Читать книгу Derek Acorah’s Ghost Towns - Derek Acorah - Страница 14

The word séance is French for a ‘sitting’. A séance is when a group of people gather together to make contact with a spirit or spirits. It is not absolutely necessary for an experienced medium to be present, but I always consider it to be advisable. The people taking part in the séance arrange themselves in a circle, often around a table, place both feet on the floor and either hold hands or, if a table is being used, place their hands palms down upon it with the little finger of each hand touching the little finger of their neighbour on either side to form a chain of energy.

It is often a good idea to place a lighted candle in the centre of the table, as the flickering of the flame can indicate a spirit’s movement through the atmosphere.

Everyone then closes their eyes and empties their mind of all thoughts, whilst the medium recites a prayer of invocation and protection for both themselves and the people taking part in the séance. Protection is highly important, as it is impossible to predict what sort of spirit or spirits will come to the group. Before I start any kind of psychic work I always perform an ‘opening up’ meditation to ask for protection from any negative energies. I call this my‘spiritual waterfall’ and I visualize white light cascading down on me and protecting me from any negative energies.

During a séance, once contact with the spirit world has been made it is no longer absolutely necessary to maintain physical contact with the neighbouring person and people may rest their hands on their lap or on the tabletop if they wish, palms upwards to keep the energy field of the physical body open.

Although the medium leads the communication with the spirit or spirits, anyone can talk to them or ask questions of them. Participants are also encouraged to say how they are feeling at any time and to just go with the experience.

A séance should end with the medium ‘closing the circle down’ by thanking the spirits for their presence and offering a prayer of thanks and protection to help them to return to the spirit realms.

Séances can be a very useful way of getting in touch with the spirits who are present in a certain place and finding out more about them. At the Shipwright’s Arms, this certainly proved to be the case.

We sat around a table in the oldest part of the pub, lit a candle and all held hands. Once we had opened the circle, it wasn’t long before I made contact with a spirit presence. I just wanted to scream out, ‘Splice the main brace!’ I took a deep breath and asked my spirit guide Sam to help him to step back. He was an angry spirit.

At that point I became aware of a strong smell of tobacco. ‘He’s got boxes and boxes and boxes of tobacco,’ I said. ‘He’s piling it up. That’s what he did.’

Who was he? I knew he was a strong man, but a weary man. He was a man of the sea. The reason he kept coming back to the pub was that he resented the way he’d lost his life. Sam told me that he’d barely made it this far. His ship had gone down, but he had not perished with it. He had got out of the water, but after that he had been walking blindly. He had had no idea where he was going.

The smell of tobacco was overwhelming. I had to ask Sam to back it off. I couldn’t believe that no one else could smell it.

Then I caught a whiff of another smell.

‘Ugh!’ I wrinkled my nose.

‘That’s amazing,’ said Angus, who was sitting on my right. ‘That’s horrible!’

‘Can you smell it now?’ I asked.

‘I can smell it,’ he said.

It was the smell of tar. It began wafting around the room and soon everyone started to smell it.

‘When I first smelled the smells I just thought, “Oh, it’s probably all in the mind,” but it was really, really strong. I could really smell the tar. It was just like roads being laid.’

Trisha

‘That happens all the time,’ Neil said, ‘and it’s always around this area.’

Then I got a name: Frederick Symes. ‘That’s his name,’ I stated.

‘My favourite part of this investigation was actually putting a name to the sailor.’

Neil

Hardly had I said the words than Angus looked puzzled and asked,‘What’s started swinging?’

Everyone looked up, startled. A lamp that was hanging above the bookshelf behind us was rocking back and forth. Its moving shadow was what had caught Angus’s attention.

‘That’s got to be phenomena,‘I explained.’ No one’s touched it. ‘I felt really pleased that we were getting such a good response.‘Come on,’I said encouragingly,‘give it a really good swing!’

Suddenly Danniella exclaimed,‘That’s moving, that one, that’s moving as well!‘She and Angus both pointed at once. A miner’s lamp which was hanging near the other lamp was also swinging gently. The spirit man was responding to us.

‘When we saw the lamps moving, we all stopped in our tracks.’

Angus

There was no window, no draught, no breeze, no physical reason why the lamps should be moving, and the wonderful thing about it was the way that the momentum kept up. There was no one near the lamps anyway, but if they had been physically pushed, sooner or later they would have slowed down and come to a stop, but the pace remained the same for six or seven minutes.

While we were still gazing at the swinging lamps, there was a sudden thud near the bookcase. Angus jumped and turned towards the noise. ‘Did you hear that?’ he said. ‘Like a thud on the floor.’ Everyone had heard it.

Danniella was still looking at the miner’s lamp, screwing her eyes up. ‘That really is moving, isn’t it? It’s not just me, is it?’

We could all see the base of the miner’s lamp moving slowly from side to side.

Then Trisha noticed something else. ‘That book, that’s just moved out as well.’

‘It has!’ I cried. ‘It has! You are right!’

A book on the top shelf had moved forward, just as if a hand had pulled it towards the edge of the shelf.

‘That was totally unexpected. You don’t expect books to move out of line when they’ve all been in a perfect line… Yeah, that was strange, very strange.’

Trisha

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘Thank you for doing that.’ The old sailor was really showing us that he was still around!

All this time the lamps were still moving. The first lamp was now moving randomly round and back again rather than swinging from side to side.

‘I just had to smile. I knew that the old captain, as I call him, was going to show that he was still around.’

Honda

Danniella was curious. ‘Neil, how does that make you feel? You live here.’

Neil wasn’t bothered by it. ‘It’s fine,’ he said. He smiled and shrugged. ‘He’s never done anything to me.’

I knew he never would.

Having succeeded in communicating with the spirit, we decided to finish the séance. I thanked everyone for their participation and closed the circle down.

When we looked up again, the lamps had stopped moving.

I was thrilled. In all my years I had never been in an investigation where I had got three responses like that in a matter of minutes. And, as Danniella said, the fact that the phenomena stopped once the séance was over was also interesting, as it showed that the energy had just backed right away.

Neil was amazed at what had happened in his pub. ‘It was totally unexpected, because I’ve lived here for so long now and nothing’s ever happened like that, ever, and it was amazing. I couldn’t believe it.’

I found out afterwards that according to local legend, one Christmas Eve the captain of an old Dutch barge had been taken ill and had come banging on the door of the Shipwright’s Arms. The bar manager at the time had thought it was a punter trying to get back into the pub and hadn’t opened the door. When he did open it the following morning, he found the captain’s body lying there. He had frozen to death during the night.

‘We can tell them the real story now,’ Trisha said, laughing.