The Psychic Adventures of Derek Acorah: Star of TV’s Most Haunted. Derek Acorah
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visit the hall in an effort to determine whether it was true ghostly activity or a mere fault on the videotape.
It was planned that the team would arrive at midnight. Dr Montz asked each member of the team to enter the hall individually so that he could compare findings.
I was the third team member to take part in the investigation. As I entered the rear pantry and walked through to the dimly lit kitchen I was aware that there was indeed spirit activity within the hall. I continued through to the hallway and was surprised to find that my nostrils were assailed by the smell of freshly baked gingerbread and the sweet smell of cooked fruit. ‘How odd!’ I thought. I would have expected such smells to have been apparent in the kitchen, but not in a hallway.
As I was mulling over this strange situation, out of the corner of my eye I noticed a movement on the staircase that led up to the first floor. A smell of freesias became apparent and there on the staircase stood the spirit form of a lady. She was in her mid-fifties, had white hair and was dressed in a deep red Victorian-style dress. She said nothing, but drifted slowly up the stairs and disappeared onto the landing above. I was strongly impressed to utter the name ‘Alice’ or ‘Ellis’.
‘This is one of the Ellis sisters,’ Sam advised me. ‘She loved her home and her garden and loves to come back and visit. Although the furnishings have changed, she’s very happy that her home still remains and that she’s able to come back and pay visits.’
I reported to Dr Montz what Sam had told me about the lady. As I followed her spirit form up the staircase, I was drawn to a room which was full of the paraphernalia of children: small chairs, a cradle and one or two low armchairs. As I entered the room I could feel a definite temperature drop. ‘Annie’s here,’ I said. ‘She was a nursemaid or nanny. She was very proficient and had very strong links with this building. She’s talking sadly of the loss of two of her small charges. I feel that these two children were lost to spirit through consumption. They’re buried in the churchyard.’
I moved from the nursery and into one of the large bedrooms. Here I encountered a man in spirit. He was quite old and bent over. Although there was no communication from him, I gained the distinct impression that he had been some type of servant and that he had worked long and hard for his master.
As we moved from bedroom to bedroom, although I was very aware of the residual energy contained in these rooms from the many years of occupation by various families, no further spirit people showed themselves to me.
I descended the stairs once more and entered the drawing room. There in the corner I could make out the spirit form of yet another lady building up. I knew that she had been a good and sensitive person in her earthly life.
‘I’m Eliza,’ she told me in direct communication. ‘I lived here with my sisters.’ She talked of her sister Isobella who had a leg impediment. She was very sad that she had not been able to enjoy walking around the beautiful gardens of Belgrave Hall, though she laughingly added, ‘She has no problem now!’
It was time for the whole team to congregate in the hallway. Stuart Warburton, curator of the Belgrave museum, had joined us and was confirming our findings with Dr Montz. It was now 3 o’clock in the morning and we were all becoming more than a little weary.
Suddenly we all became aware that the temperature had plummeted. I knew that we had been joined by another past inhabitant of Belgrave. I also knew that unlike the other people in spirit that I had encountered here, this spirit entity was not at all pleased at our intrusion. ‘Edmund,’ boomed a voice in my ear. ‘Edmund Craddock.’ I had feelings of agitation and negativity. The other members of the team confirmed that they too were picking up similar feelings. We all agreed that this man definitely did not want us in his former home. He was a forceful personality who was blustering and huffing, but because there were four experienced mediums present he was unable to cause problems. It was to be a different story three years later when I visited Belgrave Hall with the crew of LIVINGtv’s enormously successful programme Most Haunted and Vic Reeves and his wife Nancy Sorrell.
Now the ISPR investigation of Belgrave Hall drew to an end. Dr Montz had analysed the videotape footage and had questioned each of the team about it. We all agreed that though Belgrave Hall has many ghostly visitations and an enormous amount of residual energy, what had been caught on tape was nothing more than a combination of bad weather and a camera fault which had given the impression that a ghostly apparition had been photographed when in fact it had not.
And so the ISPR team’s visit to the UK came to an end. The following day I waved them off from Heathrow airport and wondered when we would meet again.
In fact it was the following July, when I flew across the Atlantic to meet the team for the premier showing of Ghosts of England and Ghosts of Belgrave Hall at the Vogue Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard. And I hope I will have the pleasure of seeing them again in the autumn of 2004 when a huge paranormal convention is scheduled to take place in Los Angeles.
By now I was well used to working on radio and had been a regular guest on Radio City’s Billy and Wally Show each Friday for over a year. I had also had a regular Sunday-evening guest spot on Red Rose Radio when I took telephone calls and gave live readings on air.
But in September 1999, just as my first book, The Psychic World of Derek Acorah, was due to go into the shops, I received a telephone call asking me to go to London to guest on the Talk Radio James Whale Show and my heart plummeted! James Whale! James has a reputation of not suffering fools gladly and I had the distinct impression that he would definitely consider me to be a fool.
On the appointed Sunday Gwen and I drove down to London. To say that I was nervous would be an understatement. We arrived at the studio and as I took the lift up to the reception desk I could hear James’s voice being piped through the corridors. ‘And my guest this evening is Derek Acorah. He says he can talk to dead people!’
‘Don’t worry,’ Gwen told me. ‘Just promote your book and we’ll be out of here in half an hour. It’s not as though he’s going to eat you!’ I hoped she was right.
Before I knew it I was sitting in the studio with James. ‘Welcome, Derek,’ he said. ‘Now tell me—just what exactly is it that you do?’
I proceeded to explain my work as a medium. ‘Right!’ said James. ‘Then perhaps you wouldn’t mind doing a reading for me?’
‘Oh dear!’ I thought. This was the last thing that I had expected to do. ‘Don’t worry, Derek,’ I heard Sam whisper.
I opened myself up to James’s vibrations and saw a lady in spirit who came up behind him and stood there smiling. She was quite plump but gave me the impression that she had not always been so, that once she had been lithe and slim. She impressed upon me that she had had lots of problems with her hips but that she had passed to spirit as a result of cancer. She mentioned the name ‘Michael’. Then she was joined by a gentleman who also stood behind James and placed a hand on his shoulder. I got the distinct impression that this man loved the open air and had some links with farming. Oddly enough, though, I also saw him standing behind a bar in the role of landlord.
All the time that I had been passing this information over to James he had said nothing, only uttering the odd grunt now and again. When I finished speaking he was gracious enough to confirm that his mother had once been a ballet dancer but had ended up with hip problems because of her dancing and consequently had put on weight. She had passed to the world of spirit as a result of cancer. The name ‘Michael’ was certainly relevant. He was James’s father who had been the landlord of a public house for many years but whose desire had always been to buy a farm and live off the land. I breathed a sigh of relief. Sam had not let me down.
‘Would you like to stay on after the midnight news and take some telephone calls?’ James asked. Of course I would!