Edition 568 - Liz Cormell
Psychic and investigator Liz Cormell - in the English Midlands - worked for a UK police force and now spends a lot of her time checking out some of the UK's scariest locations...
Psychic and investigator Liz Cormell - in the English Midlands - worked for a UK police force and now spends a lot of her time checking out some of the UK's scariest locations...
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Across the UK, across continental North America and around the world on the internet, by webcast and by podcast. | |
My name is Howard Hughes and this is The Unexplained. | |
Hope that you're doing well. | |
I'm recording this in the last week of August and I'm looking out the window now. | |
We have some rare sunshine here. | |
We've had weeks and weeks and weeks of cloud and a lot of rain too. | |
And I know that if you're in America, certainly around the New York area, eastern seaboard, you had that tropical storm to deal with that caused a lot of havoc. | |
So my thoughts are with you about that. | |
But the weather has been playing tricks on us here. | |
We've mostly missed our summer. | |
They're telling us that in the next few days things should improve a bit. | |
But it just seems to me that a switch was turned or flipped or whatever they do with switches about three weeks ago. | |
And whatever it was controlling things decided that we were going to move towards autumn and kind of skip the rest of the summer. | |
We'll see what happens, but what a weird year this has been. | |
And, you know, for a lot of us, a big portion of this year has been lost, although we're beginning to creep back to normality now. | |
So strange times. | |
You know, sometimes I don't know whether you get this with people. | |
I was speaking to somebody yesterday and I said, I'll tell you who it was. | |
It was Elaine Allen, the ghost investigator and ghost guide in Liverpool. | |
And I said, and of course we met 18 months ago. | |
And she said, that was nearly three years ago. | |
I had completely lost track of time. | |
I think that's what's happening. | |
Thank you very much for all of your emails, the nice comments that you make. | |
Very much looking for guest suggestions, either well-known guests who you know or people that you've come across you think might be interesting for this show. | |
You know, I'm giving a lot of thought to the future direction of the unexplained. | |
You know, I've always got to do that because doing the radio show, you never know when the radio show might be ended, and then we have to rearrange things quite substantially. | |
But not only that, the podcast in itself requires a lot of thought, and I think periodically you just have to give it a bit of a review, which is what I'm trying to do. | |
I know that there are people who email me and say, why don't you do all ghost podcasts? | |
I don't want to hear all the rest. | |
Or why don't you do more science podcasts? | |
I don't want those ghosts. | |
Or are you going to have a medium on, which I am going to have on this edition, a slightly different medium? | |
Don't want to hear any of that. | |
I like to think that one of the strengths of the unexplained, just like the strength of the old Arc Bell shows, was that we tackle a lot of different subjects here. | |
And we have guests who are big names, sometimes people you've never heard of, sometimes people who are completely unknown at the time, but like Paul Sinclair, they build a huge fan base, very proud of what Paul has achieved, and Craig Bryant, you know, who we've had on the show a number of times, you know, who are getting readerships around the world or a readership around the world. | |
You know, I like to throw it all up into the air periodically and just see where it all lands. | |
So that's what I'm going to do on this edition of the show. | |
A listener, Ian, in Biggles Wade, got in touch and suggested Liz Cormel, who is a claircognizant medium and a lot of other things too. | |
And I read a little bit about her, never heard of her, and I thought, okay, we don't always have to do the big names who are doing all the shows. | |
Sometimes, let's do somebody different. | |
That's the idea of this. | |
So your thoughts about that? | |
Gratefully received. | |
Tell me what you think about this show or any of the shows that you've heard. | |
Go to the website theunexplained.tv. | |
You know the address by now. | |
Created and designed by Adam. | |
And you can send me an email from there. | |
Tell me what you think. | |
Also, don't forget there is existing now and doing really well, but it would do even better if you were part of it, the official Facebook page of The Unexplained with Howard Hughes. | |
That is there too. | |
And that's absolutely rocking. | |
So like I say, as we're coming to the end of this summer and looking down the barrel of yet another year, 2022, God, I'm giving some thought as to the future direction of the podcast and how it's all organized. | |
And we'll see how things go. | |
And as I've suggested, the future direction of everything I do depends on a number of things, partly the radio show, but other things too. | |
And you've suggested in your emails to me that I need to be looking towards developing the show even further. | |
So that's what I'm going to do. | |
Thank you very much to Haley for booking the guests, including this one, Liz Cormel, Claire Cognizant Medium. | |
I don't know anything about her. | |
Normally I go into shows. | |
And every so often I throw myself a curveball and I do a show that I haven't done a ton of preparation for, just to see where that goes. | |
I think you can be over-prepared. | |
I know Art Bell believed this. | |
You know, you shouldn't know everything about a guest you're about to speak with, because then you will make assumptions, and if you make assumptions, you're going to miss stuff out. | |
This one, though, I'm doing without any prior knowledge, really. | |
I've read a couple of things about the guest, but I just thought, let's chuck it up in the air, see where it goes, and take it from there. | |
So that's my thought. | |
Now, remember, if you want to get in touch with me by email, as always, tell me who you are, where you are, and how you use this show. | |
Vital information for me. | |
All right, let's get to another part, I think, the English Midlands, where Liz Cormel resides. | |
And say, Liz Cormel, thank you for coming on The Unexplained. | |
Thank you ever so much for inviting me. | |
Well, no, the guy who emailed me about you, who I think you know, Ian in Biggles Wade, hello, Ian, I'm sure you're listening, raved about you. | |
So I thought, okay, I'm going to throw myself into this one. | |
I'm not going to do my usual tons of preparation for it. | |
I bore my colleagues, certainly for the radio show, because I am Mr. Prepared most of the time. | |
I always have a ton of notes. | |
I spend so long typing, my fingers ache. | |
And every so often I give myself a little holiday. | |
And I think sometimes you can learn more about a person. | |
So we've got to go on the complete voyage here, the journey, with you and me. | |
Whereabouts are you, first of all? | |
I'm in Starbridge, which is just southwest of Birmingham in the beautiful Black Country. | |
Okay, well, you know that I know that area because I used to work on Radio Wyvern in Worcester. | |
And if you go up from Worcester, you've got Kidderminster and if you go up and right a bit I think or maybe just straight up from Kidderminster then you've got Starbridge haven't you? | |
Yes, it is just slightly right, I think. | |
Yes. | |
And not to mention Luglow and all those other nice places that are not too far away. | |
So I know what we're talking about. | |
And have you always lived there? | |
Not always, but I was born around here. | |
In fact, I live 10 minutes away from where I was born. | |
And I spent a year down in Reading and moved up to Blackheath for work. | |
but I've come back to my alma mater. | |
um back to Stourbridge which I love. | |
Okay well it sounds like we've got a lot in common. | |
Number one you worked in the police and number two you worked you lived in Reading. | |
Whereabouts in Reading did you live? | |
I went to the university so I lived just outside Early Gates in Cavendish area. | |
It was a rented student house so back in them days. | |
Now Reading is a great place to be a student. | |
