On this edition paranormal investigator Liz Cormell...just confirmed as the fifth Guest Speaker on The Unexplained Live cruise 2023,with Marella Cruises. She joins Andrea Perron,Dr David Whitehouse,David Rolfe and Malcolm Robinson in our North American East Coast odyssey from October 22nd. Liz - who is also a "witch" and psychic - worked as a police forensics investigator...Next year she launches her own paranormal tours. She has many amazing stories to tell and a clear, methodical approach. **Cruise details and a special micro-website link on my recent Podcast Special Edition**
Across the UK, across continental North America, and around the world on the internet, by webcast and by podcast.
My name is Howard Hughes, really, and this is The Unexplained.
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You know, I'm a very small, independent operator and have been for all of these years.
I like it that way, and I like the fact that you like it that way too, by the looks of it.
It is just direct communication, me sitting here where I've been sitting doing these podcasts for all these years, and you, wherever in the world you happen to be.
And if you'd like to email me, tell me your story, where you are and who you are, and the way that you use this show, then it'd be good to hear from you too by going to the website, theunexplained.tv, manfully operated by Adam, my webmaster, for all these years.
You can follow the link and send me an email from there.
And at the website, you'll find a special edition of the podcast.
And if you read the information around it, you will get the full details and the booking link, the information link, for the Unexplained Live 2023, the cruise that we're doing, starting on the 22nd of October in Florida and then making our way via marvelous places on the eastern seaboard of the USA and Canada, making our way up and then going back down.
An amazing experience, I think you may well know if you've looked already, that we've got a stellar lineup of speakers, joined by Liz Cormel, the investigator, medium, witch, and all-round good egg.
She'll talk about her ghost investigations and the chilling details of those.
And we'll also talk a little about the tarot, maybe get you a tarot reading.
You have the chance to meet Liz.
She is the latest sign-up to the cruise, the Unexplained Live 2023.
Then we've got former BBC Space and Science editor, acclaimed author and astronomer, Dr. David Whitehouse, who was such a success on the cruise last year.
He was really, really amazing and will be riveting this time.
So David Whitehouse is with us.
Malcolm Robinson, the acclaimed paranormal author and researcher.
He's talked about and researched everything from the Loch Ness Monster to UFOs in Bonnybrook in Scotland.
He will be great on the show.
Of course, he's got a new book out currently that we featured in a podcast recently.
David Rolfe made the very famous internationally acclaimed film about the Shroud of Turin and continues to investigate that mystery.
He will be talking about it and also showing you a replica of the Turin Shroud.
He has a lot of insights to bring to you.
And of course, all of the speakers will be there to answer your questions, including Andrea Perrin from The Conjuring, lived in the Conjuring House.
She will be joining us for the day in Boston when we arrive there, and she'll be there to answer your questions.
We'll be doing a fascinating session with her.
And it is, of course, the 10th anniversary of the first Conjuring movie.
So Andrea will be there to talk about that.
I think that's a pretty stellar lineup.
I think that's everybody.
Plus, there'll be your chance to get books signed, ask any questions that you've ever wanted to ask of these people.
And if you want to know anything from me about my lifetimes and everything, then I'm there.
And I just, I loved the fact that this was something that I did that I could meet the audience while having my breakfast.
So I'd be there queuing up for the orange juice or getting myself a little bit of extra scrambled egg or a bit more bacon or whatever.
And somebody would tap me on the shoulder and say, enjoyed so-and-so or I wondered this about that.
And that I found to be a really lovely experience.
It is an experience, I think, like no other being on a cruise ship of that kind.
There is a kind of community feeling, and you get into the swing of it amazingly quickly, really.
So I can't praise the experience of the actual holiday enough.
The holiday is provided by Morella, and I'm there to host the sessions with the speakers aforementioned, as they say.
So if you come, I think you'll have a terrific time.
Don't forget, of course, if you look at the information, which you'll find on my website, in the blurb in the writing about the special edition of the podcast about the cruise, you'll find a link that will take you to information about the cruise.
And crucially, there's a booking link there.
And if and when you book, please use the special booking code Podcast100.
That's one complete word with no spaces or gaps.
Podcast100, then you get a £100 per booking discount off the cost of it all.
Fantastic value.
Great experience.
Massively looking forward to it.
The Unexplained Live, the East Coast of North America this year.
Featuring all of those people, including the guest we're about to speak to right now, Liz Cormel, our latest recruit to our seaborne team.
She's currently in Yorkshire, normally based in the West Midlands, but today, on this boiling hot day in London, it's like 90 degrees Fahrenheit outside, 31 degrees Celsius.
I'm guessing it's as hot up there too.
But let's cross now to Liz Cormel, our latest sign-up to The Unexplained Live 2023.
Liz, thank you very much for coming back on my show.
How are you?
I'm very good.
Thank you.
How are you?
Very good.
I'm very pleased to know that you are coming on The Unexplained Live 2023 up the eastern seaboard of the United States and Canada, going from Florida and all the way back down.
You excited?
Oh, I'm yes.
I haven't come off the ceiling yet, I don't think.
Well, no, I've noticed looking at my official Facebook page, the official Facebook page of the Unexplained with Habitus, there are a lot of people who you've met or are your fans or both, and they're very pleased that you're doing this.
Yes, it's so lovely.
I've just been kind of bimbling along doing my things.
I've been asked to speak at a couple of little conferences over in the UK, nothing on this scale.
But I have investigated with a lot of teams.
So it is really lovely when people have said, oh, wow, that's so glad Lizzie's coming.
So yeah, thank you to everybody who's commented.
And I hope I won't let anybody down.
No, you've got a lot of support out there, not least from my good self, because I think that, well, up and coming is not fair because you're doing so many things.
But I think, you know, more people are going to hear of you in the next year or so.
And of course, you're launching your own, aren't you?
Which we can mention here because we can say whatever we want.
