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It's Happening To My Mate... Right Now

gattino

gattino

Justified & Ancient
Joined
Jul 30, 2003
Messages
2,523
It's my best mate Y's birthday.

As he loves all those ghost caught on camera YouTube channels and ghost hunting TV shows, his partner J has taken him as a birthday surprise to stay the weekend in the allegedly most haunted room in one of the allegedly most haunted hotels ( I'll specify where once they've left).

Unusually for these kind of things stuff appears to actually be happening! He's video called me twice now to show me.

Last night they left the ( locked, draught free) room for an hour and returned to find a folder and papers they'd left on the table were scattered on the floor several feet away.



Today he left the phone video recording the room while out. J returns to room to blow up birthday balloons to surprise him. He then goes into the en suite bathroom, door still open. All this caught on camera. But when they play it back at the part where J is in the bathroom the recording picks up loud and clear as if directly into the microphone , and certainly inside the room ( despite J hearing nothing in real time) a child crying. They played the clip for me. It's not subtle! It's loud, clear and direct.

A baby's cry and a cat's meow are indistinguishable from each other, but neither possible culprit was or could be there.

Also the bathroom door keeps closing by itself though never when directly observed.

Once they're back and isolated and posted the video clip online I'll try and find a way to add it on here.
 

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looking forward to hearing more details including the venue.
 
While we're waiting for any more reports and indeed the relevant piece of video for me to share, i'll fill some time dealing with the non paranormal possibilities and how and why they've been discounted.

The displaced papers: Could it be a draught? They assert there is no draught in the room, no window left open and it hasn't repeated itself. One possibility that occurred to me while talking to them was to wonder if the act of closing the door behind them when they left the room might produce a gust of air they by definition would not have been witness to because they'd now be outside the door. So they tested that while still on the phone...closing the door but without leaving the room. No gust.
Could a member of staff have entered in their absence and messed things about to give the guests what they're hoping for and maintain the place's reputation? The door was locked with a Yale key, so other guests - if there were any - could be ruled out. Staff of course can not strictly be totally ruled out, except primarily on the grounds of how implausible it is. It would surely be highly risky and damaging to be caught doing so. In addition there appeared to be no more than about 3 members of staff on site, the one they were primarily engaged with, the lady on reception, was never out of their sight long enough.

Next the self closing bathroom door. The obvious culprits - draughts, dodgy hinges, a natural easy swing of the door - they had already discounted. J is a very hands on, practical, jack of all trades type and in fact had just personally completed all aspects of their own bathroom from carpentry to plumbing to electrics, so is more than qualified to tell if there was an obvious mechanical defect at work. In addition the door wouldn't close when they kept checking on it, only when they were not giving it their attention. Finally , on video, i got Y to show me the door in its open position and to apply light pressure to it to see if it easily swung closed. It didn't. I believe when out this evening they intend to leave the camera pointed at the bathroom door to see if they catch it in the act.

Finally the crying on the audio. Tricky for you to judge till im in a position to attach it here, but as i say it was clear and very distinctly close to the mic. Nonetheless, could it be an acoustic illusion that it was in the room? Eg could it have come from outside the window if it were, eg, a cat. The camera was not near the window but a few meters away. The room is a couple of stories up from the ground. There are peacocks on the property so it occurred to them to check what noise a peacock makes..could it be of the same nature and sufficiently loud to sound like it was in the room? The answer, it appears, is no on both counts. Might it therefore have been a baby or feline in the next room? The nature of the building (as will become clear when I identify it) means the walls are very thick, but more than that as far as they can ascertain they are the only guests currently on that wing of the building. So there is no "next door" from which the crying/mewling could emanate.

I've suggested that before they tell the staff of the latest happening, they should first try to get stories from said staff about what previous guests in the room are alleged to have experienced, so any parallels are untainted by the suspicion they are being humoured.
 
They check out today. I've messaged Y to ask if anything more had happened. He's replied he'll have to check the video recording. From which i assume nothing obvious or notable has happened by direct observation or experience.

As its now too late for anyone reading this to do anything with the information while they're there, I'll now explain where they are.

