Sandwich Guildhall and Court Room
This was one event which I had been anticipating for months, as I was hoping to try a little table rapping in the Court room, as undoubtedly there must have been quite a lot of gavel banging when the court was in session. It had been used as a court for 400 years so there should have been quite a few sentences.
My group were not disappointed with the amount of noises encountered, although I had not intended to split the group, but because Sandwich is rather a noisy place at night with the pubs opposite The Guildhall having Karaoke competitions. I had to at least try to limit the amount of noise from within the building.
We all started with a Séance in the council chamber room, the energies in here were quite subdued but the people who were facing the door, could see some unusual lights and shadows from that direction. That was the oldest part of the building. Spirit had stepped forward and began to make many people, mostly the men feel very uneasy on their feet. I just had no ability to stand still, neither did the person on my left (he wants to remain anonymous and not have his name mentioned in the report, therefore we’ll call him Bob). The male energy who stepped forward kept showing me his watch, the importance of this took several hours to work out. This male energy was approximately 5’8″ in height and wore a very smart black & white suit, although he was wearing knee breeches and a highly polished buckle shoes. He also showed me that he carried a silver pocket watch, this was attached to his waistcoat via a chain. He gave me the impression that he was of some importance although not a mayor. He gave his name as Thomas and the year of 1880. There was also a shy female energy present who just looked in on us from time to time, I did not get a name for her. However two of the guests did, Bob had Poppy in his head and Kym had Polly in hers.
It was at this juncture that I decided to split the group into two smaller groups, as the Guildhall is a big enough place for groups to work without interfering with each other.
My group headed into the Mayor’s Parlour room. I asked that any spirit present could make a noise in the room, within a matter of seconds noises started in the corner of the room behind me. I asked that the spirit identify themselves and it was Thomas who stepped forward. When the town clock struck the hour, the clock in the room was approximately 3 minutes slower. I had informed the group that I thought it was Thomas who went around the building setting the clocks by his pocket watch, which he was very proud of. Bob at this point made a joke that if it was Thomas, he was 3 minutes out. This angered Thomas and the noises that were then heard by everyone increased, not only in frequency but also in volume. At one point I thought the other group was walking past the door to our room. I was about to ask them to be quiet as it seemed a lot of noise for 5 people. However when I opened the door, all the noise ceased and to top it off there wasn’t anyone near the door or in fact anywhere in the corridor. I couldn’t even hear the other group from just outside the door to the room we were in.
After a break we all headed into the Court room, as the room was big enough and if there were any spirit taps then I wanted everyone to hear it & I could rule out any noise heard within the building, as we were all in one place. It took a while but a male energy made himself known to me, he was standing in the dock, beside Bob. I asked that this energy make some noise to prove that he was present, I tapped three times on the table in front of me and we all heard three distinctive taps next to Bob. Although Bob could not work out where exactly the taps were coming from. This energy gave his name as Jerome and that he was wrongly accused of sheep rustling, his fate and punishment was not given to me. But he was very happy to make some noises for us more or less on command.
The next session I decided that I would like to go back into the Mayor’s Parlour because the pubs had now quietened down and we may get more audible sounds. We did get some more taps & raps, but they were not as good as this first time. The other group had decided to move out of the room next door to ours (The Coroner’s Court), so we moved into there. A boy aged 8-9 stepped forward and gave his name as Samuel, I asked why he was here on his own. He informed me that his father worked in the building and his was here with him. Samuel was wearing his school uniform, grey shirt, blue jacket, blue cap, shorts and he was wearing brown shoes. He informed that these were indoor shoes (I can relate to that because I too attended a school where we had brown shoes for indoors, black shoes for outdoors).
Once again the clock in this room also chimed three minutes after the town clock. Bob once again commented that all the clocks were wrong. Thomas then explained to me that they were right and that the clocks in The Guildhall were right because they weren’t supposed to be the same as those outside The Guildhall. Whether this is true or not I have no idea.
On asking the spirit energies to make a noise they promptly made a loud tap between Bob and I, it was very good as the sound came from inside the table. [This is something that I am interested in and would like to conduct more research on, as table rapping is a very rare phenomena]
There was an empty seat between Kym and Bob and at one point it sounded like someone had sat down on the seat between these two people. I became aware of another male energy called Philip Gedridge who had been strangled. Aged 37 who was dressed in a jean shirt and jean trousers. Just as the outside clock was chiming again we all heard a shuffle of people, but during the shuffle both Bob & I heard a male growl, but before we could ask for spirit to do this again the other group came into this room. Whether the noise was caused by Spirit or whether it is a floorboard we do not know.
Although this wasn’t the kind of ghost hunt that offered physical evidence for the guests it was certainly the place where auditory noises were heard. I would certainly like to go back in the winter months when the noise from the town is likely to be minimal.
Although we tried lots of audio recordings, so far nothing exceptional has been recorded.
Steve
Spiritualist Medium
