The
Old Morgue
The Phantom Investigation
One of the most chilling Investigations we have been on. Where we
received a cool reception
OK you get the picture, but when the chance
came to investigate this place, we just had to take it
The building has ceased to be used two years
ago, replaced by a more modern facility a couple of miles away. The building has
been left fully intact, with all tools of the trade
remaining.
The history of this early Victorian looking
building, actually dates back much further, in fact there has been a building
here for hundreds of years the date stone by the side of the door read
1705
It appears to have had many uses, but because
this whole building is so bitterly cold inside, most of its uses were for food
or animal storage, and of course it last function.
The building sits by the river including a
small access way and jetty.
A lot of the building is below the water line
and most rooms are tiles in one form or another from floor to
ceiling.
We had access to four areas. The Cellar’s (four
brick rooms, used now for storage)
The Freezer room, (where the 18 block cold units where
located)
The “O R” (operating room, where the Post
Mortems are carried out).
The offices and security area, (which lead to
the ramp and jetty area, outside the side door river)
This place is advertised as one of the scariest
places in the country, clearly trying to attract visitors. But I can say it’s
about the most depressing place I have been.
Our team for the night consisted of seven hardy
and very much alive souls, including our
Groups resident Sensitive and
Medium
There are so many stories about this place,
which the security guard was keen to tell us,
It was difficult getting him to understand we
did not want to know until the end of the night
We started the evening with a walk round before
the dark of night descended. The security guard showed us all the rooms, with
glee (It was nice to see somebody happy in their work, but in this place?) After that the security guard went back
to his office, and we could begin
our Investigation.
The Plan was to investigate each area and then
leave trigger objects and EVP recording devices in that location these would be
analysed later
Area one (The Cellar’s)
Below the corridor off the main entrance, was a
small narrow set of stone steps leading down to a square brick built room with
four doors of it. It did house a huge ornate cobweb about
three feet across. It commented on how
beautiful was its design, however the location of its creator seemed to occupy
the thoughts of the ladies in the group
All four rooms were similar in size; two were
fully cluttered, with old office furniture, and offered no access, where the
others were completely empty.
Although each room had its own door the centre
wall separating them had been remove, creating one large room. This was below
the rivers water line and was bitterly cold and damp
Water could clearly be herd dripping in s a few
places, but we could not trace them
We borrowed a small table and chairs from one
of the adjacent rooms, there was no way anybody wanted to sit on the
floor
We went through our preferred protection
routines and were set then for our first vigil
A video camera was set up to record the vigil,
and we began
A group Séance to start with, got the night off
with a bang, literally, just after we had called out for spirit to give us a
sign of presence, the stack of furniture in the next room fell down cashing to
the floor, I guess we disturbed it earlier. But the timing was precisely on
Kew
This Caused one member of our group to scream,
all were shocked by this, I suspect a few heartbeats may have been missed,
suffice to say we realised what had happened pretty mush straight away, and had
a good laugh about it.
The Security guard came running down the steps,
panicked and stressed, and quite out of breath, it took a cup of tea and a
careful explanation to placate him.
We returned to the cellar room, checking to see
if our master web maker had shown up.
I felt if he did there would be more
screaming.
We decided to try a glass, on the table and
took our places; we had one member taking notes
Six took part. Each person lightly touching the
edge of the upturned whiskey tumbler
We called out for spirit to come forward and
move the glass as a sign of presence.
After a moment the glass stuttered, and
vibrated itself across the table to the far right hand corner and stopped. I was
ready to catch the glass if it fell of but id did not.
This time we turned our fingers over making it
impossible for us to deliberately control the glass
We lifted the glass back to the centre of the
table and asked out again.
We asked if this was the spirit of a man, the
glass did not move, we asked if the spirit was female, this time the glass
stuttered and vibrated itself to the corner of the table just as
before.
We asked if the spirit could move the glass
back to the middle of the table, but nothing happened. Again we lifted the glass
and placed it in the middle of the table.
I suspected that the table might be leaning
toward the direction of the corner, so I placed a book under the table leg at
that end, the table had three legs so still sat firmly on the
ground.
