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Nov. 8, 2021 - The Unexplained - Howard Hughes
55:20
Edition 589 - Warren Coates
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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.
Hey, thank you very much for all of the wonderful communications.
I've had some really nice feedback recently.
It wouldn't be fair to single out a couple of people because there are scores and scores, but you know, some of the nice emails, including from Mark and Louisa, but a lot of people who've been in touch lately.
And, you know, you've got to remember that we're all human beings, and that includes me at this side of the microphone.
So, you know, I have my issues too.
And, you know, we're all battling through life as it is at the moment.
I've had some rotten things to deal with.
Life is very, very difficult.
But we get on with things because it's what we know.
And in the case of me doing this, well, I greatly enjoy it.
And the fact that it's being well received by you means a great deal to me.
Because as we know, we have to do the things.
If we're lucky, we have to do the things that give us pleasure and play to our strengths when we can.
A lot of young people ask me, what should I do with my interest in this or that?
And sometimes the this or that is like broadcasting or something like that.
And I always say, if it's what you love and you are good at what you're doing, don't let anybody put you off.
Do it.
Because as my grandmother in Liverpool, and here I go quoting her again, you only pass this way once.
And that's true.
You do.
So, you know, I need to take some of my own advice, frankly.
Many opportunities I have not seized in my life, but you have to grab every little ounce of it while you can.
And that's enough, you know, two-cent philosophy from me for today, but just to say thank you for all of the lovely emails.
Thanks, Adam, for the ongoing hard work on the website and getting the shows out to you as ever.
So life continues in its usual vein, as they say.
Beautiful day here.
Really for November, a stunner.
Cool?
Okay, we accept that.
Not as cool as it was when I was a kid on November days, from what I remember growing up in Liverpool.
But cool.
The sky is crystal blue.
And, you know, I give thanks for any days like this because winter includes a lot of days of grayness.
I'm going to stop rabbiting now for those who don't like me talking on and tell you what's on this edition of the show.
A couple of things from my radio show.
I did a Halloween special that included a lot of your stories that you were kind enough to send in.
And I put them all together in 20 minutes, 21 minutes of continuous recording.
Now, I was under a certain amount of time pressure when I did this.
So I literally had to do what they call sight read them.
So they're not absolutely, flawlessly, perfectly read, but they're read exactly as they hit me.
And I thought afterwards, shall I do them again?
And then I thought, well, no, that's how the first recording went.
And I think, you know, that's probably okay.
But you tell me what you think.
So your stories, back to back first.
And then we have a guy from Belfast called Warren Coates here.
I've never heard of him until very, very recently.
He was recommended to me.
He is a ghost investigator of long standing in Northern Ireland.
We got him in to do some stories, so you're going to hear half an hour or so of him too, with some great stories, all from my Halloween radio show, that had incredible reaction.
If you also heard that, if you listen to the podcast and you catch the radio show, it had the most phenomenal reaction.
So thank you for that.
You know, gratefully received your feedback to it.
Don't forget, of course, please check out my Facebook page.
It is the official Facebook page of The Unexplained with Howard Hughes, and it is well worth being there and being part of that.
And the website is theunexplained.tv.
All right, let's get to the first item on this edition then from my radio show, a confirmation of the stories that you were kind enough to send me.
We start with this from John in Scotland.
A number of years ago, I was traveling along the A90 towards Aberdeen.
It was dark, and as I was nearing Dundee and at a speed of 70 miles an hour, somebody ran out in front of my car.
I immediately slammed on the brakes and managed to swerve into a lay-by.
After a few minutes, I realized there was no thud, and that the person who ran out in front of the car was only what I can describe as an outline of a person who I could see through, like a chalk drawing of a human figure.
The following week, I passed the same spot and noticed bouquets of flowers by the carriageway.
I asked my friend about them, and he said that a year before that, somebody had been killed in that exact spot in a car accident.
Craig in Bangor, Northern Ireland, thank you for this one.
I was helping my mate Ben move into a new flat above a butcher's shop.
The flat was long with corridors from room to room, from the spare room at the back to the hallway, the kitchen, a long hall past the toilet, and an alcove then onto the stairs to the upper level with the living room and the bedroom.
This alcove had what I can only describe as the most evil picture of a blood-red landscape hanging there.
It seemed almost apocalyptic.
We removed that ugly picture and replaced it with something more pleasant.
Helping Ben move into the flat, I offered to shake and vac the corridor and that alcove.
As I pushed the Hoover towards the wall in the alcove, the newly hung picture in front of me swung out on its hook towards me and then slammed itself hard back into the wall.
Freaked out, I went back into the room where my friend was cleaning the kitchen.
I decided not to tell him what had just happened as he had to live in that flat.
Completely unaware of my experience, Ben suggested we put a wicker sofa in the alcove and that's what we did.
Soon after, I moved away to live in England and didn't see Ben for some time, but years later we met up and had a coffee and discussed the old days and in particular that strange old flat.
He admitted to me that when he was alone he never really liked the alcove and that every time he was alone there there was a feeling that he was being watched from the wicker chair by something evil that didn't want him There.
He'd feel evil, watchful eyes and a chill down his spine.
Craig in Northern Ireland, thank you for that story.
Claire from the Wirral, Merseyside, says, I lived on Hollybank Road in Birkenhead when I was about 18 to 20.
It all started with footsteps walking along the landing.
Then we started coming home to hear the stereo playing by itself.
One night, we were sitting in our living room and the TV upstairs came on at maximum volume.
The television could only be turned on by pushing the button on it because we'd lost the remote control.
I started to feel like somebody was watching me in the bath, and in the end, I wouldn't get a bath unless my boyfriend stood in there with me.
Candles would flip themselves off shelves.
Red writing appeared on the landing saying, You're dead, Daddy.
It was like the red paint had bled through the white paint.