A place called Ruthin (pronounced Riffin) Castle Hotel and Spa in Denbighshire, North Wales. A medieval castle rebuilt in part in the early 1800s, at one point a hospital, now a hotel. The alleged most haunted room is 222, though the primary supposed apparition (the unimaginatively named Grey Lady) is meant to be at large in the grounds generally.

The building and room's pre existing reputation is difficult for me to pin down online...its apparently featured multiple times on the tv (now youtube?) show Most Haunted. Though the episodes ive found online constantly refer to the many earlier visits, which i can't find. But apparently they stayed in room 222 on each occasion. Whether the show is the primary source of the reputation or went there because the reputation was already established i can't quite tell. Detailed written accounts of precisely what people have seen there elude me, as the only references are general or refer to the notoriety of the room as if it were well known.
 
gattino said:
They check out today. I've messaged Y to ask if anything more had happened. He's replied he'll have to check the video recording. From which i assume nothing obvious or notable has happened by direct observation or experience.

As its now too late for anyone reading this to do anything with the information while they're there, I'll now explain where they are.

A place called Ruthin (pronounced Riffin) Castle Hotel and Spa in Denbighshire, North Wales. A medieval castle rebuilt in part in the early 1800s, at one point a hospital, now a hotel. The alleged most haunted room is 222, though the primary supposed apparition (the unimaginatively named Grey Lady) is meant to be at large in the grounds generally.

The building and room's pre existing reputation is difficult for me to pin down online...its apparently featured multiple times on the tv (now youtube?) show Most Haunted. Though the episodes ive found online constantly refer to the many earlier visits, which i can't find. But apparently they stayed in room 222 on each occasion. Whether the show is the primary source of the reputation or went there because the reputation was already established i can't quite tell. Detailed written accounts of precisely what people have seen there elude me, as the only references are general or refer to the notoriety of the room as if it were well known.
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Still very interesting and intriguing though.
 
What a great place to stop, been passed a few times but never been in,
Gulls can sound exactly like a baby crying and black birds are great imitators
the number of times I have gone to the phone only to find it's our resident
black bird I have no idea.
Interesting thread.
 
gattino said:
A place called Ruthin (pronounced Riffin) Castle Hotel and Spa in Denbighshire, North Wales.
Click to expand...

My uncle worked there in the sixties, when it was a hospital. It was a live-in nursing job. We visited him on one occasion but I think we just picked him up and went somewhere to eat.

I recall his mother - my paternal grandmother - informing us that the place was haunted but no details remain in my memory. She was a great believer - or fabulist!

I also have a later, vivid memory of landing in the grounds of the hotel, having taken a wrong turn off the narrow streets of the town. Now that must have been years ago! :thought:
 
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gattino said:
This may be useful to those with more patience than me, but found this 4 hour live feed from the room by Most Haunted from August. No idea if there's anythng to see in it.. you may get some info from the comments.

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=645162129767462
Click to expand...

Thank you for sharing. You are so good at recounting these events. I never get bored when reading them. Since the advent of youtube, my attention span nowadays is about 3 minutes, yet I usually find myself wishing yours were longer. lol
 
Thank you. I suppose the defining trait of my accounts is my habit of anticipating in detail the rational speculations/suspicions of the people reading them before they have the chance to express them. :hahazebs:

A non update update. They got home yesterday and ive not heard from them so its reasonable to assume nothing more of note occurred or he'd have been straight on the phone. All that remains then is to get him to isolate and pass me the section of recording with the child/animal sound on it so you can all tell me it was an escaped marmoset hiding in the walls or some such. As soon as i get it i'll post it.
 
I spoke to Y this evening. They've several hours of video-audio recording to look at so it may take a while. He confirmed that nothing further or of conscious note occurred at any rate.

However he then casually mentioned a detail whose potentially supernatural significance you would think would be glaring, but which appears not to have occurred to him to be worth mentioning at the time. That he barely slept at all the whole weekend in that room, partly as he found the bed uncomfortable but equally - and this is the new bit - because of the recurring dreams he was having there.

