Dankeith House

Symington, Ayrshire

DVD Available.

Saturday 3rd September 2005.

We arrived at Dankeith House near Symington at 19:00hrs. A beautiful warm evening, the weather had been fine for the preceding few days. None of the team other than Stevie and Neil had visited the location before. Bill was completely unaware of any history involving the house. Stevie had managed to get a brief history of the place from the internet and from the caravan site manager. At no time before the investigation was anyone other than Stevie or Ralph aware of any of the history available.

We were greeted by the caravan site manager and given a tour around the building by the caretaker who advised us of the poor condition of the floors in some of the rooms and advised us not to enter a room without first checking the condition of the floor and ceilings. Unfortunately, Dankeith House has been neglected of late and as a result, water has managed to get in through the roof and leading and has caused significant damage to some of the upper rooms in various parts of the building. Inside, Dankeith is a warren of corridors, stairways and tight corners that can easily cause the unwary to become quite disorientated. As a result of this, one of the main Alba rules is that no-one goes anywhere alone. This rule would prove to be the cause of one of the stranger occurrences of the evening.

The house has power on the ground floor but we were told, no circuits were live above this level other than one or two sockets. As a result, we were forced to switch to night vision earlier than we would have normally liked and found that, due to the time of year, we lost the daylight fairly early on in the investigation. In the daylight, Dankeith is imposing enough both inside and out. At night, the building is lit but inside the oppressiveness becomes a tangible thing. The ground floor is dominated by the impressive entrance hall and main staircase with corridors off to each wing. The building has been added to at various times in its history and has had a number of uses ranging from a private residence to the HQ for an RAF squadron, a list D school and a Catholic Seminary. As far as we have been able to discover, it was also, at one time, a school for girls.

The Alba Paranormal team for the night was Stevie, Allan, Bill, Tracey Neil and Ralph.

We started off on the upper ground floor. Walking along the corridor, we came to a T junction and went right, towards the rear of the building. The layout was very much like classrooms and Bill asked if there was a link with SMT buses. This was a strange question although I believe SMT were based in the area at some time in the 60's. No further information has been forthcoming in this respect.  As we continued along the corridor, Stevie said he was getting a tingle in his arm and Bill was also feeling a tingling sensation. Bill said that he could feel a link to a holy man. This link was to come to the fore later on.

As we progressed, Bill said he felt there was a link to young girls also prominent. He saw cribs and dollies etc. He said he felt uncomfortable with this but couldn't say specifically why he felt this way although he said it was nothing really nasty but just an uncomfortable edge to the feelings. He then said he wanted to go to Room 17. We walked along trying to locate room 17 but weren't having any luck when Bill suddenly stopped in the corridor and said he was seeing a small boy who was badly burned! We asked where the spirit was and Bill said, 'He's below us, in the basement! He would look like something out of a horror movie if you saw him but he's not a bad spirit. In fact he's smiling and appears quite happy to be here. We have to go down to the basement if we can.'

Bill also felt that there was another, older, spirit with the boy but this one was staying in the background and was pushing the child forward. He tried but was unable to get any further information at this point.

We walked back towards the main hall and moved onto the main stairway. Bill was telling us that he was feeling that there were a lot of deaths, one after the other here. He felt that it was some sort of disease related thing but couldn't get a grip on the specific disease. He felt that there might have been some sort of Chicken Pox like illness which had claimed several lives before running its course.

As we were filming this, I looked up from the camera and saw the outline of a child peering over the balcony down towards us. I swung the camera round but nothing was recorded. I asked Bill if he or anyone else could see what I could  He looked and said that there was a young boy standing on the landing looking at us! I described the appearance as almost an outline drawn in charcoal. I got the impression that it was a young boy who could just see over the top of the balcony. I still can't explain where the feeling came from and this is a moment that will stay with me for the rest of my life. It's the first time I believe I actually saw a ghost! We immediately ran to the top of the stairs and looked around the area. Bill asked for the spirit to come forward and identify itself or to make a noise. Some of the team heard a soft bell like sound. Again the camera missed this.

