Gay Jay investigates 30 East Drive Pontefract (must watch)

What is so different about how Gary Jay works compared to the average paranormal investigator? Well he goes into a property completely open-minded, totally unbiased, no gadgets except his camera; no presumptions, with a take it as it is attitude, if nothing happens nothing happens, but he films everything. No bells no whistles. That is how it should be done. When you see TV shows going in and no sooner as they walk over the threshold everything kicks off, it does make you question the validity and claims of these tv programmes. Anyway watch funny guy Gary Jay do his stuff.

"Watch as I spend the night all alone with what is claimed to be Europe's most violent poltergeist in what could be the most in depth, unbiased look at this famous house which is non other than 30 East Drive".

OAKWELL HALL, BATLEY, WEST YORKSHIRE

Drawing by Jules

Images courtesy of BBC

BBC drama 'Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell'

 — partly shot at Oakwell Hall

Yorkshire's Oakwell Hall manor house which is owned by Kirklees council is an Elizabethan building of major historic importance. It is  a Grade I* listed building with links to the Bronte family. 

Name: Oakwell Hall

Locality: Nutter Lane, Birstall, Batley WF17 9LG 

Built: 1583 (or there abouts)

Owner: Kirklees Council

Grade I

Website: KMC

Friends of Oakwell hall

Oakwell Hall which is a local to me, seems to be having a renaissance period at the moment, 'Shirley' a gorgeous house linked to the Bronte Sisters, with tales of crisis apparition. The house has been relatively ignored by 'ghost hunters', but thats changed somehow ?

Classified as a Crisis Apparition: Possible Veridical Haunting (Hallucination)

Oakwell Hall in Batley, West Yorkshire is a local haunt of mine 'so to speak' it has a famous legend.  The ghost of William Batt, a former owner of  Oakwell Hall in 1684 the ghost story comes from the Victorian writer Mrs Gaskell in her "Life of Charlotte Bronte".

"Captain Batt was believed to be far away; his family was at Oakwell; when in the dusk on winter evening, he came stalking along the lane, through the hall and up the stairs, into his own room, where he vanished. He has been killed in duel in London that very same afternoon of December 9th 1684."

Image courtesy of Oakwell Hall

A classic crisis apparition sighting, there is a legend that he left a bloody footprint behind in a bedroom, I remember seeing a dark stain on the floorboards many years ago but I can't remember which room I saw it in. Maybe it was just my young imagination.
 
A more modern witness saw children playing in the rear garden the children were wearing  period costume they ran off into a dead end part of the garden totally vanishing into thin air and never to be found outside nor inside the hall.

This is the back garden where the small children in period costume were seen by two visitors, only to just run off into a dead end disappear into thin air.

Source: Paranormal Database.

William Batt

Location: Birstall - Oakwell Hall
Type: Crisis Manifestation
Date / Time: 09 December 1684 (Crisis Manifestation), other sighting in 1987
Further Comments: William's family saw him enter the hall on 09 December (some sources say Christmas Eve or New Year's Eve, according to other accounts); they were surprised as they thought he was in London at the time. However, William suddenly disappeared and the following day the family discovered he had been killed in London around the time of his mysterious appearance. A woman wearing a Tudor dress was spotted hear in 1987 by an employee. The ghost stood by a window for several minutes before disappearing.



Most Haunted filmed at Oakwell Hall for Really TV. - http://www.examiner.co.uk/

Wikipedia entry

A SKEPTICS FIRST GHOST SIGHTING - Fountain's Abbey, North Yorkshire

FOUNTAINS ABBEY, NORTH YORKSHIRE

Taken Feb 2016

Allegedly... a ghostly choir has been heard chanting in the Chapel of Nine Altars but there are more ghostly happenings in nearby Fountains Hall.  The hall built by Sir Stephen Proctor is said to be haunted by the blue ghost of his daughter who witnessed his evil doings and remains at the hall for eternity. An Elizabethan man has also been seen emerging from the panelling in the stone hall.

Photography - copyright Paranormal Places UK

Name: Fountain's Abbey
Locality: Fountain's Lane, Ripon HG4 3
Built: 10th century
Governing body: National Trust
Grade I
Website: NT
Wikipedia

Fountain's Abbey was full of surprises one Sunday afternoon. We were visiting with no intention of seeing a ghost. But I did actually see something that day, just a normal day out with hubby and the dog. It was a glorious sunny summers day, we went to Fountain's Abbey in North Yorkshire England, the place was packed, folks having picnics on the grass and stuff.

This building is where I saw my first ghost? But I am a rational skeptic? I saw it. 

We decided to go in an old barn that had been converted into mini history museum (today it is a cafe) about how the Cistercian monks lived and worked, no one else was in the building except me, my better half was waiting for me outside with the dog. Ghosts and haunted was the last thing on my mind that day, it was blistering hot and my thoughts were more on ice cream.

The old barn

Inside this tiny barn I was in all on my own; I walked around reading the bits on the history of the place, when... I saw for a split second but long enough to gain a description of him a man .. crouched over working on something, he was wearing what looked like a leather waistcoat, it was really weird.