Our friends lived at the same address before us and confirmed that there was no writing there before they moved out.
Just before we moved out, I was sitting on my window frame waiting for my friend to pick me up.
Suddenly, my two cats looked up the stairs.
I followed their gaze and saw that the curtain that was hung on the stairs to keep out drafts was moving.
Then a face emerged in the curtain, like somebody put their face into it.
It was a man's face, and it scared the hell out of me.
We moved out shortly after this.
I don't blame you, Claire.
Thank you for that.
Phil, in Ashton Underline, near Manchester.
One night last month, I was woken to the sound of a burglar alarm coming from another house.
I looked to the window and saw my wife was looking through the curtains to see what had happened.
I opened my phone to check our CCTV but saw nothing there.
I looked back and my wife, who just looked like a dark figure, was just standing there scratching her head.
I then turned to look next to me and my wife was fast asleep and had never got out of bed.
I looked back and the figure had gone.
I was very tired and thought I might have been dreaming, but the next morning I checked on the cameras again and could see I had viewed the CCTV in the nighttime and I could hear the burglar alarm on the recording.
Previous to this, my wife had also thought one of our children had come into the room in the night and stood next to her side of the bed.
She reached out to them and the figure just floated up towards the ceiling and completely vanished.
She, thank you for that.
Long story now from Zander in Norway.
Thank you for this, Sander.
Xander says, my grandmother is Norwegian and when her and my grandfather lived in Norway for 25 plus years before moving back to the UK, they lived in a huge house, six times the size of a normal one, garden the size of a football pitch.
This place in a small town called Selerbach used to be a doctor's surgery in the 1800s, when operations and God knows what else were performed there.
We used to go there every summer in the six weeks holiday.
Throughout the 25 plus years, all of our family, cousins, uncles, aunts all said the same thing.
The house is haunted.
My dad was chased out of the toilet by an old lady ghost in the middle of the night.
It took a different form and spun around him.
He walked as fast as he could back to his room, trying not to show fear, but he could see in his mind's eye the old lady walking just as fast, right behind him and shouting at him, pointing her finger, although there was no actual noise.
Another time he was watching the TV.
He was the last one up and looks over to the doorway, and there he sees a middle-aged man and a woman standing there, totally expressionless and just staring at him.
My brothers and sisters as babies and young children would always point to things in the corner of rooms and say things like, who's that?
while they were looking at the doorways.
My mother, while pregnant with my younger sister, was in the bath and heard a deep growling noise from right outside the door.
One night, we came back from a restaurant.
My brother had left early.
We came back around 10.30, 11 p.m., a fairly cold night, and he was sat outside, petrified.
It was only him in the house, and he could hear loud banging up and down the stairs as if somebody was purposely stamping as hard as they could on each and every step.
I could go on for hours with all the stories, but I'll end with mine.
This was the last trip before they moved, around 15 years ago.
Until that moment, all I heard were bangs or felt as if I wasn't alone or I was being watched.
I was sitting upstairs on my own watching TV.
Everybody else had gone out.
My grandfather was in his garage working.
All of a sudden, the ceiling lamp started to swing around.
I thought it was a draft.
Then it started to swing rapidly and I thought I can't keep running from these noises and frights all the time.
I was determined to stay.
Then there was a bang, and I'm not ashamed to say, Howard, I was out of there.
There were two sets of steps right next to each other, a large staircase, which was being varnished, so we couldn't use it.
So we were using the old servant staircase, which was a steep, dark, narrow one.
I ran towards the servant steps, and the door slammed shut as soon as I got very close to it.
I could feel a presence in that hallway with me.
So I went for the main staircase and must have jumped and cleared about 30 steps, and I got the hell out of there.
Thank you, Xander, for that story from Norway.
That's quite a story.
James in Provincetown, Massachusetts, sent me this.
Thanks, James.
This happened when I was about 17, back in October in the late 1970s, around about Halloween time.
I was taking a nap one afternoon, and I felt that my great-Aunt Angie was in my room, sitting on the edge of my bed.
The only problem was, she passed away a few years before that.
The next day, my mum and I visited my grandmother, Aunt Angie's sister.
My grandmother told us that the strangest thing had happened the day before.
The apple pie she was making boiled over in the oven.
And whenever that happened, she knew she could expect a visit from Aunt Angie.
Otherwise, it never happened.
Gee, I think Aunt Angie is still around by the sounds of it.
Thank you, James.
This comes from Mark, story from 1985, when Mark was 15, going to school.
Myself and other friends had been playing about with a homemade Ouija board.
It was simply a polished wooden table, the letters A to Z, the numbers 0 to 9 and yes and no written on square bits of paper arranged in a big circle.
We used an upside-down glass to move about the letters, obviously placing our hands on the glass and asking questions.
Myself and my school friend Jason had just come back to my house from school.
We set the table up and just the two of us started to contact something, male from the past, who died a long time ago according to what the board spelt out.
We'd been wanting to confirm if there was any truth in these sessions or if it was just people messing about and pushing the glass.
I asked the spirit person if they knew if our other friend Sean was going to visit us tonight.
We never knew when Sean was going to turn up.
The spirit replied by moving the glass to yes.
He knew and then spelt out that he was coming around.
I asked the spirit if he could tell us when Sean was going to turn up.
The glass spelt something like five minutes or something similar.
I was amused and thought it was complete cobblers and then asked if they or he could give us a 10 second countdown to when Sean was going to arrive.
Yes was the reply.
Again we carried on asking the person numerous questions about their life and he spelt out various answers.
I'd almost forgotten about the conversation earlier.
Then just as the spirit was answering some questions we asked, the glass suddenly stopped in mid-flow and then moved smoothly to the center of the table.
Then as regular as clockwork, it spelt out 1,000, then moved to 9, then 7, 8, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, until it got to 0.
At which point the glass stopped dead.