But anyway, that's by the way. | |
I don't know how we tackle this. | |
Let's talk about the police experience then because you are a medium now. | |
You're described. | |
I found one little paragraph about you online as a clear cognizant medium. | |
But you worked in the police force. | |
Now, I know that the police use mediums and psychics sometimes to trace people and get clues. | |
But a lot of the people, and my dad was a copper, a lot of people who work on the force and around the force have no truck with anything like this. | |
Yeah, I think the Americans use mediums more openly, whereas the UK police, it's very much not frowned upon, but it's not an accepted form of investigation. | |
But there's certain old school detectives, I guess, where they get the detective's instinct. | |
And I guess that's pretty much what we're talking about. | |
You weren't a serving officer, though. | |
No, I wasn't. | |
I was a civilian, but I was a scene as a crime officer. | |
So though I wasn't a serving officer with all the warranted powers that went along with that, I still collected evidence, went through all the investigative process relating to crime scenes, and then presented the evidence in court. | |
Okay, now it's a very responsible job, I have to say. | |
And maybe in my early reporting days, I might even have seen you doing this. | |
I don't know. | |
But anyway, I want to wind things back to the beginning and we'll come to the police experience. | |
But I was just interested in the fact that somebody who'd been, you know, working for a police force was also a medium. | |
You know, that's quite a rarity, I think, unless there are many of them and they're just keeping quiet. | |
Like a lot of people, this one bare paragraph that I read about you, this gift that you say you have, this ability that you say that you have, all of this started very young for you. | |
It did, yeah. | |
I remember from a very early age realizing that I could not CC because I'm not clairvoyant, but I was aware of things that not everybody else was aware of. | |
So my first, I guess, paranormal experience was when I was seven or eight, maybe, staying at my grandparents' house and seeing a man stood in the bay window at their house, which scared me, obviously, not knowing an awful lot about what I was dealing with, screamed the place down. | |
And my nan came in and said, oh, no, no, it's nothing to worry about. | |
It's just shadows and there's a bedside lamp and all this kind of thing and brushed it under the carpet. | |
I later found out that it's actually come down from that side of the family. | |
So she knew exactly what I was talking about, I have a feeling. | |
My mom has the gift as well. | |
Various of my great aunts and my mom's cousins do. | |
So my dad calls it the family jungle drums. | |
Everybody knows everybody's business before it's announced. | |
So you're kind of, I mean, we all have this, I think, to an extent, maybe. | |
But you're a particularly, what, sensitive family? | |
You would know things that were going to happen before they happened sort of thing? | |
Yeah, not so much in the terms of, I guess, what everybody would think of as precognition or dream premonitions or anything like that. | |
It was more like when somebody was about to get married, you kind of know that there was something going on and you'd phone the person and say, oh, yes, I realize you're pregnant or I kind of knew that already. | |
I knew there was some big news coming down the line. | |
Okay. | |
If your friends and other members of the family who don't share this gift are aware of this, doesn't that make for a bit of an uneasy relationship with them? | |
Because if you're able to suss out what's going on with them, some people don't like that. | |
Yeah. | |
You think so? | |
I guess some of it stems from the fact that my mom's side of the family were always a close family. | |
So that side of the family weren't really too bothered about everybody knowing their business before they announced it. | |
And it wasn't, like I say, detailed enough that you could go, oh, well, so-and-so's just moved in with so-and-so and they've just bought a new car. | |
It wasn't all that kind of detailed. | |
It was just a feeling that you knew something was about to be announced or something big was about to happen in the family. | |
And the information, how would it come to you? | |
Would it be just like a feeling or would you hear something or see something? | |
How did that work? | |
Well, I think we were all claire cognizant, which is it's Greek for clear knowing, the claire being the clear and cognizant being related to the brain. | |
And I describe it as if somebody asks you your name, you don't have to think about it before you respond. | |
It's just there. | |
And I get messages from wherever I get the messages from, spirit, the universe, whatever you believe, in the same way. | |
So it's almost like a memory. | |
It's in my head. | |
If somebody asks me a question, I've got the answer ready and I don't really know where that answer's come from. | |
Can you think of times when that gift has helped you in your life? | |
Certainly I've avoided a reasonable number of holdups on motorways where something in the back of my mind said, Get off the motorway. | |
And I've learnt to pay attention to those little voices in my head, that little feeling. | |
Got home and then found out that there's been a multiple car pile up and three-hour tailbacks and all that kind of thing. | |
And I've avoided it because I've listened to my instinct and got off the motorway beforehand. | |
So it certainly helps with that. | |
It's a useful thing. | |
You've got to listen to it. | |
A couple of years ago, I was on the M25. | |
And you know what? | |
The M25 orbital motorway around London is a nightmare all the time. | |
I avoid it if I possibly can, but I had to be on this. | |
I was coming back from work. | |
And I was pretty tired. | |
And a voice said to me, almost subliminally in my head, it said, get off at the next junction and go the other way round. | |
Otherwise, you're going to get stuck. | |
Yes. | |
I rationalized it out, though. | |
I thought to myself, that's ridiculous. | |
I'm going to defy this because it just can't be. | |
So I missed the junction and got two minutes beyond the junction and there was a tail back and I was stuck for a couple of hours. | |
So that told me. | |
Yes, I've learned pretty quickly to listen to that little instinct, however irrational or improbable it seems. | |
I've learnt over the last maybe 10, 20 years to listen to that little voice. | |
And as a young person, you know, before work started, maybe while you were still at school or maybe in that period between school and work, did you ever have situations where you were able to detect bad things that might be about to happen to you or around you? | |
I have to say, no. | |
I'm fairly lucky that it tends to be positive things that I have experiences about. | |
I do tarot readings and I always say to people about readings, I don't tend to pick up negative things or I put a positive spin on things. | |
That's just the way I am, I guess. | |
This little paragraph I've got here, one piece of paper, tells me that age 17, you dated somebody from the Romani tradition who taught you things like tarot reading. | |
Yes, well, it was his mother who was Romany and she taught me to read tarot using regular playing cards. | |
So you really are listening to the cards rather than picking up the messages from the pictures, which standard cards, most tarot cards have pictures and oracle cards and things like that. | |
So I learnt the hard way, I guess, which I'm grateful for because tarot readings are really easy. | |
I don't really have to concentrate on them. | |
I find them second nature now. | |
So if you deal out the cards and you get like, I don't know, five of clubs or ace of spades, which is supposed to be the cursed card, do those all have meanings? | |
Do they in a standard deck of cards? | |
It's more the lay I use, I've never seen anybody else use. | |
It's a pyramid rather than the traditional Celtic cross. | |
So it's basically the first three cards are the recent past. | |
And next to those are two cards which are relating to the present. | |
So all the bottom line all relate to each other. | |
And then you go up to the next level. | |
So there's one card from the present and then three cards from the near future. | |