Again we asked out for the spirit to talk to
us, was she related to this building
The glass just juddered.
We asked if she worked here, the glass then
move (Now up hill) to the corner again as before.
This I found impressive.
Again we replaced the glass in the centre of
the table, each time we asked a question where the answer was yes the glass
would move to the corner.
We all changed seats around the table, and
tried again, yet the glass would only move to that one corner. I asked could she
move the glass in another direction, but the glass stayed
still
In fact the glass did not move
again.
We had got some information from her, Name
Jane, and she worked here from 1881 to 1894
After the Investigation we looked in the
records, and found the dates, women did work there but the names were
omitted.
It was break time and all snuggled into the
office for hot coffee; it was the only source of heat in the
place.
.
Its exactly as your may imagine
it.
A room about 20 feet long and 15 feet
wide
An entrance door to an empty room except for
the 18 cubicles or coolers
All situated along the right hand side 6 along
and three deep, a wall to ceiling screen at this door end and large display
window looking in from the outside corridor, a hospital trolley in
between. On the far wall was a white board,
divided in to 18 sections. To the left wall was a set of double doors connecting
the Freezer room to the “Operation Room”
All very matter of fact
Again this room was unnaturally cold, it felt
so unwelcoming. None of us felt that we should be there, except one of our group
who wanted to try one of the coolers (Yes there is always
one)
The Security Guard told us, that we could not
touch the coolers except for one at the end where the door had been removed. He
recommended that we did not try to climb in and then laughed. (As
If)
It was deep about 8 feet deep and 2.5 foot
square, it was pitch dark inside, and the smell
was like nothing I have experienced before.
I was convinced therefore that the other 17
coolers were still occupied, and got a few scowling looks when I suggested
this.
Nobody wanted to turn the lights off,
It was crazy, we are all experience Paranormal
Investigators, and we have been to hundreds of spooky places between us. We all
sat down, and I quickly got up and slammed the light switch off, you would not
believe how quick those torches came on.
One of our group decided he wanted to climb
into the empty cooler, he was of course castigated by most, but he climbed in
anyway, head first.
Now from my position, I could not see how he
was going to get out again, and I can also say
that I could not care, but I was going to enjoy
every minute of it.
It was impossible to actually do a serious
vigil in this room with this Idiot in the cooler; he had managed to turn over so
he was facing upward.
He said he felt fine, I only wished this cooler
still had a door to shut.
We sat there in silence and turned the torches
off (some reluctantly)
As we became accustomed to the dark, we herd
knocks and drips of water and even a tapping sound from the corridor. We started
to call out for spirit to make itself known, by making a noise, touching one of
us, by showing us a light.
The tapping in the corridor continued but not
to a discernable pattern
It was the anticipation of something happening
the surprised me, we were all expecting something.
We kept calling out for a while, to no
avail.
And that was it in that location, all ready
move on and have a break
Well except for the slight matter of extracting
one fool from a dark whole.
In the end it was simple, he was lying on a
drawer, on runners, which just slid out
I think I was a little disappointed
Coffee a biscuit and a warm in the office was a welcome interlude; we tried not to wake the security guard
Next up was the Operating
Room.
We had as before left Trigger objects and an
EVP recorder in the Freezer room. I was fully aware that any noise we make in
this room would probably get picked up
Again we set up a Video Camera to record the
proceedings in this room
This room was similar in size to the last one,
about 20 feet by 15 feet; there was a large frosted window on the far wall,
double doors to the right, which linked into the Freezer
Room
A large cabinet on the left wall and two
trolley tables in the middle of the room set about six feet apart. There were
special lights above each table (Not in operation now) in addition to the house
lights. The entrance door sited another smaller mobile
cabinet.
We brought up the table from the cellar along
with 6 chairs, and placed them in the centre of the room.
It was decided to try a spirit board (Its not a
Ouija board bit a close cousin)
As well as all the numbers and letters it has
symbols from Pagan and Wicken beliefs
representing the past, present and
future.