At the very instant, the gate flung open at the top of my backyard.
Who was there?
Sean.
The board, if you believe this, had given a countdown to the arrival of Sean.
Myself and Jason both let go of the glass.
In a sort of panic, we stood up.
Jason ran to the yard to tell Sean what had happened.
I just stood there, slightly trembling, with a shiver running down my spine.
I still feel a shiver today when I recount the tale.
I am not surprised.
Miranda in Kansas says this, I just had a creepy, unexplained experience this past weekend.
I was sitting in my garage around 11 p.m., as I often do at night.
It was brief, but definitely a cry I heard that sounded like it was right next to me.
My phone was off on the workbench, so that's not a possibility.
My husband, daughter, and the dogs were all sound asleep inside the house when I went to investigate if any of them could have been the source.
I live in the middle of town, so I thought maybe it was a neighbor, but the lights were out at their place, and the house is too far away.
For how close this sounded, I have no idea what it was, but it sounded sad and broke the silence that I'd been enjoying.
Needless to say, I was done in the garage for the night.
Happy Halloween, says Miranda in Kansas.
Thank you, Miranda, and happy Halloween to you.
I hope you can sleep tonight.
John in Nottingham says, my scary story is from when I was a young lad, maybe the age of 10, after a family night out, me and my two older brothers nagged our mother to get an old bingo set out from the bottom of the walk-in wardrobe in the spare bedroom.
Mum wasn't at all happy about this because it was her father's and by all reports he was a drunk and aggressive man.
This was the only thing my mother had kept that belonged to him as she was a huge fan of bingo.
As we started to play that night, there was a loud bang in the living room.
It was plunged into darkness.
The lights exploded, sending glass fragments everywhere.
Our mum jumped up, gathered the bingo set, and threw it out of the back door.
We never heard or saw of it again.
John in London.
Sometime in the early 2000s, I was alone waiting for a bus to come out of the local bus depot in northwest London.
It was around 7 a.m. and a cold, damp, drizzly autumn morning, still not fully light.
As I boarded the bus at the depot stop, I was the only passenger.
It was one of those late 80s buses prone to the leaky windows that gave rise to a damp smell in wet weather, and was common, this one smelt particularly bad and several of the lights inside were dimmed or broken.
As I went to sit down near the stairs and doors, I looked to the back seats and noticed a passenger hunched up in the corner in dark, indistinct clothing.
As the lights were not working and it was still dark outside, it was hard to see much by the way of features.
I sat down, but the bus just seemed to smell even worse of almost choking damp and cold.
As we approached the next bus stop, I decided I could bear the damp smell no longer and rang the bell to get off.
The passenger at the back was still hunched up against the window then.
However, as I got off to wait for another, hopefully warmer bus, I got off and stood watching as the bus departed, except as it went past, there was no sign of the passenger who I'd seen at the back, and the light at the back of the bus now appeared to be working.
John in London, thank you for that.
Kevin in the West Midlands has this story.
12.45 p.m.
I was driving up a long road passing Netherton Reservoir.
No houses in the area.
Approaching a canal bridge which was narrow and traffic light controlled.
Usually it was clear as you approached.
If you slowed right down the sensor would turn the lights green so you didn't have to stop.
This particular night I slowed right down and noticed a fellow crossing the grass verge right by the bridge.
Looked very normal, although he had a 70s type mullet haircut.
I had to stop on this occasion because a minibus was approaching the lights from the other direction.
As the minibus crossed the bridge, the chap who was crossing the grass verge stepped right into the road in front of the minibus, which was probably doing 30 miles an hour.
I thought straight away this man is going to be run over, and I waited for the bang, but to my amazement, the mini-bus went straight through him and carried on as though nothing had happened.
He then carried on walking straight through the bridge wall across the road.
The other side was a 75 drop down to the canal.
I was probably about 25 yards away at the time.
It was well lit.
I passed that location hundreds of times before and since.
I haven't seen a thing.
I'm a bit of a sceptic, to be honest, But I'm still trying to work out what I had seen probably 15 years ago now.
Kevin, in the West Midlands, thank you for that.
Caroline, story from Wales.
My husband and I went to Tenby to celebrate my sister-in-law's wedding anniversary.
We stayed at an old manor house near Tenby and got a taxi into the town for the celebration meal.
When we returned to the room, which was a converted coaching barn, it had taken on a completely different atmosphere.
I woke up in the night in the pitch-black room with the feeling that somebody was there.
I was aware my husband was awake too and sensed he was on edge.
I remembered some advice a friend gave me and randomly said, whatever you do, don't recognize it's in the room.
My husband said he'd woken up, looked at me and saw a white figure staring down at me.
He did a double take and it was gone.
He put the light on, I went to the bathroom.
It was then I felt somebody standing behind me and breathed in my ear.
I looked behind and nobody was there.
We didn't go back to bed that night and we found out afterwards the hotel had been rebuilt from the stones of an old monastery.
Another monastery haunting.
Thank you for that.
Terry in the U.S., she says, many years ago I lived in a large turn-of-the-century flat with two other women in an old neighborhood in Milwaukee.
The flat was haunted with the usual ghost stuff, like lights going on and off on their own, and a TV that came on by itself.
Nothing freaked me out more than the night the guy in the flannel shirt paid a visit.
One night about 2 a.m., I woke up for no apparent reason.
Standing at the foot of my bed were two people.
One was a guy with disheveled hair, wire-rimmed glasses, and a red flannel shirt.
Also standing behind him was an old lady with a shawl around her shoulders.
They just stood there staring at me for what seemed like an eternity.
I finally screamed and kicked at them, and they instantly disappeared.
And thanks to Terry in the US for that story.
Because of time reasons, I'm going to have to cut this one down, but it comes from Philip, and it's a story from Preston Park in Brighton, some accommodation there in the early 1990s.
