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

Loose dogs and Hell-Clough (by Andrew Wooding)

‘Hell-Clough? I’ve heard of Brian Clough … but is there really such a place as Hell-Clough?’ This was the question that raced through my mind as I perused the following ominous email from Mike:

If you're still happy about tomorrow evening at 8.00pm, could I suggest meeting at Bunting Nook again? The reason is that the place I'm wanting to check out is just a five minute drive away. The place is called Hell-Clough. We're talking about a tale of murder, lost lovers and the ghost of a fair eighteenth century maiden that's often seen. Much to tell, but I'll save that until we meet yet again!

My ghostly best,

Mike

How could I refuse? Fridays just aren’t Fridays unless they involve murder, lost lovers and fair eighteenth century maidens. That, and Vimto and crisps.

Mike filled me in the next evening as we wandered the secluded country lane that winds its way through Hell-Clough. Turns out there was this guy called James Archibald Durant who lived in the Hebrides back in the mid-eighteenth century. He was jealous of a male friend of his wife, so he fatally stabbed him (as you do) and his wife died of shock.

Fearing the law, James ‘Archie’ Durant fled with his daughter to England and bought some land in Hell-Clough. But jealousy struck again – he discovered that his daughter had acquired a secret husband. This wouldn’t do for Mr Durant so he got into a scrap with this son-in law of his, only to get himself killed in the struggle. The husband ran away, the Durant house in Hell-Clough became run-down and derelict, and in recent years there have been strange, eerie sightings of a woman in a long gown and large hat. Durant’s grieving daughter?

Some have reported her as floating across a corn field and disappearing into a group of nearby trees. All very spooky. Eager to experience the mystery first hand, we kept our eyes peeled on our travels as we looked for a woman in a long gown and large hat.

‘Mike, is that a woman in a long gown and large hat over there?’

‘No, it’s a man on a tractor.’

‘Oh, sorry Mike.’

A few minutes later…

‘Andrew, is that a woman in a long gown and large hat down there?’

‘No, it’s a badger.’

‘Oh, sorry Andrew.’

And so on, every few seconds, for the duration of our evening ramble. It felt like we’d stumbled across every possible lifeform imaginable, except for the one thing we were looking for. How dare these ghosts not perform on cue! Don’t they know we’re on the lookout for them? Don’t they realise we want a genuine ghostly experience to spice up our desperately ailing blog?

We did find something mysterious on our travels, though. We wandered past a compound of sorts, which was thoroughly fenced off, with gates firmly bolted. Outside, there was a large sign to scare away trespassers, with the warning: BEWARE LOOSE DOGS. We scratched our heads. We’d heard of loose women … but loose dogs? Was this a red light area for the canine species? And, more to the point, what were these ‘loose dogs’ liable to do to us if they were to leap over the fence?

The painful realisation made us race all the way back to Mike’s car. Very quickly.

The car happened to be parked by the very field that one of the ghost sightings took place in. And in one corner of the field was a massive great pylon, crackling with electricity. Is it significant that there are pylons all along the Stocksbridge bypass as well, where the mad monk has frequently been sighted? It makes you think, doesn't it?

It certainly made me think.

To explain: I found myself at a quantum physics conference in London a couple of years ago. I didn’t understand all of it - (correction: I didn’t understand most of it) - but one thing I do remember is that matter doesn’t exist. At a quantum level, all we are is vibrations and energy, and when we die we leave our energy field behind. Could it be that electricity pylons, or other massive concentrations of electricity, excite these vibrations and energy fields and somehow make them manifest themselves again? Bring them back to life, if only for an instant? Just a thought, for what it’s worth.

Also, what if that sign back there had said: BEWARE LOOSE CHANGE instead? Imagine the compound’s caretaker lobbing dangerous 50 pence pieces or handfuls of tuppenny bits at us. A frightening, but potentially lucrative, thought…

…though admittedly not as frightening as the fact that there’ll be another blog entry soon…

Blanket media coverage for Two Men and a Ghost! (by Andrew Wooding)

What a phenomenal week it’s been! With our Sheffield ghost-hunting blog barely two weeks old, we have been the proud recipients of what can only be described as blanket media coverage … a veritable whirlwind of publicity in a frenzied Sheffield media storm.

In short, we had blanket media coverage at the bottom of page 10 of The Star on Thursday … and on Saturday morning, on BBC Radio Sheffield, we had blanket media coverage for 9½ minutes at 7.45 in the morning, between traffic reports and an interview with a vicar about trespassing sheep.

The Star article, expertly scribed by columnist Martin Dawes, can be eyeballed here:

http://www.thestar.co.uk/diary/Comic-writers-get-in-spirit.5353540.jp

As for our radio appearance – on the Saturday Breakfast show, hosted by the effervescent Gareth Evans – I was hoping to provide a ‘listen again’ link, but there isn’t one. Too bad, as there seems to be a ‘listen again’ option for just about every other Radio Sheffield programme, including Sunday Breakfast, and Gareth Evans’ weekday shows.

Was it ghostly intervention that prevented our interview from being archived? Even though we’ve just started, are we getting so dangerously close to the truth that spooks are scared of us and need to intervene with BBC mixing desks and digital recorders? Naah … I didn’t think so either.

I’d like to report on one spook, though … the subject of our first investigation, the mad monk of Stocksbridge, a ghost that purportedly interferes with the inner workings of cars because he isn’t happy about his eternal rest being disturbed by the sudden new influx of noisy traffic thundering along the Stocksbridge bypass.

You may recall that our first outing to Stocksbridge was in Mike’s car, the mileometer of which inexplicably packed in for the entirety of our exploration and only started working again when we headed away from the so-called haunted area.

Trying to be scientific – we decided to pay a visit to Stocksbridge again – but this time in my car. Cynics could say that maybe Mike’s mileometer was faulty and it was all just coincidence. But if the mileometer stopped in two separate cars on two different journeys, then we would really have something worth writing about.

Our experiment paid off. Sure enough, as Mike hopped into my passenger seat and we set off from Meadowhall car park to the busy Stocksbridge bypass, my mileometer…

…worked perfectly, and it did so for the remainder of the evening. Ah well. At least it was nice getting out for a drive, as well as pigging out on a family pack of Gold Bars, kindly supplied by Mike.

The only thing I can think of is that maybe, just maybe, the mad monk is pleased with us for spreading the word about his frustrations. He only does his stuff with people he’s narked with, but by sticking up for him we’re now in his good books and he’ll leave our cars alone. So the fact that our mileometer worked perfectly might still be definite proof that the mad monk exists. Not convinced? Don’t blame you, but I’ll leave you with this final true fact.

After dropping Mike back to his parked car at Meadowhall, then heading for home in my own car (in Waterthorpe near Crystal Peaks shopping centre), I put my iPod on ‘shuffle’ mode. There are hundreds of possible songs on there, but just minutes from reaching Waterthorpe, shuffle threw up Rasputin by Boney M again, that celebrated hit single about the most famous mad monk in history. What are the chances of that, eh? Was it a sign from the mad monk himself? It makes you think, doesn’t it?

The mad monk of Stocksbridge might be pleased with us, but he has a terrible taste in music.