I am rationally minded, did I see a ghost? I saw a guy in a waist coat for a split second, no idea how I managed to see something that wasn't there. 

Just like what I saw for an instant, but more from the front.

Fountains Abbey

The cloisters

Abandoned Villages in the UK

Image courtesy of English Heritage 

Yorkshire's abandoned village - Wharram Percy

Crumbling buildings that in a bygone age housed growing families, vanishing streets that once echoed to the gleeful screams of children. Is there anywhere riper for thoughts that drift to ghosts and spirits that surely linger, unwilling to leave their former home?

Such former settlements are scattered over these lands and always repay a visit, especially if you are prone to sentimentality or melancholia. These must be the loneliest places, once so vibrant but now mute and lost.

In Scotland they have more than their fair share of abandoned villages. As a woman who boasts some Scottish blood in her lineage it is with special regret and sadness to dwell on the infamous clearances when landowners decided, with shameful disregard for their tenants, to 'clear' whole settlements in the Highlands to make way for sheep, considered to be far more profitable a use of their land.

View Larger Map

One village that suffered this fate was Lawers on the banks of Loch Tay. Once the home of the famed prophetess, the Lady of Lawers, she was said to have foretold the clearance by the second Marquis in the early years of the nineteenth century which decimated the population of the area for nothing more than sheep farming.

Today the isolated village is nothing more than a collection of ruins accessed by a path from the Ben Lawers Hotel situated on the A827 nearby; but unlike many similar deserted settlements Lawers has acquired a reputation of being rather less restful than one would assume. Australian bar staff were in the habit of taking the fifteen minute walk to the picturesque ruins but some started to report a 'presence' at the site accompanied by a feeling of being watched, or worse, followed. The staff were previously unaware of the tales of haunting and the ghost of the White Lady, according to local legend the shade of the Lady of Lawers.

The area is steeped in folklore, much of it related to the prognostications of the prophetess. It is told that early last century a man was foolish enough to ignore the advice of neighbours and cut down a tree planted by the Lady. She had predicted many events that would correspond with heights that her tree would have reached at the time. She also foretold of tragedy for anyone who harmed the tree as the injudicious man who ignored the tale sadly found out. He was gored to death by his own bull and a friend who assisted him in the deed lost his mind and was committed to a mental asylum.

Written for Paranormal Places UK by the late Toby Ion.

Yorkshire's abandoned Village (BBC)

Yorkshire Hangmen

It came through the door today, can't wait to read it.

From the eighteenth century, York was one of the places employing its own hangmen, copying London and Newgate, even to the use of the word Tyburn to define it's Knavesmire gallows, also known as the 'three-legged mare'. That was where highwayman Dick Turpin met his fate; but later, in the Victorian period, Armley Gaol in Leeds also became a hanging prison, the site of the death of the notorious killer Charlie Peace. The tales of the villains and the victims are well documented, but Stephen Wade also provides us with the stories of both Yorkshire-born hangmen and others who worked in Leeds, Hull or Wakefield. For the first time, "Yorkshire's Hangmen" brings together the tales of the lives and professional careers of these men, some famous, others long forgotten, who held a morbid fascination for the public. Their trade was mysterious, revolting and yet justified by many famous figures in history.The book includes accounts of killers, spies and traitors meeting their doom, but also tells something of the personalities of the hangmen, and of their moral dilemmas as they had to hang women and young people as well as hardened villains.

Many of the executioners suffered terrible depression; some took their own lives, and others, such as the famous Albert Pierrepoint, even questioned their work in later life.

Temple Newsome, Leeds, West Yorkshire - Haunted House

Only a 15 minute journey for us to get to this fantastic pile. The very first time I visited the property it seemed harshly formidable in its appearance, kind of reminding me of some institution for children not a family home in the way it presented itself. You could imagine some cane thrashing headmaster stood waiting for you in the doorway, it even has the word GHOST about the roof! To be honest, I didn't like the look of the place, but I warmed to it after a while. After a few visits down to the garden and lake changed my mind, it really is a glorious place.

Temple Newsam near Leeds is a 15th century Tudor-Jacobean mansion, is had been nicknamed 'Hampton Court of the North'. It was the home of the Ingram family for over 300 years. There are some creepy cellars too which date from the Tudor period about 500 years ago and run the whole length of the south wing of the house, also an underground passage beneath the courtyard that links the north and south parts of the house. Originally this passage allowed the servants to run around from the kitchens to the dining room.

Visitors have reported seeing a monk and a little girl, also people have heard knocking on doors when there is no one there and being pushed out of the way. The ghost most spoken of at the house is the Blue Lady, said to be Mary Ingram, her portrait painting can be viewed in the house. Mary was robbed by highwaymen on a journey back to her house, she was so shocked and scared by what happened that she acquired a paranoid habit of hiding her belongings in various parts of the house.

A picture of Napoleon flies off the wall in-front of visitors and staff for no apparent reason when securely fastened.

Allegedly there is another ghost, said to be that of a young servant girl who was murdered by an over amorous male servant in 1704.