On march 30th 2013 we went to Newcastle for not one location, but two. Newcastle Keep and the Blackgate Barbican are right next door to each other. Situated on St Nicholas Street, these two imposing buildings are great to visit in the day time alone.
We started out at the Black Gate Barbican first, setting up the equipment and Paul, the curator of the castle keep show ourselves the around so we would get aquainted with the area. The Barbican is shut for 9 months and open in early 2014, and is currently being restored to an education centre and vistors centre. We was very lucky. We was only the 7th investigation here ever done and was the last ones for this year. The barbican is now a hollow shell, furniture removed, creating this derelict atmosphere to it and rather sad looking. The first floor of the barbican is the oldest part, dating back to the 1200's and has two fireplaces, one being original back to when it was first built, and the other from the 1700's when the additional upper floors was built. This room is all made out of stone and all that is in there are steps leading to a platform, and a large 6ft wooden table.
The second floor is where we pitched out base room. It has a room inside it, which was probably used as an old wash room, when it used to be accomodation for slum dwellings in the 17 and 1800's. This room seemed particulary creepy. The third floor, the Society of Antiquities room had empty shelves and bookcases, it used to house lots of books on the history of Newcastle and they took over the barbican in the late 1800's. This room and the room inside it was very unpleasant. Before the guests arrived, we got in contact with the k2 meters with a girl (which Sam sensed was a 6 year old called Susan), and also an imposing man with a black long coat with tails, going back to 1841 named James.
The final floor has 4 rooms up top, one being an old bathroom and Sam had sensed a elderly lady called Rowena, plus the James being involved with murder, when his stocks and shares crashed and he wanted someone to blame.
The guests arrived and settled down for pre-investigation drinks and we split them into two groups. Group 1 came with Sam in the society of antiquites room on the 3rd floor dowing dowsing and hand held seances, and group 2 had gone with Andy and Pete to the third floor to do ouija board and table tipping. Group two got good table tipping from a 5 year old boy, and group 1 had a guest get touched on the arm by Susan.
Then we switched. Group 1 went to do the equipment vigil with Andy on the first floor, and Group 2 came with Sam in the Societies room. Sams group had strange experiences with guests hands floating up during the hand held seance, and they described it as a 'force' pushing their hands upwards, and no possible way they could push them back down again. On the equipment vigil, they had the spirit box working and a man called Mike came through, said his name twice, said there was 5 spirits. so the k2 wre spread across the room and asked mike to ask the othr 4 spirits and himself to stand where the k2's were and all five lit up to red. The last seance group 1 was with the ouija on the top floor and group 2 was doing the equipment on the first floor. On the ouija we had a man called George who said he died aged 35, worked as a castle 'gard' way he spelt it, and was married and was around in Charles II reign. He the proceeded to table tip the table, only slightly rocking it, but still was pretty good. The equipment vigil resulted in the big table in the centre moving on its own. No-one was even near it and astounded the guests.
The guests had a break, whilst we took everything over the the castle keep. Then we was ready for round two. Paul kindly did a history tour for the guests, showing them and us around the place, as it was our first time here. We had two vigils in the keep, one being the gallery and great hall and kings chamber on the second floor, and the other vigil was on the ground floor in the garrisons room. The gallery proved quite intresting when we got on evp some female saying 'come on' plus tapping heard by the stairs. Automatic handwriting experiment went really well too. In the garrison room, the k2's went off, plus a scratching sound was heard and a whoosh, then a clinking to the ground. One the guests was taken by surprise as it hit him on the way down. We discovered it was a screw and one screw was missing from the glass display cabinet. We heard huge bangs on the door nearby, dragging sounds coing from the floor above and footsteps coming down the stairs when no-one was there. There was many rooms to explore at the castle keep, but because these rooms we was in was active, we wanted to stay, rather than ship everyone off to another room and miss on the activity and making it into a dull ghost hunt.
So thats what we did, and so glad we stayed in those rooms, as it was such an intense experience, the newcastle keep and barbican are certainly places i would definatly go again and again and again.
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