8
This is the bathroom here?” Lesley asked, stepping off the landing and pushing open the wooden door. It creaked ominously on hinges that were in dire need of oiling. “This is the one where Vanessa saw the shadow man?”
“That’s the one,” Stephen agreed. “No wonder she hates that room. Can’t say I blame her in the slightest.”
“It looks pretty ordinary to me,” Lesley said doubtfully. I tended to agree with her; the bathroom looked totally peaceful and quiet. It was only later, when I spoke to other investigators, that I would come to learn that the bathroom could sometimes take on a life of its own.
“You’re standing right where we were when the old lady’s voice came through as an EVP,” I pointed out. Lesley looked all around her, but said that she didn’t feel anything out of the ordinary. EMF levels were also normal, and the temperature was no colder than anywhere else in the Cage.
“Do you want to start investigating in here tonight?” asked Caroline. After thinking about it for a moment, I shook my head, explaining that I wanted to start our own research downstairs.
“This building is called the Cage, after all,” I pointed out, “but only a small part of it was actually that ancient structure. The rest is all much newer and more modern. I do want to hit the upstairs bedrooms, bathroom, and landing, but let’s start out with the historic part first, shall we?”
Nobody objected to that, so the four of us trooped back downstairs to set up in the Cage itself. After a fortifying cup of tea and some snacks, we settled upon using the Ouija board as our first means of communicating with any resident spirits.
As the old cliché goes, it really was a dark and stormy night. The wind was howling outside and fat raindrops were spattering on the window panes in the kitchen when we assembled.
A stout wooden table occupied pride of place in the center of the Cage, a holdover from the recent filming of the extremely popular TV show, Come Dine with Me. Four comfortable wooden chairs surrounded the table, and it was easy to forget that the rug on which the table stood covered a trapdoor that was nailed firmly in place, covering a hole that was some six feet deep. Skeletal remains had been found down there by a former owner, some of which obviously belonged to animals, and others that may possibly have been human.
Clearing off a small mountain of paranormal research equipment and a pair of laptops, Stephen and Caroline carefully placed two candles in glass enclosures, one at either end of the table, and lit them before turning out the lights. It was then time for them to set up a Ouija board in the center between the two dancing flames.
The board that Stephen had chosen looked suitably ornate and gothic, seemingly perfect for its purpose. It had been left behind in the Cage by one of its most recent residents, a writer and musician who had been looking after the place for Vanessa. The board was painted entirely in jet black and then highlighted with gold embossed lettering. All twenty-six letters of the alphabet were represented, sweeping across the board in a series of gently curving rows; they were further augmented with numbers ranging from one to zero, along with the words hello and goodbye on either side. Sitting proudly in the very center was a pentagram, a five-pointed star that was enclosed within a circle—not, as some mistakenly believe, necessarily a satanic symbol, but rather one indicative of occult magic.
Stephen performed a brief ritual in order to clear the board of any negative influences, making sure that it had not been clandestinely dedicated to the use of some form of dark magic: It was not that the former occupant would have done such a thing, but we knew nothing of the person that he had inherited the board from. They were said to have been a medium who was not local and had refused to take the board with when they left the Cage for the last time. “It is now irretrievably tainted with darkness … ” They had allegedly said.
All of the boards that Stephen uses at home have been personally blessed by his bishop, which he firmly believes will protect them from malign forces and attachments.
“We still need to be very careful,” Stephen told the team gravely. “Whenever I’m working on a case that has some sort of demonic involvement, I get a very specific sensation … right here.” The priest pointed to a spot slightly behind his left ear.
I asked him to describe the feeling as best he could. “The best way that I can explain it is some kind of combination of pressure and ringing in the ear, a lot like tinnitus. There’s also a certain amount of pain, which is what usually seals the deal and signifies the presence of a dark entity.”
“Why haven’t we heard about this before?” Lesley wanted to know.
“Because I haven’t experienced anything like it on this entire trip—right up until now … ”
All four investigators looked at one another hesitantly. After a very brief discussion, it was determined that despite Stephen’s instinct that there might be a dark, possibly demonic presence in the room, we were going ahead with the Ouija session anyway. I put in my two cents, explaining that I had always felt the term “demonic” to be overused, and that far too many of the people with an interest in the paranormal jumped to label anomalous activity with that word. Just because something was negative did not necessarily make it demonic, I suggested as diplomatically as I could.
