Background
This investigation was to be carried out without any of the staff being present, therefore when we arrived at 8.30pm the owner, Helen, let us in and after giving us a tour of the building we instructed her to lock the door on her way out and come back at 2am to let us out.
Our base room was on the first floor where all the costumes are kept, as it was coming up to Halloween there was a mannequin in the room that we nicknamed Hannibal Lector. Although the layout was basically one room per floor, for some reason one member, Lorraine, found it very disorientating every time she moved from one room to another, she described it as being in the place at the wrong time, e.g. she was expecting the shop or its stock.
After setting up the equipment we formed two teams, Lorraine, Betty and Alan would start in the attic and Tracy and Michael would do downstairs on the shop floor. The attic is small and we only had a limited amount of floor space to work but as soon as we entered we were aware of being watched by a male presence in the corner of the room.
Lorraine took the dowsers to see if she could get any communication going, we got a 'yes' to the energy being male but he would not give us his name. When we asked him to give us the letters of his name, as we went through the alphabet he told us 'no'. We then got a new energy, male who also gave us his name as Maldwyn from Mold. We got the year 1836. He wasn't always here but at this time it was an anniversary of something that was personal to him.
Alan took over the questions and an orb is seen going from the right of the room to the left. Alan couldn't get any answers to his questions so we asked if they preferred to speak to a female and the answer was 'yes'. Still using the dowsers, with a female voice we got the resident ghost by the name of Sarah.
At this point team B (Tracy and Michael) came in as Tracy heard a voice telling them, forcefully to 'get out'. Also, one of the novelty statues in the shop has been going off on its own. Tracy, who is not prone to becoming unnerved, did feel unsettled about the voice so from that point on we stayed together as one team.
We went for a break in our base room, sitting in there the atmosphere was slightly different from when we first went in to leave our things. It felt like it was a main room for family discussions, where secrets were talked about and plotted. Betty felt a hand touching her neck and a pressure around her. Tracy was generally on edge, but couldn't explain why. We finished our break and went down into the basement to do some work in there.
We set up the table with two female investigators and one male, with a female voice always asking the questions but this didn't work so we asked if they would speak to us if we just had females at the table, which we then did. Lorraine, Tracy and Betty then asked who was with us and we had 'Sarah' again and she told us her story through a series of questions. The story goes as follows:
Sarah had lived here with her father and two brothers, her mother had died a few years previous to the events that had eventually led to her death. The younger of the two brothers was away in boarding school but the elder one still lived at home. Her father was a farmer, but more of a gentleman farmer; he didn't do any actual farming but had employees on the land. He was a Welsh baptist and was considered an elder of his local church and he was a good friend to the priest of that church. Sarah had been in the church choir, and regarded the priest as a confidant, telling him her secret thoughts and events that happened to her, believing that whatever she told him would be just between them, she trusted him completely.
When she was 14 the priest started to take a special interest in her. He would keep her back from choir practice or come to the family home, gradually making advances to her which she was unable to defend herself against. She believed he wouldn't do her any harm and she respected him and so she should do what he told her to do. As she began to feel something was wrong and what he was asking her to do was wrong he then started to blackmail her by telling her he was going to tell her father things which he would disapprove of so, in short, she had to carry on letting him use her or face possibly being outcast by her father. She must have felt that her father's friendship with him was stronger than what he felt for his children.
This went on until Sarah became pregnant, not knowing what to do the first and only person she told was the priest. He didn't want this hindrance and so went to Sarah's father and told him of her predicament. We don't know if he told her father the truth that he was the child's father or if he made her into a girl with lose morals but one thing they both agreed on was that she must lose the baby and so together they planned the best way to do this.
At this point lights were flashing on a costume of a priest/monk that was on a shelf near us. The light was attracting all our attentions, it wasn't coming from torches as they were all switched off as we had the overhead light on and it didn't come from that as it was perfectly still and this light was flashing on different areas of the costume.
We felt as though Sarah had left the table as the energy changed; we called out and asked if we had the presence of the priest here - the reply was 'yes'. When asked if he wanted to talk to us he replied that we shouldn't listen to Sarah, that she was a discredit to her family and she was a liar and shouldn't be talking to us about these things. We told him we believed Sarah and that he just didn't want anyone knowing the truth. We asked if he could justify himself being 'a man of the cloth' when he had no right to be. All the time we are talking to him the air was getting heavier and we are feeling more exhausted.
He told us that 'yes' he does feel he is rightfully a man of the cloth and we had no business interfering. With that we asked him to leave and we brought Sarah back who told us he was very angry at her for talking to us.
Sarah then carried on with her story:
In the house, just her and her father, he told her he knew about her condition and he was most upset. He started to beat her, of course this was the plan. If she was to be beaten she would lose the baby and, therefore, a scandal would be avoided, except that it went too far and she became unconscious.
Her father, in blind panic, thought he had killed her. In the basement was a well which, if she were to fall in, would turn the event into an accident. At this point her brother came in and saw the situation with his father asking for his help.
He did help him but he was unaware of what had brought on this turn of events. Sarah didn't blame her brother for anything as she felt that if he hadn't have helped he would have been disowned by his father and had lost his place to live, which she didn't want that to happen - what's done was done!
At this point the temperature went very cold, we felt she was showing us how it felt as she told us that if her father had only looked or waited she would have been saved as she wasn't dead when she entered the well but they left her to drown.
She said she was happy being a resident there, looking at what's going on, and she does admit to being the culprit of the many little things, such as computer going off or losing data. She doesn't want to hurt anyone but she does like the staff in the shop knowing she's there.
We were happy to leave when the door was unlocked. It had been a night of heavy energy which made you tired and a story of a lovely girl's life cut short.
More details
Tracy is a member of L and T paranormal, set up by Tracy and friend Lorraine who met at other groups and decided to set up their own partnership to investigate paranormal activity across North Wales. If you would like to join L and T Paranormal or have them carry out an investigation at your property email
landtparanormal@hotmail.com.