You're launching your own paranormal tours next year.
I am, yes.
June next year.
Very, very ably supported by Mysterious Adventures Tours.
Maria Schmitz, who runs Mysterious Adventures Tours, has very kindly taken me under her wing for my first tour.
So that's all being hosted on her website just so I can find my feet, really.
But yes, first tour of England.
Some places some people might have heard of.
Other places I'm hoping people won't have heard of.
But I will show the hidden side of history and mystery and the paranormal.
The kind of places you tend to think of are there.
And, you know, that's not to say that going back to them again, you'll always get a different perspective if you go with different people and you do it in a different way.
So it's always going to be different experiences.
But you tend to think about Edinburgh, of course, being well haunted and Stratford-upon-Avon being well-haunted.
Various other places in the United Kingdom.
So you're going to go to some of the places that are perhaps less well-known?
Yes.
What I wanted to do was the main bucket list tick off.
So London, Stonehenge, Stratford-upon-Avon.
But I'm going to a place called Tudor World in Stratford-upon-Avon to do an investigation.
Tudor World.
Tudor World.
Used to be known as Falstaff World.
Yes.
The Falstaff Centre.
Run by Janet and John, who are lovely people.
And I'm doing a paranormal investigation there rather than the usual ghost walk tour.
So I've put a different slant on that.
And Stonehenge, I'm signed up to do the Inside the Circle tour.
So it will be just us at dusk.
It won't be being shepherded round as a regular tourist.
So even the bucket list, well-known places, I'm trying to do slightly differently.
And then I'm throwing in places like there's a Roman villa.
Well, there's multiple Roman villas up on the Cotswolds that I'm taking people to.
And there will be a Roman dressed up to do the tour of the villa for us.
Oh, that's good.
And as for Stone Enge, I always think that these days, because so many people want to see it, you're kind of, you know, you're filing round in a circular fashion and then you're gone before you know it.
So to be able to have a bit more time to do it at dusk, I think is going to be a nice experience and an interesting experience for people.
I hope so.
And of course, I'm an archaeologist, so I can put it into the wider landscape.
So point out the burial mounds and the Curses Monument and the Avenue and talk about Avebury, which we're also going to be visiting, and Silbury Hill and the river that goes past both Stonehenge and Durrington walls.
So linking it into the landscape archaeologically and ritually.
So I'm hoping that slightly different, maybe more detailed perspective will just make people think a bit differently about it.
And Avebury is my favourite Stone Circle.
Yes, I love it.
So kind of taking them down to Avebury, to the Red Lion pub.
So kind of teaching them that they don't have to go to the big well-known places.
There are so many places off the beaten track if people look for them.
And isn't it fascinating that you said, as a lot of people are saying now, that there is a confluence between the archaeology and the ancient beliefs and paranormality and all that kind of stuff.
They actually go hand in hand.
And yet it makes you wonder how those ancient people understood that.
Yeah, but I think it's more of us trying to understand them because there's no written records.
So we're kind of making it up by what they left behind.
I mean, my whole, I teach for University Magicus, and most of my lessons are based on the link between what we now call paganism and the archaeological evidence for what they called their religion.
Because it was the Romans who coined the phrase pagan.
And it just meant everybody else, basically.
So, and the way that's kind of drifted through into Christianity and then in through into neo-paganism, where have we got the evidence that the Vikings did worship Thor or the Druids worshipped at Stonehenge or Stone Circles?
What evidence have we got archaeologically to root it into fact?
Not just the stories and the myths and the legends that are out there?
You mentioned those connections.
There is also a connection to what my friends will call ufology, because we all know that Wiltshire is UFO Central.
That is where there is an awful lot of activity and crop circles and that kind of thing.
Will you be touching on those connections?
Because they do seem very strange with Stonehenge and Avery and other sites there.
I don't actually know too much about that side of things.
I will obviously make the connection and say this is something else that might be connected.
You might want to look into it.
But I wouldn't want to stray into realms that I know nothing about, really.
So I'll stay away from that, signpost it, but I won't be going into too much detail.
Well, I mean, who knows what might transpire while you're there, though, Liz.
So it might be brought.
I mean, I'm not saying that I know anything, but it might actually be brought to you.
What is University Magicus that you teach at?
It is an online university that was set up by Nicholas Spanini, Patty Negri, and Father Sebastian.
And it's anything that is out of the ordinary, not Christianity, basically, or lay down religion.
It's spirituality, it's magic, it's witchcraft.
And I was very fortunate to meet Patty last year, and she asked me if I'd come and teach online for her.
So, like I said, most of my Lessons are based around the link between archaeology and spirituality now.
And one of the things that you've done, I think, with the University of Magic, as you were telling me, is an introduction to the Vikings.
There is tremendous interest, it seems to me, on television and other places, in the Vikings now.
You know, for me, when I was at school, I have to say, and I'm really guilty about this, but the Vikings were all part of boring history lessons taught in a boring way by boring teachers.
But there's nothing further from the truth, is there?
No.
Well, the Vikings and Saxon age are my, that's what I specialized in on archaeology.
So, and then as I've gone through life, I've discovered I am Norse Saxon pagan.
So that's where my link between the two disciplines comes in.
But I try and teach in an interactive way.
I mean, we did Viking face painting, one of my lessons, where I went through, this is the documentary evidence of Vikings wearing makeup or war paint or whatever.
And then we all had a go and we all painted our faces and it was great fun.
So trying to make it more interactive, not just cold, hard facts and people going to sleep like the traditional history lesson possibly we had at school.
All I know about the Vikings is that they apparently went round wrecking places, but there was much more to them.
And I guess they had a very deep and unique spiritual side.
Yeah, I mean, if you look at things like the poetic and prose edda that were actually written down in the 14th century, I think it was, and you look at Icelandic traditions, which are probably the cleanest version of Norse myths we've got, because of course the Vikings didn't write.
