Ghost hunting in haunted pubs part 2

I had already spent several hours in reputedly haunted JW Lees pub the Olde Boar's Head when the team of paranormal investigators accompanying me felt compelled to go downstairs into the old cellar. This part of the pub, in Middleton, Manchester, was thought to have been a holding cell for prisoners in the 1600s.

Speaking with the dead?

As we head down, the group's medium, Angie, starts to get very excited. "I love old dungeons, I'm in my element here," she says. I get into the room with Mark, the group's wizz at ghost detecting technology, their trainee medium, Tracey, and licensee of the Old Boar's Head, Claire Robinson. The lights are turned off. I can't see my hand in front of my face.

The room goes deathly quiet as Angie begins to try to get in touch with the spirits.

After a period of concentration, she hesitantly tells us: "I've got a murder in this place. Jack Thomas, that's the name I've got. I've been given the year 1658."

Using an infra-red thermometer, Tracey measures the temperature as 13°C.

Angie continues. "Jack Thomas that was down here was actually quite a violent man," she says. "He did get done for murdering somebody... I can see an old pistol… he was here before being transported through to Manchester.

"Also, there's a boy here… a child of roughly six years old - he looks like a four year old toddler by our standards because they were smaller back then… he actually lived in the pub. I feel like he used to sneak down here. I feel as though he had some kind of disability, he's too childish.

"There was a murder in the pub itself. It was a scuffle that got out of hand, and I see a knife pointed into someone's chest. The name looks like… John Crowther… not sure who the other guy was but it was John Crowther that survived. I'm seeing water in here, used as punishment, like it was being thrown at them. I don't feel they were held here for great lengths of time. It was just until they were taken somewhere more secure. One thing I keep hearing… I first thought it was a horse, but now I think it's a whip, a whip being used against someone.

"It wasn't just men down here, it was women as well. There was one in particular… I'm getting something to do with steeling sheep, something so petty… 17 or 20… let me get the name… Elizabeth H, I can't work out the surname."

Ghostly presences

Claire shrieks. "I've just seen a figure there right in front of me. I'm going to have to go," she says, hurrying back up the stairs.

The resulting shaft of light reveals we are all standing stock-still, paralyzed in a nervous sense of apprehension. As soon as we are returned to darkness, Tracey announces that the little boy she feels pulling at her arm is making her nervous and she requests that she swaps positions with Angie.

"Don't let him get too close," Angie warns hurriedly. "Child spirits can often get to people and make them emotional."

Tracey must have succeeded in warding the child spirit off because now she seems to be hitting her stride.

"I'm starting to see something," she says. "It's an old man, really old and wrinkly. He's laughing at me."

"Do you feel like he was kept down here?" asks Angie.

"He were a complete fruitcake," says Tracey, not really answering the question. "He's wearing three quarter length trousers and a scruffy jacket."

"So around 1800s?" Angie presses.

Tracey is in the groove. "I've got the name James for the child," she says, and notes that the corner of the room she is in is starting to feel very cold. She measures it as a slightly lower temperature than her earlier reading, and invites me to try where she is standing.

I do, but fail to feel anything other than sleepy - it being the small hours of the morning.

Tracey: "I feel as though he's helping out for pennies so he could eat, as though he lived here."

Some are sceptical

It is at this point that Mark, a sceptic interjects. "If this was a coaching inn, prisoners would have been transported and quite often they would have stopped off here and used this as a holding room. You could read all this in an old book or something."

Angie seems to ignore his worries. "Murderers were kept here among other people, what we would call petty criminals," she continues. "It wasn't just the really vicious type. There was a mixture of everyone in here, even children and women

"People were put down here for no reason at all. It depended on who was ruling at the time… but there was one particular one who was quite ruthless… it was a judge, a justice of the peace. You could get in trouble for looking at him the wrong way. He was that kind of man… Actually, where the wood panelling is in the room upstairs, I did see a judge's chair."

See the Ghost hunting pictures​