Introduction

Around 2011, I ended up joining a tiny amateur paranormal investigation team. I can’t remember the exact how or why, but I do remember how it started out: with a Facebook message asking if I’d be up for checking out my uncle’s property. Apparently, he’d been having issues with eerie feelings, cold spots and a pungent smell at one part of his garden.

Around this time, I was majoring in photography, making side-cash by doing portraiture shoots for people and I was the only one in my family with a decent camera (a Canon EOS 450D).

Being the sucker I am for anything spooky, I immediately signed up. The team wasn’t anything official (yet) and was merely six family members (myself included) and one other person (later down the line, we’d recruit another one or two people, but at this stage, I believe it was only the seven of us). The uncle and aunt whose property we were going to check out were among these members.

The Ayrshire Paranormal Investigators (API) wasn’t officially formed until after this first night, when we realised we were on to something. I’ll try my best to recall my experiences, but it was over a decade ago now and some memories may be fuzzy. I only have the photographs and EVP recordings from my uncle’s property. I have one photograph from Loudon Kirk. It’s not much, but I hope to share it with you today.

The First Investigation

I still remember how I felt when we drove out that night: excited. I honestly didn’t expect anything to come from this, but maybe — just maybe — I’d get to see something weird.

My uncle lives outside of my town in a secluded area. This is very important to remember for the EVP’s we captured later. There’s no one around — only a motorway up the road from where his property sits. I can’t say anymore without risking giving away his area, so I’ll leave it at that.

The first night was certainly weird. The moment we pulled up and pushed the buzzer on my uncle’s doorbell, the Ghostbusters theme blared. He’d set it up for a laugh and again, it confirmed my belief that this was going to be a night of spooky fun.

Little did I know that my foray into the unknown would be anything but fun.

The Orbs of Light

It rained that first night. I remember it so vividly. I also remember taking some test shots and noticing the rain in the photos — it was always clearly moving in a downward trajectory, as expected, or it was stationary, depending what my shutter speed was. This can give the appearance of orbs of light, as seen in the photograph below.

I tell you this so that you may better understand the first signs that something wasn’t right when we arrived at the property. When we grouped up and my uncle relayed the specific areas that he felt uncomfortable in — his work shed, another shed down the bottom of the garden, and the bin area where a vehicle he was working on sat. We headed out into the garden and our first venture into the unknown began.

This first night, we focused mainly on getting a feel for the location. It certainly felt creepy. When I began taking photographs of the areas he’d mentioned, I reviewed the images and immediately noticed something odd: the rainfall was moving up towards the sky.

Through later research, I learned that this can, indeed, be caused by the refractive nature of raindrops. It’s an illusion — the light of the camera’s flash causes an optical illusion. To quote Paranormal Milwaukee directly:

Rain drops have most of their mass in the bottom due to gravity and as such when the light from the flash enters the rain drop it leaves via the path of least resistance, which is straight out the top.

Paranormal Milwaukee

At the time, I had no idea this was the case and so, we were all mesmerised by these dancing orbs that flickered and flitted around in each image. Some of them were full of colour, but again, this can be caused by the light refraction of the camera flash.

I thought I could file this under ‘debunked’ but no. As it would turn out, those same orbs would appear on our subsequent investigations when the night was bone dry.

As it stands, I still have no concrete explanation for this. Normally, I would lean towards dust or other similar airborne debris if it hadn’t been for the next things we captured. Take note of that vehicle in the photo above. It plays a major role in our EVP discovery.

The Face In The Window

Okay, this one is weird and it genuinely spooked me so much at the time.

Remember I mentioned a specific shed that my uncle felt uncomfortable near? We didn’t approach it as we focused on the main area (we’d upgraded ourselves to K2 meters and wanted to figure out how they worked), but I wanted to snap a few shots of it, anyway.

I need to apologise for the low quality of these images. I had to zoom in to be able to show what I noticed in the image. It’s entirely possible it’s a mistaken case of pareidolia, in which the human brain recognises patterns as faces, but if that’s the case, then why does the same thing not show in the first photo?

The following photos were taken seconds apart. Keep in mind that all present at the home this specific evening were with us, as my uncle and aunt were out investigating with us.

This was the first time I began to truly realise that maybe there was something to this whole paranormal thing. It was the first night I went home and stayed up until sunrise.

