Lincoln Castle

Yvonnes account

We arrived at the castle at approximately 5.30 in the evening with the weather, breezy and relatively clear. After meeting with our guides for the evening from Friends of the Castle, our first task was to situate a camera in the Transportation Cells. A survey of the rooms was made and a number of observations made regarding items found there. The camera was located down a narrow corridor with cells leading off and in a long room to the right of the corridor. The room had a dirt floor, brick ceiling, no windows and a few other cells leading off the main room. In one cell a name had been carved along with part of a date. Nothing unusual was noted at this time. Motion detectors were placed at the entrance to the corridor then we all left the cells and the door was securely locked.

Guests started to arrive from 6.30 until 7pm when the castle gates were closed. Approximately 7pm, we all grouped in front of the prison for a brief history talk by our guides and a talk by Garry and Sarah about some of the equipment that would be used that evening.

After the talks, the group was split up into 4 smaller groups of 15 guests in each group. Clare and myself taking one group to our first location of the Women?s prison wing. Neither Clare or myself noted nothing of interest but a couple of people said they could smell something like sulphur in the condemned cell. We asked for any signs of anyone there but received nothing. One guest said she could see a shimmering light but nothing was noticed by anyone else present in the group. No readings were picked up on the Ultrasonic Detector. A number of people reported feeling cold in the cell next to the stairs. After 25 minutes it was time to move on to our next location.

Our second location was the Prison Chapel. Michael came to join us and he felt he could sense someone walking in the corridor to the back of the pulpit. A number of people, including myself, went up to the actual pulpit to take photos. My camera took one picture but then turned itself off a couple of times before it would allow me to take another photo. The batteries were new that night and I had never had trouble with that camera before or since.

Our 3rd location was Cobb Hall. One of our group took a photo on the roof and a white orb was caught in the centre of the roof. No other people were in the photo. I explained that it was possible the camera might have caught an insect at the wrong time but the guest was quite excited by it. On the middle floor, a guest said she felt she didn?t want to go near the stairs leading to the dungeons. No readings were picked up on the Ultrasonic Detector. Clare noticed that we had trouble picking up radio messages, lots of static and difficult to understand any messages all the time we were in Cobb Hall, this was the only location where we had trouble with the walkie talkie.

Our 4th location was the Mortuary. To me this seemed to be the least interesting. At one time the Ultrasonic Detector shot up to 20khz while the entire group were still and silent. This happened as I was stood by the door of a room to the right of the tunnel leading to the mortuary room. I heard a noise from outside which sounded like something dropping but on investigating I could see nothing to account for it and no one was in sight but as it was quite breezy I think it was natural causes. A séance was held again with no results. Clare noted she could hear a noise from the back room but thought it was water drops onto a cylinder stored in there. After 25 minutes we left the mortuary and took the group around to the main meeting area in front of the prison.

After a short break, all the guests, group and guides held a vigil in the men?s prison wing. This is not open to the public and is used as storage. A few of the cells were open and the guests were invited to spend some time in small groups to see if anything happened. A séance was held with 1 gentleman in a cell on the top landing saying he felt his face being touched. A noise was heard in the condemned cell by Garry and Sarah, Sarah commentating that she thought it sounded like tables being moved while Garry said it didn?t sound that loud while he was in the room. I was stood on the second landing with Clare to my left and Michael to my right a few feet away. I thought I saw a shadow pass across Michael and immediately looked up to the top landing to see if someone was moving. Clare also noticed a shadow at the same time. Other than this I noticed nothing of interest.

At 11pm, it was time for the guests to leave us. After they had gone, we went to retrieve the camera from the Transportation Cells. I must admit I felt a little uncomfortable as I walked along the narrow passage on my own leaving Garry, Clare and Paul the BBC reporter, in the room dismantling the camera, with Sarah and Michael at the other end out of sight, I was glad to reach the end!

To sum up, I think the few hours we had in the castle were too short but most enjoyable. Although nothing of interest happened to the group I was with, there seemed to be a few things happening during the night, which were very intriguing

Michaels Account

Early on in the evening I saw someone as a shape of soft light walk toward and past me on the right-hand lawn. I got no sense of who, when, etc., but felt it was a slender woman.

I felt and saw a woman in Cobb Hall, around 5' 5" tall, stocky, perhaps in her late thirties. She was wearing a white-ish blouse, long medium brown skirt, and soft leather shoes like slippers, with a bit of a shine to them. Her skirt was of reasonably fine material, not sacking as prisoners would have worn. I could see her putting a tray down on the floor, and felt that she was a cook/cleaner. She seemed reasonably happy.

Another woman, who said she was sensitive, told me that she picked up on this woman as soon as she entered Cobb Hall. Chris Collins also told me that the cook house was very close when the old prison wing existed right next to that area. I got no name or date, etc., but felt that it was reasonably recent, ie., not when the castle was first built.

In the Prison Chapel I felt a few non-visible people moving around, both in the stalls at the front, and also in the passage beneath the lectern/warder's pews. A few people talked to me about the passage, and most said they could feel a presence there, and that there were strong changes in temperature, though warmer, not cold. I felt that there was a man walking back and forward there, probably a warder rather than a prisoner.

In the Mortuary I sensed very dense energies, though not particularly nasty in any way. After Jeff talked to the group and then did some 'calling out', we were silent for a little while. I then spoke to the group and told them what had been related to us about that area, and was telling them about some of the energy work I do when the 7'+ scaffolding support arced across my view and down into the group. There were screams and a little panic, though nobody fled. One chap suffered a cut to the head, and his partner said that she had been hit on the shoulder.

