11
After topping up the tanks with caffeine and sugary snacks, we reconvened inside the prison room for a second session a half hour later. Once again, I acted as the questioner, but this time it was Caroline who volunteered to be the human pendulum. It was something that she had never tried before, and she was eager to find out whether she was a suitable candidate or not. After Stephen and Lesley pushed the chairs and tables aside, she picked a spot in the center of the Cage, shook her limbs and body out like a dancer getting ready to perform, and signaled her readiness to begin.
“If there are any entities present, be aware that Caroline has volunteered herself to serve as a human pendulum. Please show Caroline her yes position,” I said, still feeling slightly foolish to be addressing thin air like that. It’s something I still haven’t quite gotten over to this day.
Immediately, the slender nurse began to tilt from the top down. First her head and shoulders, followed by her chest and torso, slid forward while her feet remained firmly rooted to the spot. For a moment I couldn’t shake the surreal impression of the late Michael Jackson doing something similar during his concerts.
“That’s forward for yes,” I stated approvingly, telling Caroline to relax and return herself to the neutral position. She resumed standing up straight once more, a little nonplussed at the way in which her body had just been manipulated. The motion was a little jerky in nature, and she admitted that when she felt herself beginning to move forward, her natural instincts kicked in and tried to override the movement. Having done it myself and experienced the strange feeling personally, I sympathized, but I asked her to try as hard as possible to override those instincts, explaining that I had yet to see anybody fall flat on their face during a session acting as a human pendulum.
“Now,” I addressed any spirits that may be present inside the Cage, “please show Caroline her no position.”
Once again the response was immediate. Caroline’s upper body began to tilt backward, and once again she caught herself. Cursing softly under her breath, she returned to an upright, relaxed stance. It was now very clear that backward constituted Caroline’s no.
When questions weren’t being asked, she swayed neither backward nor forward but instead remained in a relaxed stance with her arms held loosely by her side. At a nod from Stephen, I decided that it was time to begin asking some serious questions.
“Are there any spirits present here that wish to talk with us through Caroline?”
Yes, came the answer, straight away.
“Are you the same spirit that communicated earlier through Lesley?”
No.
“Are you still willing to let the priest help you move on at the end of this evening’s session?” I asked, referring to Stephen’s earlier offer to assist any earthbound spirits that might be resident inside the Cage to cross over. No sooner had the words move on left my mouth than Caroline was pushed forcefully forward, indicating a most emphatic yes.
“Are there any other spirits here that would like me to help them cross over?” Stephen interjected. Yes. Once again, the answer was a very forceful push. “Are there more than three?” No.
“My vision is starting to blur,” Caroline said, blinking furiously. “It’s going completely fuzzy, except for the one tiny spot that I’m focusing in on. That’s never happened to me before.”
“Are you okay?” I asked, concerned for her welfare. Caroline indicated that she was and that she wanted to continue the session.
“Is the second spirit a female?” Yes.
“Do you trust us to help you?” No.
Lesley chimed in with, “Would you like Richard and I to leave the room?” Another emphatic yes. Lesley and I obediently trooped out of the prison, heading next door. We sat down on the couch in the front room and allowed Stephen and Caroline—not to mention their unseen guest—to continue the human pendulum session with some degree of privacy.
“Do you travel throughout this house?” Stephen asked. Caroline rocked backward, signaling that the spirit did not. The implications of this answer were not wasted on either of the two investigators: If this spirit truly did not (or could not) move throughout the house, then it was confined to the Cage. Trapped, just as prisoners would have been during their earthly lifetimes …
“Can you physically manipulate items in this house?” No.
Then, just like that, all communication ceased. Caroline’s body failed to move in any direction, no matter what questions were asked. It seemed as though the lines of communication had been cut. No matter what he tried, Stephen was unable to get the pendulum working again. Personally, I wondered whether it was because Caroline was growing fatigued, or it could be attributed to Lesley and I leaving the room and taking our energy with us.
