It's the Saturday night of Halloween weekend, it's dark and we are walking towards an old mansion that emerges out of the mist like the perfect clichéd haunted house from any generic B-movie horror film from the 80s. The perfect setting then, for a ghost hunt.
Waiting for us at the door is paranormal investigator and host Yvonne Hydes and David McCabe, the group's lead medium, who are part of one of Scotland's top ghost events companies, The Scottish Ghost Company (TSGC) which has more than 20 crew members spread all across Scotland and the north of England, with experience in the area of paranormal investigations dating back decades.
Unsure of what to expect, fellow paranormal enthusiast Ali Smith and I head inside to sign in and join our fellow attendees, who are all women who have been to a TSGC event before.
As the newbies, we were kept behind to learn more about the equipment we'd be using on the night to explore the house, which dates back to the 17th century and most notably once hosted Bonnie Prince Charlie himself within its walls.
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Yvonne, who is dressed as Daphne to partner David's Scooby Doo, takes time to show us traditional items such as creepy dolls – trigger objects for ghost children to play with – dowsing rods and a ouija board (which she explains we can't use on the night due to a request from the house's management), alongside more modern equipment including REMpods (for measuring electromagnetic frequencies), motion detectors, spirit boxes and even a thermal imaging camera.
However, fellow member David Jack informs us that the best equipment to use on any hunt is your "eyes and ears". Sage advice.
It's not long before we are split into teams, with our group joining David and fellow medium Natasha Girdwood to learn more about the spirits who inhabit the house – of which both of them assure us none are malevolent. Which is a relief.
As we move from room to room, we learn of spirits such as Mary, a lady from the 1880s in funeral attire who is spotted on the stairs, Caroline and her younger sister, the daughters of the former owner who possibly died from illness in the 1820s and another rich owner nicknamed 'Houdini', who was fond of having parties in the house.
It's here where the first of many strange occurrences take place, with one of the women in the group mentioning that she can really strongly smell wet dogs in one of the rooms. Surprised, one of the Bannockburn House workers on hand to guide us around points to the numerous scratches on the floor near the door, where the former owner's dogs used to try to get out of the room when they were locked in. An auspicious start to our hunt.
From there we split into smaller groups to begin our 'vigils', which Yvonne explains will see the various team members using equipment to try to contact any spirits in each of the rooms.
In the burnt room, the large drawing room which was severely damaged by fire in the 70s, Ali and I enjoy our first unusual experience involving a method called the human pendulum, where one volunteer acts as the "pendulum" where they relax and allow themselves to be compelled to tilt forward or backwards in response to questions asked of the spirits. Both of us agreed that when we took part there was indeed something prompting us to tip forward or backwards depending on the question, even when we tried to resist.
While the sceptical among you - myself included in this - will say it was the power of suggestion, it was truly very strange being part of it at the time.
And it wasn't the only thing that had us querying whether there were indeed spiritual forces at work. In both the pantry and study, torches untouched by human hands and left at various points of the room were coaxed into being turned on and off by something invisible that we couldn't explain in the room. This happened multiple times with each as spellbinding as the first time.
Incredibly, in one of the other groups, unseen by us, one of the prop balls was spotted levitating, eliciting loud gasps and laughter which we did hear from the other room but which we only learned about at the end of the event. Sadly, no one had time to film the event in question, something that Yvonne and David were disappointed about as they say they are always enthusiastic about taking the best evidence from each event they host.
The Dowsing rods given to us in the laundry room elicited similar spooky results, held by us they moved seemingly of their own accord in answer to questions prompted by Sara, another one of our guides.
In the final vigil, the spirits seemingly didn't want to come out and play, refusing to knock on the wall or light any of the torches around the room despite much coaxing by the team and though it was a perhaps disappointing end to what was a fun night overall, it helped to reiterate the point that the team weren't just playing to the crowds by having something happen in every room and helped to reinforce the impression of their sincerity that nothing that happens on one of these nights is "forced" or "manufactured".
Overall, we were left unsure what to believe, other than that we'd had a pretty great time and the laughter, occasional gasps and genuine sense of excitement that resonated around the rooms on the night was a testament to the fact that it was a fun, if mystifying experience all round, and one we both agreed we'd be more than happy to indulge in again – if only to search for even more evidence of the otherworldly.
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