Basically, he'd got up to answer a call of nature, and I'll describe what happens next.
The light switch timed out.
As my eyes got used to the dim light, I saw a dark shadow of human form coming up the stairs towards me.
Then all hell broke loose.
The toilet light went off, and I was left in darkness as this human form reached me.
It went straight through me.
It was ice-cold.
It sucked the life out of me.
I was so scared, my screams were silent.
This experience has never left me.
I am not surprised, Philip.
Thank you for that.
Nick in Nottinghamshire worked in the coal mines of the UK.
He says, I had a possible ghost evil manifestation happen on a boat on the Pocklington Canal near Hull.
I saw in Staffordshire what I can only describe as a human shape, 10 feet tall, a goat's head, horns, bright red eyes, cloven hooves on hands and feet.
This rose out of a fire, and when it looked my way, I ran faster than I've ever run in my life.
Gee, I'd have done the same.
Thank you, Nick.
Finally, as they say, this story from Joe.
Joe says, years ago, I worked as a housemistress at a boarding school in Somerset.
It was a very old building going back to the 1200s, and I had lots of very strange experiences.
The headmaster was a very accomplished piano player and often worked late into the night.
He'd regularly play the piano to relax after his long day quite late after we'd set all the alarms.
He lived in a house on the site, and what he would do is climb out of the ground-floor window of his office to get home.
On this particular night, a weekend not long before Christmas around 10.30 p.m., we had very few children in, and those who were still boarding were all tucked up in bed.
So myself and the matron were on the landing of the very grand staircase that led down to the headmaster's office, having a bedtime drink and a talk.
All was very quiet and very still.
Out of the stillness, we heard the piano, the headmaster's grand piano, playing from his office.
It was a beautiful classical piece of music.
We both gave each other a surprise look.
And I said, I can't believe he's here this late on a Saturday night.
Shall we make him a cup of tea?
Matron suggested we should go and see him and ask if he wanted one, so we set off down the wide ornate staircase, down to his office door.
I knocked twice and we went in.
The music stopped.
Nobody was there.
Not a soul.
The lights were on, but the piano lid was down.
We both got goosebumps and our hackles went up.
We giggled and shuddered, and after a quick look around, went out and turned the light off, shutting the door behind us.
Giggling to each other in a knowing way that only comes from working in a haunted place for so long.
We walked up the stairs.
Halfway up, and the piano started playing again.
I ran down and swung the door open, thinking somebody might be having a laugh or teasing us.
But no, lights on, piano lid down, music stopped, all the windows shut, all the alarms on and set.
I asked the headmaster the following week if he'd been in that night, telling him what had happened.
He'd been over a hundred miles away with his family and wasn't even on sight.
That's a heck of a story, Joe.
Thank you very much if you've sent a story.
I've tried to include as many as I can.
I enjoyed each and every one of them.
And it all goes to prove what I've always said.
Ordinary people like you, like me, have extraordinary experiences.
Thank you again for your stories.
If I didn't have a chance to include yours, I'll try to on a future edition.
And we'll maybe, if you think it's a good idea, we'll do that again.
Okay, let's get to Belfast, Northern Ireland now.
Warren Coates, established investigator of ghosts.
Here is that segment for my radio show.
Warren, thank you for doing this.
How are you?
I am fine, Hard.
I'm doing the best.
Thank you.
So far, friendless last words, we haven't had any major technical glitches here, but I tend to find sometimes when you talk to people about deep paranormality, sometimes it affects the equipment.
And sometimes I think, am I going nuts?
Is this mad?
I've heard all kinds of stories about that.
I don't know whether that's affected you.
It has.
We've had a, there's always several things would happen.
Brand new batteries would be drained.
You would take them out of the pack, put them straight into the equipment.
And two minutes later, the energy is just drained from them.
But we had one occurrence that happened now.
It was a very haunted inn, very old, haunted pub we were doing.
And three of us were in the group were actually witness to this.
Now, I know a lot of your readers or your listeners probably won't even believe this, but it's 100% true.
We had took brand new batteries out of a pack, put them in a voice recorder and set the voice recorder down, switched it on, and walked over to the other side of the room.
We're doing an EVP session, electronic voice phenomena.
And all of a sudden, the batteries or the lights went dead.
The lights just went off on the bit of equipment.
And we went over to check it.
Now, I swear to goodness, whenever we opened up the back, there was no batteries on it.
The batteries were gone out of it.
I swear.
And this place had a lot of poltergeist activity and a lot of different sort of activity happened.
But that was, that stumped us.
That really did sort of stopped us on our tracks.
And you absolutely double-checked there were batteries.
We double-checked.
And lucky enough, one of the other girls, Donna, she was actually standing beside me whenever I was doing it.
And we put it on and we'd done like, you know, setting up, given the location and the time we're setting it up at.
Batteries were the lights were definitely on it.
The lights were definitely on record.
And we set it up on a few minutes of your talk.
And within a half an hour, now it didn't go out of our sight.
It was just over the other side of the room.
So it was in sight line of our line of sight all the time.
And the batteries were gone.
And we never found them batteries.
Now, there is what you call, obviously, sort of our port and deport, where things would disappear, but usually we'd reappear again at different stages, but we've never had them batteries return.
God, well, I hope we're going to be all right doing this.
Hey, we've got an awful lot of stories to get through.
I know that you've been researching for a long time in Northern Ireland.
Just talk to me very, very quickly.
Just, you know, a second or two about you.
Yeah.
Well, just always been interested in the paranormal.
I'm 57-year-old.
Started the Northern Ireland Paranormal Research Association in 1991 and basically just gone as a bit of a joke, basically, just to see, is there any cases out there?
Is there any need for a paranormal group over here?
And it just blossomed from there.
Now, Bangor, the town that I live in, I was the only group in it.