The only recorded history we have contemporary with the Vikings is things like the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles and where Islamic cultures came into contact with them because the Vikings themselves didn't write.
It's all through their artwork.
It was all an oral tradition.
So stories were told and then obviously stories get bigger and bigger and somebody tells them slightly differently because that's the way they like to tell a story.
So pulling out the little threads of the truth, which is where the archaeology comes in, to then make sense of what actually did they believe, what was their legal system, things like what they lived in and what kind of boats they had is easy because we've got archaeological examples.
But the more esoteric stuff is a little bit harder because we have to kind of just tease out what we think is the truth.
And obviously, everybody looking at the same evidence comes to potentially different conclusions.
That's why I love archaeology because there is no right answer.
And there are so many mysteries.
I suppose mysteries is the word, for want of another one, up and down the United Kingdom, you know, things that we don't understand that are connected with archaeology and what has been left for us.
I mean, things like Tangential, I suppose it is, but, you know, Ross Lynn Chapel that they say is a portal to something else.
And it's very hard to get the kind of access that an investigator would want to Ross Lynn Chapel.
But, you know, this country is replete with strange from various eras bits of archaeology.
Well, we've got a very strong spiritual and nature spirit based culture, I guess.
Because, I mean, I guess the best example are the Irish with the small folk, the fairies, the leprechauns, the tree spirits, the banshees.
We've started to lose that a little bit in this country because it wasn't Christianity took over and wiped most of it out.
I won't say all of it because I'm hoping my book will prove that.
But people are becoming more aware because they're looking past the more organized religion, looking into how did we live in the past.
I think lockdown helped an awful lot with that because we were taken away from the busy lives, spent more time in nature possibly, more time even just in our back gardens or sitting looking out the windows.
And I think that link to our past is being explored more these days.
So when you sit in the back garden, people are going, oh, was that a fairy?
Rather than going, oh, that was a bit weird.
I've dismissed that.
It can't be anything new.
There's a quest for answers, which I think is a good thing.
It certainly helped, you know, my podcasting and broadcasting efforts over these years.
But I've been asking questions for as long as I've been here.
So, you know, as you know, is quite a few years.
Now, before we talk about the ghost hunts and other stuff, which is how I first discovered you, at this moment, you are in your hotel room in Driffield in Yorkshire, which I think is Paul Sinclair Country.
Why are you there?
I was having a break.
My main reason for coming up this way is I have Viking ancestors, as it happens, buried at Flamborough Church.
The only times I've been there in the past, it has been at night for investigations and stargazing and all that kind of thing.
So I thought, well, I'll take the opportunity.
I was looking for somewhere different to go and thought, well, I'll go and visit the ancestors at Flamborough.
And then all sorts of things, other things have happened.
So it's not been so much of a holiday where I've not done anything.
I've been busy.
But to be honest, I'm better off when I'm busy.
I get into less trouble.
All sorts of stuff apparently has happened in and around Flamborough.
You've only got to talk to Paul Sinclair about the lights and strange balls of luminescence in the sky there and other happenings.
You said you'd done investigations there.
What sorts of things?
Just ghost investigations?
I say just ghost investigations or something else you've done there?
Yeah, mainly looking for spirits.
There's a beautiful headland on the cliffs at Flamborough, next, not far from the lighthouse that I Really find, I just find it welcoming.
And it's one of those, why?
Why does this place?
I mean, some of it might be because I've got ancestors there.
So it's like an inherited memory almost.
But is it the atmosphere of the place?
Are there spirits there of my ancestors that welcome me?
So it is kind of looking for answers, I guess.
Why do I feel so comfortable here?
And then I do love sitting on the top of the cliffs next to the lighthouse watching the sea.
Now, you worked for the police.
We talked about this on my TV show some time ago, but you had a job with one of the major police forces in the United Kingdom.
You weren't actually a serving police officer, but you worked for the force.
I was a CSI, yes.
Right.
You were literally forensic investigations, weren't you?
Yes, yes.
How does that help?
Does it help in investigating ghost cases?
I think it helps in the logical frame of mind.
So not immediately going, oh, that tap was paranormal because that's what I want it to be.
It's the dissociation between, it's called confirmation bias in investigations in the police.
So looking for something that will confirm what you think it's going to be.
And the other way, I recently did a talk at Ghost Planet Networks Parameet about using investigative interview techniques that the police use for witnesses, using those on witnesses to paranormal occurrences to get the best evidence and get them to recall everything and even things that they might not realize they remember and building up a portfolio of stories by interviewing them properly, I guess.
Let's concentrate on that a bit because I get a feeling that there are with the best will in the world and we don't need them any ill intention or we don't need to mean to say anything bad about them, but there are a lot of amateur investigators out there who don't know very much about anything.
They're doing it for fun and I completely understand why they might want to do it.
But when they try and get accounts and garner accounts from people, they don't know in the way that you and I might know how to question people.
So just for their benefit, maybe if they want to listen to this, if you're meeting somebody who wants to tell you their story of some kind of experience, for want of another word that they've had, how do you begin to question them?
For me, the first thing, and this is the thing that really used to annoy me and I have to bite my tongue.
People say, tell me about what happened.
And everybody has a memory and you've told the story to your friends and people who all never guess what happened.
So you kind of have a rehearsed story in your head of the timeline.
So when you ask, tell me about what happened and they start telling you, do not interrupt them.
This is the most important thing.
If anybody takes anything away from this, just let them go.
Let them tell their story.
If they start wandering off into Aunt Mabel's front room, then yeah, pull them back.
But let them tell how they've remembered it in their memory story, if you see what I mean.
Then you can start asking not yes and no questions, but okay, you mentioned you saw an apparition of a woman.
Can you tell me what she was wearing?
And there's several acronyms.
TED is a really good one.
So tell me, explain to me, describe to me.
They're really open questions.