And they all relate to each other. | |
So it all kind of, it's a story that flows on from each other. | |
So it's not just isolated cards in a position mean certain things. | |
I find it easier to interpret like that rather than, like you say, you get the Ace of Spades or the Five of Clubs and look at those in isolation. | |
And presumably, and that's a big presumption that I'm making, you don't go into it expecting the person who comes to you, maybe for fun, maybe with a more serious intent, you don't expect them to tell you or ask you anything. | |
Is that right? | |
You don't want to know. | |
Otherwise, it's going to colour the reading. | |
Yeah, no, I find reading for people I don't know a lot easier than reading for people I do know because I'm a sceptical medium. | |
I'm always sceptical about what I'm telling them. | |
Is it because I know it already and I'm just interpreting subconsciously what they've told me in the past that I'm remembering? | |
Or am I actually getting the messages from the cards? | |
So I actually find it a lot easier when I don't know anything about the people because it's then down to the cards and me interpreting the cards and not cold reading or looking at them giving me a question and me second guessing what they want the answer to be. | |
You know, I think you're lucky in a lot of ways. | |
I've spoken with people who had terrible experiences in their young years, you know, where they've had mothers and fathers or people at school around them, teachers, authority figures who'd be very much against this. | |
It seems to me that you're very comfortable, always have been with all of this stuff. | |
I guess part of that is because I'm a confident person. | |
I've always been, this is me, take it or leave it. | |
My family weren't particularly happy with what I was doing. | |
And my mum's family, they were strict Catholic. | |
So it was never openly discussed that we have these gifts or abilities. | |
It was just accepted. | |
So I guess I was lucky in that I've got the confidence and I was given the confidence by my upbringing to say, okay, I can do this. | |
This is what I want to do. | |
And that led me into doing paranormal investigations later on. | |
Now, I haven't asked you at any stage, and you don't have to tell me what era this was. | |
But I think we all have to bear in mind that things have changed for this kind of practice. | |
The view of it is much different. | |
You know, I do a radio show and have done this podcast for 17 years Now, and I was always interested in these things. | |
But when I started being interested in these things, a lot of people around me, especially in newsrooms, were very much against it and they would look down on me. | |
So, you know, I guess we're all a product of our era. | |
But was it easy for you, beyond your family experience, which smoothed the way for you, and the fact that you had a Romani connection when you were 17? | |
You know, the outside circumstances, did they nurture you, help you to develop? | |
Not to begin with, because I was born in the mid-70s. | |
So until I was in my 30s, it wasn't anything that I discussed with friends or made generally known. | |
It wasn't until I was in my 30s, I guess, early 2000s, that a friend of mine and I went on a ghost hunt, I guess, with one of the initial big companies that ran entertainment events. | |
And that's where I got hooked. | |
And we did that as a bit of a laugh, bit of fun on a Saturday night kind of thing. | |
And that's when I got hooked. | |
And then I joined other groups that meant I was meeting like-minded people. | |
But up until that point, there weren't many people who knew what I did in my spare time, I guess. | |
And certainly in the police, it wasn't until mid-2000s, 2010, maybe that I was open about, yes, I did paranormal investigations and yes, I was a witch and a pagan. | |
And because it just you were scared of being laughed at, I guess. | |
Well, I'm glad you brought the police thing into it. | |
How old were you when you joined the police? | |
I was 22, fresh out of university, pretty much. | |
Okay, and you go straight into CSI, and that's a very responsible and quite demanding thing. | |
Did this ability have any impact on that work? | |
In other words, did you know things? | |
Did you sense things? | |
A lot of policing is instinct. | |
Yeah, I looking back, there must have been times where instinctively I've gone to look somewhere and thought, well, why did what made me look there for evidence? | |
But at the time, I wasn't switched on is the phrase I kind of use. | |
I had a work brain and I had a me brain. | |
And when I was at work, I was very logical. | |
It was all very much prescribed. | |
This is what you did at this crime scene. | |
There's a certain amount of free thinking and interpretation of the scene, but I wouldn't have thought of that as being psychic or using my mediumship abilities at all. | |
But looking back, there must have been times where I've taken a leap and thought, and looking back now, I'm thinking, well, what made me take that leap? | |
Was this West Midlands police? | |
Yes, it was, yes. | |
Okay. | |
There's a guy who, weird that I've forgotten his name. | |
I'll look it up, but I had him on the podcast. | |
He's written a book about haunted police stations of the West Midlands, many of them in the Birmingham area. | |
Yes, yes. | |
Right, and while you're talking, I'll look him up. | |
But did you ever come across any of those buildings that are said to him? | |
Oh, yes. | |
I remember spending an awful lot of time in one of the property offices where all the lost property and the crime property was stored and getting to know the property officer there, who's still quite a good friend. | |
And he's into investigations and has been for a while. | |
And we, you know, when you start feeling other people out and you think, well, actually, you're on the same wavelength as me. | |
And he'd tell me stories about things that had happened in the property office and going to the public order training event place, which is at RAF, was at RAF Cosford. | |
And when they got to know, the trainers there got to know what I did and my interests outside of work, they'd come and see me one by one. | |
It was never in a big group. | |
It was never admitted to a group of people, but they'd come and tell me stories about, oh, I saw so-and-so. | |
And I don't like locking up this hangar on my own because of X, Y, and Z. So, yeah, there's definitely a few stations that a lot of police officers, although they may not openly admit it, are a little bit wary of, walking around by themselves in the middle of the night. | |
Well, no, there was one in particular that Andy Gilbert is the guy's name, that Andy told me about. | |
I think he's been featured in the local media there, certainly in the local newspapers. | |
And this was one where a police officer was on duty downstairs by himself, and there was something going on upstairs. | |
And I think he came across an officer wearing an old-fashioned policeman's cape upstairs. | |
But there were all sorts of experiences like that. | |
And I guess it's true that in policing, those buildings, all human life is there. | |
You know, there are people who are there being interviewed about murders. | |
There are people confessing crimes, denying crimes, going through anguish, officers who've seen and experienced terrible things. | |
My dad was a police officer and he would come home and not talk about it. | |
He was just dad when he'd come home from a late shift. | |
But some of the stuff that you go through, all of that imprints itself, I think, on the place that you're in. | |
Yes. | |
And of course, a lot of them had courtrooms attached and some of them had the morgues attached. | |
I mean, Smethick, Piddock Road, the front office of Piddock Road Police Station is where the mortuary used to be. | |
So there's the full gambits of human emotions and human states, whether that's alive, dead, anywhere in between kind of thing. | |
So yeah, it's completely understandable. | |
And then you've got the psychometric side of it where items, murder weapons, property from murder victims or suicide victims or road traffic collisions and all that kind of thing, the emotion that's attached to those items potentially, but this stuff did not become serious to you, did it, until you started joining paranormal groups going on tours. | |