Now it's about six or seven different groups in it.
And there's groups all over the place.
But no, it's been an exciting time.
30 years of it.
There are some fantastic stories.
We're going to get through some of them.
Let's start with Crumlin Road Jail.
Now, it's one of the places that, you know, during the Troubles era, of course, was never off the news.
So I'm guessing, but maybe I'm wrong, that that era has left an impression on it.
It has, Howard.
But what we found, now we've been lucky enough to have an association with the Crummen Road Jail Prison for years and a paranormal field, just like the stress.
Now, we found there was an old basic workhouse built on the side of a part of the Crummen Road Jail, and a lot of the activity we were getting seemed to come from that.
Now, there was, unfortunately, some activity we had that came from the troubles.
But yeah, not a very nice place, brilliant place to investigate.
But you did feel completely drained whenever you'd finished your investigation in the night.
Well, if it was a workhouse and then became a jail, you know, I'm guessing there's a lot of heartbreak that would have been within those walls.
Just give me an example of the kind of stuff that happens there.
Well, on a regular basis now, there's a D-Wing, it's set in ABC and D-Wing.
And in D-Wing, there's what's known as the Annex in D-Wing, which is a bit added onto it.
And that would have been the most profoundly paranormal activity place, we would say.
And it was just the activity in that place.
We had people, we had men going, we had prison officers and all that used to sort of be, we used to work in it with prisoners that were actually imprisoned in it.
And they all told us the same thing.
They said, if you were in D-Wing, you hated it.
And the figures people seen, and they were all dressed in really, really old dress, weren't dressed in sort of prison clothing or anything like that, or prison officers' clothing.
One prison officer I know very well wouldn't go up in it.
And he said, if he did go up, there would have to be one of the other guys who went up with him.
And all the other prison officers were the same.
They just hated getting into it.
But there was a spirit of a woman.
You've seen the spirit of a woman dressed in like a white gown or just like a Hessian bag, basically, sort of tied in the middle.
That's what it looked like.
And there was all these other figures, we had like psychics and mediums and all went in with us.
And they all said it'll be these figures just sitting slumped against the wall in really bad conditions.
And the energy, as I say, again, it's another place you took battery equipment in there, especially in the basement of D-Wing.
And within half an hour to an hour, the batteries just were drained completely.
Some of the activity and it was amazing.
Anything, you know, physical, knocks, bangs, things being moved or turned over?
Oh, yes.
Yeah.
I mean, we had a lot of the cell doors.
The only thing that was changing was it basically took the locks off them so you couldn't lock them.
But there was actually unlocking our cell doors.
I were on it when it was an actual working prison.
And we had had some of them doors slamming.
Now, the thing was, it was like a residual because a couple of doors that we knew the noise was coming from the cell and we heard the door slamming.
But whenever we walked up to it, the door was still ajar.
The door hadn't been closed at all.
You had sets of keys thrown at you, pushed, slapped.
There was what's known as a whistler cell or a whistler.
It was just this whistling came from one cell in particular with shadow people.
So these just black shadows.
And the thing was, you're talking to be five or six people witnessing this, you know, the same apparition.
And there's one came down the stairs of again of D-Wing.
Or sorry, this was C-Wang, actually, that's me.
Come down the C-Wing and turned and started walking up to where we were standing.
Now, we were in a darkened room, but there was still, it was summer's evening, so there was still a bit of light coming in where the windows now were.
And we all seen this figure coming up and then it just disappeared about sort of 20 yards away from us.
But we all, I mean, as I say, every night you were there, you didn't get activity.
But there were some of the nights you went there.
And as soon as you went in, as soon as the door was closed behind you, it was just crazy.
We always love stories of castles here.
You know, you always expect there to be something on the ramparts.
You have a castle in Northern Ireland that you've checked out called Rich Hill Castle.
What happened there?
Well, Rich Hill Castle, absolutely awesome, awesome place.
Beautiful, beautiful buildings built in Rinster 1670 and it's one of the first unfortified houses built in Ulster.
So it didn't have like the ramparts, it didn't have battlements or anything, I guess, here because they had taken all this down.
There were still sort of a couple of secret passages in the place.
There were still like tunnels underneath it, and then I got there to escape from.
But we were invited in to do, it was a four-part documentary thing.
It was done with us years ago.
And we were invited in one night just to do a bit of investigation to see if there was anything there.
And again, all the activity in that place was, you know, there was everything from you could hear horses coming up through, there was a big courtyard.
You could hear the horses' hooves coming on the stones.
Yeah, you could hear there was the servant, what was the servants' quarters?
And, you know, we had taken people in.
We didn't see anything.
It was what was known as the death room.
And the death room was a room that overlooked the gardens, lovely big, extensive gardens.
But if anybody was sort of ill or anybody was approached or sort of approaching their death, we were basically moved into this room and the windows were opened, you know, just so they could sort of, it was like a, so they could live their last in a nicer sort of part of the house.
And people were standing in that room and the amount of people went, somebody in a grey dress, just like a grey uniforms, just walked by the door.
And this was one of the maids and she was seeing the regular occurrence, just walking by the doors, Lise, of this house, or this room.
Again, noises.
You had the wee bells, like the wee servants' bells would have heard ringing.
You'd things move.
You'd have set a cup down.
And again, the outport and deport bit.
You'd come back five minutes later and the cup had moved.
And just a wide variety of things you would, again, you would class as paranormal, but you know, it was a beautiful place, nothing bad, nothing negative.
The only energy there, there was one energy, and whenever, whenever he came into the house, any girls, if there was any sort of females or any children, they didn't feel great.
They felt very ill.
And it all turned out to this guy who was from the era that sort of women shouldn't be in the same room as men and children shouldn't be basically spoken until they're spoken to, basically all the truth.
And I mean, we're a real oppressive character.
Very, very oppressive.
