Explosion Team Reports

Upon entering the Warehouse as a team looked at the various pieces of equipment we were going to use in the location and familiarise ourselves with what they could do and how we were going to use them. We settled down into the area spliting up and walking around the location to get familiar with the area and the various artifacts that were stored inside. The next phase of our vigil was to see if we as a group had any shared feelings of unease about in any specific spots. The majority of the team agreed that one half of the area felt more apprehensive than the other and a twenty square meter area of that part was of particular interest. We first decided to try Dowsing unfortunately without much success apart from the paranormal disappearance of one of the rod's that was discovered by Kevin who chose later in the event to be called Foxtrot Alpha..... (its a long story) Another occurrence with the Rod's while being held by Carla they seemed to follow Stephanie where ever she walked to they would follow and end up pointing at her. From this we decided to try some Pendulum divination the team members with the most success at this were Jodie and Stephanie who had definite movement of their pendulum crystals to add to this we decided to use a digital Dictaphone for EVP and Tim asked some basic questions using the EVP devise and watch the pendulums also give a synchronised answer. by this point our forty five minute slot had finished and it was time to move on to our next location.

We were joined in this location by Lib another P.I.G.S team member who was on her first public event and was here as an observer, Lib is expert in wicca and although not a practising wiccan she ranked as a high priestess and has an excellent knowledge of the paranormal, also Paul Cissell joined us in the C magazine who was the guest celebrity medium. we attempted Glass moving at the very back of the location but without any success, Lib suggested that we move the table as she felt that the glass may be more active about half way down the location. We relocated the Table and attempted glass moving again but unfortunately again without any movement of the glass. i (Tim) decided to ask the team to spread out in the location with each team member in their own alcove, and we stood in silence seeing if anybody could detect anything unusual, after a few minutes Paul stood in the area between Stephanie and Carla and asked Stephanie if she had any connection with a female name called 'Helena' Stephanie replied only as a distant school friend from a long time ago, Paul was keen not to jump on this as he felt that this wasn't the connection he was looking for. He moved up the corridor seeing if he could pick up on any spiritual connection. Jodie mentioned that she felt that at times she could connect with her grand mother but tonight she felt that there was something keeping here at a distance. Paul moved up to the guys at the far end Kevin (Foxtrot Alpha) and Luke, Kevin inveterately remarked on something (forgive me they were a distance from me and i didn't hear the detail) however i felt that Kevin was jesting with his remark but it was interesting that Paul tried to look past this and get to why Kevin had decided to play with him in this way trying to find out if Kevin was being influenced in someway by spirit . Just after this i (Tim) could hear the sound of distant conversation and i made Paul aware who then walked towards the door to see if he could detect the sound coming from outside, he then invited me down there and outside to see if i could still hear it, while out side all i could hear was the sound of the sea which was about 30 Meters away. By this time we had about 5 minutes left on this location so we decided to take it in terns to walk up the centre walkway of this location with deep alcoves on either side to see if we could individually detect any areas of uncomfortable sensation, after we had all completed this four of us had detected an area which we then all walked to. interestingly myself and Jodie walked to the same area and reported the same sensation of being looked at from a far corner, The other two group members also found them selves in an area not to far from us, we all reported that it was like walking into a wall of darkness on the final section of the location.

Here Jodie, Carla and Joe wanted to connect with the energies of the room and as such Kevin, Luke, Stephanie and myself (Tim) attempted an experiment called Automatic writing using a planchet and a pen mounted in it. It wasn't long before we has small movements at first and then the speed increased, we asked questions without much response the planchet seemed intent on just moving around on the paper. We examined the paper to see what was being drawn and discovered the image of a pentagram. we flipped the paper and started again, through questioning we found out that we were apparently talking to a lady but beyond this we were not able to distinguish any further details. as it was time to leave this location i went to find the other half of the team which were a little frustrated to have to leave the location because they felt that they were just starting to make contact. Joe reporting that he had the sensation of spirit touching him on the face, Jodie also reported that she was just getting contact.