It’s also worth mentioning that, at this time, I was living in a home that had bad energy in it. I distinctly remembering feeling like there was a male presence in my bedroom. I’d always feel it at night, as though someone was looming over my bed, but there was never anyone there.

What’s eerie though, is that my cousin, who had previously lived in the home, mentioned that she’d never liked that room and had often felt like “a man was staring at her”. I’d never mentioned how I felt in the room, nor that the presence felt male. It’s an eerie coincidence, but you can understand why, after a night of amateur ghost hunting, I felt inclined to stay awake until the first rays of sunlight.

The Bright Flashes At The Séance

We were absolute beginners at ghost hunting. We used to try to conduct pseudo-seances by holding hands in a circle, closing our eyes and seeing if we could feel anything. We did the whole ‘is there anyone here with us?’, ‘would you like anyone to leave this circle?’, all that jazz.

Now, I’ll be honest — I don’t mess with séances, Ouija boards, anything that can potentially ‘contact’ the dead. My reason? Simple: I fully believe you’re dealing with the demonic when you dabble in this. Now, I’m not religious, but it’s interesting that every world religion warns against this type of thing, and even in the beliefs of demonolatry — the worship of demons and the belief that ‘daemon’ merely means ‘teacher’ or ‘guardian’ — they warn against a darker, more negative energy.

Needless to say, I was extremely uncomfortable during these séances. I even took to wearing my mum’s pentacle necklace as a symbol of protection (my mum is a practicing Wiccan and this is potentially relevant to the EVP later).

There’s a belief in certain sectors of Forteana, that bright flashes of light are a spirit’s failed attempt at possession. That gives me the creeps because I have two photographs that were snapped during one of these séance sessions that show a bright flash at the backs of myself and my aunt. Take a look.

I need to be crystal clear here that neither of us were wearing reflective clothing. My hoodie was a matte Bleeding Star hoodie, and she was wearing a matte fleece. There’s no reason bright flashes should radiate from either of us, especially considering the glistening showerproof jackets of the other attendees.

I also had a similar experience with a flash of light in my fiance’s old apartment — it was haunted too and I’m hoping to do a separate write-up on that soon. But this time, we both witnessed it. It filled the entire room, like a nuke had gone off, but only for a split second. He was in a maisonette, so up around the sixth floor of this building. There was a road in front of his maisonette, but the only window in his bedroom was at the back, where the River Irvine flows. There are no roads there.

Now, when I recently reviewed these images again, I noticed something in the image of myself.

When I boosted the brightness, I got chills. Again, though, this is almost entirely another case of pareidolia but it creeps me out nonetheless as it seems to be overlooking the séance.

It’s easy to see things that aren’t there when you’re already freaked out. I hope this part of the article serves as a demonstration of how easily pareidolia can catch you off-guard. Even with the shed image, it’s important to keep an open mind and not get pigeon-holed into the belief that it’s absolutely one thing or another.

I can’t explain it, but that doesn’t mean it’s not something perfectly explainable or normal.

The Voice On The Recorder

One of the few experiences I have tangible evidence of is the night we recorded some terrifying EVPs. We recorded all the EVPs below on the same night, when the activity was bad. One in particular is absolutely baffling to me.

We conducted an unusual experiment. Our uncle’s home had a small extension with clear glass windows facing his driveway. He had a car there, and we placed the voice recorder on the roof of the car, headed inside for some tea and coffee, and simply watched. That’s exactly what we did. We all sat on the bar stools and leaned on the counter, looking out at the vehicle. We sat for maybe ten or fifteen minutes, enjoying our drinks and bantering while keeping our eyes on the car.

Hand on heart, there was no one out there. We all saw that. We were all indoors with the patio doors open. You can even hear our muffled voices from the inside.

We played back that voice recorder and everyone’s blood ran cold. There was a voice, clear as day, and it was not happy.

The recording shook us all to our core.

Now, I’ll be honest. I didn’t want to believe this was real. I wondered if my uncle was being his usual prankster self and winding us up by placing something outside to play the eerie voice, but one look at his face told me otherwise. 

As we played the recording back, the colour drained from his face completely. It was genuine fear.

But that wasn’t all we caught that night. Later, during the same investigation, when we were all outdoors again, we captured a male voice. Again, an electronic distortion can be heard before the voice.