I mean, one of our group members, she was actually severely physically sick off their heads and energy.
She was in the room one night.
And with other people that felt very ill, with people, the color just green from their faces.
And again, with people get slapped and people get pushed.
Slapped.
Slapped.
Oh, yeah.
And the thing was, you could actually hear, there was one woman.
You actually heard slop and she had the red mark on her face where this energy had slapped her.
But any other thing that happened in it, there was fine.
There was nothing bad at all.
But just his energy, if it showed itself, it just wasn't very nice at all.
I love stories about ships.
You know, there are many stories.
Of course, Titanic was built and designed in Belfast.
We'll talk about that in a bit.
But you've got a ship that I've never heard of before that apparently is well haunted, as they say.
The SS Nomadic.
What's that all about?
The SS Nomadic was the actual tender ship for the Titanic and the Olympic and Hall as well.
So it would have taken the people, you know, from the harbor on the internet aboard the ship.
It's done out in a lot of the, there's what's known as the powder room.
And the powder room is all like wooden panels.
And it's the same wooden panels that was actually used on the Titanic as well.
Beautiful, beautiful ship in its own right.
Now it's dry docked.
So you can sit and you can go on it as a tour.
We were lucky enough to actually get on and done an investigation.
And then we were lucky enough to actually be able to take other groups on it as well in the public and to do sort of tours and investigations with.
Again, some of the levels, you had the first class, then you had the second and the third class.
And the difference in the first class was all done up lovely.
It had lovely sort of tiles in the floor.
Again, lovely chairs, lovely sort of paddling and all this here.
But whenever you go down to the bottom decks, there was quite, it was just completely negative.
You know, it's just completely sort of down, down atmosphere.
And there was a lot of activity there.
Now, there was a couple of deaths on the ship as well.
There was a couple of people.
There was one guy, a gentleman who died when he was actually working on the ship.
It was actually based in Paris for a while, below the Eiffel Tower, doing, it was like a nightclub.
So it's got a long, long history, but it's got a very, very haunted history as well.
Right.
And as anything connected with the Titanic does.
One quick thing.
I don't know whether you're aware of this, but the drawing room, the draftsman's room at Harland and Wolfs is said to be well haunted too.
I think they've preserved it.
But from what I'm hearing about that place, lights switch themselves on.
People hear all kinds of noises.
It's a very spooky place.
Do you know anything about that?
Yeah, well, we tried to get into it.
We're very, very sort of, we don't like, again, a lot of activity because that's where the big sort of Titanic or Titanic Hotel now is now.
You know, so obviously the trend sort of hush, hush all of that side of it up.
But yeah, I mean, again, the drawing room over the years, I've known people that have worked on it.
And that's what they'll say to you again.
You see, you walk out, you switch the light off when you're leaving the room.
And two seconds later, you hear a click.
And you'll walk in, the light's been switched back on again.
Or opposite, the lights are switched off when you're halfway doing your work.
You know, we were lucky enough as well to do the Titanic dry dock and pump house, which again, the Titanic actually sat in the dry dock for two weeks to get an open sort of work carried out on it.
But in the dry dock itself, there was the big pumps.
So it would have turned, you know, it was a big bit turned in the middle.
So there was the help of the Alexandra dock and things, the Huntington dock.
And the dry docks were being able to open up the docks to let the water in and let the ship in and all this.
But that room was the same.
The amount of temperature in there, lights were switched on and off, doors open and closed.
Now all the doors are well secured.
And again, the sound of machinery, the sound of heavy pumps going on, but the pumps are still there, but they haven't been switched on in sort Of donkey's years, but it's the exact same.
It's just an awful lot of residual energy that's just basically caught in time.
Isn't that amazing?
Even the energy and even the impression of machinery turning and working at a very important time, even that is caught in the place.
It is.
And we had a brand experience one night.
And again, say now the dry dock's like 44 feet deep and I think it's 96 foot long or something like that.
And you can walk right down into the dry dock and you can walk right from one end to the other and back.
And we were sitting one night and I was about, I think it was about six or seven, the group down.
We're just doing a bit of a bit of a circle work at them seance.
And the whole room started shuddering.
And we went, you could actually feel the vibrations.
And it was the same vibrations that would have got whenever one of the ships was basically coming into the actual dock.
You know, when they like going to the reverse engine or something like that, and you can feel the vibration in the water.
But there's windows all around you.
We looked out and there was no boats.
There was no ships.
There was nothing coming into any of the locks or any of the docks.
And that was quite a sort of funny one to hop me.
So it was because, you know, again, it left us speechless because we were just talking about, you know, the history of what have been there, the ships that have been there, and the amount of people in the dry dock.
I estimate there have been a couple of hundred people have actually died in the dry dock alone over the years.
But isn't that amazing, Warren?
And we've got to park it for some commercials just now, but it's amazing that events are actually imprinting themselves on a location, not just people.
You know, we tend to think of people being imprinted on a location.
But the actual events that went around the building of the Titanic and other ships to be imprinted on that dock is amazing.
Hold that thought?
Warren Coates in Bangor, Northern Ireland is here.
You know, we have to not forget that some of the spookiest and scariest stories come from what they call domestic properties, homes like you and I live in.
There is the Enfield Poltergeist.
There was one in Battersea.
There have been so many over the years.
And you've checked out a couple, one of which was a house on the Antrim Road in Belfast.
That's correct.
Yeah.
Well, again, the group, I really started the group in 91, and this was the whole thing to do private cases, you know, to go and help people that are having activity in their houses.
And this was a private house, but it was actually a charity, a wee charity had set up, and they were using the building for their charity work.
And the gentleman called us in one night, very, very skeptical guy and quite good living.
And he just said, look, he says, the girls won't go in.
It's a big three-story building, that was sort of Victorian building.
And I said, the girls won't go up to the top floor.
