Bodmin Gaol Investigation 9th and 15th October 2011

Place: Bodmin Jail

Date: 9th October 2011 - Junior Event

Date: 15th October 2011 - Adult Event

The 2011 Haunted Devon charity event held at Bodmin Gaol was attended by around fifty people, with just a small number of those being regular members. With the chosen charity for this year being the National Deaf Children’s Society, it was decided an event for children would be appropriate.

A kiddies’ ghost hunt was held a week prior to the main event, with the opportunity for youngsters to track down ghostly figures throughout the gaol to win prizes and a youth tech workshop at which teenagers were able to use the equipment used on investigations. This was a brilliant day, very well attended by group members and public alike.

The event itself proved equally popular, having around fifty people attending who were split into four teams of between twelve and fifteen people. Larger than our usual groups, this led to a lot of complications with maintaining our usual high standards of investigation, but there were a great deal of experiences for all present nevertheless. The members of the public attending were shown how to use the technical kit and put through some of the regular experiments undertaken by Haunted Devon in order to see how the team conduct a full investigation and will hopefully join us again to put these new skills into practice.

In terms of technical experiments there were some interesting results from the use of EMF and ELF measuring equipment. In the hanging pit area, two separate teams noted that the pit lever gave off erratic measurements. There would be areas which gave off a field of up to 4 milligauss, but a second pass would reveal nothing at all. A lot of time was spent checking over the lever to find the field would come and go and rarely be in the same place a second time. It was confirmed there was no real reason for this, although the lever is obviously made of iron so would emit some sort of natural field.

In the basement area, the EMF meter was used as a divination tool, with the machine seeming to respond to questions. This proved quite effective whilst there were females only present, but once a male team member joined ceased.

One team took the Franks Box through the upper floors. At the very top of the building, they reported some interesting results, with the box giving the names of those present and also giving the names of David and Anthony. Those using it also reported that although the box landed on clearly different frequencies with different content, the voice they heard always sounded the same.

There were some glass divination and table moving experiments conducted. Those participating in these had good results with one team in particular having some very strong movements from the castored table resulting in the team being led out of the area they were working in to join the rest of the group. Worthy of note is that there was a considerable force needed at times to push the table in the direction it went and all present agreed it was clear none participating were able to have contributed.

Many members reported personal experiences within the cells, mostly seeing shadow figures and the general feeling of there being someone lurking in corners watching what was going on. Lights were seen throughout, although there were many people taking photographs so it is hard to say how much of this was bleed-over from other groups; likewise hearing noises, such as murmurs and music as it was possible to hear other groups working wherever we were in the building.

In the stable area, sensitive members were able to pick up on the names of David, Daniel and Nicholas, three prisoners who worked in the stables and a Harry who had been a guard.

At the hanging pit, was a Fred who had been hanged in 1831, although his neck had not broken so he had strangled instead. Another member also came up with the date of 1831, although connected with the name of Richard Hopkins (or Hoskins) who it was felt had been an executioner or guard.

Many reported feeling odd in the area behind the hanging pit, with a general impression that there was something not quite right; no-one was able to pin-point a reason for this.

Within the basement area, two members of one team felt a dizziness and that their legs were giving out. Not revealing what they felt, others were asked to stand in the same place with more than half independently reporting the same experience. This was in the same place that members of another team had reported feeling a general discomfort and fear.

All-in-all, this was a fabulous event which raised an amazing amount of money for this year’s chosen charity.

As ever, ideas are now being sought to make next year’s charity event even better so any ideas for venue or suggestions as to which charity we should support, please email the committee.

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