It sounds like this voice is saying ‘get away, mad witch’ which is kinda freaky considering I’d taken to wearing my mum’s pentacle necklace. I’m not entirely certain that’s what it says but that’s what it sounds like to me, at any rate.

We caught various EVP recordings over the space of perhaps four or five sessions at this property. Another one is included below, from our last séance.

In this one, a female voice can be heard saying what sounds like ‘please leave’. You’ll have to take my word for it but I am absolutely certain that this is none of the women who were present at the séance. We had the same team each time and this voice doesn’t sound like any of them.

That being said, it’s important to be vigilant when listening back to any EVP recording. There were clips I’d timestamped as ‘unusual’ but upon further listening, it became evident they were various noises made by the team.

It’s that easy to hear what you want to hear when you’re already spooked.

Other Experiences

When we were more comfortable with our equipment, we started venturing out to other locations — places such as family homes, Adamton House Hotel and Craufurdland Castle. There’s not too much to say about these events, sadly — all the evidence has been lost over time as laptops have failed and Facebook accounts deleted.

I used to type up ‘case files’ for each location we visited and I know I have one somewhere for the poltergeist case we took on at a family home. When I find it, I’ll write another post but for now, I don’t want to report on it in case I misremember things or over-exaggerate the facts.

Adamton House Hotel was an interesting one. While most of the team reported feeling uncomfortable in an old, disused gym/sporting area, I didn’t feel it at all. The only time I felt incredibly uneasy was in the kitchen area. Our K2 meters were flying off the charts, picking up electromagnetic waves here, there and everywhere. One particular area of the kitchen felt horrible. However, I turned a corner and lo-and-behold, there was the hotel’s massive electric cupboard.

It’s well known that electromagnetic waves can make humans feel paranoid and anxious and it’s my belief that the electric cupboard was causing us to feel scared. It sounds crazy, I know, but it makes more sense than poltergeists haunting the kitchen, especially considering the K2 meters went absolutely bonkers as we got closer to that cupboard area.

As for Craufurdland Castle, that was a collaborative charity night with another team. Again, sadly, my memory is foggy — I remember my own experiences but not enough to say for absolute certainty “this happened”. I chalk most of this up to ADHD and my memory being like a sieve — if I can’t show proof or experienced something so profound that it’s lodged in my memory (like Loudon Kirk — that’s an article that’s on its way soon!), I can’t talk about it.

Conclusion

Do I recommend becoming an amateur ghost hunter? Absolutely not, if I’m being honest.

We were playing with forces that we couldn’t explain and anything could have gone wrong. When I think about those flashes of light at myself and my aunt’s backs, I wonder about the folklore regarding possession, and it chills me to wonder what would have happened if that truly was a possession attempt. We were not equipped to deal with something like that. We never were.

But that’s the risk you take when you delve into the unknown. Are any of us really, truly ever ready for such possibilities? I don’t think so. On the other hand though, I’ve seen and felt things I would have never believed possible. There’s so much I wanted to add to this piece, but without the photos or videos to back me up, I know none of it would be believed. And here’s the kicker: I wouldn’t believe it either, had I not been there.

It cemented my belief that there are things out there that we just don’t understand. The fact that negative energies are mentioned in every culture, religious or not, also makes my belief in these things concrete. Thing is, I lean more to the demonic angle. I’m not sure I believe in psychics, mediums or seances to commune with the benevolent souls of the deceased. Part of me truly believes there’s a darkness to every element of it and I don’t like it.

Now, I said before and I’ll reiterate it: I’m not religious. I’m not coming at this from a Christian angle, or an Islamic angle, or even a Wiccan angle, but there are some things I’ve experienced that I just can’t explain.

Perhaps some things are better left unknown? Maybe one day, the paranormal will simply be the ‘normal’ when science catches up and can explain the Fortean as perfectly natural phenomena.

Either way, I hope this little piece sheds some light on my experiences for you. This time, I spoke about spirits but when I write about Loudon Kirk, maybe — just maybe — we’ll be talking about the demonic.

References

File Title: “Rain_orbs_nimbostrati_1.jpg”. Source: Wikimedia Commons URL: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rain_orbs_nimbostrati_1.jpg

Paranormal Milwaukee. “Orbs Explained.” [Online]. Available: https://paranormalmilwaukee.com/paranormal-101/orbs-explained/