We did find a very cold spot on the landing. This was verified by several of the team especially Stevie and Allan, after I had felt goose bumps come up on my arm. The cold was intense and although Stevie checked with the EMF meter, nothing was recorded. As we walked round the landing towards the old kitchen area, Bill got the name Alistair Turnbull. He said this was the boy on the landing and that he was 13 years old when he passed. He apparently liked to run up and down the corridor from the kitchen to the front of the building and he said that he has been seen on several occasions by people in the house. We walked into a room at the end of the corridor and Stevie noticed the number on the door....Room 17!

As we entered Room 17, Stevie complained that he was getting a pain in his arm. Bill and I both felt the small of our backs hurting. This has happened before during investigations and has been the precursor to paranormal events on several occasions. As we stood in the room, Bill began to link with a spirit. As he tried to get the spirit to come forward, Stevie said he could see someone standing in the middle of the room! Tracey also said she could see the outline of someone standing there! Bill got the name of the spirit, 'Just call me Bloody Porker!'

Porker was obviously the nickname of this man. A tall (over 6 feet) well built man, who appeared quite irreverant to Bill. He seemed to enjoy winding people up and had little respect for authority figures. Bill said he wanted everyone to line up behind him and march up and down the hallway. He got the impression this was a military man who enjoyed high jinks.

We moved back to the landing and into the other wing of the house. Bill was still picking up Porker who said to him, 'I'm the painted lady!' Bill laughed but said that he wasn't going to tell us what else he was being told as he felt it was too rude for our records. This appears to allude to a character from a Gilbert and Sullivan Operetta!

While we were in this corridor, I caught an orb on camera, moving along the hallway towards us fairly low to the ground. Bill said that he felt the building had been a military school of some sort at one time and that there are a large number of residuals of children, espcially on the first floor. Tracey and Allan both heard a mans voice whispering in a room off this corridor. Although we stood quietly, nothing more was heard here until later in the night when we left a recorder in the corridor and got a very plain voice saying, 'Leave!' This is on the EVP page of our site.

While we were filming this section, my video camera froze! The video picture locked although the tape continued to run and record the audio. I told the team what had happened and we stopped while I tried to get the camera working once more. I eventually had to reset the camera by removing the batteries before it would run properly. When we started filming again, Bill said that he felt this corridor was very active and that Porker would be staying with us during the course of the night. He also saw an orb moving along in front of us. Unfortunately I was filming close in and didn't get this one on camera. Bill then talked about the various spirits so far contacted. Alistair Turnbull can come and go as he pleases. Porker is grounded in the building. The main vortex is in room 29 on the ground floor and this is where spirits can enter and leave the building.

As we moved back to the landing, Bill contacted a nurse who had looked after a Holy man. This was the second reference to a Holy Man since the start of the investigation. Stevie and I told Bill that the building had been a Catholic Semenary at one time. Bill was extremely happy with this news as he had been unable to understand why he kept seeing this priest.

We moved to a smaller room at the front of the house which has been used to store various pictures etc. Bill felt that a particular print had hung in the room of a man who had been locked in a room and left to die. This was due to the fear of contagion and Bill said the man was basically crippled and had wasted away. Not a particularly pleasant end.

One light hearted moment happened as I walked out of this room and back towards the stairs. As it was dark, I was using the night vision camera to see my way to the stairs when i got the impression of a child standing at the bottom of the stairs, looking up towards the landing. After an initial 'second take' I realised that the lighting from downstairs was making one of the fineals on the banister look like a face! I showed this to the rest of the team who all agreed that it did look like a face looking up the stairs!  My heart did skip a beat for a moment though.

We moved back to our base in the club room for a break. The next part of the investigation was to be in the basement and we were fairly apprehensive as we made our way down a narrow flight of stairs under the building.

We walked along, through the basement to the room at the end. A fairly large room with the mains supply for the building installed against one of the walls it's not the nicest place I've ever been in. One of the walls has a bricked up doorway and the other wall has a small opening which allows access to the rest of the basement, currently unused.

Bill almost immediately picked up the little boy who had been burned. He described him as approximately 7 years old, wearing tweeds and smiling. After a moment, Bill became quite distressed. he said he could now see the boy standing in the room, burning! Bill was visibly upset by this and although he tried to control it, he eventually had to ask if we could leave the basement. We immediately retreated back upstairs to the base room to catch our breath and let Bill calm down.

