Private Residence near Dollar
19th January 2007.
Alba Paranormal team: Bill Black, Tracey Black, Mike Hall, Ralph Kelly, Stevie Douglas, Christine Docherty, Pete Jackal and Neil Cameron.
Names and places in this report have been withheld at the request of the home owners. The owners will be known as Ian and June. Unfortunately we have had to restrict the number of photos available due to privacy concerns. Note: DVD Not Available.
History.
We were contacted by the residents of a remote house near Dollar in Clackmannanshire. The house stands on land, ownership of which dates from 1604. The house itself appears to date from the 1700’s and has been extended and split into two residences. An Edinburgh merchant bought the land and built a larger house at the top of the hill but this was torn down after around 100 years.
I arrived at the location on a very cold Wednesday afternoon. I interviewed the owners and was told that there have been several incidences of footsteps heard from the upstairs room when empty, electrical disturbances and on one occasion, a male figure has been seen in the hallway, dressed as a stable hand. This is interesting due to the fact that there is a derelict coach house and stables to the rear of the building. There are also several very cold spots, observed using laser thermometers, although it must be pointed out that the house has no central heating and is heated by a log fire in the lounge with electric heaters throughout the rest of the house.
The apparition of the stable lad was reported to the current owners on the occasion of a visit from previous residents who lived there as children. They had also heard the noises from the top floor and remembered the house as one building. They had several experiences in the hallway, now foreshortened due to the splitting of the house.
June told me of a series of dreams she has had recently;
The first takes place in the kitchen. June finds all the cupboards emptied and feels that it is a child doing this. She says that she has had enough of this although she doesn’t see anyone else. After this, a young girl appears walking across the kitchen with her head down and looks at her as if to say sorry. She then walks away and disappears.
The second dream is that June finds herself in a Victorian Street and the same girl is with her. She feels that the girl is trying to tell her this is where she came from.
The third finds June waking up after moving across her bed as if to let a child come in beside her. This one frightened her quite badly. She also got the name Andrea.
At the request of Ian and June we decided to carry out a full investigation on the following Friday. The team arrived at the house around 20:00hrs and after introductions etc. Bill, Neil and I decided to begin a walk round. Due to the fact that the house is a private residence, we decided not to video the investigation until we carried out the séance at the end of the night. Still photographs were taken and audio recordings of all proceedings were made.
The Investigation
We began in the main bedroom. Bill almost immediately picked up on a smallish man wearing black trousers and a frock coat with red piping around the edges. He also had a tricorn hat with silver piping on it. Bill said that he felt the man was quite subservient although he wanted to strike out at someone. He felt that the man was pushing himself forwards and could cause us some trouble. After a few moments, Bill said that the man was moving away and appeared to be retreating as if he realised that he was up against someone he couldn’t handle. Bill got the date 1791 in connection with this man.
Bill then said that he could see ‘Redcoats’. The English army would have been present in the area during and after the 1745 rebellion. He said that they were bivouacked close by and that they were in large numbers. Bill pointed towards the North side of the house and said they were in that direction. They appeared to be relieved that they had made it to Sheardale. The EMF meter was giving intermittent readings of around 5 milli-gause.
At this point, Michael came into the room and Bill passed the investigation over to him.
Michael picked up on a woman who had died young, he believed in her 30’s. He said that she wasn’t aware she had died and that she had been trying to attract her husbands’ attention as he sewed her up in a sheet. She wasn’t buried in a box and Michael said she was upset at this. He said that he could help her move on and we hoped we could do this at the end of the night. He got the name Sally and believed her husband was called Tam. He believed she was buried nearby along with a small box of personal possessions.
Michael then stunned us by asking if there was a barracks nearby. When I asked him why, he said that he could see soldiers, in the past, wearing red coats and tall helmets. Bill was very pleased that Michael had picked up on this as it helped confirm his findings.
He then said that he could see the young woman and that she was in visitation and he felt that she was searching for her husband. She was dressed in a tartan shawl with a plain dress under. She was accompanied by a young girl. This was the young girl who both Michael and Bill had seen at the kitchen window and he was also getting the name Martha although he wasn’t sure if it was the girls’ name. June confirmed that objects had been moved from the kitchen window sill at various times.
Bill then told me about two spirits who, in life, had thought it very amusing to play bagpipes and frighten the English soldiers in their encampment. They stayed a safe distance from the camp and played tunes to them while the soldiers tried to find them. Bill said that the two boys were rolling about laughing at the thought they were winding the English soldiers up. Bill also said that one of them was called Alex. He then said that both men were naked and this was why they found it so amusing. He got the second name of one of the boys and said that they were well to do people. The name was Calder-Thomson.
As a matter of interest, Bill has since told me that Castle Campbell in Dollar was loyal to the English crown and would have garrisoned English soldiers.
At this point we split up again with Michael going downstairs and Bill, Tracey, Neil and I moving through to the second bedroom.
As we went into the room, Bill found two small girls playing ring’a’roses in the middle of the room. We took some photos but nothing appeared in them. Tracey asked if any of us could see an aura round Bill. I looked carefully and could make out a light blue glow around Bill’s head and shoulders. I outlined what I could see using the led on my voice recorder and Tracey agreed with me that this was what she saw also. Bill said that this colour means healing is needed.
Bill said that the two girls had faded out a bit but that he could still see them and they could still see us. One of them was called Alison Thomson and the other was Jessica. Alison drowned aged about 6 in 1894. She drowned in deep water fairly far from the house. Her father was a blacksmith and Jessica came for her father to tell him about Alison falling in the water. The father ran to try and save his daughter but was too late. He tried to revive her but couldn’t bring her back. He carried her back to the smiddy and tried to heat her up. A few days after, lost in grief, he went to where his daughter died and committed suicide. Bill was getting quite upset at this as were we all. Tracey was becoming overcome with the situation and we decided to move back to the living room for a break.
