Woodchester Mansion (Glos)

    

On 16th October the Lunaorbis team and friends were lucky enough to carry out a night time paranormal investigation into this superb Victorian gothic mansion. Mysteriously abandoned and unfinished since 1868 this menacing mansion is nestled in thick woodlands and miles from anywhere. Falling into many peoples list of the UKs most haunted locations it is said to house a large array of hauntings and strange goings on. We were definately not disappointed.

As we drove down the driveway the mansion loomed out of the freezing darkness at us and you could cut the air of excitement and anticipation with a knife. Before we even entered the mansion our guest clairvoyant (Rich Leach) could see what he said was a man standing at the entrance as if standing guard.

With the dining room and the only room with lights designated as our meeting point we were ready to explore what this amazing building had to offer us. Seven intrepid paranormal enthusiasts armed with only torches, cameras, and our instincts and only one of us had researched and knew what was supposedly in there.

                  

One of the first ports of call was the chapel. This was full of paranormal activity and our clairvoyants immediatley picked up the spirit of a small girl who was upset due to the trauma of losing her mother. She was believed to date back to a time period before the present day mansion was built when the original 17th century Spring house existed. Also present in the chapel was the spirit of a monk seeming walking up and down the corridor 'humming'. This 'humming' was heard by several members of the group on several seperate occasions. At one point our guest clairvoyant subconsciously stepped out of the way to let the monk pass. To support this several members of the group had experiences of being pushed out of the way, aswell as hearing shuffling noises in this area.

 

                           

The next place we were drawn to was the infamous cellar, this dark and suprisingly warm part of the mansion held a certain intrigue for us. On our initial visit we picked up nothing but on a revisit spirit decided to join us. One was that of a young boy aged about 10 years old, members of the group were physically overcome by breathing difficulties in one of the cellar rooms. Our guest clairvoyant said this was due to the fact that the spirit had died in the corner of this room from a lack of air or maybe due to a lung infection. According to one group member the spirit was apparently grabbing his chest hunched over saying "i'm alright!" On exiting the cellar we also came across the spirit of a short young man (about 5 & a half foot tall) who was none to happy that someone "had taken his horse"
 

After feeling slightly drained from our trip into the bowls of the mansion we were in for more emotional and psychic draining as we headed into the hall next to the dining room. We didn't stay here long due to the menacing heavy feeling of mass scale suffering and death. Our clairvoyant put this down to the hall being used as an infirmary at some point. He could physically see bodies everywhere and feel the panic and anguish of people dying from horrific wounds. On some subconscious level we all felt the distress of these tormented souls.

Whilst going up the main staircase to the first floor a member of the team saw what he thought was a white blur or mist on the top step, our clairvoyants saw a little bit more they saw the spirit of a women but she was very faint and didn't stay with us for long. She may be the spirit of a women dressed in a white gown that several vistors to the mansion have reported seeing around the staircase and the main hallway.

                           

On the first floor landing it got very interesting, before we all walked around I was up there and felt like i was not alone, i felt like i needed to go and that i wasn't supposed to be up there. Later on when the group went up there our guest clairvoyant felt like he was been pushed back down the stairs, he picked up the spirit of a builder angrily telling him "you're not supposed to be working up that high, go back down" He established that someone had fallen to their death from a window either on this or the next floor up. We had two auditory phenomena up here, one was a deep breath or a 'whooshing' noise and the other was a screaming sound that three of us heard at exactly the same time. The first one we may have caught on tape (see the members section for this).

                          

Our guest clairvoyant was visibly disturbed by what he saw in the bathroom. When we walked in we were immediatley overwelmed by the intense depressive and sickening atmosphere. Our clairvoyant saw the spirit of a girl aged 7 or 8 years old being sexually abused by two men in the bathtub. We all felt disturbed by this horrific image and didn't linger too long.

                        

After this unexpected insight into the depraved side of certain individuals from the mansions past we all needed a time out, so we headed outside for some fresh air and to gather our thoughts. However the darkness of the outdoors still unveiled more spirits to us. This time the spirit of a horse was seen by one group member and heard by another on the back driveway. We caught several bizarre photos in this area, here is one.

                       

                         

After a 10 minute re-fresh we entered the 'belly of the beast' again, and once more we were met with spirits and other paranormal phenomena, to mention but a few, there was the sound of a clock chiming in the kitchen, a white flash of light flying up the corridor past the doorway pushing a group member back into the kitchen. Many more orbs were caught on camera (see below and the members section for a few of these), batteries in our equipment were unexplainably drained of life but the most weird of all was the feeling that you were never alone, you were always being watched. Apparently from the moment we entered the mansion to the moment we left we 'were' being followed by the spirit of a large man who was enquisitively watching us and smiling at our every move.

By the end of the night we felt psychically drained but very lucky to have been allowed to experience what we had. We all left enlightened and keen to go back again for a further investigation of this amazing gothic mansion steeped in strange and eerie phenomena.

Thank you to such a wonderful team of talented people and to the staff of Woodchester Mansion for such an intriguing and fullfilling night.

                       

                            

                           

                            

Watch this space and the members section for the other group members experiences and photos etc.

 

On the 30th October the Lunaorbis team returned to Woodchester Mansion for a further night time investigation. This time the mansion felt alot different, even more on edge and forboding. The corridors seemed to be the focus of paranormal activity on this visit. On the first floor corridor it felt like your feet were being swept from underneath you, like you were being pushed backwards towards the stairs and the end of the corridor. The walls seemed to be rippling energy as you looked at them, we thought we saw a whisp of something moving out of the darkness towards us.

On the second floor corridor as i got to the far end i looked through a doorway down into the room below. As i did this i heard a woman gasp or whimper in the corner of the room, our clairvoyant took a look and said he could place a women in the same spot so we took a photo.

                              

The other place for activity that night were the corridors surrounding the chapel. We sensed the little girl known as Emily was around and with us. At one point we could hear a girl maybe Emily singing down the end of one of the corridors but when we reached the point where we thought she was the singing was then behind us like she was moving around.

The night was very enlightening although not as fullfilled as our previous visit we did learn a little bit more about the moods of the mansion and its spirits. How the atmosphere can dramatically change from one night to another, the first time we visited it was more friendly the spirits were all around us, this time it was more concentrated, intense and dark. We got many more photos of possible orbs and one very intriguing photo from the ground floor corridor that we are currently having analysed. So watch this space for news on this it could be interesting. In the mean time here are some of the photos of possible orbs from around the mansion.