Читать книгу Derek Acorah’s Ghost Towns - Derek Acorah - Страница 24

‘There was a Faversham Abbey, of course, which was a Benedictine abbey. He was spot on there.’

Dr Arthur Percival

At that point Danniella decided that as the brewery was so large it might be a good idea to leave Angus in the malt kiln and take me to a different part of the brewery to see if I could pick up the story better elsewhere.

‘Am I on my own here?’asked Angus nervously. ‘Just don’t close the door then!’

We told him all he had to do was holler and we would come back to him. Danniella left him with a camera and we walked off.

‘I’m not very keen on being in the dark – which is something I wasn’t really that aware of until I started working with Derek. But in the dark I just lose my coordination. I suffer from claustrophobia too. And though the night-vision cameras show quite clearly what’s happening, we really can’t see at all.’

Angus

‘The malt kiln room, the room we left Angus in, was horrible. It was dark, it was dense, it was wet, it was horrible – just a horrible room! Very, very dark-you couldn’t see a thing in front of you. It didn’t have a good feeling to it at all.’

Danniella

But it wasn’t long before Danniella was having her own problems. As we followed Mark through the brewery and across an area where bags of grain were piled up, she asked worriedly, ‘This isn’t the place with the rats, is it?’

‘No,’ he reassured her, ‘it’s just the place with the mice.’

‘Oh no, don’t say that!’

As we carried on walking, I saw something. ‘Oh yes, there are a few of them here, a couple just ran across there, look!’

‘Shut up!’ Danniella wailed. She stood stock still.

‘Look, there were only a couple of them, Danniella, a couple of them just ran across.’

‘No! I’m goin’! I’m out of here!’

‘They were just running, they weren’t jumping.’

‘No, I’m out of here! Honestly! I don’t do mice! Or rats!’

She turned away and wouldn’t go on.

‘Derek, please, you go.’

‘Look, you just hold my hand…’

‘No, you go, just go.’ She stood still and wouldn’t move. ‘I don’t do mice!’ she repeated. She put her hands up to her face. ‘I can’t, I can’t do it.’

It took quite a lot of persuading before she finally allowed me to take her hand and lead her forward. Huddling in her coat, with her eyes firmly shut, her head down and her other hand over her eyes, she followed me through the area with the grain and into the malt silos, where we were safe from mice. I did feel sorry for her, but I couldn’t help but feel just a tiny bit amused that in a brewery full of spirits, what bothered Danniella was a couple of small furry animals!

In the malt silo I was soon picking up the energies of a spirit man. I could feel that he was being engulfed by something and was having problems with his breathing, but I didn’t know what was around him at first – it wasn’t water, but what was it? Something was raining down on him from above, suffocating him. I tried to understand what was happening to this man. One thing I knew for sure was that he wasn’t in visitation: he was trapped.

I asked him to come forward and tell us who he was.

Almost straightaway Sam gave me his name: Edward Stimpson.

Then we asked his age. Sam told me that he was 26 years old. Then I knew what had happened! He had been testing the grain when he had slipped, overbalanced and fallen in.

As I related this to Mark and Danniella, we heard a plopping sound in an area behind us. I asked whether it could be some kind of machinery, but Mark said no, there was nothing there. Was it Edward Stimpson communicating with us? We decided to move towards the area where we’d heard the noise.

I reminded the spirit that we were his friends and respected him. Then I suggested he make a noise above us.

‘There you go!’ said Danniella at once. She had heard a noise at the end of the hall.

She asked Mark to talk to the spirit. He too asked Edward to make a noise.

We all waited in anticipation. Then there came a distinct couple of raps, much louder than before.

‘Hear that bang?’ I said to Mark. ‘That was heavy. Ask him again.’

At that moment, unbeknown to us, in the dark back in the malt kiln Angus heard a scraping sound.

‘What the hell was that?’ Startled, he looked down to his left.

It came again and then seemed to come from the other side of him. Angus looked round in alarm. ‘What the hell was that noise?’he whispered.

We were also hearing noises – bangs and thumps and what sounded like a creaking door that suddenly slammed. Each sound was getting closer to us. It seemed that the spirit trapped in the brewery was responding to Mark’s requests.

‘Tell him to come closer,’ I said.

Mark did so and once more we waited with baited breath.

Then there was a tap.

The spirit was continuing to respond.

‘Come closer, come closer to Derek. Keep making the noise,’ said Mark.