in this location we joined Dr Ciarán O'Keeffe who treated us firstly to a room containing lockers and asked us to try and explain why this room had reported temperature drops (cold spots) . As a team i felt we did very well in suggesting all the possibilities that could cause this location to have a variance in temperature, such as a stone floor, a glass roof, a walk through doorway that lead to the front doors also radiators on the wall that would cause the air to circulate and draw cooler air in through the open doorway, Luke was great in pointing out the unusual way that the lockers were placed and as such he felt that they gave the room a kind of suspense as if somebody could appear over the top of to the side of the lockers Dr Ciarán O'Keeffe explained that when your body is in a state of flight of fight your blood will flow in a different way to the core of your body which can give the sensation of cold on your skin and as such could contribute to the sensation of temperature change in the location . we were then treated to some of Ciarán's examples of MP3's being played backwards, some EVPs and a live experiment using a ghost box.

This was our final location of the event , we entered the location and split, Jodie, Carla and Joe went to investigate down stairs while Luke, Kevin, Stephanie and Tim went upstairs, we walked down the hallway talking about the different rooms, we were discussing conducting the experiment again where we detect the strangest room off of the hallway when Dr Ciarán O'Keeffe appeared at the end of the corridor which lets face it none of us expected and at first he was just a shape holding his case of gadgets and yes it was a little unnerving as soon as we realised we invited him to join in on our experiment which he did and suggested that we all stood in a room where we couldn't see the person walking up and down the corridor, we were then joined by Jodie, Carla and Joe from down stairs and we all conducted the experiment, on completion we all headed for the location that we feard the most and strangely we all stood together at the end part just beyond the top stairs, Jodie reported seeing a shadow move across the wall as she took her turn in walking the corridor . Kevin reported hearing a strange noise as he reached the end of the corridor and for me it was a strong feeling of being watched from the top of the stairs. We all made our way downstairs where we split as a group again. Kevin and myself went into a far downstairs room as the other members of the group willed things to happen to us, as we stood there talking i could see corner of the eye stuff going on, i also had the sensation that somebody poked me on the right hand side of my back and touched my right hand. What was interesting about this was Paul Cissell was giving his dog a walk as we were in the Admin Block and reported that his docile dog suddenly got his heckles up at something on the lower floor and became very aggressively upset about something in the area.

i would like to personally Thank my team Jodie, Joe, Carla, Luke, Stephanie and Kevin for a fun and interesting event you guys were great sports always willing to take part in everything i suggested and were willing to try and experience the paranormal. Thank you.

Team 2 Mike Lima
Group Leader: Matt Laker

In the rolling way and cooperage areas, We worked with Dr Ciaran O’Keeffe, and an experiment with a ghost-box. No discernible results were detected.

On the initial kit set-up and walkround, I was laying equipment in the upper corridor, and Lib and myself both picked up on energies in certain areas, both of us in agreement as to their locations. On preparing to leave, i had collected the box of kit, and planned to place this in the room at the bottom of the stairs. As I started down the staircase, I suddenly had an overwhelming urge to put the kit in the large room with the fireplace, and stopped and turned. On doing so, Lib jumped back, and told me that at the moment I stopped, something had barged past us both. As she was telling me this, a piece of red and white safety tape blew up into the air and travelled a couple of feet along the corridor. While not discounting the presence of a breeze- there was a broken window in the adjacent room- the fact that this happened at the same instance is compelling. On going to leave, we came to the main door out of the building, and found that we were unable to open this. We phoned some of the others who informed us that we were not locked in. We tried the door again, and this time it opened with no trouble. I came in and out of this door several times throughout the evening, and there were no problems with this. Whilst I cannot conclusively say that this was paranormal, it is nonetheless strange, that following our experiences prior, we were unable to leave.

When on the location for the vigil, we experienced a few different things here- firstly, the upper room with the fireplace seemed to be quite active- we heard lots of taps, bangs and footsteps in this area. When I left the location to allow my group to settle into the location, they reported a lot of activity here. We heard a lot of noises that are as yet unexplained, several of which occurred on command. On walking along the corridor, at one point several of the audio lights lit up, seemingly without any provocation. It is possible that i had caused this to happen- there was a lot of small debris on the floor which could have caused this to occur. We conducted several EVP sessions here, analysis pending.