While in the base room, Bill explained to camera what had happened. The child had put the conditions of his death onto Bill which were so overpowering that he couldnt handle the fellings of shock and horror experienced by the child. I said to Bill that maybe we should leave the basement alone for the night but he insisted that he had only been surprised by the onset of the feelings and that he was quite happy to return to the basement albeit more prepared this time.

With Bill more prepared, we returned to the basement.

Bill again linked with the child and again said he could see him burning. The child was saying,'Andrew set the fire. He burned me! He burned me!'

Bill could also see two women crying in the corner as if unable to reach the boy. He also felt a man running downstairs trying to reach the scene but failing to save the boy. Bill felt that it was strange that the boy was standing still while burning as he thought that, if you were on fire, you'd be throwing yourself around trying to extinguish the flames. One theory that  put forward was that, where the spirit was standing is very close to the mains electricity supply for the house. There is a large switch panel  and ancillary equipment mounted here in the basement. If the boy had somehow been electrocuted, he could have burned although he would have been killed instantaneously by the shock.

Michael Hall, one of the other psychics in our group, has looked at the video and believes that the child was standing in a puddle of water at the time. This would obviously preclude any attempts to rescue him if he had connected to the mains supply and would explain why the women couldn't get to the child. Electrocution would also explain the feelings that Bill felt the child had been literally thrown out of his body.

Bill got a name for the man trying to get to the child as Francis Arkleston. A search of the web hasn't turned up any information on this name.

Bill was unable to make any more sense from what he was seeing and we decided to return to the base. Before we went, Bill said that the boy was happy in the house and didn't want any help to move on. The initial shock of his death appeared to have left him and he had accepted his conditions.

After another break, we set up for a seance on the landing. We started with Bill, Allan, Neil, Stevie and Tracey at the table and I remained standing to film the session. After a few minutes, Tracey said she felt that a spirit was trying to come through her and she felt uncomfortable with this. Bill made her leave the circle and told the spirit to come through him. He said it was the spirit of a woman who was angry at us for being there. She felt threatened although Bill assured her that we were not there to do her any harm.

He got the name Peggy Marshall and believed that she had been the nurse who looked after the priest. She said she had been treated like a slave and when Bill asked why she had stood for this treatment, she told him that she had no option. We couldn't get any further information on this spirit. At one point, a sigh was heard and the atmosphere on the landing became quite oppressive. Bill said that Peggy was standing between Stevie and Neil and asked her several times to step back. Stevie said he felt his shirt being pulled! Small light anomalies were noted by some of the seance sitters although nothing was caught on camera.

Bill persevered for another 10 minutes but nothing was noted by the group. We decided to end the investigation at this point as it was rapidly approaching 01:00hrs.

Allan was standing at the corridor off the landing as we set up for the seance when he saw Stevie walking down the corridor away from him. Aware that no-one should have been on their own, Allan walked after him only to turn the corner and find himself quite alone. He lost a few years growth when Stevie came round the corner behind him, having noticed Allan walking on his own, away from the team down the corridor! Allan said the figure he saw looked solid and was about the same size as Stevie.

The same corridor was to prove to be the most active part of the house on the night. We set up a locked off camera on the landing looking down the corridor while we conducted the seance. The camera uses an unusual form of night shot in that it doesn't use infra-red, but shoots at a low frame rate and over exposes each one to bring the light levels up. The resultant video playback is fairly jerky and looks like time-lapse.

The camera had a fully charged battery which should have lasted about an hour. However it actually lasted only 12 minutes from switch on! When I came to edit the video, I was amazed to see more orbs and rods than I ever had before. These rods are moving at high speed along all levels of the corridor, both towards and away from the camera! At one point, they can be heard hitting the microphone of the camera and leaving a long trail in front of the lens! At one point, they appear to dance right in front of the camera! If these are insects, then they are the first ones I've ever seen flying in formation!

Dankeith House is haunted! I have no doubts regarding this statement. When I went into the house, I could be classed as the proverbial open minded skeptic. When I left, I was convinced that we had experienced something totally paranormal!

Park residents have reported several sightings to us over the past year and have even sent us some of their own photographs taken from outside the building. Thank you all for the interest.

If we get the chance, Alba Paranormal would like to return to Dankeith to carry out a more detailed investigation.

R. Kelly Jan 2007