Elvaston Castle

25 Feb 2005

On Friday 25 February seven Members from ESSIVE participated in a ‘public’ paranormal investigation at Elvaston Castle near Derby, which was arranged by the Derby Heritage Centre.

After we had eaten our meal we started the evening with a guided tour of the castle conducted by Ed Felix with the assistance of Billy and Warren from the Heritage Centre. During the tour an audio recording was made, however after initial analysis nothing apparent was picked up, although there were a lot of people chatting, talking and a whistle most of the way through but as yet we are unsure whether it was one of the party.

We started the evening’s investigation in the Gothic Hall, we remained as one group and several people tried their hands at glass channelling with varying success. Ed Felix set the glass on a table and as ESSIVE always place a ring on the bottom of the upside down glass Eleanor placed her silver ring on it. The reason that as a team ESSIVE do this is so the people participating can feel if the person opposite them is pushing, as the ring presses against their fingertip. Unfortunately no significant results were obtained.

We moved into the oldest part of the building and once again tried glass channelling once more with varying success. Whilst Paul, Sue and Jenny (all ESSIVE members) were participating along with three other members of the public, a spirit who had made contact with ESSIVE at an investigation the previous week called Jimmy Jones came through, from previous experience this is not an unusual occurrence. 

The group then moved upstairs and a séance was held in Lord Harrington’s morning room involving the majority of the night’s visitors. The session was started and ended by Ed Felix, and lasted 10 minutes. The name of Charles was mentioned by Eleanor and Jack by Tina. Tina said that Jack wishes to talk to Sarah and Eleanor confirmed that Charles was with us in the room but he was not too talkative therefore at the time we were unable to say which Charles it was. It was later confirmed that Charles was a common name amongst the Stanhope’s. Several people reported that they felt a burning and or pain on the left side of their faces and others mentioned a sharp shooting pain in their left temple. Initially we thought that there had been a fire in the building but the Elvaston Castle staff on duty assured us there had not. Post investigation research however has shown that Charles Augustus Stanhope, 8th Earl of Harrington (1844-1917) died from blood poisoning resulting from burns incurred in his engineer's workshop.

Our next stop was Lady Harrington’s bedroom where another séance was held, it was on this occasion opened and closed by Eleanor. Several people heard a growling noise, which appeared to be coming from outside the door, unfortunately this was found to be someone’s stomach. Everyone inside the room said there was a definite presence in the hall outside the door. Tina and Sue, who were sitting next to each other, said it felt as if someone was pulling on their hands. Several people then heard a woman shouting from outside the window, Chris and Phillip, who were taking measurements outside the circle, went over to the window to check if there was anyone there and Tina said Chris there is someone behind you. Eleanor looked over and saw a lady dressed in a long grey dress, tight at the waste with long sleeves and either a high lace neck or she was wearing a choker collar. Her hair was dark, almost black and tied up in a bun at the back of her head. At this point Jenny started shaking uncontrollably and Sue said, “Jenny’s shaking” the group then heard a thud as the back of Jenny’s head hit the floor. It is thought that Lady Harrington had walked through Jenny and apparently hit her in her face, later Jenny’s left eye was swollen and sore, there was also a red mark on her face underneath her eye. Although it would be possible to knock the back of your head and burst a blood vessel thereby causing bruising, we must point out that all the participants were sat on the floor in a circle holding hands. This being the case Jenny would not have got enough momentum to cause serious damage, however physical injuries do sometimes happen as a result of poltergeist activity. Eleanor closed the circle quickly and Jenny was taken downstairs and outside for some fresh air. One of the security guards confirmed that the lady seen by Eleanor was Lady Harrington as he had a photograph on his mobile phone of her wearing the clothing described.

The security guard went downstairs to his colleague to check on Jenny while Chris and Eleanor gathered the equipment that had been used. After clearing up they decided to join the rest of the group downstairs. Chris placed the case of equipment by the rails on the landing as we would be returning to this level for the next part on the night and Eleanor walked to the wall ready to descend the stairs. As they approached the top of the stairs a battery operated lamp which had been placed there to illuminate the staircase but was now switched off careered down the stairs to the landing below. This brought the castle security and several other members of the group running to find the cause of the commotion. As there is no recorded evidence of this event we can not either prove or disprove it as paranormal therefore we will not dwell on it any further.

The group then divided into three smaller teams, Billy and Warren accompanied a team consisting of six people each and Ed Felix accompanied the third team made up of the seven ESSIVE members.

