Do you want to come and live in a haunted prison for witches?”
A lot of people would run for miles if they were offered an opportunity like that. But then again, just as many would jump at the chance. I’m definitely in the latter group.
My name is Richard Estep. I’ve been a paranormal investigator for the past twenty-one years, investigating claims of ghostly activity and haunted locations on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. During that time, I’ve been fortunate enough to spend nights in some of the world’s most haunted buildings: Asylum 49 in Tooele, Utah; Bobby Mackey’s Music World in Wilder, Kentucky (which some have labelled the gateway to Hell); and the notorious Black Monk house at number 30 East Drive in Pontefract, England.
I’ve also been locked up in haunted prisons. I spent a night in the old jail up at Cripple Creek, a former mining camp turned gambling town up in the hill country of my adopted Colorado. In one hair-raising night, my fellow investigators and I heard the whisper of disembodied voices all around us on the cell block, recorded an EVP of what sounds disconcertingly like somebody getting their throat cut, and most concerning of all, my very own doppelgänger put in an appearance while I was securely incarcerated in one of the cells.
But a haunted witches’ prison? Just show me the way!
I had first heard about the Cage from a TV show called Great British Ghosts. In it, former kids’ TV presenter Michaela Strachan travels around the United Kingdom, visiting some of its most active haunted hotspots and interviewing the people who live and work there. It was late 2015, not long before Christmas, and I was in between paranormal cases to consult on.
The episode concerning the Cage really piqued my interest, and I ended up re-watching it several times over. I was impressed by just how down to earth its owner, Vanessa Mitchell, seemed to be. As she began to tell her terrifying story of life inside the Cage, detailing some of the more bizarre and disturbing events that had taken place there, I found myself growing more and more intrigued. Could the building really be as active as Vanessa claimed it was?
Flipping open my laptop, I went online and began some preliminary research on the Cage, beginning with that most trusted of resources: good old Doctor Google. “Is this UK’s most haunted house?” was the question posed by reporter Matt Quinton in a Halloween week article for The Sun national newspaper on October 28, 2014.
Mr. Quinton spent a night sleeping inside the Cage in order to research his article. His evening seemed to start out innocuously enough, with a tour of the prison conducted by Vanessa, followed by an interview with a paranormal investigator named David Mayhew. Mr. Mayhew reported that he had been “Bitten by an invisible force once while trying to make recordings of spirits in the living room. There was a sudden pain in my leg and I collapsed to the floor. It was agony and actually drew blood. I’ve still got the mark.”
I sat up straighter in my chair. It wasn’t all that unusual in the field of paranormal research to record the voices of the dead, to hear phantom footsteps, feel icy drafts, or even witness shadowy figures … and sometimes full-bodied apparitions, if you were really lucky. But physical phenomena—particularly violent physical phenomena—added an entirely new dimension to things. For one, it implied that any spirit entities that might be present at the Cage would be willing to interact with visiting paranormal investigators … and not necessarily in a nice, friendly manner.
Continuing to scan the article, I read about Vanessa’s own dark experiences while living inside the Cage. It might even be more accurate to say that she was sentenced to it, because her life inside the former witches’ prison sounded very much as though it had been a jail term, full of trials and tribulations that ultimately led her to flee the place in fear of her own safety and that of her precious baby son.
When The Sun’s cameraman attempted to film a brief video segment of Vanessa talking about her ordeal for the newspaper’s website, he asked both Vanessa and the reporter to stop humming—which was odd, because neither of them were humming. And yet an unexplained buzzing noise was coming in through the cameraman’s headphones, effectively ruining the footage.
Vanessa brushed it off as one of those things that happened quite often in the Cage, where technology and the spirits of the sixteenth century didn’t really seem to get along with one another. When she led the reporter into the Cage itself (the actual prison where those accused of witchcraft were held, as opposed to the modern house that has been built all around), he was surprised to see that some heavy iron chains that were embedded in the brick wall appeared to be swaying to and fro, despite the lack of any sort of wind.
One would imagine that a reporter for a national newspaper is exposed to some rather frightening (not to say dangerous) things during the course of their career. To his credit, Mr. Quinton admits to feeling a little fear and apprehension when Vanessa and David left him alone for the night. Taking up residence in the master bedroom, the reporter curled up and tried to get some sleep. “I roll over in my sleeping bag and try to convince myself that the rattling latch on my bedroom door is caused by the wind. When a sudden blast of freezing air hits my face, I mutter that it too must be just a draught … even though the windows are tightly closed. Then there is a thud from a corner and I break all world speed records for disentangling oneself from a sleeping bag.”
Fortunately, Mr. Quinton was able to make it through an entire night spent inside the Cage; two years earlier, one of his colleagues was not quite as brave. Following links on The Sun’s website, I discovered that his fellow reporter, Miranda Prynne, had also gamely attempted to spend a night alone inside the Cage … with a very different outcome.
In a May 2012 article titled “Building Inspector: Sun girl stays night in haunted house … and is left terrified,” the journalist related how she had settled in for the night on the couch—and waited for the spirits of the Cage to make contact.
It wasn’t long before they did, just as soon as night fell.