On kit setup, this warehouse contained a lot of activity. Whilst here with Lib, I walked into the location, and saw a movement in the closest room, which seemed as though someone disappeared behind the weapons here. I was in here alone for about a minute before joined by Lib, and was instantly aware that I was not alone in this location. I could hear a lot of noise in the second warehouse, and although the roof was leaking, and drips were being collected in a couple of large buckets here, the sounds seemed to be coming from the right hand side, around the corner just out of sight. It is possible that this had been caused by echoes, but I definitely had a feeling that I was not alone. When Lib entered this location, we both picked up on energies in the same parts of the location. On leaving the location, I placed my box of kit just inside the doorway to the left hand side. On returning later on, the box of kit had moved further back by about a foot. As it was a wet night, my footsteps from earlier when I had placed the box down were clearly visible. To have placed the kit where it was would have meant I had stretched forward to place the box down. On returning later in the evening, the box appeared to have moved to the right by another foot or so.

During the vigil in this location, we experienced the following- there seemed to be footsteps within the warehouse, several of the group saw shadows moving in the corner of the second warehouse, caused by movement within the ship’s magazine in the first room. On investigation, there was another person in this room- Paul, the medium, had walked into this area, however, he had moved round the back of the magazine, and this could not have caused the shadows as he at no point passed between the light source and where the shadows were observed. In the second area, one of the participants picked up on emotions in connection with a particular weapon- this was the 40mm Bofors gun in the second room. Paul picked up on a few things, which he did not inform us of, merely concurring with what the group felt and picked up on also. Paul instructed me to film the window above the location, as he feels that there may be something seen in this- analysis pending. We got the feeling of something ‘above’ us- there was a higher level to the magazine in this location- we heard some sounds from here, and felt like something was watching us. We went back to the second half of the location, where we all heard a sound that sounded like an aircraft- Portsmouth is not on any commercial flight routes. I am not drawing any conclusions from this, but it is interesting that the sound of the aircraft occurred when we were heading back into the location with the AA gun in it that one of the group felt drawn towards. We did some dowsing in this location, and whilst doing this, both Paul and Myself picked up on the smell of perfume. As the group were all female, I disregarded this, although Paul told us that the smell was not one that was coming from any of the participants. We conducted an EVP session in here, and when I asked ‘Can you see us?’ Paul said ‘They can see you, Matt’. Paul later explained that the smell of perfume was linked to the workers on the site, who used to, on their lunchbreaks, come down to the warehouse to flirt with the workers here. The reason, according to Paul, that they could see me, and why we smelled the perfume, was because they were trying to flirt with me and get my attention. Get in!

In this location, there did not seem to be much activity- no discernable movement in the glass, and through all of the other experiments, there was hardly any activity, although at one point I felt as though someone was standing behind me, and it felt as though someone had spat in my hair- on feeling the back of my head, there was nothing there.

In this location, there seemed to be a feeling of great pressure and heaviness- as though a storm was brewing. We settled into the location, and focussed on the automatic writing Planchette. The spirit that seemed to be coming through was of a male who could not read or write, so we established a yes and no response. We asked for his name, and I decided to do an experiment to deduce whether anyone was pushing the Planchette- I said that I felt I knew who the spirit was, and asked if his first name was William. The answer was YES. I asked if his surname began with a C. YES. I then thought up a different surname to that which I was expecting, as there is a C surnamed spirit of a man who is linked to the location. I could not think of one, however, the first surname that came to mind was COLLINS. I asked if that was the surname, and I got a yes response. Lib was leading the group at this time, and we got some clear answers about who this gentleman was. We established that he was linked to the merchant navy, had died at sea in 1941, in the Atlantic Ocean, that there was an explosion on board, and he was connected with the gun in the other warehouse. I asked whether he knew the gun well, and he said yes. I asked if he could indicate when the gun was built, and he said yes. I gave some years, and asked him to indicate which was the correct year- the answer was not given. We asked if he could move other objects and he said yes- we asked if he could move the trigger objects, and he said yes. There was no movement with these. We took a single match out of the box and asked him to move this. I found myself getting really angry, as I felt that the spirit was not being truthful, and I told him so, and asked if it made him angry me saying this- the answer was strongly YES. I said that I thought he was not as strong as he wanted us to believe, and that he was misleading us with his information. At this point, something shoved me hard in the base of my spine. The spirit indicated that it was him. We continued asking more questions about him, and got some clear answers, to be gone through at a later stage. I am hopeful that the shove in my back as been captured on CCTV camera and also can be cross referenced with the handicam I was filming with at the time.