Is that right? | |
Yeah, no, I kind of switched it off, I guess. | |
Life gets in the way, I suppose. | |
From 17, 18, you're exploring yourself and what's possible, which is when I got into the tarot and astral projection and reading Alastair Crowley and that kind of thing. | |
Then university, I studied archaeology. | |
So there was a certain amount of dabbling because you're looking at ritual and there's a few archaeologists in the past that used dowsing to find sites. | |
And then bang into the police force, it's all real life. | |
It's all there happening in front of you, all walks of society. | |
So I kind of switched it off, didn't really pay much attention. | |
And then, as I said, a friend of mine and I, a work colleague of mine and I, went on a commercial investigation ghost hunt for a laugh. | |
And it all kicked off again from there, really. | |
It all kicked off? | |
Yes. | |
Well, I had a couple of experiences on that public event and said to the medium, why am I getting this? | |
Why am I experiencing this? | |
And he said, did you know you're a medium? | |
And I went, no, what do you mean? | |
He said, I think you need to do a development course. | |
So I found a weekend development course, which included meditation. | |
It was at an old hall. | |
So there was an investigation on the Saturday night. | |
And I had my first trance experience there. | |
And it was like, that's it. | |
I'm hooked. | |
All right, let me take you back to know more. | |
Because we're leaping ahead of ourselves very slightly, but there's a lot to say here. | |
On that first experience where the medium who was part of the guiding team said to you, you need to do some more of this because you've got the gift, you've got the fluence. | |
What was it that you experienced? | |
It was at a place called Coldycott Castle, which some of your listeners will know very well for being haunted. | |
And we were in one of the towers that's got, it isn't enclosed anymore. | |
Most of the walls are broken down, but there's a wooden walkway. | |
And I'd got up to the inside the tower in the wooden walkway and my ears were ringing like proper tinnitus. | |
And I said, it feels like there's an explosion gone off. | |
And my ears are ringing from the explosion. | |
And he said, well, what can you see? | |
What else are you experiencing? | |
And I described this soldier with half his face missing. | |
And he said, yeah, I think you need to develop this further. | |
And then just walking around that evening, there was one bit of the keep and I could smell herbs. | |
And I was looking around for like sage and thyme and there wasn't any. | |
And I said to the medium, I can smell this. | |
And he said, did you know this was the area of the kitchen garden? | |
And I said, no, I didn't know that at all. | |
I'd never been to the castle before. | |
And he said, I think you're picking that up psychically. | |
You definitely need to develop. | |
So it piqued the investigative side of my brain, I suppose. | |
My logical brain was going, yeah, this is a load of old rubbish. | |
But, okay, well, why am I having these experiences? | |
If it's not mediumship and I'm not communicating with spirits, what's happening? | |
Because I've just come up with information that I couldn't know in any other way. | |
So the scientific side of me went, I need to know more about this. | |
I need to do more experiments on myself. | |
So I've heard people being told, you know, you need to develop, get some training. | |
I've never really asked anybody how does that happen? | |
So you did this. | |
I did it. | |
Like I say, I found a development weekend and it was run. | |
I can't even remember the people who did it now. | |
I mean, we're talking back in 2005 now. | |
And it was a husband and wife and they'd got a historian. | |
And the whole weekend was around learning to meditate, trying psychometry, trying ink readings. | |
And then there was a paranormal investigation on the Saturday evening. | |
And I thought, well, it's a cheap weekend away. | |
If I get nothing else out of it, I'm going to learn how to meditate, which is always good because you're relaxing and that kind of thing. | |
It was a place called Grendon Hall, which I know there's a load. | |
If you Google Grendon Hall, I've never been able to find the place again. | |
But I came up with all sorts of information about SOE. | |
I had a trance experience with an RAF officer who'd got a leg injury, so he'd been given a desk job, couldn't fly anymore. | |
And he'd been put in charge of this SOE station at this old hall. | |
And I was answering questions that the historian was telling me. | |
And she actually had to go away and research it because she didn't know the answers. | |
She came back to me and said, you're spot on. | |
How did you know that? | |
Because it took me a long time to research it. | |
And I said, well, I can't explain why. | |
I just was talking to this RAF guy. | |
And I'd given his name, rank and number at one point. | |
So she was able to trace him. | |
So this was the spirit of somebody who'd worked at Grendon Hall during the war. | |
And now this, I'm just looking it up now. | |
I'd never heard of it. | |
It's in Northamptonshire, isn't it? | |
And it was used for what? | |
For intelligence? | |
It was an SOE station. | |
So it was the Special Operations Executive. | |
So they were the ones who put the spies over into France to help the resistance and find out German troop movements and all that kind of thing. | |
But I gave code names for some of the operatives. | |
I mean, we're going back a while now and I can't remember all the details, but I do know that she came back to me two or three weeks later and said, I've done an awful lot of research and I found who you were talking to and who you are talking about. | |
And I remember walking into this one room and we could smell this chemical smell. | |
And somebody said, oh, what has a funny smell? | |
And I turned around without thinking and said, it's the chemicals they use to clean the points on the Morse code machines. | |
How amazing. | |
And all that was going on there, we think of Bletchley Park, as you mentioned. | |
This place was SOE Station 53A, and it wasn't in North Hence. | |
It was a bit further down. | |
It's in Buckinghamshire. | |
Right. | |
Like I say, I can't remember the details now. | |
I just turned up and had the experience and thought, oh, that's quite interesting. | |
What do you think you were connecting with there? | |
Because, you know, like we said with the police stations, I firmly believe that the experiences that transpire in a location sometimes imprint themselves on that location. | |
But you went a step beyond that. | |
You were actually getting information off that location and communicating with somebody who'd worked there. | |
Yeah, I think it was, well, the mediumship side of me says, I was talking to this RAF guy who was in charge of the SOE station. | |
The scientific part of me says, well, if it wasn't a spirit, what else could it have been? | |
And there's all sorts of theories about universal knowledge. | |
If the knowledge is out there somewhere, you can plug into like universal Google if you've got the ability to do it. | |
And people ask me how I do it and I don't know. | |
It just happens. | |
And was it two-way? | |
I'm sorry to jump in, but so you were able to ask questions and whatever it was was clearly receiving those questions and responding. | |
Well, it was almost as if they were my memories. | |
So somebody else would ask a question, like the, oh, that's a funny chemical smell. | |
What is it? | |
And I responded without thinking, it's the chemicals used to clean the Morse code points. | |
And that information didn't come from me. | |
It came from something that was telling me that information, if that makes sense. | |
I didn't know that information until they'd asked the question. | |
Were you able to give them something that they hadn't been able to confirm before, or maybe they didn't know? | |
Well, like I say, the name, rank, and number of this RAF guy, the... | |
It took the historian took two or three weeks to confirm it. | |
So it wasn't like there was somebody there with me who knew the information I was giving. | |
And I described him physically. | |
I described his leg injury. | |
He'd got a dog with him. | |