The ESSIVE team started in Lady Harrington’s bedroom where we tested a new form of communication device designed by Chris and Eleanor Thompson. This consists of a circular board with a channel cut into the face in which a marker ball is placed. The marker ball is used to either point to letters or numbers or give simple yes and no answers. With the participants standing the answers seemed a little nonsensical and everybody was puzzled when we got the letter P followed by another P then the number 5. Ed then suggested it might be easer to do it seated and left the room to fetch some more chairs. Eleanor and Phillip were putting the three chairs that were already in the room around the table when Chris and Eleanor simultaneously pointed out that on the back of each chair the letter P had been painted. Moments later Ed returned with two chairs also bearing the letter P. Were we being advised that it would be easier if the participants were seated and that there should only be five? By asking questions we ascertained that the spirit we were communicating with lived in the castle but did not work there. We then decided to give the board the ultimate test by turning off the lights and spinning it so the sitters did not know what part of the board was in front of them. The answers were to be relayed by Paul who was recording the session in night vision. The first question we asked was “did you die here?” and the ball gave an emphatic yes. We then asked for the first letter of their first name and were given the letter ‘S’. Paul then asked for the second letter of their first name and we were shown the letter ‘U’. With this information everyone suspected that the name was Susan, Paul asked “can you give us the third letter of your first name” and we were given the answer ‘YES’. We then restarted the ball and asked if her name was Susan and the ball pointed to ‘S’, Chris asked “can you give us an emphatic yes if your name is Susan” and the ball stopped dead giving us a ‘YES’ answer. Paul asked “Susan did you live here” the board responded ‘YES’, Paul then asked “Susan did you die before the age of 50” and the board responded with the letter ‘Y’. At the time we interpreted this as her asking us why we wanted to know her age however having given it some thought maybe she preferred to be known as Susy.  We asked how many children she had and got the number ‘0’ then if she had had a still born child and got the answer ‘NO’. The next question was, were you married and the answer was ‘NO’, we then asked several questions to ascertain if she was a mistress every time we got ‘?’ for an answer. We asked her if she knew anybody in the room and got the answer ’NO’ so we asked of she was a resident spirit in the property and got the answer ‘YES’. We the got either ‘?’ or ‘BYE’ as the answer to the next few questions we asked so we decided to end the session.

The board was passed over to one of the other two groups while we relocated to Lord Harrington’s bedroom. Although while we were using the board our group found on a couple of occasions, through over exuberance, that the ball left the table, it never rolled more than a metre away.  We were therefore stunned to discover that this team who tried the board had the ball leave the table, roll about three metres and disappear down a small hole that had been drilled in the floor. Since Elvaston Castle is soon to be converted into a luxury hotel and golf course, could the spirits have been practicing their putting?

A séance was held in Lord Harrington’s bedroom with Ed, Eleanor, Jenny, Sue and Tina in the circle, Chris, Paul and Phillip on the outside taking readings and the two security guards as spectators. After a few minutes Tina and Jenny felt someone pulling their arms down and squeezing Tina’s wrist and Paul got a reading on his EMF meter that caused the needle to bounce to the top of the scale and the temperature dropped by two degrees behind Ed. Moments later Jenny started to shake, the shaking got more and more violent and lasted for around five minutes and was followed by Paul feeling a cold rush pass straight through him, at this point Eleanor pointed out that Ed was also shaking. Ed described his shaking as being like spasms and that it was mainly down his right hand side, Eleanor confirmed that there was a male spirit stood behind Ed on the right. Tina then asked if there were two and a whispered voice was caught on the video saying “peasant”, this was not heard by anyone in the room at the time.  Things went quiet and meter readings returned to normal so the séance was drawn closed.

The three teams regrouped and the majority headed off to the kitchen to try glass channelling once again. We started with the glass directly on the table top however, there was no apparent movement as the table surface seemed to be to rough. Ed went to fetch a board to place on the table so the glass could move more freely. After asking a few questions Ed asked for the glass to be moved towards the person they wanted to communicate with and the glass moved towards him. Ed then moved to the other end of the table and asked the same question only to find the glass once again moving in his direction. He then asked if the spirit was anything to do with the castle and once again the glass moved thereby giving a positive answer. The next questions asked and answers received were “did you work here?” -  yes, “did you work inside the castle?” - yes, “did you work in the kitchen?” - no, “were you a maid here?” - yes, “did you die in the castle?” – no, “did you die in a different place to Elvaston Castle?” – yes, “are you trapped?” – yes, and “do you want us to help you?” – yes. With the answer to the last question being yes and the majority of the people on the investigation being inexperienced it was decided that we would have to return at a later date to try and help. We decided to continue asking questions and Ed asked if they could see us in the kitchen and the glass moved to answer yes. Ed then said “so you can see us, thank you very much” and the glass continued to move stopping just before the edge of the board at which point the four people with their fingers on the glass and Ed heard a noise and asked “what’s that?” to which Eleanor replied “it was the ring off the top of the glass”. On checking the video footage the ring which had been placed in between the finger tips seems to jump off the glass and roll straight towards the camera veering off at the last minute so it did not hit it. After the session had ended Ed tried to roll the ring but as it was oval in shape he was unable to get it to roll straight without assistance. The session continued with the following questions and answers “do you mind us being here” – no, “were you under the age of 50 when you died?” – yes, “were you under the age of 40 when you passed away?” – no, “did you move the ring?” – yes, and “did you move the ring to try and frighten us, was it to shock us?” – yes. We then asked several question to try and ascertain the gender of the spirit but received no reply. At this point the remaining members of the group could be heard descending the stairs to join us and the only movement we had from the glass was in answer to the questions “are you an animal?”, “did you work with the hounds?” and “did you live in the castle grounds?”. We feel that the people joining us, using flash cameras and torches may have caused the spirit to try and disguise itself and eventually leave the room.

As it was getting close to the end of our time at Elvaston Castle for this visit, everyone moved back to the Gothic Hall to have one last try at glass channelling. This time three glasses were placed on the table to allow more people to participate, two of the glasses appeared to be moving however the third just stood still and the people decided to close that glass down. Once again Susan appeared to be trying to make contact, questions were asked and answered and the answers we received left several of the people present with the impression that Susan is trapped at Elvaston Castle as part of a love triangle. The session was brought to an end and we all gathered our belongings and departed feeling happy and content after a very active night.

Further public investigations are planned at this very active location. For more details contact the Derby Heritage Centre

These 2 pictures of the balcony were taken one after the other.
The first one however seems to show an orb in motion