On post-research, I decided to look for the ‘Sailor’ who had attacked me. I firstly gathered a list of all vessels that were lost in 1941 from the merchant navy, and cross-referenced this with a list of crew manifests for those who had died in the Atlantic. This did not provide any results. I then searched for all crew members from the Royal Navy who had died in 1941, and there were two William Collins’. Firstly, there was one who was a reserve sailor who had died on HMS Sydney. Secondly, there was a Sailor by the name of William Collins, who had died on board HMS Picotee. This vessel had been sunk in the Atlantic, in August 1941. The vessel had been escorting merchant ships and was torpedoed. This ship was a Flower Class Corvette, among whose armament was a 40mm bofors gun. So, this sailor, by the same name as the spirit we were communicating with, had died in 1941, in the Atlantic, was connected to the merchant navy, had died at sea, due to an explosion, and was connected to the type of gun that we were drawn to in the warehouse. It is possible that when the name came to mind, it was through some kind of mediumship, rather than through my own imagination? Maybe he hit me in the back, because he was being truthful, and resented my accusations?

Throughout the night, I was lucky to have such a great team to work with, and would like to thank all of the participants on the night, and a big thank you to Ciaran and Paul for all they did, and finally, a massive thank you to Anna and her team for organising the event.

Team 3 Lima Sierra
Group Leader: Lauren Setters

Team Lima Sierra's first location was the Grand Magazine where we were going to experiment with some automatic writing. Paul Cissel joined us which really helped everyone relax and he encouraged the team to be up-front with how and what they were feeling. My first thoughts in this room was of being watched. The torch lights still did not reach into the corners and lots of members of the group had that prickling watched feeling that continued throughout. At first we split up and very soon a member of the team came over very emotional and felt very drained- another team member started to feel very heavy and light-headed, so , encouraged by this, we went on to try some automatic writing.

This produced some of the best results of the whole investigation! The planchet moved straight away and we had a lot of information from the spirit we contacted who called himself Micky. Paul was getting the impression of an Irish man, who was facially disfigured in some way and the pen verified this. While we were asking questions we all felt a great sadness, it was actually quite upsetting for a couple of members- this is very common during intense paranormal investigations to be overcome by strange emotions that feel out of place with what you are doing.

Rolling Way / Cooperage

We were with Dr Ciaran O’Ceefe for this part. Ciaran took us into one of the side rooms and encouraged the team to use scientific reasons to explain seemingly paranormal events. I have to admit that we were all fascinated by how quick your mind is to judge something without stepping back and looking at things constructively. Next all sat around while Ciaran showed us his Ghost Box. This, by far, was one of the most suprising parts of the evening- it was so strange to try to listen so hard to all these random radio stations to pick out words, well, then we started asking questions and it seemed that we were talking to Micky again! We had some taps in answer to call outs which was very exciting.

Administration Block

There was much anticipation for this location as on the walk around it had struck us all as very eerie and it didn’t fail to disappoint. Lib joined us here so we made a lot of use out of the size of the building and split ourselves up into small groups to capture some EVPs. During a vigil in one of the small teams myself and the team member who was holding my hand felt an icy gust blow across our hands. I also saw some ‘swirling’ mist and the far end of the corridor which when I walked towards it just disappeared. Other team members told me they felt very cold and watched, one described it as “Just a very uncomfortable place to be”.

I hope that we get some good EVP evidence from this location.