You'll get really long answers and they will go on for as long as they want to.
And they may remember stuff because you've asked specific things from their total, their free recall stage.
Then you can drill down into, well, you said it was a blue dress.
What kind of blue was it?
So you've then got the five WHs, the what, where, when, how, who, why.
You can use those to start questions.
How were you feeling?
Where was everybody else?
Then you open it out again and say, is there anything else about that incident you'd like to tell me about?
So think of it as like an hourglass shape.
Start open, free recall, let them go.
Bring it down to TED, TED, explain, describe, into the funnel, the 5WH, and then is there anything else?
And you can go through multiple stages of those, that time, that hourglass shape.
If there's another area that they open up and you go, oh, okay, we'll do that again for this little section.
But it's so simple.
But not many people, unless you're a trained, like you say, unless you're a trained interviewer, you don't know about these tricks.
I think you have to be listening ahead to people.
Sometimes I will talk to people and sometimes they get emails saying, why did you interrupt that person?
And I only ever do it when I feel that they're beginning to veer a bit.
But I do hear people doing interviews and the interview is more about them than the guest.
Part of this is making people feel at ease with the process.
And then they're going to start remembering things.
If you ask me, what did I remember, here I'm going on now, but if you ask me what I remember about the one ghost that I saw in my life as clear as the nose on my face, which was the guy in the Radio City Tower in Liverpool, the old watchman, 1950s, 1960s style.
Short guy.
Two things I remember about him, if you ask me first of all.
Number one, his shiny workman's boots.
They looked like, you know, Doc Martin's, but shined so you could see your face in them.
Everybody in those days, my dad, when he was in the coppers first, he used to shime his shoes until you could see not only his face, but everybody else's face in them.
It was amazing.
So everybody did that back then.
And his cap.
You start with that.
If I remember his boots and his cap, then I start remembering other bits of detail about what I saw.
And I only had probably five seconds to take it all in.
But you'd be surprised at what you remember if you just sit back and give yourself the time.
So you've got to give people space.
Yeah.
And if you happen to ask the right question and show that you've been listening, you've shown you paying attention and you taking notes, you can then go, okay, you mentioned his cap.
What kind of cap was it?
I've then got you thinking more specifically and visualizing what you want to do as an interviewer is put that person back into that place at that time and get them building the picture in their head.
But yeah, they've got to feel comfortable talking to you.
They've got to feel like you're listening.
You're not looking at your watch every 30 seconds or scratching your head.
Looking at your phone or all of them things.
Before I ask you specific ghost cases, which we will get into and my listener, of course, wants to hear those things for reasons we both understand.
Just staying with the police for a moment.
My father was very into all of this, oddly enough, and so was his dad.
And he came into contact with ghostly happenings and strange coincidences and weird things.
I think that's where I get it from.
Through all of his police service, did you find that actually there was acceptance of these things in the police?
For example, the police are rumoured over the years to have used, we know they have, to have used psychics in investigations, but they don't admit to it most of the time.
So do you think there's interest among police that you came across?
If you scratch the surface, yes.
It's not something that's openly discussed between police officers.
But for instance, I was based at RAF Cosford for a while and I started asking who's seen what.
And you'd get people finding me and taking me to one side that didn't want to be known to be telling a ghost story, but wanted me to hear their story.
So I think an awful lot of police officers have experienced things just because of the situations they get put in.
But I don't know whether it's openly accepted.
But I think a lot of police officers do accept that there is something out there, paranormal or whatever you want to call it.
Did you ever go to a crime scene and experience something that you can't explain?
No.
The only place I ever felt a little bit weird was at Coventry Cathedral.
But that was mainly because it was out of hours.
It was sort of two, three o'clock in the morning.
There were two of us inside the police cordon and they were playing piped monastic chanting.
So it's going to be a bit freaky.
But I think when I went to crime scenes, especially where somebody had unfortunately lost their lives, it was too fresh.
The spirit wasn't there.
The person wasn't there.
We always used to talk to the body like they were a person, sort of say, oh, excuse me, I'm just going to step over you.
I'm just going to check your pockets.
I'm going to, just as a respect thing, I suppose.
But I never felt that they were there, if that makes sense.
No, it makes perfect sense.
I'm glad that you did do that and you do that in the police service and that that tradition goes on.
Sometimes we think people are treated by a lot of public services as just numbers, but it's nice to hear that that respect goes on.
And like you say, that whole idea of when somebody's died and it's fresh, you kind of think that their presence will still be there, but it's not.
You know, I actually walked in and I'll tell this story as tastefully as I can.
I had to go to my downstairs neighbor, Nigel, a few years ago now, and he'd died.
I'd heard his radio on through the night and just thought he was having a late night listening to LBC radio in London session.
So I thought nothing of it.
But the radio was still back on, was still on when I got back home.
And his ex-wife was outside the front door.
She was very worried.
She hadn't been able to get an answer on the phone from him.
And I had to go in and I had to walk into his bedroom and I had to see him, you know, lying in bed.
And it was as if he was still there, but he wasn't.
There was just a vacuum there.
And it wasn't like there was any kind of presence or anything.
And I've never felt his presence.
Beyond that, it was just like there was nothing there.
So I totally get that.
All right, let's get to the stories then.
One of your most recent investigations, which we sort of touched on a while ago on the tele show, is smetic baths.
Now, we have to tell people in America, I think, and other countries, there's a great tradition in this country, and certainly before public spending started being cut back to the bone everywhere, that communities had quite ornate, in many cases, public bathing areas, beautifully tiled with marvellous dressing areas, and, you know, some of them very, very ornate.
My sister used to swim for her school at Bootle Baths in, what's the name of that road now?
I'll remember near the old police station in Bootle anyway, Liverpool.
People who live near there will have no idea whether it's still there, but I remember her competing in this place, and it was very grand.
And I think Smethick was very much like that.