“Let’s call this session finished for now,” Stephen sighed, turning off his video recorder. “Maybe the spirits are as tired as we are … ”
For a while, Nicole’s boyfriend Jim moved in with us. He was an old friend of mine, one who insisted that he didn’t believe in ghosts and the paranormal, and who was I to argue with him? The spirits of the Cage didn’t care whether he believed in them or not: all that mattered was that they believed in him.
When they discovered that she was expecting a baby, Nicole and Jim naturally wanted to get their own place, and I really couldn’t blame them. Jim had experienced more than his fair share of ghostly goings-on inside the Cage. In fact, it soon reached the point where he flatly refused to be left alone inside the house. The three of us made a pact that under no circumstances would we leave any one of us alone inside the old prison, for any reason at all.
We began to plan our lives and daily schedules around that single, unbreakable rule. If two of us ever went to bed, then the third would immediately follow, rather than sit downstairs alone watching TV or listening to music. We felt vulnerable in our solitude, clinging to the idea of there being strength in numbers. Constantly watching one another’s back became our way of life, the only way in which we were ever able to feel safe.
It was hell.
One of the very last straws for Jim happened one night when he was upstairs in the bedroom that he shared with Nicole. He suddenly heard a sound coming from somewhere outside his door, fairly quiet at first but growing louder by the second. Jim recognized it at the thudding sound of heavy footsteps—male footsteps—coming up the main staircase.
Except that there were no men in the house, apart from himself …
Whoever it was seemed to take forever to climb the stairs; it was almost as if they were trying to do it in the most frightening, intimidating way possible. When he related the incident to me afterward, he admitted that he had thought about throwing open the bedroom door to confront what he knew had to be a ghostly visitor, but that something had warned him not to … an indefinable sense or feeling, one that told him in no uncertain terms that opening that door could be a very bad thing to do.
“I’m not scared of any man, Vanessa,” he had said, and I believed him. Jim could handle himself in a fight. “But how am I supposed to protect us all against something I can’t hit? I can’t fight a ghost!”
Jim stood there inside his bedroom, fists bunched and feeling helpless. What was he supposed to do, other than wait? The menacing footsteps finally reached the landing at the top of the stairs, pausing outside his bedroom door. Jim waited, heart pounding inside his chest, trying to breathe as silently as possible.
The latch on his bedroom door jiggled, and then lifted itself up. With a loud and ominous creak, the door swung slowly inward. Jim squared off against whatever was on the other side of it, but the landing was utterly deserted. I believe that he had just had a run-in with the spirit of the jailer.
When it finally came time for them both to move out, Jim was well and truly glad to see the back of the Cage. Nicole was concerned about leaving me all on my own in that haunted place, but I put on a brave face and told her not to worry; behind the mask, though, I was absolutely terrified.
After I waved them off for the last time and went back inside, I knew that I was completely at the mercy of the dark entities that dwelled there.
I have been able to perceive spirits ever since I was a child, and being able to constantly sense their presence can really take it out of you, not only physically, but also emotionally and mentally. After a few years I soon learned to live with my gift … until I moved into the Cage.
Living inside the Cage was grueling and debilitating, the longest slog of my life. It drove me to the brink of exhaustion and nervous breakdown, and I’ll never forget it as long as I live. Gone was the cheerful, happy-go-lucky Vanessa that my friends and family knew and loved. She had been replaced by a sad and angry woman who sometimes felt like she was a stranger, even to her own self. Slowly but surely the Cage was grinding me down, stripping me of all hope and plunging me into a permanent state of despair and anxiety. My health was suffering, my career was suffering, and I had nothing that resembled a social life any more.
But then, one encounter gave me just a little hope, demonstrating that not all of the prison’s ghostly inhabitants were evil.
On a bright, sunny afternoon, I was sitting on my couch, which at the time backed onto the main window in the front room. I was enjoying a much-needed day off from work, all alone inside the Cage, and doing the best I could to try and relax by watching something mindless on TV.