Stephen did a creditable job of not rolling his eyes. To him, demonic entities were all too real, and it was a foolish investigator indeed who was willing to take them lightly. I also have to admit that sitting there at a Ouija board in the middle of a haunted witches’ prison, watching the candlelight dance upon the faces of my three companions and hearing the drumbeat of heavy rain on the roof above us, it wasn’t all that difficult to see things from Stephen’s point of view!
Prior to beginning the Ouija session, the three of us that were participating—Stephen, Lesley, and myself, with Caroline taking a safety nap—determined that a safe word would be in effect for this particular session. Each of the participants had the option to simply call out the word stop at any time, and was then to simply remove their fingers if they felt even the slightest bit uncomfortable. Once the rules were agreed upon, all three of the sitters placed the tip of their index finger lightly on top of the planchette, the smooth sliding pointer that was used to indicate specific letters and numbers on the board.
The lights were already out, leaving just the candlelight for the team to see the Ouija board. This was further enhanced by a third candle, which Lesley lit and placed inside an ornate glass-lined box next to the Ouija board. I started a digital voice recorder running and set it down next to the board, watching the seconds begin to tick away.
Stephen cleared his throat, and began: “This board is opened up for the use of positive energies only—no negative entities or energies will be permitted to use it to manifest. Now … are there any spirits or entities present here with us inside the Cage? Would you like to contact us? If so, please move the planchette … ”
It took less than ten seconds for the planchette to start moving—slowly and feebly at first, barely making it from letter to letter, despite there being three different fingers placed lightly upon it, and therefore the combined energies of three living people. It limped wearily and without enthusiasm, as if it was simply too much effort for it to spell out words properly.
The planchette began inching its way toward Stephen, at a speed that can best be described as glacially slow. At this rate, it would take all night to spell out a single message. Whether it was a problem with the board itself, one or more of the three sitters, or simply that the spirits of the Cage did not feel particularly talkative, it was impossible to say with any degree of certainty. Perhaps it was a combination of all of those factors, and maybe more besides.
Frustrated, the three paranormal investigators tried mixing things up a little, and began switching themselves out. For the first attempt, I went back to the bench while Stephen and Lesley stayed on the board. When that little shake-up yielded no noticeable improvements, Stephen dropped out and was replaced by me once more, which also failed to speed things up in the slightest.
“Let’s try changing the board, then,” Stephen suggested with a weary sigh. After all, there was a second board waiting in the wings, just itching to be given a try. Lesley slid the black and gold Ouija from the tabletop and stuffed it back into its place on the shelf at the side of the fridge. It would remain there for the rest of the week, untouched and gathering dust.
Whereas the first Ouija board was all ostentation and style, its replacement was just about as plain Jane vanilla as it was possible to get; it was one of the official Parker Brothers boards, of the same kind that is still sold by the thousands at toy stores around the world each year. It naturally appeared far cheaper and generic than the first board, because it was: This board was mass-produced and should not have had the history that its counterpart did.
Caz, Stephen, and Lesley using the Ouija board.
All three of us returned to our original seats around the table and placed two fingers on the planchette, which was positioned squarely in the center of the new board.
“Is this board easier to use?” Stephen asked, though whether he was addressing the spirits of the Cage or his fellow sitters was never made quite clear.
The planchette immediately slid across the board, coming to a stop on top of the word YES.
Bingo, I thought excitedly. We’re in business!
“Can you please tell us your name?”
R-E-D-F-A … then suddenly the planchette slid across to the word NO.
We looked at one another in puzzlement. REDFA? What kind of a name was REDFA? It made absolutely no sense at all. Perhaps a fresh start was needed, we reasoned. On request, the planchette moved smartly back across to the middle of the board and sat there, waiting. This Ouija board was already proving itself to be light years ahead of its predecessor.
Going back to the beginning once more, we asked the spirit to spell out its name again. At first, the planchette seemed reluctant to move—if, that is, such an inert piece of plastic could appear reluctant at all. By the flickering candlelight, however, the sliding pointer seemed to be imbued with a personality and energy all of its own.
Stephen offered whichever spirit was trying to communicate with the team an infusion of free energy, theirs for the keeping if they could simply drain it from any of the electrical devices that were scattered across the tabletop. They would be spoiled for choice: A K2 EMF meter, digital voice recorder, TASCAM, or any of the other recording and sensing tools that festooned the table.