While Jeff and the Sheila Collins took the couple to the Castle Gate for first aid treatment, I investigated the incident as best I could. I had been looking directly at the group in the second room of the mortuary, and assumed at first that a guy in a light coloured top had stepped backward, standing on the baseplate of the scaffold support and causing it to fall. However, I don't recall seeing him move, and two others stood next to him said nobody had moved at all. I Bent to pick up the long steel pipe, but had to use both hands to lift it and put it back into the corner with perhaps six or seven others. All were at an angle of perhaps thirty degrees into a corner, and I could see no reason why one would fall.

I tried standing where the nearest guy had been, and stepped back to see if I could make the pipe fall, but two things stopped me. Another smaller pipe was lying on the floor in front of it, which made me stumble backward. Also, though I weigh around thirteen and a half stones, I could barely budge the pipe by putting my weight on the baseplate. I pulled the pipe away from the wall, and realised that even if I had been heavy enough to move it, it would have first hit me in the back before falling to the side.

I have to say that as I do not normally experience such 'heavy' physical effects whilst doing my energy work and interacting with non-physical beings, my next response was to assume that perhaps someone at the rear of the group had perhaps done it. Others felt this unlikely, and I have to admit that someone would have to be very irresponsible at the least to push such a heavy steel scaffolding support onto an unsuspecting group of people they didn't know. Without further evidence I make no conclusions about it, as I was looking at the entire group as it happened, but was not standing near the scaffold pipes in the corner which was hidden from my view.

In the Female Prison Wing I had a non-physical being approach me and take my hand. I felt she was scared, trapped and feeling very lost and lonely, and wanted to leave. I was slightly confused by this, as I thought we were in the Male Wing, so I asked Sarah to confirm which wing we were in - I could see no reason for a woman to be so trapped in the Male Wing.

I went into an open cell, which felt 'right' at the time, and now I think about it, was probably where she was imprisoned as she followed me in. I changed the energies in that place and told her she could leave but she was frightened, and I had to lead her forward by the hand until she left, thanking me as she went. When I returned to the main floor nothing further happened.

In the Male Prison Wing with the whole group, I picked up on strong energies in a few places, though again, nothing very 'heavy'. Towards the end of the vigil there I spent some time alone in a cell in the dark, and was talking with a man I felt there. I got no particular details, but found myself discussing the sad conditions of the place. I felt no great distress there, and after a while I walked back out onto the balcony and leaned over to look up and down at others on the landings. Another PRT member walked straight up to me from further along to my left, and asked if I was picking up anything there. I said no, but that I had been having a brief conversation with a man in the cell behind me. She said that as I had walked out, a large shadowy shape flitted out after me and moved past me across the prison. Another PRT member confirmed this, and said the shape was so substantial that she had even looked up to her left to see who had moved above to cast such a shadow. There was nobody who could have, and no light source either.

I must say that for all the horrific events that have happened at Lincoln Castle, I expected to feel far more in the way of misery and suffering. However, as I said on the night, being with over sixty people and moving from one group to another all night didn't give me time to relax and become sensitive to the place and whoever may still be there. It would be very interesting to spend a night there alone as a team.

Sarahs Account

After splitting into groups we began in the mortuary. Once we'd all filed into the somewhat cramped space, I explained a little about how we conduct investigations. I then begand the 'asking out' process, encouraging other members to get involved. We heard a couple of shifting noises in the back corner of the ante-room behind the slab room, and some taps, although on further investigation this was found to be water dripping from the ceiling onto some gas bottles that were stacked in the corner.

We then moved on to Cobb Hall and spent the first few minutes on the upper level, just imagining what it would have been like to be led up there to be executed in front of a huge crowd. We then came downstairs to the lower level, and as I was counting people down the stairs, I thought I counted a 16th person coming down the top set of stairs. Another member of the group thought she saw a shadow moving at the bottom of the stairs. During the rest of our time in Cobb Hall, one lady felt a touch on her hand and at the same moment the negative ion detector light flickered briefly.

Next on the list was the prison chapel, after most of us had settled themselves on the pulpit gallery looking down into the chapel, we began asking for responses. We all heard several tapping noises coming from the right hand side of the room. One group member suddenly started to experience streaming eyes and a runny nose, another another man standing next to him developed a sore throat, both of these conditions vanished in minutes after they moved a short distance away from where they'd been standing. Whilst we were all chatting there was a noise of someone walking up the stairs at the side of the gallery, although none of us had moved. We also heard a couple of 'sighs' coming from the pew area. People on the left hand side of the room also felt distinctly cold all of a sudden and started to shiver, which was just prior to the noise on the stairs.

Onto the Georgian prison wing, on entering the female wing, a few of the group heard tapping noises coming from the condemned cell at the far end of the room, we all congregated in there and began asking for signs that someone was with us. No one reported anything but on coming out of the cell, a couple of us thought we saw someone running along the upper gantry and disappearing into a cell - this gantry is off limits to everyone and is barred by a gate. There was nothing else of any note during our time in the Georgian wing, apart from Michael and a few others sensing someone standing in the centre of the room - the air felt slightly colder in that particular spot and no draught could be detected. Everyone said it felt more peaceful than the previous location in the chapel.

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