have never been mice or rats in the building.’
It was over. One of the most fascinating and intense experiences I’d ever had. Was there a ghost in the cell next-door? At the time it seemed so, and even if I do find a good material explanation it will never take away the fear and the conviction I had that I was witnessing a ghost right then. But, looking back, tendrils of confusion are entwining themselves already about my memory of events. The noise of riffling in the next-door cell I assumed was what caused the previous sounds of ‘rattling keys’ and ‘a door handle’. When we hear something unfamiliar, the mind suggests images that fit our surroundings; keys and door-handles seem more likely among prison cells than plastic packaging.
Yet since reviewing the video footage, the ‘door handle’ captured on the soundtrack sounds quite different from the noises recorded from the next-door cell. So perhaps the sounds were different after all, and what transpired in the cell next-door was indeed distinct from what I had heard before it.
It seems impossible to be sure, but maybe the video, which I’m currently editing and hope to have ready soon, will help readers form an opinion. One thing I’m certain of, however, is how much I enjoyed the night – in retrospect, at least. If anyone can offer me the opportunity to do anything like this again, I’d love to hear from you.
