I’m going on a ghost hunt. (Filed under ‘Things I Do for Cotswold Life'.)
The way I look at it is: I might not have any spectral encounter at all!
On the other hand, I think – suddenly terrified – I might! (Lose-lose, really.)
It’s not just ghosts I’m terrified of. It’s my reaction. What if I suddenly lose control of my bodily functions. Such as – I dunno - the ability to deaminate amino acids... (Actually, the thing I’m most-most worried about is staying up until the 3am finishing time; 10pm seems a very grown-up bedtime to me.)
On the plus side, I note on Sky News that there’s a ‘Do Not Approach’ prisoner on the run in Gloucestershire. He’s unlikely to run to another prison, I conclude. (One worry crossed off the list.)
To be fair, this isn’t my first rodeo. I took part in a ouija board session at Oxford Castle once, where a ghost began spelling his name with a D, followed unpromisingly by the letters HIS - and then completely gave up. ‘I think DHIS might be a Roman name,’ the chief ouija tentatively assured us. (My own guess is that he was trying for ‘dyslexia’. Which is fair enough. Not every ghost can spell.)
The second is around general attire. People wearing t-shirts emblazoned with white ghosts make me wonder if maybe my Lucy & Yak dungarees – though ethical – aren’t the discerning choice.
We’re led through to a prison hall with wooden floor and cream walls. It’s the sort of place (bar window-bars) where you could imagine WI bakers selling cakes held together with strawberry jam rather than, say, chisels. But who knows – the WI are full of surprises.
The main thing, I think, as I take my seat, is that everybody here is doing this purely in a spirit (also no pun intended; this is going to get exhausting) of fun and amusement.
…Or maybe not.
‘Who has their own equipment?’ asks Lisa of Haunted Happenings, our leader tonight.
(Sorry, what? Ghost-hunting equipment? Like, real, paid-for technical stuff, as opposed to my emergency clove of garlic and stake??)
Lots of serious hands go up. ‘I’ve got 19 years’ worth,’ says Belle (whose name I actually find out later, through conventional means rather than a moving pointer).
I had no idea you could bring your own ouija board. I guess maybe upmarket ones have eg built-in Google Translate in case of an indigenous spirit-guide; or better connective speeds to the Other Side?
But it’s not just ouija boards. Lisa lists a whole raft of things I have never heard of that we might have brought with us – digital thermometer; rum elephants (I might have misheard that); spirit boxes. Or we can borrow Haunted Happenings’ rum elephants. (Again, might have misheard.)
‘Are you excited?’ Lisa asks us, in cheerleader mode. ‘Are you ready to go?’
At least, I assume it’s us she’s talking to.
We see the yard, complete with razor wire. (‘We need teaspoons,’ one fellow guest jokes to me. ‘We’ve got until 3am. How far do you think we can dig?’). There’s the kitchen: ‘Full of hot oil and sharp instruments,’ Mel assures us. ‘People would have been stabbed and had hot oil thrown over them.’
A wing (that is actually ‘A’ wing, NB) once housed Mad Frankie Frazer, whose name gives you a lot of the information you’d ideally want to know. It’s a rather beautiful space: echo-y convex ceiling; upper walkways supported by iron serpents and lion paws. ‘Victorians were very superstitious,’ Mel explains. ‘These represent guard and prisoner; good over evil.
‘Anyone know why cell windows were so high?’
Everybody mutters an escape theory.
‘It was to get the prisoners to look up to God for forgiveness.’
We next visit B wing, the ‘nonce’ quarters: child molesters, rapists, police, judges, segregated for their own protection. ‘Nonce’, Mel explains, ‘is an acronym for Not On Normal Courtyard Exercise.’ (I’m unconvinced, I must say. But this is a ghost-hunt, not an exercise in etymology.)
Fred West was another intimate, held on the second floor, on remand for tax infractions: ‘Not garden activity ...
‘We can’t go upstairs as the suicide nets aren’t completely there.’
Then there’s C wing (I guess the original designers tossed up between alphabet or Julie Andrews), for young offenders. And the chapel – huge, with balcony and arched windows – where a sinister hooded prisoner stands silent and stock-still, which everybody else seems to be ignoring. I’m hoping this is a mannequin, but I have my doubts.
‘Am I the only person who can see that black figure?’ I ask Teaspoon Man.
‘I was thinking that, too,’ he says, looking slightly shaken.
Then on to the gatehouse, where condemned prisoners would be hung off the top. ‘There were at least 102 executions with drop-style gallows. All were buried standing up in unmarked graves, so they couldn’t rest in peace.’ (A forward-thinking move in terms of tonight.)
The last prisoner was dispatched on March 4, 1939, for murdering his girlfriend: one of 122 bodies allegedly buried in the prison grounds. (I think Mel says that Kylie Minogue’s great-grandfather was hung here. *Refuses to make ‘I should be so lucky’ comment*)
‘Everyone came to watch these hangings for a fun day out with the kids. When the last woman hung here, more than 20,000 came to watch.’
*Also refuses to link this to the quality of Gloucester nightlife*
‘You can look in the prison van but don’t go near the helicopter,’ Mel says.
For centuries, miscreants had been housed in the ancient keep of Gloucester Castle, an exceedingly grim fate. Men and women weren’t separated, with the inevitable ‘licentious intercourse between [unusually for a prison] the sexes’ and the conception of several children. On the plus side, the gaoler had a licence to sell beer to those held. Happy days.