Nobody will work on the top floor.
And we always take away a pinch of salt.
We always say, look, we'll let us go in and we'll investigate it first just to see if we find anything.
But as soon as we walked into the door, you just felt the sort of the energy was there.
And he just knew there was paranormal sort of activity on it.
And we ended up being there for, I think we ended up going up for about five or six weeks in a row, maybe two or three nights a week.
And one of the things was seen was, we've seen this gentleman about three or four times.
And he was very apprehensive to sort of show himself fully.
But whenever you sort of seen a bit of him, it looked as if one side of his face was burnt.
But he was wearing like an old, to us straight away, we got the impression that's an army uniform.
You know, that's an army uniform.
And that's something that is a connection with there.
And he didn't mean any harm, but it was just, again, with a paranormal activity, most of the times, the spirit is just trying to show itself, trying to get help, trying to look for help or trying to find out, you know, why am I here?
And people are ignoring me.
And unfortunately, people always jump to the, oh, it's a demonic thing and all this here.
But we looked into the history and looked into the history of the family.
And it turned out that the family had owned it originally during the Battle of La Somme, they had two sons that was serving in the Battle of La Somme and one of them got very badly burnt and killed.
And when we described the uniform and that's what we took it to be, and as soon as we went down, one night, basically just spoke to him.
And some of your listeners probably think this funny, but again, when we're speaking to spirit, it's only one of us.
It's just one of us that doesn't have a physical body anymore.
So the personality traits, everything that person had when they were alive, they've still got when they're dead, when they've passed on.
So we just spoke to him and just went, you know, look, we're here to help.
You know, unfortunately, you've passed on.
You know, your family, your loved ones have passed on as well.
And they're waiting for you.
And after about two weeks, we'd done it regularly.
Every night we're down, just spoke to him.
And that was it.
And the last time we were speaking to the guy who runs the business, now the business has closed down and moved on.
But it was about five years ago.
And the guy said, this is, oh, the girls are more than happy.
So they're sitting up in the top room.
You know, they're doing everything.
There's nothing, nothing at all has happened, you know, and everything had clear.
And that was the spirit just moved on just because, you know, there was something holding it here.
And it was probably just, you know, it was looking into its house where he used to live and his family was gone.
He's wondering why these strangers and all those in his house.
Isn't that interesting?
get the idea of a spirit walking the earth just trying to find familiar things were you able to Yeah, it was very, it was one of those energies that at first we found it very hard to communicate with.
We were all sitting, we're doing what's known as circle work.
So we're sitting doing the circle work one night and he came into, we felt his energy coming into the room and would say, so, you know, if you're there, and again, this was quite an in-your-face, paranormal activity, because we had said, look, if you're there, can you please do something for us?
Can you please switch the light on?
And as soon as we said that, click, the light went on in the room we were sitting in.
And we went, you know, thank you.
And so we started this.
We had a meeting with us one night.
And we were just, you know, she had says, right, you know, he's here.
He's willing to want to move on.
And so we just talked to him normally.
And there is cases where there's some of the cases where, again, the spurt doesn't want to move on, you know, because they're still very hesitant, don't know they're dead.
So they're going, I'm not dead.
Why are you telling me to get out of my house for it, basically?
But this one, I think he had been there for so long and he just, he needed closure.
He needed to actually go into where he should have been.
So they say it was very, very, very hesitant.
He didn't come out.
You know, we've seen glimpses of him at peripheral vision and all this here, just out of the corners of our eye.
And then it started in the stage where we were sitting at night in a darkened room, and you would see him coming out.
And I think that's when he sounds a bit funny again, but we just got, he's accepted us as being here.
So he hasn't had that fear anymore, basically.
And look, generally, Warren, you know, the ones that you tell, do you realize you are dead?
Do some of them, you know, cut up a bit rough?
Do they cause problems?
They do, definitely.
Again, a case we done in Bangor a lot of years ago.
Now, it was a council house in Bangor.
We ended up actually having to get this family moved through the local council.
And the last time I, I think it was two or three different families lived in this house after this.
And every family had only stuck this house a couple of months and moved out.
And this was just a very aggressive, very negative energy.
Now, again, but I'm not sure about over in England, I'll get here, but over here, a lot of our sort of groups straight away think, turn things as evil and think it's all demonic.
And we went, it's not evil, it's just despairing energy.
Whenever this person was alive, they weren't a very nice person.
You know, they were quite a nasty person.
So they've taken that energy over with them and the hottest sort of melts.
So that's why, again, they're dropped.
We actually researched.
And again, this actually turned out this guy had had a severe beating.
Basically, he was beat up and he actually died from his injuries.
But he was like a drug dealer and all this hair.
So, I mean, it was, but his energy, whenever we try to communicate with him, I'll tell you about actually what happened.
We were actually called in this woman's house because she'd said about this, this man was telling her son to jump down the stairs or else to jump out the window of his bedroom.
And she had phoned the police.
Now, I had spoken to the police constable that actually that was there had done this, so that's all we know is true.
And the police had came to her house and the cops went in.
The police went in, checked around her house.
There was nothing there.
And the cop came down, standing there outside the door talking to her, talking to the woman.
And she had said about it.
And he had said, look, if anything happens again, phone us.
Next minute, he pushed the woman out of the way and went running up the stairs.
And she didn't know what was going on.
The cop, whenever the policeman came back down the stairs again, a couple of minutes later, she said he was pure white.
And she said, he was still talking.
And he says, he just looked up and he's seen this man just leaning around and looking down on him from the top of the stairs.
So how would they, as far as you know, how would the police able to resolve that case then?
I mean, look, my dad was a copper.
He was called out to a few bizarre things in Liverpool.
I don't know.
What would they put that down to then?
Perfectly honestly, I think a lot, there seems to be a lot goes on that they know about, you know, so I think it just do class it as just another one of them weird cases.