For me, this was the most frustrating of locations. I personally have never had much luck with crystals or dowsing rods as I have very shaky hands, so let Lib take over the running of this area. We all tried some call-outs and my group split up with each of them picking dowsing rods or a crystal to try and contact any spirits that may have been wanting to talk. They had various degrees of success and the part that sticks in my head the most was the one ALMIGHTY BANG from over Claire’s head that reverberated around the room, shocking all of us!!! We did get some tappings and bangs in answer to questions but nothing concrete.

The C-Magazine was our final location of the night so we all tried desperately to build up some energy in the room to allow us to attempt the glass moving. This was very slow to start, we tried various things to encourage the glass to move more distinctively and one of my team had the great idea to put a marble into the bottom of the glass and ask the spirit to try to move the marble. This worked very well and we started to get some fantastic results! The spirit we contacted called himself Jimmy, Jimmy Jones. We gleaned information that he was married and had more than 6 kids, he was 26 and died in an accident on site that, when questioned more closely, he said was another person’s fault. He seemed very angry that they had not been held accountable for it, although Jimmy says he did not get the blame for the accident. He came across as a lady’s man and it was defiantly a buzz when jimmy indicated that he was stood directly behind me…

All in all I would have to conclude that the investigation was a great success. Not only did Team Lima Sierra have lots activity from the auto writing and the glass moving, We also had a lot of fun. I would like to thank everyone in team Lima Sierra for being such a great team to work with.

Team 4 Alpha Bravo
Group Leader: Amy Banks

We started our night in the C Magazine, where after settling into this location, a few of us agreed that we felt uncomfortable towards the back end of the building - although we were aware that this may be because it is further from the door and slightly darker than other areas. Two of us also felt pressure on our heads and a slight headachy feeling. We then attempted some call-outs, but got no real response and so the group decided they'd like to give glass moving a try. There was no real movement from the glass (just a few twitches), despite the session lasting nearly 20 minutes.

Our second location for the night, was the Grand Magazine. We quickly picked up on the noise pollution from the radiators. We decided to try several different things in this area. Firstly we did some call-outs to which there was no audible response. We then split the group around the location and this seemed to spark some activity. A few members thought they had heard taps or knocks near them, Anna felt a chair move beside her when she was sitting by herself, and one team member's camera battery died - despite the fact that they were new batteries. We then tried automatic writing, which took a while to get going but while we were waiting both Anna and myself felt something tickling our hair. Eventually the planchette started moving and so we stayed through some of our break to see what came trhough.

Rolling Way / Cooperage

We joined Ciaran for this location, where he started by talking to the group about using logical, rational thinking to potentially debunk paranormal phenomena. He then played us a selection of EVPs and asked us for our thoughts on what was being said. He then demonstrated the power of suggestion by playing Stairway to Heaven backwards and seeing if we could hear the 'satanic message'. He then showed the group the words we were supposed to be hearing and we all could 'hear' it much clearer. There were some strange noises happening while this was going on, but we discovered it was the roof creaking. We then did some experiments with the Ghost Box, and although there were no clear responses, two team members saw an unexplained flash of light.

Administration Block

I think everyone on the team was apprehensive about our vigil in the Admin Block, some because of stories we'd heard about previous investigations and some because the building itself has a very creepy atmosphere. We were joined by Paul Cissel for this location, who was really eager for the team to experience their own spiritual contact. He encouraged the group to talk about anything they were thinking or feeling. Although we had no luck experimenting with the audio lights, Paul picked up on a group of nurses in the upper hallway and a very distressed man downstairs who was shouting.

Our last location for the night was 309. The group thought we could hear tapping during our call-outs, but this was discounted when we discovered it was water dripping from the roof. A few group members tried the dowsing rods with some success, but no other activity was witnessed here.

Although the night didn't prove to have any overwhelming paranormal activity for our team, there were a few interesting occurrences. That being said, the members of team Alpha Bravo were all very good fun to work with. Thank you to everyone on my team for your enthusiasm and high spirits (no pun intended!). You made the night a very enjoyable one. Also I would like to thank Ciaran and Paul for their excellent insights into their own views on the paranormal. Finally, a thank you to Anna for ... well everything really! Including the biggest cupcakes anyone had ever seen!