You were in a supposedly haunted hotel room witnessing inexplicable events and it never occurred to you that disturbed sleep and recurring dreams might be part of the story?

The dreams that thwarted his rest, it turns out, were of being in said bed and a mob of angry people charging in and shouting at him that he shouldn't be in that bed and didn't deserve to be there and chased him through the grounds and surrounding fields.

I'd call that a thing.
 
gattino said:
The dreams that thwarted his rest, it turns out, were of being in said bed and a mob of angry people charging in and shouting at him that he shouldn't be in that bed and didn't deserve to be there
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I hope he remembers why they believed he didn't deserve to be there.
They sound like a rude lot!
 
IbisNibs said:
I hope he remembers why they believed he didn't deserve to be there.
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Well it's interesting you pick up on that word deserve ( perhaps he was simply reaching for "belong") as it was one of two that popped out for me in his brief reference to the recurring dream. Both are ripe for speculation if we imagine - as we doubtless are - that his nocturnal disturbances were communication with the resident spirits.

The other word that caught my ear but which I said nothing about is that he initially said a mob/bunch of "white people".

Y is brown skinned. But I struggle to think of an occasion when he has ever referenced skin colour or whiteness in terms of 'the other'. So it was very odd that he should specify that adjective as if relevant. Two speculations come to mind. 1) at some unconscious level he understood it to be relevant or 2) his own dreamscape is naturally more ethnically diverse than my own and so the homogenous nature of the mob was genuinely noteworthy and different.

Either/both of course can be imagined to fit in with our fantasy of spirits from a past century lingering around a castle. They would certainly lack diversity and would doubtless have views about the worthiness of someone who looks like him to be in that bed.

Alternatively we can theorise a scenario involving not current spirits but past events. Maybe someone else really was angrily chased from the place by outraged thugs....
 
Just spoken to him again and quizzed him on those two points/words. Again he gave me details he somehow had failed to previously note the potential spooky relevance of.

So the dream repeated, without variation, several times on each night and woke him from slumber each time.
The "deserve" and "white" reference did have a perceived relevance to him as he felt - without any racial epithets being used - that his otherness was part of their outrage at his presence. J who is white and was present in the dream was not targeted. The sense of being an inappropriate class to be in a 4 poster bed was also shaped by - this being the previously omitted bit - the people were all in historical period clothing, both aristocratic and peasant.

When they chased him they did so each time "towards the stone circle" on the estate. Here's the circle he seems to be referring to....(No ancient mystery here...they appear to be a modern construction from 1973 for the Eistedfodd. Though involving druidic ceremony)

"In 1973 this national festival was held at Ruthin in North Wales and the twelve stones, which form the circle, represent the twelve old counties of Wales. The Logan Stone in the middle was for the Arch Druid to proclaim his information about the festival, and it is here, within the Gorsedd Circle, that the ceremonial dances were performed and where all the new members of the Druid Circle are inaugurated."

1643800798731.png

https://www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=17322
 
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Could it be possible that some staff member waited until they left the room and sneaked in to toss the papers on the floor. You know, adding a bit of spookiness to their experience?
 
gattino said:
They check out today. I've messaged Y to ask if anything more had happened. He's replied he'll have to check the video recording. From which i assume nothing obvious or notable has happened by direct observation or experience.

As its now too late for anyone reading this to do anything with the information while they're there, I'll now explain where they are.

A place called Ruthin (pronounced Riffin) Castle Hotel and Spa in Denbighshire, North Wales. A medieval castle rebuilt in part in the early 1800s, at one point a hospital, now a hotel. The alleged most haunted room is 222, though the primary supposed apparition (the unimaginatively named Grey Lady) is meant to be at large in the grounds generally.

The building and room's pre existing reputation is difficult for me to pin down online...its apparently featured multiple times on the tv (now youtube?) show Most Haunted. Though the episodes ive found online constantly refer to the many earlier visits, which i can't find. But apparently they stayed in room 222 on each occasion. Whether the show is the primary source of the reputation or went there because the reputation was already established i can't quite tell. Detailed written accounts of precisely what people have seen there elude me, as the only references are general or refer to the notoriety of the room as if it were well known.
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ah... Ruthin Castle. I did some IT work there about 4 years ago. The cleanliness of the kitchens and bar areas left a lot to be desired and certainly spooked me. It certainly put me off staying there ever.
 