Because whenever we had phoned up, they actually spoke to the police constable and we thought, there's no way, you know, we're phoning up from a paranormal group asking to speak to one of their constables.
And straight away, the girl said, yes, it's we can put you in touch with him.
And he phoned us up and it says they were talking about it.
And they had been called to this house with this family, with this lady.
I was here about two times with different things.
But the family before that, they had also been called to the house because the things happen.
You know, so I think they must have a book because with like strange things or weird things that they put all these reports in because there is a lot of reports must actually go to them.
I mean, with so many people leaving that house, did anybody have the idea of, you know, maybe we might call in the local exorcist, somebody like that?
Well, we suggested that because we have a member of the clergy, we've sort of a minister and we've got a priest that'll actually work along with the group and we can contact Mlingwin, help us do clearance or lessons or whatever.
And we suggested that, but the housing executives were extremely close to it.
And basically, actually, one of the girl I was speaking to, trying to get this family moved, she actually laughed at me down the phone and went, Hunt that would be stupid and all this here.
And I said to her, I said, well, how about you come out and you stay in the house with us?
And they wouldn't do it.
And then I say, there was just the police and all.
We had the police and all contact and we had a letter from the police constable and all.
And to get them on, they actually, we did, we ended up they did actually have to move the family.
But I say, as far as I know now, maybe there is now because it's been a couple of years since I've been around that area.
But the last time I was around, there'd been nobody living in that house.
It was just boarded up.
Right.
So they're obviously aware that it's got a reputation and people don't stay.
And if you put people in a place, costs money to get them in, costs money to get them out.
So it's just exactly.
I think there's copper loss basically.
Wow.
Like to see that place.
People love stories, don't they, about haunted theatres.
You've got one about a haunted cinema.
Yeah, yeah.
It's Don't Cinema.
It used to be what still is off the Hollywood Road in Belfast.
So it is, and it used to be the Strand Cinema, it was called.
And again, it's always been stories about it.
You know, whenever I was growing up, you know, I always remember some sort of mother and father telling me stories and then other people saying about sort of people used to work in the cinema and people that sort of visited and seen things.
And then again, we were lucky to actually get invited into it to do an investigation again because the people that were on it, you know, people were closing up, switching the cinema, the lights off at night and switching everything down, locking up.
We're seeing these figures basically just walking around the place, you know, so the alarm was gone off.
They were coming in during the night and was nobody there and all this here.
So we get in and again, amazing place.
You know, we had stories.
One of the stories was like a guy would have went up, coming out of the, locking up the back room, switching the lights off.
And they would walk down through the, where all the chairs and all are and seeing this gentleman sitting on the seat.
And our first Once a lot of times people would have fallen asleep watching the TV, watching the film and then not realizing they're sleeping.
And there's people that have actually died in the cinema as well, just having a heart attack and passed away.
But the guy said he walked right down to this person and says, just when he got a couple of feet away from him, the figure just disappeared.
And he said, that was him.
He was in that cinema by himself, but he said he just went out that night.
He actually said they're running through the door and they just locked the door behind him.
And it wasn't the next day when they came back and left all the lights on inside.
But he says nobody was going back in to switch the lights off that night.
You know, surprise.
Yeah, exactly.
But again, a very, very good place.
We had some really good activity there.
Again, we would have had torches and all switching off.
We had equipment getting switched on and off for us.
We were making a cup of coffee one night and had the kettle on in one of the rooms and the kettle was switched off about three times.
And I got the stage where I switched it on and stood, basically stood in the same room as it and it started boiling.
And then I walked out of the room to get something.
We came back in, it was switched off again.
But it was just we silly things like that.
You know, when you sort of go, it was very tricks, very sort of playful.
One of the energies that was there was very playful, you know, and they would have had, you know, people would have had like as if somebody was blowing in their ears or like sort of touching their shoulders and all this here.
And you turn around, there was nobody there.
Wow.
It's still, I mean, still there.
But at the moment, let's say with COVID and all that there, you know, just they're not doing anything at all paranormal in it.
Last question, and thank you for doing this.
We have to talk again because I know you've got a million stories.
Has anything just in a minute or so scared you?
Oh, the only thing really scared me one night, again, back to the original one, Crumb and Roe Jail.
We had decided one night what we're going to do.
And we never, ever provoked the spirits.
And we don't one night because there was nothing at all happening.
We went, that's stupid.
We'll provoke the spirits and see if we can get something happen.
And we did.
And we were playing sort of loyalist music and then we were playing Republican music and all this here.
Just doing anything to try and get the, you know, like this whole thing of war effect where you would do different music or dress and period cushions and all.
And I ended up getting thrown across the floor.
Now, I'm quite a biggish guy.
And if you ask any of my group members that were with me that night say that I was just, we were all worthless energy just rushing towards us.
And something hit me and I was thrown back about four or five feet backwards across the room.
And from there on and I just went, I'm never ever going to provoke spirits again.
Doesn't sound like a good idea.
Hey, thank you for sharing this time, Warren.
If people want to see your website, what is it?
It's now, we're getting a new one at a minute, but it's beyond www.nipra, n-i-p-ra-a, northern Ireland paranormal research association.co.uk or else my name is Warren Coates, so I'm on a Facebook page, and I got there, or I can go on Nipper's Irish Ghosts and Legends on Facebook as well.
Warren Coates in Northern Ireland will have him on again.
And before that, a compilation of your stories very kindly sent to me.
More great guests in the pipeline here on The Unexplained.
So until next we meet here online, my name is Howard Hughes.
This has been The Unexplained Online.
And please, whatever you do, stay safe, please stay calm.
And above everything else, please stay in touch.
And by the way, when you get in touch, please tell me who you are, whereabouts you are, and how you use the show.
I'd love to see those things.
Okay, take care.
Thank you very much.
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