So talk to me about the investigation at Smethick Baths in Birmingham.
Yeah, well, it is, like you say, it's a beautiful Art Deco 1930s building.
And it's had a lot of uses.
It's not just a swimming venue.
They had a removable floor that went over the bath, over the swimming pool.
So people like the Beatles and the Who and the Rolling Stones have actually done gigs there.
It was used as an air raid shelter and a temporary mortuary during the Second World War because it's on the outskirts of the city of Birmingham.
So it wasn't immediately in one of the bombing areas that kind of caught the odd stray because it's so close.
When they were constructing the building in the 30s, they dug up an old plague pit where they found 300 bodies.
The Crays used the tunnels underneath for bare-knuckle boxing and dogfights.
And it was the Crays and the Peaky Blinders.
People hopefully have heard of the Peaky Blinders.
Yeah, I have the London Crime Gang brothers, the Cray twins, actually held those things in Birmingham.
They came up and met, and it was kind of a bit of a rivalry between the Crays and the Peaky Blinder crew.
Sorry, my Black Country came out then with Peaky Blinders.
Peaky Blinders.
So yeah, they used to do bare-knuckle boxing because it was literally underground and dog fighting.
And I think one of the first things I remember capturing in the tunnels was dogs.
Obviously, there were no dogs around at the time.
And it was clearly in the tunnels with us.
We didn't hear it with our own ears, but we caught it on our recording device.
We just used little dictaphones that people use to make voice notes.
And yeah, we've got dogs barking and whining.
The last time I was there, we were in the area of the air raid shelter, which was also over the plague pit.
And we actually, I picked up a little girl and a little boy.
And the other members of the team I was with had set up one of these grid laser lights.
I'm sure people have seen them on TV where you have one of these laser pointers and you split the light into lots of little dots.
So you can see if something's moving through, because it moves the dots out of the grid pattern and your eye picks it up really easily when it's pitch black.
And although some of them couldn't see it as a little boy and a little girl, they could see something was disrupting the pinpricks of light from the laser grid.
And we actually, I was speaking to them and they stood there holding hands, obviously brother and sister, or close anyway.
And yeah, I think we've got video footage where you could just about see the lights kind of flicker.
So that was really interesting.
What were they telling you?
But they didn't talk very much.
They were scared of another male spirit in the tunnels who is known as being quite a misogynistic character, doesn't like women at all.
We don't know what his background with the baths, the connection with the baths are, but he's physically thrown people before or pushed women especially up against the wall.
And if you go in his room, it makes you feel very, very uncomfortable.
And we have to say that this site is now disused, isn't it?
It's been turned into flats, unfortunately.
It's no longer, they're keeping the building because the building's listed.
But the upkeep of the swimming pool, because I think they've got two swimming pools there, and just the upkeep of it and the old building as well just got too prohibitive.
So it's been turned into residential flats.
So I think the last investigation ever held were there was June this year.
And we were there just before.
So we were the penultimate investigation.
I'm really interested to see what the residents of the new flats get.
But no, it'll be interesting to get those reports.
I'm not sure how you would get them.
The man who pushed people around, do we know anything about him?
No, nobody's picked up because, like I say, he won't speak to women.
So if you're like myself, female medium, you've got no chance.
He'll try and intimidate you.
He's obviously connected to the site somehow.
And just by his presence, I would have put him further back than the building.
So predating the 1930s.
So he's not connected to the actual building or the baths.
He must be connected to the land or what was on the land before the baths were there, which I think was farmland.
So I don't know.
He's quite short, quite big built, but quite often presents as a dark shadow or a dark presence.
The room goes pitch black when he enters.
And then you start feeling intimidation.
Does it feel like his presence is kind of sucking energy out of things?
He kind of, no, it's more like, you know, when you were naughty at school, I don't know if you were naughty at school, but when you were bad and the teacher kind of loomed over you to tell you off, it was that kind of feeling, that intimidation that he's bigger than me.
I'm not sure whether I want to mess with this because he's got the authority almost.
I think we actually scared him out because I was with a group of very strong women.
So he decided we weren't the right people to pick on.
Too much female energy there for him.
Yes, yes.
So he went and found another group to play with.
Oh, it's good that you can win these things.
We tend to think of them as being overpowering and scary.
What do you think it is?
And I don't expect you to have the definitive answer because I'm sure that experts are still searching for it.
But what do you think it is about a presence like that, whatever it may have been?
What is it about them that makes them want to hang around?
That traps them at that particular critical, crucial location for them?
I think it depends on the person because that's what spirits are.
They're just people without a body.
So if, for instance, myself, my favourite place in the world is the top of the Long Mind.
I love going there.
I find it really relaxing and I find it really energizing.
So I think if I was to choose anywhere to go back to, that's where I'd choose.
And we have to say that the Long Mind is one of those things that's as near as you can get to a mountain in the Midlands.
It's, yeah, it's the Staffordshire Moorlands.
It is a mountain.
Part of it is called the Long Mountain.
And it is not inhabited, beautiful open.
They've got wild ponies living up there.
And it is beautiful.
And it's a dark sky space as well.
So one of the places where I've seen something that I would err on the side of calling a UFO, but we diverge.
But yeah, I think it depends on why you've come back.
If you've come back because you enjoyed a place, then that gives it the nice energy.
So, me going back to the long lind would be a peaceful energy.
Whereas it may well be that gentleman in the baths liked the feeling of power, liked intimidating people, got energy from it.
So that's why he goes back because he finds lots of people here he can intimidate.
So maybe once the building's been turned into flats, he disintegrates, goes away, moves on because he won't be being fed that energy, that negative energy that he feeds off.
And a lot of this is an energy exchange.
Yes.
Well, everything is, well, first law of physics, isn't it?
Everything's energy cannot be destroyed or created.
It's just merely transferred into a different energy type.
It's just passed along the line.
Yeah, so we're made up of energy.