The people around me said I grew to about six foot two. | |
My stature changed. | |
I was stood to attention like a military person would. | |
So it wasn't just the information I was giving. | |
My persona changed, which was the really intriguing part of it. | |
The scientific part of my brain was like, yeah, I need to know more about this. | |
How is this happening? | |
So you're like a sponge for the vibrations in a location? | |
I guess so, yeah. | |
But I'm always looking for that logical explanation. | |
Is it using my archaeology now, my training as an archaeologist to look at a building and go, oh, well, that door's not in the right place or the staircase has moved? | |
But that doesn't explain giving personal information about somebody who's connected with that location. | |
Have you ever fancied contacting this particular officer's family now? | |
To be honest, I couldn't tell you who he was now. | |
I never recorded it. | |
I'm very much an activist. | |
I do and move on to the next thing. | |
I kind of have an experience, go, oh, wow, that's really cool. | |
And then move on to the next one. | |
So I kind of rely on everybody else to document it and take what they will from it. | |
I'm not really interested in that so much. | |
It's great when somebody confirms something and I go, oh, okay, that's interesting. | |
On to the next place. | |
I have a very, very bad memory in terms of I will go to a location a second time and I won't remember what I've got the first time when I walk in. | |
It's not until I come up against a spirit or a vibration and they go, oh, hi, I've met you before. | |
I'm so-and-so. | |
And I go, oh, yes, I remember you from last time. | |
But before I'm going, I couldn't tell you who I'd got there last time. | |
You know what you need? | |
I'm holding one right now. | |
A little, one of these things. | |
This thing costs 70 quid. | |
A little digital recorder. | |
And just record whatever. | |
You could record hours of it. | |
You need to, you know, I couldn't be bothered to, I need to say something else. | |
I couldn't be bothered to, couldn't be bothered to write stuff down. | |
But, you know, if I've got a little recorder, you can always speak it. | |
I tend to carry a recorder anyway, just looking for EVPs and stuff. | |
But to be honest, it's very rare I get around to listening to it all back. | |
And once I've got something, I've got to the point now where I just accept it. | |
But if somebody else wants to go and research it, that's fine. | |
And if they want to go away and do all the research and then come back and go, do you know what? | |
You were right. | |
And I kind of go, yeah, I know I was. | |
So I'm kind of past the point of testing it to a certain extent because I've been doing it 15 years now. | |
So I kind of just accept the messages that I'm getting, pass them on to somebody else who wants to do something with that information. | |
This place we were talking about, Wikipedia says, if it's correct here, that this was station 53A, Grendon Hall in Grendon Underwood, Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire. | |
It was a signal centre, and it says now Spring Hill Prison. | |
So I don't know whether it's changed. | |
I don't know. | |
HM Prison Spring Hill, located in the village of Grendon-Underwood. | |
well, one of my listeners can tell me this, but apparently it's now some kind of prison. | |
We have to say, according to Wikipedia. | |
Okay, so that was that experience in that location. | |
And according to this piece of paper that I've got here in my hand, you've been involved in a thousand investigations? | |
So you must have been to some of the celebrated, seriously haunted, spooky locations around this country, I would have thought, if it's a thousand. | |
Yeah, you get the lists. | |
Higgy Pop brings out these lists, top 100 places or top 50 places. | |
And I've usually been to about 80% of them. | |
I've now kind of got to the point where I'm like, well, I want to go somewhere that not many people have been to because then I'm not being led by what I've heard. | |
Because I've got so many friends in the paranormal community now. | |
You talk about locations and I don't want to be influenced by, oh, a friend of mine had this experience in this location and 16 other people have done this location and had this happen. | |
I'm not interested in that. | |
I like going to the new places and getting new information. | |
So please do these days. | |
I love your approach to it. | |
I think that's exactly, if I was doing this, if I had the ability, that's exactly how I would do it. | |
Okay, my listeners love stories. | |
If you've been on so many investigations and been to places that everybody else doesn't go to, talk to me about some of the places that have surprised you then, that have made the biggest impact on you. | |
I think the one that springs to mind was a disused hospital not far outside of Kidderminster. | |
You might know the place. | |
I don't know if I'm allowed to name it because it's Council Land now. | |
And I managed to get in using my police contacts because it was a heart training centre. | |
So they did the special major disaster reconstructions, getting the ambulance, the fire and the police all together in a big area because it was all big open areas, offices, hospital wards. | |
I'm looking at something in the Birmingham Mail from a year ago. | |
Is this Lee Castle Hospital? | |
Yes. | |
Yes, it is. | |
Yes. | |
And the main team that I was with at the time managed to get four or five investigations there before it was all shut down and not even the airsoft people who run around playing with the guns that shoot the little white pellets at each other. | |
It was completely shut down. | |
And we did, like I say, we did five different investigations, five or six different investigations there in probably four buildings we had access to. | |
And now we all knew it was an ex-hospital. | |
None of us had done any research because we were a team of sensitives. | |
So we liked to test ourselves. | |
And we came up with this experiment in this room that had a one-way mirror. | |
So we were looking at ESP. | |
So passing messages between members of the team, who makes a good receiver, who makes a good sender, and are there pairs that work best together? | |
And we didn't just do it with pictures, we did it with tastes and smells and sounds as well. | |
And I have to give credit to Dave Ball, who was the guy who came up with the experiment. | |
And we repeated this every time we went. | |
And we found that there was certain people who made good receivers and certain people who made good strong senders of the information. | |
And of course, using the one-way mirror meant that the person receiving couldn't see what was going on behind the mirror, which made it all really interesting scientifically, I guess. | |
So that was our standing experiment. | |
And we'd have things like mustard and lemon juice and church bells and pictures of flowers and that kind of thing. | |
And we were working about certain pairs, we're working at about 80-90% hit rate. | |
So that's one side of the investigation. | |
And there was another room in the same building, I think, that was painted all black. | |
Now, we never found out why this room was black, but it had a very, very oppressive feeling in it. | |
And we were testing ourselves doing lone vigils in this room. | |
And of course, once you start thinking there's something in there with you, the tension builds and you almost psych yourself out. | |
So we were doing like daring each other. | |
You did five minutes last time. | |
Let's do 10 minutes this time. | |
And we were sitting in this room on our own on a little folding stool with the door shut, seeing how long we could last. | |
And we'd all had a go and we'd all freaked ourselves out and we were all laughing at each other. | |
And as we're walking away from this room, there was an enormous crack of static electricity, I guess. | |
A couple of the people in the group saw the blue, almost like ball lightning, you know, that static energy, like when you took a nylon top off over your head and the lights were off, that crack of the sparks. | |
Kind of like a mini version of the northern lights. | |
Yes, yeah. | |
We all heard the crack and we could all smell that static ozone-y smell. | |
And we're walking backwards and forwards, wondering if, like, trying to recreate it, do the same again. | |