In 1783, the High Sherriff of Gloucester, no less, spoke out against conditions: the state of the buildings was an absolute disgrace. By now, all prisoners were herded together at night, in a tiny dark cell, chained to the walls to prevent escape (a Bad Thing), which at least prevented the conception of more children (a Good Thing). As a result, the keep was demolished and a new prison built on the site, which opened in 1791 – complete with new rule book.
If you want a proper timeline, then do read – as I have – Jill Evans’s excellent A History of Gloucester Prison, 1791-1950. It not only details all the rebuilding, additions and improvements; it also describes thrilling escapes… Along with not-so-thrilling ones. Such as the first-such recorded, when a felon employed at sawing wood merely climbed over the wall using a ladder the builders had left in the yard.
There are heart-rending facts, too: the youngest boy known to have been imprisoned in Gloucester was seven-year-old Edgar Kilminster, in 1870, for stealing sweets with his nine-year-old brother, William. They got seven days’ hard labour and 12 strokes of the birch.
And the executions from the gatehouse roof. For example, 19-year-old Joseph Ray, condemned for committing burglary. According to the chaplain, the teenager was so traumatised and hysterical, he had to be carried out to the gallows in a fit.
Just grim.
‘I’ve a feeling of being crushed,’ somebody says. Another person has to leave the room, feeling odd.
I don’t feel crushed, creepy or accompanied; but, out of the corner of my eye, I do see a movement. A small pebble is rolling away from me. As I eyeball it, it stops, slightly rocking, before coming to a complete standstill.
Maybe I missed somebody announce they were going to roll it, I think. So I keep quiet.
We spend time on a ouija board, in groups of four, touching our fingertips to a moveable pointer.
‘Can you spell your name for me?’ Belle asks whichever spirit has popped by.
The pointer moves, hesitates, moves, and then stops on an X.
There’s an uncomfortable silence…
Until I have a helpful brainwave. ‘In the old days,’ I say, ‘if somebody couldn’t read or write, they’d mark their name with an X!’
The other three turn to look at me for a second…
‘What’s the second letter of your name?’ Belle continues.
There’s table-tipping – which is genuinely interesting. I lay my fingertips on one, alongside three other people, while they call on spirits to move the furniture like Pickfords on an off day. ‘Come on, cowards! Show us what you can do!’ Nothing happens for a while. I wander off; somebody else joins. And suddenly the table begins bucking like a bronco, even though everybody appears to be in very light contact. (I go back afterwards to investigate: these are quite flimsy tables. I don’t have an explanation, but I think maybe physics/psychology might.)
The claims come thick and fast. Somebody says they made contact with Psycho Sam. ‘He killed someone, and then killed a nonce inside.’ Another person says this has been verified by two groups.
At 2am, during a free period, I wander into the old shower block, where a group has made contact with a spirit called Michael.
‘Tell us why you’re here, Michael. Did someone hurt you in these showers?’
I don’t want to disturb them but this is a scene I’d like to remember. So I unobtrusively pull out my voice recorder and whisper, ‘Michael’ as a voice-note into the machine.
The room goes icy still.
Somebody quakingly says, ‘I’ve just heard something whisper, ‘Michael’…’
She senses things. Feels things. Hears things.
And who am I – self-confessed sceptic – to put my views above hers. Because she’s not only sincere, she’s caring. She couldn’t wait to go on her first ghost-hunt (‘investigation’) aged 18, the minimum for most companies. And since then, over 19 years, she’s been collecting her own equipment. And her own experiences. Some have been great; some not so. At Wymering Manor in Portsmouth, activity was intense: shadow figures, doors slamming, equipment going off, things moving. One team member had a spirit take over him (known as ‘overshadowing’). Belle blames herself for not protecting him.
At the Haunted Antiques Paranormal Research Centre in Hinckley 12 months ago, Belle felt as if something had tried to take her over. It left her feeling shattered and vulnerable. She stopped investigations completely for six months.
In Gloucester Prison, she’s picked up a lot, and none of it threatening. ‘I randomly got this guy talking to me; this young lad,’ she says of a spirit she spoke with earlier. ‘He didn’t seem miserable. I’d put him at 18 or 19; quite content at being here. I’ve not been anywhere tonight where I’ve felt: This is horrible.’
And I’ve met some lovely, genuine people.
But I am left with questions. We’ve been given lots of information about the prison’s history; about gruesome happenings here. But nobody has mentioned – or presumably knows - that it’s built on the site of a Norman castle which could win hands down in terms of century upon century of death and misery. Yet tonight only prison inmates have shown up.
Maybe it was the medieval archers’ weekend off.
I find Teaspoon Man before I go. He was there with me earlier, in the room with the rolling pebble.
‘So I must have missed something,’ I say to him, logically, awaiting his confirmation. ‘You know – somebody kicking or throwing it?’
He looks at me oddly. ‘No,’ he says. ‘Nobody did anything like that.’
• Katie’s ghost hunt was with hauntedhappenings.co.uk at Gloucester Prison, Barrack Square, Gloucester GL1 2JN. Events in other Cotswold locations include Woodchester Mansion, Stroud; Sulgrave Manor, Banbury; Oxford and Warwick Castles; and the Nunnery, Malvern.
• Gloucester Prison news: City & Country has submitted revised plans to provide a total of 202 new and conversion homes, alongside over 5,000 sq ft of commercial and community space and a range of private and public landscaped gardens. With Gloucester Prison dating back to 1791, City & Country acquired the former prison site in 2014 following its closure by the Ministry of Justice. Planning permission was granted in 2018, with revised plans addressing design changes to the consented scheme.