We have electrical energy.
We have all sorts of different types of heat.
We give off heat energy.
So when we die, that energy has to go somewhere because it can't be stopped.
It can't be destroyed.
So a lot of paranormal investigators see spirits as electrical magnetic energy, which is why they use all these gadgets to pick up on electromagnetic energy.
Do you have any fear?
See, it always seemed to me whenever we've talked, and one of the things that impresses me about you, maybe it's the police experience, you know, the forensic work that you did, but you don't appear to have any fear of these things.
I've only ever once, and I think we've spoken about it before, whatever it was in Drake Cloe Tunnels I came across.
In Kidderminster.
Yes.
That was the only time I really experienced like proper, I don't want to be here anymore, fear.
But I've now got to the point where I want to go back.
I will always confront my fears.
I'm not one of these people that run away and that's it, gone dusted.
I will want to go back and confront that fear.
One of my very earliest investigations in the National Justice Museum in Nottingham, in the caves underneath the cells, it was a courtroom with prison cells and then caves underneath.
I believe I was psychically attacked by Templar Knights.
Now, being a witch, I find that quite common.
Templars don't like witches.
But it was the first time I come across this kind of thing.
And I sat there in a little ball and I shut down because it scared the living day knights out of me.
But I've been back three or four times.
And the time after that I went back, I went in going, right, I'm ready for you now.
Come on then, bring it on.
And we had a bit of a confrontation and the people, the guests with me at the time said, we're surrounded by dark shadows.
And I'm like, yeah.
And come on, bring it.
And they kind of petered out and got bored because they could see they weren't going to intimidate me.
Is it always then that they will back down first?
If you show them defiance, just as you did at Smethick Baths, if you show them collective or individual defiance or strength, we will always trump them.
I think, I won't say always because there's stuff out there that I've not come across and I've yet to experience.
But in my experience, most of them were bullies in life.
And like most bullies, if you stand up to most bullies, they back down.
And I found exactly the same with spirits.
If you kind of stand strong and go, yeah, I'm not scared of you.
They feed off that fear.
They feed off the energy that you give off by being afraid.
And if you're not giving that energy off, they don't have anything to gain.
So I have to say, I would think only about 20% of the spirits that I come across are like that.
Because I think if you go in with a positivity, with an open-mindedness, okay, I'm coming to see what's happening.
I'm interested in the people here.
A bit like the whole interview scenario, I'm here to listen.
Come and talk to me.
There are spirits that go, oh, finally, I've got a chance.
Somebody's going to listen to the discovery.
Or they're making a noise and you're like, oh, who are you?
Rather than, oh, my God, oh, my God, it's a ghost and running away.
So, yeah, I'm not.
It takes an awful lot to scare me now because I have been doing it a while.
So things moving in front of me doesn't scare me.
People spirits touching me doesn't scare me.
It might make me jump a little bit.
And you get that.
And then the burst of adrenaline.
But it doesn't make me run away now.
I'm more likely to run towards something because I want to see what it is that's doing it.
So you've confronted your fears, I think.
You said just for my listeners' benefit that you're a witch.
We just have to say that that's not the kind of witch that has a cauldron and wishes people evil.
No, it's a religion.
It's a path that people follow.
It's a spiritual belief rather than the label that the old lady who lives in the house by the cells and puts curses and eats children.
That's kind of the fairy story, which, no, it's my religious path is, and most witches are very nature-based, very eco-friendly, more into living with and loving nature.
Which is where it all came from.
Yeah, but magic is prayers.
I mean, if you say a prayer, please, please, God, let me find a parking space.
To me, that's a spell.
That's magic.
There's no difference.
You just call it different things.
Ghost investigation at the Albert Hall Theatre in the very centre of Wales.
My dad did military service in Clandrindod Wells many, many years ago.
I think there was some kind of army camp there that he was at.
It is an imposing and lonely place because you're right in the centre of Wales.
It's quite mountainous, loads of forest, not a lot of people, plenty of sheep.
And this theatre in Clandrindod Wells is all singing, all dancing when it comes to phenomena.
Oh, yes.
I think one of my favourite places to investigate because it never lets us down.
We might only have one thing, but it will be a big thing for the night.
Yeah, shadow figures, REM pods, which is one of these devices that detects electromagnetic energy.
I've actually had two wildlife cameras physically switched off.
These are these wildlife track hunting cameras that people use to see what wildlife's wandering around in their back garden.
I set two up looking out from the stage throughout the auditorium because that's where we'd seen shadow figures before.
And to switch them on, you slide a switch underneath, close the hatch, and then I attach it to a tripod.
So we were doing our investigation.
We were seeing shadows in one of the aisleways.
The REM pod went off.
And I was like, oh, we've got it on camera.
We've got it on camera.
And then somebody realized that there were no lights on the camera.
So we took them back to the base room.
And I'm thinking, oh, batteries have run out because we quite often get battery drain.
The theory is that spirits drain the battery energy to use themselves.
Batteries were fine.
I opened up and the switches had been slid to off on both of them.
Now, to do that, who or whatever it was would have had to have taken them off the tripod, which would have shown because it would have treated their motion sensors.
So as soon as you move them, they start recording.
There was no activation at all, yet both of these cameras were switched off.
Now, I know before your listeners say, oh, you forgot to switch them on, I know I switched them on because the first activation is me switching them on and then attaching them to the tripod.
So you see me wiggling the cameras around and getting them in the right place.
That's the first recording.
So they were both switched on.
And then when we came to see why they weren't working, they were both switched off.
Something turned them off then.
What do you think?
It has to be a spirit.
I'm a great believer in what's called the observer effect.
And it's a theory within quantum physics that says certain things will only react in a certain way if you are not filming them or nobody's observing them.
And it's almost like we're not supposed to know what happens after death.
It's weird.
