http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/cn_news_features/DisplayArticle.asp?ID=341545

Mediums feel the power - but I can't get into the spirit

Richard Gregory at the spooky spot at the bottom of the stairs leading to the Baron's bedroom

MEDIUM Richard Gregory sits at the bottom of the stairs leading to the Baron's bedroom, where Jeremy Goldsmith is convinced there is a ghostly presence.



"I am having trouble breathing," says Richard. "I feel I am a servant that has been beaten. My legs are like jelly. I feel I am in trouble for something."



Fellow medium Christine Lynam holds an electromagnetic field meter which shoots up from one to three as she approaches the stairs.



Chris Bullen, who has been asked to film the proceedings, discovers his battery, which should have lasted one and a half hours, drains in four minutes.



And our own psychic, Sue Jones - brought along by the News as an independent observer - feels "very heavy". She says: "I feel the air is oppressive, as if I can't breathe."



And I feel absolutely nothing - apart from a desire for a strong cup of coffee to keep me awake. I take photographs, hoping a ghostly apparition will appear in one of them and that the flash doesn't frighten them off before I can get an interview.



During a three-hour night-time vigil at Stansted's Mountfitchet Castle, the team from Clearsight Paranormal Investigations - invited by owner Jeremy Goldsmith, who is convinced his award-winning tourist attraction is haunted - claim to have spotted an abundance of spirits.

 

They include a woman with a white head scarf draped over her head, a man with head bowed low and arms secured behind him, a short, unkempt man with a number of injuries, and a young man bound at the wrists with shackles on his ankles - to name just a few.



The ghost-hunters also boast of encounters with a host of weird and wonderful noises, a variety of "orbs", sudden drops in temperature and a camera taking a picture all by itself.



Mountfitchet Castle, which is situated on a hill overlooking Stansted railway station, is believed to have been the site of an early Iron Age fort and Roman, Saxon and Viking settlements.



A castle was built in 1066 and it continued to thrive until an attack in around 1215 by King John. Stones were taken away by villagers and the castle site lay overgrown and forgotten for 700 years, until its reconstruction by Alan Goldsmith and his son Jeremy 27 years ago.



Jeremy lives on the castle site and visits it at all times of the day and night - but there are two places where he always feels distinctly spooked.



"One is by the gift shop and one is at the end of the Grand Hall," he says. "Most of the time it is at the end of the hall where the armoury is situated. Two years ago we found a dagger that had come out of the ground outside the armoury.



"I have also seen someone walk towards the end of the building. They moved without any motion at all, as if they were on a conveyor belt. The shape was blurred but it was definitely a figure and definitely moving.



"I have heard flute music coming from inside the hall and when I am in the armoury I always feel someone is with me. There is a presence behind me on my right shoulder. I know what I see and I'd like to know more."



At the end of the night both our psychic Sue and the paranormal investigation team are convinced there are spirits wandering around the castle.



"This is one of the best investigations that I have been on for a very long time," says Richard, who started Clearsight in 2004, with an initial brief of investigating paranormal activity in disused railway stations.



Jeremy is pleased with the findings, and keen to learn more about psychic phenomena. But his father Alan is more circumspect: "It has been a really interesting investigation and I am pleased that the News brought along an independent psychic who has come up with very much the same feelings as the paranormal team," he says.



"I'm a bit of a sceptic though - I think I am going to keep an open mind."



As for me - well, I remain to be convinced. I didn't spot a single ghost or feel a single spirit.



I did try, though. When everyone had left the Grand Hall I went into the armoury below the Baron's bedroom - the place where everyone felt the most intense psychic activity and where several of the mediums had difficulty breathing. I stood alone in silence, in the dark and waited.



And I have to report that I did not feel cold; I did not sense any spirits and I certainly did not see any ghostly apparitions.



Maybe the ghosts thought I just wasn't worth bothering with. But I'll keep an open mind.



The investigation team felt there was more to do at the castle, and plan to make a return visit. I'll probably join them but, for now, I'll stick to the spirits in the pub - a far more entertaining prospect in my book.