While we were downstairs, Michael went up to the room with Neil, Pete, Chris and Stevie and got exactly the same story! He was very distraught and had to be helped back downstairs and taken outside to recover.
We decided to take another break to let everyone prepare for a séance in the living room. We set up the video cameras to record the whole room, remote controlled stills camera covering the room and voice recorders on the table.
The Séance
Temperature in the room was 20.8 degrees. Michael began by saying that two men were in the room with us. One of them was quoted as saying,’The fella beside you is a bit feart.’
Michael then said that more spirits had entered the room and that one of them was a man who was singing. One spirit attempted to come close to Michael but he asked them to step back as he felt it wouldn’t be a good idea to allow this spirit to come through him. The temperature around Michael had dropped noticeably by this point to around 15 degrees. Mike said that the spirit wanted to apologise to the young folk and wanted to know why they wanted him to leave. He also said he was not for moving but that he meant no harm to anyone. Michael assured him that we were not going to attempt to move him on but that we were there to help any spirits who wanted help to move on. Bill stepped in at this point and told Michael to close down as he felt this man was possibly too strong for Michael to handle alone and that the encounter was putting him under too much strain.
Both Bill and Michael agreed that there were now 6 spirits in the room and that Bill would take the lead with a spirit called Victor who he believed was once a gamekeeper on the property. The temperature around Bill was now 15.3 degrees. Bill said that there was another man in the room and Michael got the name Archie. Bill said this man had also worked on the estate and may have been a Gillie. He said that he and Victor came through together but that they almost never entered the house. He then asked Ian if there were remains of another building close to the house. He described them as just the foundations of an earlier building. Ian told us that there are indications of there once being another section attached to the outside wall of the house. Bill said that this had been where Archie and Victor originated but stressed that in normal circumstances, they would not enter the house as they had not done so in life.
As this was going on, Stevie had been checking the temperature around Bill and found that it varied between 13.6 and 7.8 degrees C. Meanwhile Michael had been aware of the presence of a woman behind him. We checked with the EMF meter and got a fairly high reading of 5mG. Mike said that the spirit of his mother (who is one of Mikes workers) had moved between him and the woman to protect him as he felt she could cause problems. Mike said he could help the woman but she appeared to want to channel through him. Mike asked her to step back and eventually appeared to threaten the woman with his other workers who would move to guard him from any harmful presence. At this point, the Tri-field meter began to register a very high reading of up to 8mG on both magnetic and electrical settings. A very weak RF field was also registering.
At this point, Ian spoke up and said that during the flash of the last two camera shots, he had seen a tweed jacket, very clearly, at the end of the couch. He said that he normally closed his eyes during the photograph as we always warn of flash exposures but that this time he had decided to keep his eyes open and had noticed this tweed jacket which appeared very clearly to him. We asked if he had seen anything else but he said he could only make out the jacket. A check of the photos taken at this time, proved inconclusive.
Mike said that Archie and Victor had moved to the other side of the room and appeared quite content to watch the proceedings as neither of them wanted to be moved on and felt a bit threatened by Bill. Archie had a clay pipe and Mike said he had died of a heart attack.
Bill said that the young girl, Alison, was standing near Neil. He asked her to come closer, into the circle and Mike encouraged her. Mike also said that the woman was giving him her name as Shona and that she wanted help to move on. Mike told her that he could help her and invited her to come closer, into the circle. Mike said that Shona was very happy to know that she was going to be helped to move on. Bill asked Mike where she came from but Mike said he didn’t know although he commented that her energy was particularly fine. While this was going on, I had placed the Tri-field meter on the table and set it to magnetic. The meter was pulsing slowly up and down. I pointed this out to June who was sitting beside me and we watched as Mike walked towards Bill and encouraged the spirits to move towards Bills side of the room. He asked Alison to hold Shonas’ hand and Bill said that he felt Alisons’ father close by. He then said he could see him and that Alison was asking who the man was.
Temperature readings were being taken all through the séance. The perceived temperature dropped to around freezing around Bill but readings from the laser thermometer showed 25 degrees centigrade!
There was an electric heater between Bill and I which was switched on but the temperature continued to drop as far as we were concerned.
Bill told Alison that the man was her father and that the light she could see was for her and Shona. He asked Alison to go to her dad and for Shona to follow. Mike said that Alison was trying to pull away from Shona towards her dad. Bill said that Alison had taken her dads’ hand and that he was lifting her up and that he was walking towards the light. Mike told Shona to follow them and she asked him to thank everyone present for helping her. All three walked intot he light and Mike and Bill both let out a sigh and said that they were gone. Mike said he felt an enormous amount of pure joy and we thought he was about to collapse. We helped him sit down and calmed him while Bill closed the séance down. Most of us present felt extremely emotional and we all felt that we needed to calm down.
The séance ended at 23:06.
On later discussion, we all agreed that this had been an extraordinary evening and that the séance had been one of the best we’ve ever experienced both from a psychic and evidential point of view. We had readings from meters showing changes in electrical and magnetic fields while the psychics had been in contact with the spirits. We also had huge temperature differentials measured. Corroborating evidence obtained separately from both team psychics was also obtained on several occasions during the evening. Bearing what I myself saw and felt, I have to say that this house was definitely haunted and if reports from Bill and Mike are to be believed, remains so, albeit by benign entities who are happy to remain there and are also happy to have the present owners sharing their house.
Ralph Kelly
February 2007