Because the number of times I've been in a circumstance where something big has happened and we've got somebody with a camera with them and the camera's facing in the wrong direction or the batteries have run out or somebody stood in between them and what's going on.
And I've only ever once caught something on camera that looks like it might be paranormal.
And I believe it's down to the observer effect.
What was that?
It was a shadow figure in a doorway at a place called the Ancient Ram Inn, which is a very famous haunted location in a place called Wooden Under Edge in Gloucestershire.
And the whole group of us, I think there were 25 of us in the area known as the barn.
And every single person saw this shadow that looked like a figure stooping down looking at us.
And it was caught on camera.
And we did the usual, is it somebody's shadow?
Everybody waved their hands and the shadow didn't wave their hands.
So we kind of tried to rule out as much as possible, like looking at, is it like coming in from outside, casting a shadow with bits of furniture?
Or we tried to, what's known as debunk it, disprove it, but we couldn't find a rational explanation.
Now, I'm not saying it therefore is paranormal, but at the time we couldn't explain it and we still can't explain it.
Back to the Albert Hall Theatre in Flandrinda Wells, because we ain't finished with that yet.
It's a gift of peace on giving.
Apparently, one of the ghosts or presences, whatever it is, and I'd like your impressions or your thoughts on what it might have been, what might be there, was a thief.
You had pickpocketing.
Yes.
The last time we were there, we use wildlife cameras and we now use fisherman's bivvy alarms because they're motion sensors.
So you get three little PIR sensors that link to a little base station that you carry around and they set an alarm off if something moves in front of them.
So we were setting these up mainly up on the balcony overlooking the stage.
We were all on the stage so we could see there was no person physically up there, but these motion sensors kept going off.
We came to the end of the night to pack up all the kit and Alan, who runs Skepticide Paranormal, went up to collect the Bivi alarms from on the balcony and one of the Bivy alarms had been put face down on the floor.
Next to this Bivi alarm was his wallet, which had been in his pocket.
And I know it was in his pocket because he took it out and put it back in there in front of me earlier on in the evening.
And it was open next to this alarm.
And it was almost like something was like, I know what you're doing.
And I'm going to fool you.
And I'm playing a game with you.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Alan, I think he was, he was more angry than anything because something had taken his wallet out of his pocket and he hadn't realized.
And then had the audacity to put it up where we knew no person had been because it had been in full view of ourselves all night, put it up there next to a piece of equipment that they'd stopped working by lying it down face down so it couldn't pick them up.
I just thought it was hilarious and amazing.
So I think it was some kind of either child or spirit who likes to play pranks on people because it was a very much two fingers up to you.
You think you're great investigators.
Well, I'm going to get one over on you.
Watch this.
Is this place a working theater?
Yes.
Yes.
It's run as a charity now, which is another reason we like doing it because we're supporting the upkeep of the building.
But yeah, they put on performances throughout the year.
Yes.
And do spirits, phenomena, ghosties, whatever you want to call them, I don't want to trivialize this because, you know, it's serious stuff, but do they make their presence known around the performances there?
Or do they?
Yes.
There's been numerous sightings in one of the dressing rooms, props and things being moved around.
More trickster stuff.
So some actor's gone to find their prop and it's not there where they've left it.
It's been moved.
There's a lady who we picked up on several times over several visits who dances on the stage.
And I think she's actually been photographed as a white light on the stage.
There's somebody, potentially an usher, who up on the balcony opens and closes one of the doors from the corridor.
I picked up on one of these ladies, you know, with the tray around their necks for the interval, the truck ices.
Silly ice cream.
Yeah, it would have been cigarettes back in the day.
And I think she's the one who we see the shadow of going up and down the aisleway.
So, yeah, this place is absolutely rammed to the rafters with all sorts of different spirits.
It's known that somebody fell out of the, is it the catwalk up above, where they do the backstage and they have all the pulleys and levers for doing special effects?
Yeah.
Well, it's recorded that somebody fell from up there and unfortunately died.
And we've had ropes swinging for no reason.
So whether he's still there, it's a possibility.
But yeah, it's never let us down once.
And I think we've done it four or five times now.
And we've always had, like I say, even if it's one thing, it is a big thing.
Or we'll have lots of little things happening throughout the night.
Is there any danger in doing these things?
I might have asked you this before, but here goes again.
You know, that you might take something home with you or, you know, the uninitiated, the unaware, the amateur might encounter something that will leave an impact on them that they may not want?
Yes, is the short answer.
The long answer is I think if you believe it can happen, you're almost giving them permission.
So you've got to go in with the mindset of nothing here can hurt me and I'm not taking anything home with me.
And with that intent, that gives you protection, whether you call it psychic, spiritual, religious, whatever kind of protection.
People I know who are Christians will say the Lord's Prayer or they'll wear a crucifix.
I always wear my amulet, which is a mother goddess statue with amethyst and moonstone.
And that's my protection.
And I believe that protects me.
Therefore, it works.
So me wearing a crucifix would do no good whatsoever because I don't believe in the power of the crucifix.
So it has to be something that you derive power from?
Yes, it's an intent and a belief thing.
So a friend of mine is atheist and she just says, nope, nothing can come home with me.
And I totally believe nothing can come home with me.
And touch word up to this day, nothing ever has because the power in her intent gives her that protection.
That's the way I've always thought of it.
You know, I always believe, and again, I might have told this story before in various forms, but there's a place in Liverpool on Concert Street, top of Bold Street, that used to be a music hall.
And the story goes that in the days of music hall, a young woman got locked inside and actually threw herself off the balcony one night.
She just got locked in there after the performance.
And my father worked there when he was head of security for a discount warehouse chain called Comet.
You know, they used to do electricals and stuff like that.
And so they had washing machines and TVs and all sorts.
But there was something in that building.
It still had the grand staircase up to what would have been the entrance to the balcony, I guess.
And the doors to the what would have been the balcony, but was now a storage area for TVs and fridges and stuff, those doors would fling themselves open.