The first sign of something being amiss was the same thing that Mr. Quinton had noticed: those heavy iron chains mounted on the brick wall inside the Cage began to sway and clink, despite there being nothing visibly capable of moving them. I raised an eyebrow, getting more and more curious by the second. Two reporters had visited the Cage, separated by two years, and had experienced exactly the same phenomenon. At least the spirits seemed to be consistent.
Writing in the third person, Ms. Prynne went on: “As our reporter settled down for the night, she heard scratching behind a wall. Just before midnight the temperature suddenly dropped to freezing and the fire spluttered and died. The investigator felt unwelcome, as if she were being watched—and after just a few sleepless hours scarpered, terrified, around midnight.”
So we had two reporters who were spooked inside the Cage. I continued to browse the web, following links that led me from article to article, and from there on to YouTube, where a number of paranormal investigators had posted video footage from their own visits.
Finally, after several hours of reading and watching videos, my mind was made up. I would reach out to the owner of the Cage and ask her whether I might come and spend some time at the old witches’ prison, in the hope of finding a few answers for myself.
Connecting through the magic of social media, Vanessa and I began talking to each other on a regular basis. I would ask her questions about the Cage, and she would answer in what I soon learned was her typical no-nonsense, down-to-earth manner. When I finally asked her if I could move into the Cage myself for a few days, she agreed immediately. “Just so long as you don’t expect me to move in there with you,” she wrote. “I hate going inside the Cage after dark.”
I wondered at first whether she was kidding, but it turned out that she was absolutely serious. When I got to know her better, I learned that Vanessa Mitchell isn’t afraid of much on this Earth, but on top of that very short list is stepping across the threshold of the Cage once night has fallen. It is a fear that she still has to this day, and it shows no signs of abating any time soon.
Once the decision was made that I was going to investigate, all that remained was to settle on the date and to sort out a team. Since 1999, my adopted home has been the beautiful state of Colorado, but I did get across the pond once or twice each year in order to conduct a paranormal investigation back in my homeland. It was also a good opportunity to visit with friends and family.
Pulling up my day planner, I was due to attend a science fiction and fantasy convention in Southampton at the beginning of February the following year, a gathering of like-minded geeks and nerds who party the weekend away in support of the Teenage Cancer Trust. That meant that I would be in England for the first week of that month—was the Cage available for me to occupy then?
Fortunately for me, it was. Vanessa hadn’t lived there for several years, ever since she had fled with her son and such possessions as she was able to gather. The building often stood empty, but she currently had a friend staying there, taking care of the place and also conducting an investigation of his own. She arranged for him to move out temporarily, leaving the place vacant for me to work unimpeded.
When Vanessa asked me what else I needed, “I’d like your permission to use a Ouija board in the Cage, if that’s alright,” I messaged her. “Do you mind?”
Sitting back to wait, I was more than a little concerned that she might say no. The owners of some haunted locations flatly refused to allow Ouija sessions, fearing that to do so would open up a doorway of some kind—one that would allow dark spirits to pass through.
Fortunately, Vanessa’s reply wasn’t long in coming. “I don’t see why not. I know that it’s been done before. Do you know how to open the board up and close it down properly?”
I confirmed that I did indeed know how to do that. For many years I’d been one of those investigators who flatly refused to employ the Ouija board during any of my paranormal investigations. I had heard too many ominous stories of people using the board and experiencing some very dark and disturbing phenomena afterward.
My mind had finally been changed during an investigation of London’s famous historic prison in Southwark, which is known as the Clink. It was the first time I was ever coaxed into using a Ouija board as an investigative tool.
The Clink is where we derive the modern phrase “thrown in the clink,” referring to somebody who has ended up in prison. On a hot Saturday night in the summer of 2014, when most Londoners were out enjoying the nightlife of the capital city’s pubs, clubs, and bars, I accompanied a team of paranormal investigators in an attempt to probe the mysteries of this ancient gaol.
We were conducting an impromptu séance underneath the streets that ran so very close to the River Thames, where hundreds if not thousands of prisoners had lived and suffered in abject misery during the Clink’s time as a busy place of incarceration.
Initially skeptical of the whole thing, I watched quietly as the planchette (the smooth wooden pointer that is used to indicate letters and numbers) skimmed across the surface of the Ouija board, weaving and bobbing its way from one letter to the next. The session actually turned out to be rather emotional. While the sitters had expected to make contact with some spirit that was hundreds of years old, perhaps one of the many unfortunates who had lost their lives living in the abject filth and squalor of the Clink, what seemed to actually come through was someone very different indeed: the recently deceased father of one of the sitters, whose phrases convinced the now-weeping participant that she was indeed in contact with her greatly missed father.
From that point on I was a great deal more open to using the Ouija board on future paranormal investigations. However, not everybody felt the same way. When I was investigating the infamous house at 30 East Drive in Pontefract, for example (which was the scene of the notorious Black Monk haunting), I was told in no uncertain terms by the property’s owner that Ouija boards were under no circumstances permitted inside the house. Indeed, a laminated sign posted on the living room door greeted visitors upon their arrival, telling them that anybody breaking the “no Ouija” rule would be expelled from the house, blacklisted, and never allowed to come back.
Vanessa didn’t have the same fear of the spirit board, fortunately, and once she knew how to use the board safely, she had no hesitation in granting permission for me to bring one into the Cage. “Feel free,” she told me. “I bet you’ll find out some interesting stuff.” At the time, neither of us had any idea of just how right she was.