A glass disc is placed at its centre and is
used in the same way as a glass, each participant
placing their finger tips on its edge. We would
then share our energy and call for any spirit present to move the glass and give
us their message.
As a sceptic I have reservations about this but
I am more than happy to try anything.
I was particularly looking to see if anybody
was influencing the glass disc, either pushing it or dragging
it.
I can report that nobody seemed to do this and
we made use that once contact was made everybody turned his or her fingers over,
to eliminate the possibility.
With the lights now out and only a torch
illuminating the table, the atmosphere changed from being jovial to being a
little more apprehensive.
I did note the irony though, that in the
freezer room everybody felt very uncomfortable, and some quite scared, where as
in here people felt ok.
(They did not like to be where dead
bodies were stored but did not mind being in a room where they were chopped up
first)
“Back to the Spirit
board.”
We again went through our white light
protection routines, and energy sharing rituals
Then calling out for spirit to contact us and
give us any messages.
The glass disc moved to the number 3, which was
puzzling.
We asked if that was the number of spirits
present, but the disc then moved to letter A
Several questions then followed could they
spell out their name.
The disc just moved to a date 1849 or 1840, as
the numbers 0 and 9 are quite close.
Then the name ADAM and then the symbol EAST
meaning travel or a journey
The disc was moving to recognisable letters and
numbers that had meaning, but I could not discern an actual
message
Then the glass disc moved to LEARN this
normally means we have e to find out something to
Interpret the message.
The disc continued to move to several symbols
some of which I did not recognise, with one member of the group reading the book
explaining each symbols meaning. There was a pattern and the symbols were
linked, but it was not tangible, not information I could take away and
research.
We had spent an hour on this and we were
getting a little tired.
It was agreed to stop for now and have a
break.
** We found out later that in 1849 there was a
fire in this building, and several bodies were
lost, and that they were never given the
Christian service.
Their names were listed and one was called Adam
Carter **
All a bit of a coincidence, but we had nothing
else to go on.
Break time again and time to disturb the
security guard again
The Security Guard said that he had seen TV
programs on Ghost Hunts and wanted to know about the table tipping, convinced
that it was all fixed.
A challenge then, Table tipping would be
next.
Our Medium and our Sensitive both said the most
active room was the Freezer room
(Now why did I know they would say
that.)
Six of us went to the freezer room, while two
decided to do a silent vigil in the cellar
Well two plus our eight-legged
friend
We collected the table from the “O R” and
placed it in the centre of the Freezer room
After going through our protection routines
again, we began
Each person placed the fingertips on the edge
of the table
This time there was no messing about and this
vigil felt much more reel
As the medium asked out for spirit to come
forward the table shuddered and jolted
It was quite violent and nobody was left in any
doubt that we were not alone
We asked out again an asked for the spirit to
tip up the table in any direction just to
Show a sign of presence There was a slight
vibration
We asked again, slowly the table seem to lift
from opposite me and swivelled to my left
The table was a tripod table so when this table
moved it effectively lifted two legs at a time
Again we asked for the table to move to the
left for a yes answer and to the right for a no answer.
We asked if it was male and the table moved to
the left, we asked if he was related to the building and the table moved to the
right, we asked if he was older that 20, the 15 then 10
Before we got the yes answer. It was a boy of
ten.
He had come to play a game, so we went with it,
we asked him could he spell but he said not
We asked did he know whom the king or queen of
England was, but he did not.
SO we asked if he wanted to play a game, the
table swivelled round on one leg.
We asked if he knew the nursery rhyme ring of
roses, the table swivelled a full circle again
(I cannot express how daft it feels to sing a
nursery rhyme in a morgue at 2 am)
So there we were singing and the table started
to swivel round and round, faster and faster
We could not keep up with it and some were
getting dizzy
It was incredible. I am sure at one point the
table was completely off the ground
And then it stopped just like
that
We called out again and again but no
response
We had no choice but to end the
vigil
And that was the end of the
night.
Nothing at all conclusive, but how do I explain
away the events that occurred
As for the most active place we have
investigated, this was not it
But as for the scary factor it gets a 9 out of
10
Peter Sugden
www.ghostvigils.com