I addressed that suspicion in my second post.

While its clearly impossible to say with absolute confidence "an unknown member of staff did not do it", its a speculation with no known data to support it. As a mere speculative idea, it can only be judged on how plausible it seems. As pointed out a member of staff letting themselves into a paying guest's room and disturbing their possessions for entertainment purposes is rife with risks. They might be discovered. The guests might be furious. Word might get out. Any draw the reputation for being "haunted" provides would be lost, perhaps irreparably. And to what benefit? Nowhere on their website do they use the claim of ghosts to attract punters. Its reputation exists only externally and primarily among fans of Most Haunted. It's not part of their marketing. An act of kindness then to appease those guests who specifically asked for that room? Again we go back to all the reasons that could blow up in their face, when entertaining subterfuge has not been explicitly requested.

Point two, again as i already detailed, is that there appeared to be precious few staff members around to do so. They saw no more than 3 or 4 around at the time. The only individual they had personal and personable conversation with, including about their interest in the subject, was the lady on reception who was in their sight for almost the whole time they were out of the room on that occasion.
 
gattino said:
I addressed that suspicion in my second post.

While its clearly impossible to say with absolute confidence "an unknown member of staff did not do it", its a speculation with no known data to support it. As a mere speculative idea, it can only be judged on how plausible it seems. As pointed out a member of staff letting themselves into a paying guest's room and disturbing their possessions for entertainment purposes is rife with risks. They might be discovered. The guests might be furious. Word might get out. Any draw the reputation for being "haunted" provides would be lost, perhaps irreparably. And to what benefit? Nowhere on their website do they use the claim of ghosts to attract punters. Its reputation exists only externally and primarily among fans of Most Haunted. It's not part of their marketing. An act of kindness then to appease those guests who specifically asked for that room? Again we go back to all the reasons that could blow up in their face, when entertaining subterfuge has not been explicitly requested.

Point two, again as i already detailed, is that there appeared to be precious few staff members around to do so. They saw no more than 3 or 4 around at the time. The only individual they had personal and personable conversation with, including about their interest in the subject, was the lady on reception who was in their sight for almost the whole time they were out of the room on that occasion.
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@gattino makes good points. I find that, in most cases, the common-sense explanations are just explaining something away because they do not address the details of the specific situation.
 
3 months later...i took me to see the friend in person to be able to record ten seconds of video from his phone using mine.

I've never worked out how to attach anything here bigger than a single photo without it being deemed too large to upload, so it may suffer from further deterioration by my creating a simple YouTube link but here it is.

AS previously detailed there was no extraneous sound either side of this burst of ...well you tell me if it's a child or a cat..but there was nothing in the room to account for it and one of the occupants was in the en suite bathroom when it happened and heard nothing.
 
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gattino said:
3 months later...i took me to see the friend in person to be able to record ten seconds of video from his phone using mine.

I've never worked out how to attach anything here bigger than a single photo without it being deemed too large to upload, so it may suffer from further deterioration by my creating a simple YouTube link but here it is.

AS previously detailed there was no extraneous sound either side of this burst of ...well you tell me if it's a child or a cat..but there was nothing in the room to account for it and one of the occupants was in the en suite bathroom when it happened and heard nothing.

Click to expand...
Video doesn't work...
 
The sound may be a bird. I have heard peacocks before and the sound can travel quite far - a farm had them which was about a mile from my childhood home. The sound travels even better in rainy weather. The sound doesn't sound like peacocks to me, but are there other birds that may have this cry?

Forgot to ask: Where the windows open at the time of recording?
 
I can't answer that with any authority after 3 months, but my understanding is they were closed. The only thing I recall with regard to windows is that at the time while video chatting I was shown they were 2 or 3 floors up from the ground and there was no outer window ledge.
 
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