Does it happen again? | |
Trying to debunk it. | |
Is there a hanging wire? | |
Well, no, there's no power in the building and all this kind of thing. | |
And we ended up walking away from Lee Castle, not being able to explain it. | |
But it was just coincidental that the only, we'd been in this building numerous times. | |
The only time we had this experience Was when we'd all had a go at a lone vigil in this black room that was just off the corridor where we had this spark of electricity. | |
And we're thinking, well, is it the emotion? | |
Is it us psyching ourselves up? | |
We've got to the point of almost collective hysteria. | |
Is it our energy that's created this spark? | |
Or is it something, a spirit or whatever in the building that's created this spark? | |
Are they laughing with us or at us? | |
That was very strange. | |
And as far as I know, nobody else has ever investigated in there. | |
I'm looking at a picture of it now from the Birmingham Mail on their website. | |
The pretty grim looking building, isn't it? | |
Yes, there were some. | |
Yeah, it's very much an old hospital with 70s buildings interspersed with older sort of 19th century buildings. | |
And we had access to, I think there were two like 1970s newer type civic buildings and then two or three of the older ones. | |
And then the gatehouse type area, which is where the caretaker was, where we had our tea and coffee and breaks and stuff. | |
It was, yeah, very, very interesting place. | |
And unfortunately, we'll never be able to investigate there again, I wouldn't have thought. | |
So, yeah, interesting. | |
Well, according to what I'm reading here, the hospital closed in 2008 is still abandoned, certainly as of 2019, two years ago. | |
And we've had COVID since then, so it's probably still the same. | |
Hang on. | |
Oh, no. | |
In 2019, approval was given for a developer to build 600 new homes. | |
So I'm not sure whether that's had an impact on it. | |
I'm sure my listener will tell me. | |
It's believed that before the site was used as a hospital, an American military hospital was there. | |
Oh, I didn't know that. | |
I didn't know that at all. | |
And it says the site was used to help people who were living with mental illness. | |
We knew there was a couple of buildings that we had access to that were for people with learning difficulties, certainly. | |
I don't think we knew it was specifically a mental hospital, so to speak. | |
You went to Edinburgh? | |
Yes. | |
What happened? | |
I mean, Edinburgh is supposed to be, well, depends on which poll you read, but it's said to be, you know, the most haunted city in the entire United Kingdom. | |
Well, it's beautiful besides being really haunted. | |
We were really lucky. | |
Three of us from the same group, Wolf Paranormal, World O'Nearic Life Force, which unfortunately we're still friends, but is no longer operating as a group. | |
World What Life Force? | |
O'Nearic. | |
What's that? | |
Other dimensional. | |
Oh, thank you. | |
I should know this. | |
Doing a show like this. | |
O'Neeric. | |
There's another word for my vocabulary. | |
Sorry, so a bunch of you from this team. | |
Three of us from Wolf actually went up to Edinburgh before all the big shows, before the prices on the big haunted locations got ridiculous. | |
And we managed to stay in one of the sets of the vaults under Edinburgh for 50 quid each. | |
We got locked in the, I can't remember, it was one of the vaults on, it was either Nidry Street or Blair Street, the one with the stone circle in it, whichever that one is. | |
The three of us got locked in there from after the final tour of the evening until 7 a.m. the next morning. | |
Yeah, that was some experience, as you can imagine. | |
We had some very, very strange EMF readings. | |
So the electromagnetic frequency readings that we couldn't explain. | |
Unfortunately, there's a nightclub above it. | |
So the sound contamination was quite prevalent till about half two, three o'clock in the morning. | |
But we were still getting very strange EMF readings. | |
The stone circle, you're not supposed to go in the stone circle, otherwise you get attacked. | |
And Dave, the guy who came up with the ESP experiment at Lee Castle, said, well, let's see what happens, stepped inside, stepped out and came out with a scratch. | |
Towards the end of the evening after, well, early hours, when the nightclub had shut, we split up down the one long corridor. | |
So Paul was at the top, Dave was in the middle, and I was down the other end, furthest away from the entrance doorway. | |
And we saw what looked like a candlelit lantern light walk down the corridor. | |
All three of us saw it because one by one we kind of popped our heads out to go, well, who's that moving around? | |
And switch your torch off. | |
I haven't got a torch on. | |
Well, whose is the light? | |
I don't know. | |
It's not mine. | |
No, it's not mine either. | |
Well, it must be. | |
So as things go on like that, and it walked down the corridor and then disappeared. | |
And of course, being a vault, it's, you know, it's like sealed, so there's no other source of light. | |
If this is the place that I'm reading about here, I've just looked it up here. | |
Is this Nidri Street Vaults? | |
That's it. | |
Nidri Street, yes. | |
Yeah, the one with the stone circle. | |
The stone circle, it says the underground complex is home to a witch's vault, complete with pentagrams etched on the floor, and a stone circle. | |
I've got to read on here, said to contain an evil something, but I think we get the impression here. | |
So there was witchcraft. | |
I mean, you're involved in witchcraft yourself now, but witchcraft and all sorts of things happening there. | |
Yes, and I believe there's still an active coven that use that area. | |
So all their paraphernalia is around. | |
There was when I was there anyway. | |
I don't know if they still use that as the meeting, the coven meeting place, the moot point. | |
So we were told, don't mess with any of their artifacts or anything like that, their equipment and stuff. | |
But yes, like I said, Dave did step inside the stone circle and kind of go, Oh, I don't believe in all this, and stepped out again and he'd been scratched. | |
Okay, well, I'll tell you something that you might not have heard. | |
You might have read this. | |
This is from Edinburgh Live website, very good website. | |
It says, and I quote, the vaults are said to be haunted by a poltergeist that scratches its victims. | |
Yep, well, we certainly experienced that, so I can confirm that. | |
And apparently, it's not a great experience. | |
One of the people who had been scratched like that quotes said he felt like he'd been stabbed. | |
It was more of a burn than a scratch, is how Dave described it. | |
It kind of, it was a burn, and we all looked and went, oh yeah, you've been scratched, Dave. | |
And it was, you know, when you drag your nail across the skin hard and you don't quite break the skin, but it peels the top layers of the skin off and you end up with that roar. | |
It was like that. | |
So, but yeah, just a single, single scratch mark. | |
Do you not get scared getting locked in places like that? | |
I have been. | |
It takes an awful lot more to scare me now, 15, 16 years on, than it did back in the beginning. | |
I do remember being absolutely terrified at a place called Coal House Fort in Essex. | |
It's one of the big round Napoleonic forts. | |
So within the fort itself, it's got two concentric tunnels, one for moving the ordnance and a smaller one for moving lighting, because they obviously didn't want the gunpowder in the same place as naked flames, the candles. | |
And us being us, went in the narrower lighting tunnel, which was narrow enough that you had to walk crabwise. | |
Your shoulders wouldn't fit across the tunnel. | |
So we all kind of shuffled down around the lighting tunnel, stood there and was doing the calling out. | |
If there's anybody there, can you give us a sign? | |
Can you show us a light? | |
Can you do something? | |
And I stood next to Paul, one of the guys who went to Edinburgh with myself, and we heard... | |
Please don't do that again. | |
And I can't remember which one of us spoke first, but one, the conversation went along the lines of, that was your stomach, wasn't it? | |
No, I thought it was yours. | |
No. | |
