The oldest building in Penrhyn Bay is Penrhyn Old Hall, dating from the early 15th century. It was the home of the Pugh family whose fortunes faded through their adherence to the Catholic religion when their neighbours reluctantly accepted Protestantism during the time of the Eizabethan persecution of Catholics.

In the grounds of the hall are the ruins of the medieval chapel of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Penrhyn, last used for public worship c1930. The hall now serves as a pub and restaurant.

UK-Paranormal Investigators, who are based in North Wales, are the first paranormal group to research the building and hold an overnight vigil. The staff of the hall report such phenomena as strange noises, items being moved and feelings of never being alone.

The moment our team entered the building we were in awe, the atmosphere felt electric and the building itself was very welcoming, we felt very much like we had taken a step back in time.

We did our ususal baseline scientific tests and monitored each room individually. High electro-magnetic field levels were found surrounding the mediums whilst contacting spirits. This phenomena has been recorded, though no logical explaination could be found.

Myself and Dave, another medium, contacted the spirits of two males. One was a hooded figure that preferred Dave's company and remained quite silent for the duration, the other gave the name Thomas, he was a man of authority in this district, and felt it was his duty to find the man 'Will'. Thomas has a moustache and wears a very odd black hat and is smartly dressed in a long dark coat.

Later we encountered a young soldier from the World War II era, expressing his humourous dissatisfaction at having to take pops at nothing in particular on 'that there hill'. He gave the name of Albert, 'Albie' as his mates called him. He wished he had the 'real thing' to shoot at and was getting a little bored of 'popping at nothing' and wanted to return home to Chorley. A very amusing spirit energy indeed!

The area of the dance floor was 'felt' to have been an external part of the building and that the dance floor steps had once been the threshold of the buiding, which was confirmed by the present owner. In this area a young maid by the name of Ceinwen was contacted and she was telling about the horrific sights she had seen, she held what appeared to be a rosary and was pulling at this in great anguish, whilst muttering prayers. She didn't linger.

Most of the team reported feelings of sudden dizziness and sudden extreme cold, our temperature monitoring equipment found great fluctuations in temperature, with no apparent reason for this upon investigation.

Our team also set up a 'lock off' experiment with a trigger object, which was continually filmed; on return to the experiment, the object had moved, which was no great surprise to the owner as he suggested it was a frequent occurence.

In the main restaurant area, residual energy was encountered as our mediums envisaged that this was the area where Welsh clansmen would gather to debate and that the small staircase in the corner of the room was not original to the building, but had been brought from a nearby castle.

Our technical crew reported: "We encountered a lot of audio and visual phenomenon throughout the night, some of which was caught on camcorder and digital camera, we will be doing alot of analysis in order to rule out any possible logical explanations, but some of which we personally witnessed dumbfounded us entirely."

We'll be returning to Penrhyn Old Hall to further our studies of this fabulous historical building. If anyone is interested in becoming a part of our team of investigators, please visit our website (see link above right).

Sheena Young