Less than an hour later, when conducting an EVP session on the second floor landing at the top of the staircase, the battery in Stephen’s TASCAM digital voice recorder—which had been removed from the factory packaging and freshly installed in the device at the start of the Ouija session—would die. It had been sitting next to the Ouija board throughout this session, and should have lasted for many hours longer than it actually did … another example of the unexplained power drains that are so common at haunted locations, particularly when bursts of paranormal activity are about to occur.
The planchette moved from R to E to D once more, on to F, then A to S and then rested on T, before making its way back to the middle of the board again.
R.E.D.F.A.S.T. Redfast.
Acting purely on a hunch, I removed my fingers from the planchette for a moment and pulled out my phone. I began browsing through various Google search entries for the term red fast, until finally I discovered something very interesting indeed: One particular website claimed that Redfast was a medieval nickname for a person who was “red-faced.”
One particularly fascinating aspect of this revelation was that none of the sitters had ever heard the word redfast before, let alone knew of its meaning. So much for the theory that the Ouija Board was tapping into our own subconscious knowledge or memories.
“That sounds like a nickname,” Lesley said when I excitedly showed her the article on my phone. “Was it?”
Without hesitation, the planchette went directly to YES.
“But what’s your GIVEN name?” she asked. “Mine is Lesley. What’s yours?”
ME, the board answered smartly, causing the three sitters to roll their eyes in unison. Was the spirit being smart or sarcastic, or was it simply being an absolute literalist? Once the planchette finally gets rolling, the key to successful and meaningful Ouija board communication is usually the way in which the questions are couched. Phrase them in the wrong way, and you’ll get stonewalled or gibberish. Phrase them in exactly the right way, on the other hand, and you can learn a surprising amount.
Growingly increasingly curious, we doubled down on our attempts to uncover the entity’s real name. H-E-I-N-R was the best that it seemed capable of. “Is your name Heinrich?” Stephen intuited, earning himself a satisfying YES. My follow-on question (asking whether Heinrich was a German) garnered the same answer—although when further pressed, the board went on to say that it was not actually born in Germany.
Stephen asked Heinrich about the year in which he had died. The best date that the Ouija could provide was the year six hundred and something, but Heinrich did state that he had been forty-six years old when he had passed away: if true, this would have been an exceptionally long lifespan for that particular era.
One long-accepted theory among the skeptical community is that users of Ouija boards may not be communicating with the spirits of the dead at all. Rather, the sitters are instead being influenced by their own deeper selves, with the resulting answers being a product of their own subconscious desire to please. Bearing this in mind, I framed my next question with as much tact and delicacy as I could manage.
“I ask this very respectfully,” I began cautiously, “but are you a figment of our imagination?”
The answer was an emphatic and very definite NO.
When asked if he was a friendly spirit, Heinrich claimed that he was indeed. Nor was he the only entity around. Other spirits were also present in the Cage tonight, according to the board, though it appeared that the “mic” was his—at least, for now. Others repeatedly tried to break in, but the one who called himself Heinrich would always shove them aside in short order and begin to answer questions once more.
Heinrich did not miss Germany, he claimed, which made sense considering his former statement of not having been born there; he had lived in the village just after it had been named St Osyth, during the seventh century (years after the girl named Osyth herself had been butchered and martyred) and denied being either a prisoner or a jailer within the Cage. He was, the spirit claimed, a local man who had herded and tended to livestock on behalf of the church.
Suddenly, Stephen sat up straight with a jolt. “Somebody just touched my right hand!” he exclaimed in surprise. “Tapped it, at least. Twice. Tap tap. I’m getting the feeling that Heinrich—or whoever this is—is standing right there.” The priest nodded toward his right. Lesley and I stared expectantly over his right shoulder, hoping to catch the slightest glimpse of Heinrich, even if it was just his shadow figure … Yet we could see nothing apart from the bolted wooden door.
The board then claimed that Heinrich didn’t trust either Lesley or myself, and in fact even admitted to fearing us both a little—for reasons that it refused to make clear. Heinrich went on to say that he did trust Stephen, however, mostly due to the fact that he was a man of the cloth. This seemed to lend credence to Heinrich’s earlier claim that he had worked on behalf of the church, and had perhaps retained some of his old loyalties after shedding his earthly body.