Without any kind of warning, I suddenly sensed that something out of the ordinary was going on. I looked in the direction of the small lobby and could hardly believe my eyes. There, directly in front of me, stood a young man with long black hair and deep brown eyes. His face was lined and weather-beaten, with crow’s feet around his eyes, something that seemed unusual because his overall looks appeared to be that of a man in his early twenties. The lined and careworn face didn’t seem to match up with his age.
I sat absolutely still, not daring to move a muscle. Unlike most of my previous encounters with apparitions inside the Cage, I was thrilled to find that there was no fear this time. I was just so enthralled with what I was seeing. My eyes were glued to the young man’s, and we both stared at one another curiously.
Neither one of us seemed willing to look away first. Thanks to the early afternoon daylight, I could see him with absolute clarity, picking out every detail of his clothing. This was a poor man, with ragged apparel that reflected his lack of means, and the style of dress was hundreds of years out of date. His skin, just like his clothing, was dirty and grubby, but he seemed happy nevertheless.
It wasn’t until I looked down to where his trousers and shoes should have been that I realized something important: he was only visible from the waist up. Everything below the belt line was gone. I could see the back door and the bottom of the garden window where his legs ought to have been.
I don’t know exactly how much time passed—minutes, certainly—but the man looked away first, gliding slowly past the lobby. Somehow, I knew that he could see me in exactly the same way as I was seeing him. This man wasn’t a residual apparition, a paranormal recording whose energy was replayed only when a person with the ability to see them turned up; this was an intelligent spirit, one who possessed consciousness and sentience. We were equally aware of one another, and I felt a flicker of brief, unspoken understanding pass between us. As he disappeared right in front of my eyes, I actually felt comforted by his presence—more importantly, I felt slightly less alone.
I named the man Jack, just because that name seemed right to me somehow. The residue of his presence stuck with me inside the house for weeks after our encounter. It was a genuine novelty to meet a spirit inside the Cage that I wasn’t in fear of. This man brought with him a sense of kindness, and he gave me the impression of being a lost soul. I knew that he couldn’t stay there forever, and I also felt that he either wanted or needed to move on to whatever it is that comes after this life.
After giving the matter some thought, I finally decided that the best way to help Jack was to call in the local vicar. I contacted the St Osyth church, which belonged to the Church of England, and the vicar agreed to come over and visit. He was a lovely man and didn’t hesitate to see what help he could offer to Jack.
We sat together in the front room and had a long chat. We finally agreed that he would bless the house with holy water and follow up by saying prayers in every room of the Cage in an attempt to help Jack cross over. I didn’t trouble the visiting vicar about the other paranormal activity in the house; not only did it seem too bizarre a subject for me to broach, but I also wanted to keep the focus of this evening’s ritual where it belonged—on Jack, not on myself.
The vicar went upstairs first and walked around the house, getting a short, informal tour from me; then he came back to the front room and began to prepare for the delivery of his blessing. Donning his robes, he produced a small vial of holy water and set out what looked like a miniature altar. He told me that he was now ready to begin God’s work.
We climbed the stairs together for the second time, and then suddenly stopped dead in our tracks as we heard the sound of fast-running water coming from both taps in the upstairs bathroom. The vicar looked at me in surprise. We both knew that they were not running when he was up there five minutes before.
The only thing I could think of to say was, “You see?”
I never saw or heard from Jack again after the vicar’s visit, so I like to think that with a little help from the local man of the cloth he was able to cross over into the next realm of existence. The Cage was definitely colder and darker without Jack’s presence, and it became very clear to me that the Church of England blessing ceremony hadn’t driven off the darker residents. The atmosphere of gloom and doom returned with a vengeance, and I fell back into the grip of despair.
And then, just like that, my entire world changed. All it took was a single visit to my doctor, the results of which left me stunned to my core.
I was pregnant.