THE MINERS VILLAGE HALL – May 2009

Investigation Site

The Miners Village Hall
Coalpit Heath
Bristol

History of the Site

The Miners village hall was originally known as "The Miners Institute", and was opened in 1927 by H.B. Napier to promote the welfare of the local miners and their families. All the buildings costs were met by weekly contributions of six "old" pennies from the miners, and then equally matched by The Colliery Company.

The local pit (Frog Lane), had provided many jobs to the small surrounding villages and was the last major active pit in the area. Sadly it was closed in 1949, and has just celebrated a 60th anniversary.

Investigating Team

The members of the team present for this investigation:
Marlene
Sandra
Gill
Mary

Paranormal Activity Eyewitness Reports

The site has not had many reports of strange activity or abnormal behaviour, but some that has been reported over the years include people seeing black shadows along the back wall, as well as unexplained noises coming from various locations within the building.

Investigation Report

Arriving around 10.30pm, the team all met in the bar area of the village hall as the structure was quite well known to them (with it being very local). They waited for the function in the main hall to finish and empty before they could setup the equipment and begin the evenings investigation.

A motion camera was placed in the kitchen area, and a second was set up on the stage (facing the stage and also part of the hall too). The team chose to place one of the digital camera's in the hallway along with the baby monitor, and another on the bar looking up the hall towards the stage.

Once all the equipment was installed and ready to go the team then done their "protection" prayer and then was still for a short while to allow the building to settle. Whilst the team where sat there they all heard a noise like the scrapping of a chair along with what sounded like footsteps, but where unsure from where the sounds where actually coming from.

The team then commenced the investigation and they began by them all sitting around a high table, linking fingers and asking out into the room. After a while the indicator on the EMF meter that had been placed on the table, started to move. It went up to the second light (red) which was very interesting as there had been no electrical equipment around.

Around the same time the team noticed that the camera in the kitchen had started to move sideways. Some of the team went into the room to see if there was a reason for this movement, but was unable to find any. They asked out in the room for it to stop, and it did, so they asked for the camera to start moving again, and to their surprise it did. This was quite a shock.

Mary said that she had a song come to her, that kept repeating itself in her head, she couldn't remember the name but knew it was song by Freddie and the Dreamers. She struggled to understand why this song had just come into her thoughts as she had not heard it for a long while.

Marlene thought that she had seen a shadow on the side wall of the hall, but with all the cars going by on the main road, could not be sure that it was not that of 1 of the team being captured by the passing headlights.

With the team all back in the main hall, Mary started to feel the name Graham or Graydon come to her. The team started to ask out for this person to come forward, but got no real response, but when they asked if there where any animal spirits in the room, they found that the monitor displayed some interference across the screen, but this did not last long.

The final experiment that the team performed was for Marlene to site alone on the stage, whilst the rest of the team asked various questions into the hall. Whilst this was being done, they noticed a few bright lights as well as some orbs travelling passed Marlene. Gill also saw a bright white light in the bar area.

They brought their investigation at the Miners to an end at about 3.45am, all feeling positive with how the investigation had gone.

Conclusion

The team where really pleased to have the opportunity to spend the night investigating paranormal activity in The Miners Village Hall, and were really hoping to find something of real interest, and with the sound of the chair scrapping, the team certainly do believe that this was a great location for their investigations.

The team are open to the fact that the noise may have been just the sound of a chair coming to rest after the function, but are more sure that they had heard the sound of footsteps.

After more thought the team believe that the shadow that Marlene had seen on the wall could have been that of a member of the team, and not something unexplained, but do believe that the activity that took place in the kitchen with the camera is definitely the act of a paranormal force, especially due to the fact that the movements responded to their commands.

The EMF readings that had occurred at the begining of the evening was also very interesting to the team and gives them more details to analyse along with all of the photo's and video footage taken during the evening. All in all, the team enjoyed their time and are very grateful to have had the opportunity.

***We would like to thank Dot and her team for allowing the team to perform an investigation at The Miners Village Hall.***

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