Oh, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep. | |
And I'm bleeping for the sake of radio. | |
At which point we all popped out of this lighting tunnel very, very quickly, an awful lot quicker than we'd shuffled in. | |
So we didn't hang around to find out what it was. | |
Now I would go back in and find out what it was, or I wouldn't leave. | |
I'd be like, right, okay, if that's you, can you do something else? | |
Can you do it again? | |
But back then, something like that did scare me enough to make me run. | |
So I'm not scared to admit that. | |
I think I'd be halfway down the motorway. | |
But you're introducing me to places that I hadn't heard of. | |
This Coal House Fort in Essex, it's kind of East Anglia more than anything else. | |
It says many people who've worked at Coal House Fort on the website over the years have seen strange shapes and shadows. | |
Others have seen full apparitions. | |
There have been the sounds of children laughing, eerie footsteps. | |
During ghost hunts, people have witnessed dark figures walking towards them before vanishing. | |
That's what happened to you? | |
Yes. | |
Well, we didn't see it. | |
We definitely heard it. | |
Harwich, which is a similar kind of fort, a bit further around the coast, definitely seen shadow figures walking around in the parade ground, in the middle of the fort around there. | |
Got a really interesting photograph of a light anomaly, which is hovering in the middle of a circle, you know, where you all join hands, building the energy, passing the energy around the circle. | |
Well, in the middle of the circle, just that sort of shoulder height, looks like there's a flame on the LIR photograph. | |
Somebody was up on the ramparts taking a photograph down on us. | |
No other light sources. | |
And like I say, in the middle of the circle, there's this, what looks like a flame shape of a light. | |
So that's one of the most interesting pieces of evidence that I've been party to capturing. | |
I don't live very far from Hampton Court. | |
They tell me, the guides who work at Hampton Court tell me that place is astonishingly haunted and people see 3D images all the time in the chapel there, down the corridors, even Henry VIII himself. | |
You know, I've had people who work there look me in the eye and tell me that they've seen Henry VIII appear, walk down the corridor and vanish, along with some of his wives. | |
Yeah. | |
Well, there's that famous security camera footage of the fire exit door, wasn't there? | |
Yeah, they made all the newspapers, yeah. | |
Yeah, somebody looks like they're wearing a Tudor ruff standing in the doorway. | |
It's somewhere I've never investigated, but I would love to get in there. | |
It would cost an arm and a leg and a head, probably. | |
So we've just about got time. | |
Have you got another story from a place that maybe I won't have heard of and my listener won't have heard of that you've been to? | |
I can't think of off the top of somewhere you wouldn't have heard of. | |
All right, well, somewhere I might have heard of. | |
Somewhere, yeah, somewhere that's recently stopped having paranormal investigations, Drakelow Tunnels up near Kiddeminster. | |
That's local to you, isn't it? | |
Yeah, yeah. | |
Yeah, under Kimver. | |
It's under the Iron Age Hill Fort at Kinver Edge for the locals. | |
It's now a wine storage facility. | |
But I think one of my most recent, most terrifying events was in Drake Cloe Tunnels. | |
we had the run of the place for as long as we wanted, which is kind of like the holy grail for a paranormal investigator, um, especially a hardcore one that can go till dawn. | |
Um, so we're like rubbing our hands together, going, oh yeah, we've got it all night, seven o'clock lights, daylights, we'll leave kind of thing. | |
Um, so we get all our equipment together. | |
It takes us three trips from the car to get all the equipment in in flight cases and suitcases and stuff, pellet cases and all that kind of tripods and this, that, and the other. | |
So we start investigating. | |
There's five of us start investigating the tunnels and we're working our way around, being methodical because it's so easy to get lost in that place if you don't know it. | |
And it was the first time any of us have ever visited there. | |
And it seemed like there was something trying to split us up because we'd all agreed, nobody go off on their own because we'll lose you. | |
We'll never find you again. | |
There's miles and miles of tunnels. | |
We don't want that to happen. | |
So we all stay together. | |
And every corner, somebody would just wander off. | |
And it'd be like, oh, come back, come back, come back. | |
Somebody, one of the group got scratched. | |
Another of the group, we had to take out and kind of bring them back round to reality. | |
So we called a break, going back to the base room, cup of coffee, some caffeine, keep us going kind of thing. | |
And we hear this almighty crash. | |
And we all look at each other. | |
Now, we're all very experienced investigators. | |
And I'm sat there going, please, nobody go and see what that was because I ain't going with you. | |
Because there was a very oppressive, negative atmosphere. | |
It was like something wanted to get us. | |
And me as the medium, I see my job as protecting the group from anything spiritually attacking them. | |
And I'm sat there going, please, nobody go and see what that was because I ain't going. | |
And we all sat and looked at each other. | |
And it sounded like a huge fire door had been ripped off its hinges and thrown down one of the tunnels. | |
It was that big a crash. | |
We knew we were the only ones in there and we were locked in. | |
So there was no way anybody else could have followed us in and were playing silly devils or anything. | |
I took one look at the group and went, I'm not happy continuing this. | |
It was midnight. | |
Bearing in mind, we've got it till whenever we want. | |
I'm going to call it, I don't feel safe carrying on with this. | |
Wow, even you said that. | |
Wow. | |
Even I said that. | |
And this was maybe five years ago. | |
So everybody's heightened anxiety then. | |
Everything got put away. | |
Casey's click, click, click, click, click, click, click. | |
And I said, right, whatever you do, just keep walking. | |
Just look straight ahead. | |
Keep walking. | |
Get out. | |
I'll come out last and we just got to get out. | |
We got everything out in one trip. | |
Bearing in mind, it took us three trips to get in, everything out in one trip. | |
There were two of the guys had bags pulled off their shoulders. | |
We got out and I could feel something rushing us. | |
And the guy at the front had put a case down to open the blast door. | |
It's one of like a bit like the doors on the back of an articulated truck with a lever. | |
I believe they've changed them now. | |
But when we were there, you had to pull the lever across to push open the door. | |
So he had to put a case down to have a spare hand. | |
I opened the door. | |
We all kind of fall out all the cases, put them down. | |
And I just said, Liam, pick your case up. | |
Liam, pick your bleeping case up. | |
Liam, pick your case up. | |
He grabbed the case. | |
Two of us slammed the door and something hit the inside of the door very hard. | |
And we all kind of went, but the ordeal wasn't over yet. | |
We, most of us had parked our cars in the cutting, which is right by the entrance door. | |
So we all piled up. | |
And one of the ladies who was with us had parked her car up in the car park. | |
And we said, we're not happy for you to walk up. | |
So we'll drive up and drop you around by your car. | |
We don't want you walking around there. | |
So we all up into the car park. | |
The main gate was on a combination padlock. | |
Get to open the main gate and it looks like something's bent the gate. | |
I mean, we're talking inch thick steel gates that are now bent. | |
Putting the combination in, nothing. | |
Putting the combination in again, nothing. | |
Check that we got the right combination where we'd written it down. | |
Nothing. | |
We're pulling at the lock and it's not coming open. | |
God, so whatever it was was trying to throw you out of the, trying to throw you out of the caves, out of the tunnels, and then when you want to finally get out of the place, you can't open the gate. | |
Well, it was trying to keep us in there. | |
That's what it didn't want us out. | |
