Ghostly goings-on in the Village Hall

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It didn’t feel strange, at first.

We had held a number of charity clairvoyant shows there before we carried out any paranormal investigations and when you are busy, with over two hundred people to cater for ‘strange’ is not something you really notice.

I suppose we should have realised something was going on when some of the Mediums we employed started to talk about ‘the boy’ and complained that stones were being thrown on the stage. And why did some of the female customers hesitate to use the toilets; complaining that they felt weird and that it made them uneasy, insisting on using the staff facility?

This was our local village hall! It couldn’t be haunted, could it?

Built in 1910, Coronation Hall, Mundesley is the hub of this lovely North Norfolk fishing village. Situated on the cliff edge overlooking the sea it’s hard to imagine that anything “paranormal” could affect it, let alone turn out to be a featured story in a magazine and the subject of a YouTube video clip.

There always seemed to be an atmosphere in the backstage storeroom, we had videod a strange incident with a chair once and when one of our team got touched on the shoulder while sitting alone on a vigil in the dark; her screams still linger in the memory, we decided a full investigation was necessary. What we discovered amazed us.

We knew from local knowledge that the hall was used for wartime dances and that over the years there have been many amateur and professional variety shows performed there. We questioned older locals to gain an insight into any strange happenings that may have occurred.

Paranormal Norfolk; our regional ‘spooky’ magazine, had asked to be involved and in fact published the story as the main feature in their second edition.

And so it was that in January 2006 we gathered together two very different teams of paranormal investigators, one which, at the time was Spiritually based, us. The other a local paranormal group, rooted in the scientific side of investigating.

As a precursor to the nights events we decided to play some 1940s music; Glenn Millar, Vera Lynn, The Andrews Sisters etc, just to raise the vibrations and entice memories of a bygone age in the hope we would encourage Ghosts and Spirits from the past to join in.

Our investigation revealed a number of energies in the hall, from a distressed man in the back storeroom who conveyed his name as Edward, who with the help of one of our Medium friends was crossed over into the higher vibrations of the light; we never leave a distressed Spirit in the lower vibration of this plane. A woman called Rosemary and other male Spirits in the ladies toilets were also picked up, (the name Edward also came up again but we were not sure if it was the same energy as before) one was not very nice and during a Planchette experiment in there one female participant was touched on the head and was so overcome with a feeling of dread that she had to leave.

On the stage one investigator had a distinct feeling of falling over and banging his head, this feeling proved to be quite revealing. You will have heard of the old theatrical cliché of dying on stage, well this wasn’t a cliché it really happened, to a young boy.

We discovered that during the 1950s a boy about 10 years old had had an epileptic fit while on stage and had fallen over and died. All we knew of him was his name, David and that he liked having people around. It was him that affected the table tipping experiment, making it spin around the hall and who had made a series of knocks in response to questions.

We did ask him about stone throwing but he was strangely quiet.

We have carried out a number of investigations there since and David is always happy to be involved, from knockings and table moving to displays of dancing lights when his name is called out; and all this in our local village hall.

So the next time you attend an event in your local hall or community centres don’t imagine that everyone you can see is everyone that is there. If, when the curtains open and the lights go down you feel a cold breeze on the back of your neck, keep your eyes firmly on the performers on stage. Do not be tempted to turn around!

5 / 5 Review by expert member John Blythe