Investigation Date: 9th March 2007
Investigators present: Drew Bartley, Fiona Vipond and Lee Stephenson, Nikki Austwicke and Ralph Keeton
The Black Horse in Chester le Street, County Durham is situated on Front Street. The front portion of the building dates back to the 18th Century and is very characteristic with black wood beams. The back part of the building is a later addition. The property has always been a public house as far back as we can research. The building was bombed during the Second World War and has been significantly rebuilt.
There has been no definitive evidence in the past to say this property is haunted, so this investigation is purely a diagnostic one: To investigate the bar and the cellar for paranormal activity.
There were three areas that could be investigated; the front bar, the rear bar (areas adjoined as one big room but partially separated by a bar in the middle) and a cellar.
As we all walked into the bar, Ralph immediately put his hand over his ear and said "I've gone deaf". After discussion later in the night with the landlady, Irene, she informed us that at the back of the building used to be a shooting range. This may explain the deafness. Due to the late closure of the Black Horse, the investigation didn’t commence until after 1.00a.m. Initially, whilst standing together in the rear bar, Ralph became aware of a male presence. He described the man as quite haggard looking and his temperament as quite nasty and agitated. He was asking Ralph to leave. When asked if Ralph could get a name from this presence, Ralph replied with the names ‘Graham’ and ‘Davey’. These names may not necessarily be put together but may be the names of two separate entities. People may suffer from hot or cold flushes in this area and get headaches and aches and pains. These symptoms are all due to the male spirit that Ralph had picked up on due to the negative energy given off. The male Ralph spoke of died of possible alcohol poisoning and gave an approximate date of 1970. After speaking of this male presence, Ralph picked up on a female presence also that seemed to have a homely, gentle nature. She was thought to be a housekeeper going back to the 1890’s. Ralph’s description of her was of a lady with a small stature, middle aged and happy.
Three trigger objects were set up in each of the three areas and a motion detector was set up in the rear bar in front of the trigger object. Throughout the night none of these showed any evidence of paranormal interference.
1.20am After listening to Ralph, the group split into three groups and started the vigils.
This area is the oldest part of the building and hopefully would prove to be active. The bar was very quiet and there didn’t appear to be any atmosphere building. Lee called out to the atmosphere to ask for any spirits in the room to try and give us a sign of their presence. This was to no avail. At 2.00 a.m. Nikki stood up from her seat and Lee caught a bright flash on the viewfinder of his camcorder following her. Lee asked the spirit (if that’s what it was) to move towards him and show themselves to us. At that moment a light anomaly moved into the camcorders field of view and hovered in front of it and then moved off. Because of the way the light anomaly hovered in one place, dust can be discounted. Whether it was an insect cannot be proved, though the movement characteristics of the light anomaly were unusual if it was one.
N.B. Nikki left the investigation after this vigil and, therefore, does not appear in further reports from this investigation.
This was a very quiet vigil with nothing significant occurring. Drew filmed a possible orb during the vigil. This was the all that was noted.
Once again, nothing paranormal happened during this vigil.
Rear Bar
At 1.27am, whilst standing quietly in the bar, Fiona smells a strong smell of incense. There was no explanation for this. No air fresheners were nearby and no-one was wearing strong perfumes. Within seconds Ralph commented that his knee was cold and, using Fiona’s temperature sensor, was found to be 3 degrees Celsius cooler than his other knee.
From nowhere at 1.50am Ralph gets the nursery rhyme ‘Little Bo Peep’ coming into his head. There is no way we can see if this has any relevance unfortunately.
Ralph picks up on a dispute between boundaries or land but does not give a date to correlate the facts.
The vigil started at 2.15a.m. Lee called out to spirits in the room but no response was picked up. The vigil was very quiet and, unfortunately during our vigil here, nothing happened to report.
Group 3’s vigil in the rear bar started at 3.30a.m. There was nothing to report during this vigil.
At 1.45a.m., a metallic sound was heard from an area where barrels were stored. When the lights went on at the end of the vigil, a set of keys were found on the floor by a barrel. Lee and Fiona, as well as other witnesses, had seen the set of keys earlier in the evening on a shelf in the cellar above where the keys were found. Unfortunately, because the keys had not been seen by any of group 3, it cannot be proved that they had not already been on the floor before the vigil started.
The vigil started at 2.15a.m. During group 1’s vigil, nothing happened of any importance.
At 3.30a.m. Lee, Ralph and Adrienne made their way down to the cellar. The lights were turned off and the cellar was in complete darkness. Initially, all of group 2 felt no presence and very shortly after Ralph said “Someone’s just walked down the stairs”. Ralph went on to explain that a man had walked in who was late-middle aged and who had a prominent nose. This man wore a black waistcoat. He was allegedly saying that we shouldn’t be down there and we should leave. I suppose any spirits (or anybody for that matter) wandering the cellar would be confused if they saw members of the public down there at 3.30 in the morning! The man moved from one end of the cellar to the other passing right between our group. Ralph did not get a name for the spirit present in the atmosphere with us therefore we cannot correlate the facts and prove their accuracy.
Throughout our investigation, nothing could be considered to be a ‘paranormal’ event and therefore, from a scientific perspective, there was no paranormal activity in this building during the time we were there. From a spiritual perspective, their appears to be many spirits occupying the site though none of the accounts given can be verified at this moment in time.