It wanted to hold us in there. | |
God help. | |
We finally got the gate open, all pulled out, shut the gate behind us, and then one of the guys' cars died. | |
All the electrics went. | |
And we're like, oh, turn the key again and off it went. | |
And we're like, don't look back. | |
Just keep driving. | |
Just get out of here. | |
So, yeah, that was quite an eventful night. | |
That is one of the scariest stories I've ever heard. | |
And I've been doing this for years. | |
My God, Liz. | |
And even you were off-put by the place. | |
Even you Wanted to get out of there, yeah. | |
So there was something territorial and seemingly malevolent there. | |
Any idea what it might have been? | |
I picked up that it was old, very, very, very old. | |
I don't know whether it was an elemental or a druid or something like that, but whatever it was that was chasing us as we were going out was almost like his familiar. | |
So it was more animalistic, whereas he presented us like a wizardy kind of figure. | |
That's what I was, how I was visualizing him. | |
And it was almost like as we were driving, finally driving away, I could feel the energy in the hillside going alongside us. | |
And it was unfortunate because just as I was about to go, I need to go and find out what that was and go back, COVID hit. | |
And now they've stopped doing investigations there. | |
So I'm kind of hoping at some point in the future, I can go and I describe it as picking the scab. | |
I've got to the point where I'm curious enough that I want to see what it was, see whether it's going to happen again, see whether it was group hysteria or is there something there? | |
It's a fascinating location. | |
Somebody contacted me a couple of years ago, wanted to do some kind of broadcast project with me there that didn't actually happen. | |
I'm kind of regretting that now. | |
This is Draclow Tunnels. | |
It's got a TripAdvisor rating here. | |
I don't know what that's all about, but I'm looking at online here. | |
Maybe that's when it was, I don't know. | |
They did do tours, daylight tours, because it was a shadow factory. | |
I believe it was a rover shadow factory, which is why it was constructed. | |
Yes, I've heard of it for that. | |
Yes, it was used for car. | |
Certainly they were storing parts for cars there, I think. | |
Yeah, it was built as a shadow factory, I think. | |
And not World War II, but also Cold War kind of thing as well. | |
There aren't that many reported deaths in there. | |
Off the top of my head, I can think of at least three. | |
There may be one or two more that I've forgotten about, but certainly up there with atmosphere and certainly up there with terrifying places. | |
Okay, well, it's got a website. | |
It says Drakeloe Tunnels are a former top-secret underground military complex beneath Kingsford Country Park north of Kidderminster, Worcestershire. | |
Tunnels were built between 1941 and 1942 as a shadow factory for the Rover Car Company. | |
Parts for aircraft engines were machined in the 3.5 miles of tunnels throughout World War II. | |
After the war, the tunnels began producing parts for tank engines till 1958 when they were handed over to the Ministry of Supply and later the Ministry of Works. | |
In 1961, if you want the whole history, British government converted half the tunnels into a top-secret facility. | |
Wow, a designated regional seat of government. | |
Get this. | |
Drakelow, along with 12 other facilities scattered across the UK, formed a national network of classified nuclear bunkers. | |
I think we know that where the business of government would go on. | |
1980, redesignated as regional government headquarters. | |
They got upgraded blast doors. | |
Hell of a history this place has got. | |
Yeah, I think the guy who owns it is desperately trying to get planning permission to open it as some kind of museum. | |
Yes, I think it's actually on the TripAdvisor site here. | |
And if you're listening to this and you know anything about Draclow Tunnels at the moment, let me know. | |
There's a listing here on TripAdvisor that says, I don't know how up to date their information is. | |
It says Draclow Tunnels is currently being converted into a Cold War and World War II museum. | |
It'll house items showing how the bunker evolved over 40 years. | |
What a fantastic location. | |
There's a photograph of it here. | |
And this thing looks like something straight out of a Bond movie. | |
Oh, yeah. | |
It's just atmospheric. | |
I mean, brilliant for a photo shoot. | |
And like you say, Bond movie stuff all the way over. | |
Oh, Lord. | |
Well, when you go, I'll come with you if you'll tolerate me. | |
Very quickly. | |
And if they ever left us back in again, that's the thing. | |
Well, I think we'll have to exercise some fluence on them. | |
We haven't got long to talk about this, just a couple of minutes, but you will say it's very rare to hear somebody who does the stuff that you do also say, I do witchcraft. | |
You cast spells, do you? | |
Yes. | |
Yes. | |
I'm a Norse pagan witch. | |
So my house is locked down. | |
The only spirits allowed in my house are guides and ancestors. | |
So simply because I used to live in an old Victorian terrace house and I'd get random people walking in the middle of the night and asking me to pass on messages. | |
And I don't sleep very well at the best of times anyway. | |
So the last thing I want is a cue of spirits asking me to act as BT. | |
So my current house is locked down, protected with spells. | |
So the only energies inside my house and my garden are connected to me and my family and my guides and ancestors. | |
So it's partly to protect yourself that you do this? | |
Yes, yeah. | |
Well, it protects me. | |
I also foster cats for the RSPCA. | |
So I think it helps them. | |
So, yeah, I could not live in a haunted place. | |
I just couldn't. | |
I'd get no sleep whatsoever. | |
We'll have to talk again. | |
And thank you to Ian if you're listening to this. | |
everything that you said is true and more so. | |
I think you turned out to be one of the most... | |
No, you turned out to be one of the most interesting people that I've ever spoken to here. | |
Plus, you know all the places that I know, which is great. | |
So Liz, thank you very much. | |
Have you got your own website? | |
I didn't check. | |
Have you got your own website? | |
I don't have a website at the moment, but people can find me on Facebook as Liz Le Guinis Cormel. | |
So Le Guinis is L-E-G-W-Y-N-I-S. | |
That's my witch name, means the white one in a mixture of Welsh and French. | |
So, Liz Le Guinis Cormel, C-O-R-M for Mother E-L. | |
And you're happy. | |
You're happy for people to contact you that way. | |
Yes, that's my public Facebook. | |
Okay. | |
So I have a public profile for there. | |
Well, Ms. Cormel, I have been amazed at the stuff you told me, and I've let you tell the stories, and I've enjoyed them. | |
It's been an hour that's passed. | |
You hear my finger snapping that quickly. | |
Thank you very much. | |
Well, thank you for inviting me. | |
And thanks, Dewey, and I'll pay you next time I see you, mate. | |
I'll give my love to Kitty when you're passing through Kidderminster next time. | |
Yes, I will do. | |
I'll wave on my way past. | |
Take care. | |
Thank you, Liz. | |
And you. | |
Thank you very much. | |
Your thoughts about Liz Cormel, gratefully received. | |
Your guest suggestions, always gratefully received. | |
Please go to the website, theunexplained.tv, follow the link for communications emails, and that'll get straight through to me. | |
And I do get to see all of your emails. | |
If your email requires a specific response, then it will get one. | |
But please know that whatever, I do see all the emails as and when they come in. | |
In fact, I'm obsessively checking emails. | |
Sometimes I'll wake up at 3 o'clock in the night. | |
I'll turn on the light, grab the phone, and see who's emailed. | |
Is that obsession? | |
I don't know, really. | |
I'm always checking news stories, too. | |
I'm a news junkie. | |
I'm just like that. | |
Anyway, that's by the bye. | |
More great guests in the pipeline here with The Unexplained. | |
So until next we meet, my name is Howard Hughes. | |
This has been The Unexplained Online. | |
And please, whatever you do, stay safe, stay calm, and above all, please stay in touch. | |
Thank you very much. | |
Take care. |