Heinrich refused to touch either Lesley or myself, no matter how politely we asked or what assurances we offered. Working discreetly underneath the table, I connected the FLIR (forward-looking infra-red) attachment to my phone. This piece of cutting-edge technology handily converted my iPhone into a thermal imaging camera, allowing it to both see into and record images and video footage in hot and cold portions of the spectrum. With my eyes still fixed on the empty air behind Stephen, I fired up the FLIR underneath the table and slowly raised it to cover Stephen, placing special emphasis on his right side; whoever (or whatever) Heinrich was, he did not register as a source of appreciable heat or cold … if, of course, he was ever actually there at all, a possibility that could not be entirely discounted.
The small liberty that I had just taken without asking permission may well have angered Heinrich, because the planchette suddenly swept forcefully across the surface of the Ouija board, landing firmly on the word GOODBYE. The pointer abruptly stopped moving, and from then on remained obstinately still. Try as we might, pleading and cajoling, none of us were able to coax it into starting back up again. It was almost as if Heinrich had slammed down the receiver of the telephone and had gone off in a huff to sulk.
The cold gray light of dawn was now visible through the cracks in the curtains. Another long night had passed inside the Cage. Stifling a yawn, Stephen suggested that we take a break from using the Ouija board and review some of the audio files from the last Ouija session right there on the spot, to see whether Heinrich (or any other spirits of the Cage) had decided to make their voices heard.
“Sounds like a good idea,” Lesley agreed. “I’ll put the kettle on and make a cup of tea.”
Considering how tired the three of us were by that point, the extra jolt of caffeine seemed like an inspired idea. Once three cups of hot and steaming tea were sitting on the table in front of them, Stephen copied the raw audio files over from each of the digital voice recorders and onto his laptop’s hard drive. I plugged in the external speakers to the audio jack, and the three investigators sat down to listen. Stephen cranked up the volume, filling the Cage with the hiss and crackle of static, followed by the sound of his own voice opening up the Ouija session for business.
Ask most paranormal investigators, and they’ll tell you that they hate doing evidence review. It’s one thing to commit hours and hours of video and audio data to hard drives during an investigation, but something else entirely to wade through those same hours with headphones in place, straining your hearing in order to try and make out potentially anomalous sounds or voices. The work really is drudgery, and something in the region of ninety-nine percent turns out to be fruitless (sometimes one hundred percent on nights that are a complete bust).
Everything on the audio recording was unremarkable for the best part of a quarter of an hour. Stephen, Lesley, and I sipped our tea, quietly munching on chocolate biscuits for sustenance.
At fourteen minutes and seventeen seconds in, Stephen hit pay dirt.
“Bloody hell,” exclaimed Lesley, leaning forward excitedly when she heard a guttural moan that sounded grossly out of place in the middle of a hushed and respectful séance. “Run that back and play it again, Stephen, will you?” Stephen nodded, and with a couple of mouse clicks he slid the file back precisely to the fourteen minute mark and hit play.
The noise that we all heard next was unmistakably made by a fourth person in the room—one that we could neither see or hear. It certainly hadn’t originated from one of the investigators. What sounded like a strangled, guttural, and gurgling cry of augur blasted out through the speakers. The three investigators looked at one another, nodding their unspoken agreement that it had not been made by any of them.
“Was that Heinrich?” Lesley asked, giving voice to the question that they had all been thinking.
Stephen snapped his fingers. “Wait a minute,” he said, minimizing the playback window on his laptop and opening a new one with just a couple of clicks of the trackpad.
“What are you doing?” I asked, immediately intrigued.
“Just listen.” Stephen fired up a second audio file and ran it through the speakers.
“Is there a light in here?” It was my voice, recorded on that very first afternoon inside the Cage, when Vanessa was giving us our impromptu tour.
“Yes,” rasped the guttural and now increasingly familiar voice, as they had all listened to it multiple times. “In the bathroom.”
When he had replayed the in the bathroom audio clip three or four more times, Stephen repeated the newer EVP, with the harsh, guttural uuuuuurgh that had been recorded at the beginning of their Ouija session. After going back and forth and comparing the two audio files, one thing became clear: Our newest EVP sounded very similar indeed to the voice of the old lady that was captured on the upstairs landing.
We hadn’t been alone in the Cage that night, after all. Far from it …