The 2MG team discover … appliances! (by Andrew Wooding, with a bit of Mike at the end)

Our previous nocturnal excursion to Graves Park in Sheffield had been anti-climactic, to say the least. You can read about it here. The aim was to check out the boating lake where two dejected ladies had drowned themselves independently of each other … then subsequently popped up in people’s snapshots wearing Victorian dresses (as you do).

It sounded like a promising evening of ghost hunting, except it took us over an hour to find Graves Park, and when we finally got there, we couldn’t locate the bloody boating lake! It was pitch black in there, and the light from our mobile phones and iPods did little to illuminate the way.

But good things can come from bad, as they say, and the whole sad experience has forced us to rethink our methods. Two weeks later we have bounced back fighting fit, armed with a surefire strategy that will take us to the next level … appliances!

Turns out that all self-respecting ghost hunting teams worth their salt go forth armed with gadgets and gizmos to aid them in their quest. Ultra-sensitive recording equipment. Finely-adjusted cameras. Radiation detectors and the like. All sorts of technological wizardry, with the single aim of proving to the world that ghosts are more than just pygmies of our imaginations.

Mike and I don’t have much of a budget yet (for some reason, Sheffield Council have declined our request to fund our vital scientific experiments), but we’re proud of our very first dip into the metaphorical pond of paranormal paraphernalia.

For our return visit to Graves Park, we each took a ‘para-luminator’ (mine was a torch from Poundland; Mike’s was one of those wind-up non-electrical torches that doesn't need batteries), and we shared a handy ‘moisture manipulator’ (a fold-up umbrella from Oxfam down the road).

Turns out the moisture manipulator was a must – it was chucking it down this evening. And the para-luminators meant that we stumbled across the boating lake within minutes … although it was a little off-putting hearing Mike whizzing his para-luminator round like a egg whisk each time he felt like shedding some light on things.

Plodding towards the boating lake, I could have sworn I saw the outline of a giraffe. It was dark, it was raining, and my glasses were drenched, but it was undeniably a giraffe. Could we have found the first reported case of a spectral safari animal? I pointed it out to Mike, and since the batteries in my torch had already run out of juice (good old Poundland), Mike obliged by powering up his para-luminator.

Whizz! Whoosh! Whirr! (This should be good for at least ten seconds of light.)

It wasn’t long before Mike’s para-luminator revealed that what I was seeing was indeed a jungle creature of the long-necked variety. But it wasn’t a ghostly giraffe. It was flat and cut out of wood and turned out to be part of a jungle-themed play area for kiddies. Ah well. Like so many of our potential ghost discoveries … so near, and yet so far. It makes you think, doesn’t it?

The best thing I can say about the boating lake was … we didn’t fall in. The path winding round it was dark and slippery, and that can of Irn-Bru I’d imbibed an hour before was getting to my head.

We walked round the lake once … didn’t see a ghost. We walked round the lake again … still didn’t see a ghost. We walked round the lake a third time … guess what? Our optical perception of a watery ghoul was still most firmly in the negative.

On the way out of the park, though, I received my biggest fright since we started this ghost hunting lark: a blood-curdling high-pitched scream that chilled us both to the very bone.

Mike did his powering up again…

(frenzied egg whisk sounds)

…and the resultant beam of light revealed that the shriek originated from a nearby peacock. Maybe the poor thing had been frightened (like us) by the imposing silhouette of a fake wooden giraffe.

Folding the moisture manipulator away so that we could consume a bag of Monster Munch in Mike’s car, we resolved to be armed with even more ghostly gadgets on our next foray into night-time Sheffield.

Helpfully, Mike emailed me the next day with his proposal for further appliances. Considering our lack of funds, we have to be realistic about what we can afford. But I think this list looks promising. What do you think?

Professional teams' appliances

Table tipping
Automatic writing experiments
Trigger objects
Motion detectors
EMF meters
K2 meter
White noise experiments
EVP recorders
Lone vigil


2MG's appliances

Chair wobbling
A pen
Tigger toys
Prunes
An 'AA' battery
K9 model of Doctor Who's dog
Blow up paper bag and burst it
Wooden recorders and odd flute
Lonely Scott, John, Alan and Gordon Tracy