And huge boxed television sets, we're talking about the kind of tellies that you had in the 80s, you know, heavy things, would throw themselves around.
And the most convincing thing of all about that place, I don't know why I'm telling this story now, but it's a hell of a story because I think you should investigate this.
The scariest thing of all was that they used to have an overnight security man there, a little Scottish guy with a very big, quite ferocious, but rather lovely dog if you knew it and he knew you.
If you didn't, then you'd have to watch out.
That dog was terrified like a little puppy.
It would not go up the stairs.
And I always felt that I connected at the age of 17 to something in that place and that I might have taken some of it back home.
It was a strange thing because I came away with a lot of very confused feelings from that.
But I think the link, the connection, the communication between us here and whatever else is beyond us here, I think that is a palpable thing.
It's something that you can sense, but you must go into it without fear of it.
If you have fear for it, then it has more power over you.
Let's talk finally about your investigation in Abergaveni.
As a student, the train used to take me from Crewe to Shrewsbury, down to Craven Arms, and then on the way to Cardiff, where I was training to be a journalist on the University College Cardiff Journalism course there.
Thank you, Radio City, for paying my fees, by the way.
But the train would be in the dead of night.
Sometimes I would be virtually the only person on it by the end of the journey.
But the last stop before Cardiff, well, before Newport, then Cardiff, was Abergavenny.
And there is this place called the Skidded Inn that, again, is well haunted.
Yes.
Another of my favourite locations I go back to time after time.
In fact, I think I've investigated it three times this year already.
It's beautiful old coaching inn, typical old coaching inn.
There's all sorts of stories about hanging Judge Jeffries and the top floor was used as a courtroom, like most of the big old pubs in the middle of nowhere were, because it's in a convenient place for the traveling courts back then.
But there's a few specific things that we always get when we go to the Skyrid.
And one of those is in the sunken bathroom of room three.
It's the biggest room upstairs.
And you go down, I think it's down a couple of steps and then round a corner and then down four or five steps.
So it's on a different level.
And the story goes that there was a lady who was drowned in the bath because she was pregnant to a guy who was married to somebody else.
Age-old story.
And if you sit in the bath as a woman, you're supposed to feel hands pushing you down either on your shoulders or on your head or over your face.
Now, a while ago, was it the first time I investigated?
It might have been the first or the second time I investigated there.
I sat in the bedroom looking down into the bathroom.
And I saw the only way, the best way to describe it, if you've seen the movie The Ring, you know, the remake of the Chinese horror movie, there's a girl in a long white dress with long black, wet hair who drags herself out of this well and then drags herself along the floor.
Well, this girl did the same.
She dragged herself up and over these banisters, which if you stood on the toilet, would still come to your waist.
So kind of a bit of a human physical possibility.
So she dragged herself using just her arms, not her feet, up over these banisters onto the floor and then dragged herself along the floor towards me.
This did freak me out a little bit, you saying I don't scare easy.
This did freak me out a little bit.
Not surprised I would have been apoplectic.
Incidentally, the two people who were on the sofa to my left, the bathrooms to my right, they had a thermal imaging camera and could see something crawling along the floor because I could see their reactions.
So I'm thinking, okay, they can see it as well.
Yeah, this is interesting.
Not sure I'm going to let it reach me.
But from that point onwards, I wanted to discover who or what this was.
So the last time I went, I went and sat in exactly the same place as I usually do at some point throughout the investigation and held my hand out because I believe this is now, I believe this wraith spirit, whatever you want to call it, that drags itself over the banisters is the spirit of the lady who was drowned in the bath.
So I just kind of said, look, come and if you remember me, please come and talk to me.
Come and hold my hand.
You're safe.
And three or four other people who don't, who say they're not mediums came up with quite a detailed story about this lady being drowned in the bathtub independently of each other.
So whether it was because she knew I was there and felt comfortable or the right group of people were together and the energy was good between the group of people, I don't know.
But that night, we did seem to get an awful lot of story out of her, more than I've had over the years I've investigated at the Skyrid.
And did you, could you try to explain to her what her current situation was?
Yes.
Because the rule I work by as a medium is I don't get rid of spirits even if they ask me to.
I have to ask the owner of the building because it's kind of morally it's their income, isn't it?
So they don't want mediums going around setting all the spirits free and letting them go and then they don't have any hauntings.
Never thought of that.
Yes, of course it's bad for business.
But then morally, am I obliged to help this lady?
It's a really, really difficult question because to me, the lady's a spirit, a person without a body.
So who's my loyalty with?
But yeah, I did try and explain that she's safe now.
She doesn't have to keep reliving this.
And just because you get other gentlemen in the bathroom doesn't mean that they're going to do the same to you.
So it'll be interesting to see if she's still there the next time I go.
Oh, I hope she finds peace.
What an awful story, but what a fascinating case.
More where that came from with Liz Cormel on the Unexplained Live 2023, The Cruise, which we're all very excited about.
And Liz has just joined the lineup for that.
And also a bit of tarot as well.
If we can fit it in, we're going to do a bit of explanation about the tarot because so many people are interested in it.
There are so many ways of interpreting it, I've found over the years.
So you might be doing some readings and stuff as well on top of a whole lot of other things.
Very excited, Liz.
Thank you.
Yeah, I'm so excited to be able to join you and thank you so much for giving me the opportunity.
It's going to be good.
Have a nice weekend in Driffield.
Give my love to Yorkshire.
Thank you.
Yes, I will do.
Liz Cormel, more great guests in the pipeline here at the Home of the Unexplained.
Don't forget, of course, to check out all the details for the Unexplained Live 2023, our cruise with Morella in October.
Going into November, North America will be the venue this time.
A fantastic experience to be had by all.
Thank you very much for being part of my show.
My name is Howard Hughes, and please, whatever you do, stay safe, stay calm.
