Investigations

I’ll say up front that I’m a sceptic when it comes to the paranormal. A sceptic, as in one who questions and does not simply accept supernormal claims, rather than a cynic. I’ve had a few anomalous experiences that I can’t explain over the years: admittedly, I have had a lot of other strange experiences but as I’m my own strongest critic I’ve debunked all but a handful.

By trade I’m a field archaeologist with a specialism in historic building recording. I’ve been working professionally in the heritage field since graduating with by Bachelor of Science (Hons) degree back in 1994, with forays into photographic archiving and technical authorship along the way.

Back in 2003 I was working in the same office as Tyne Bridge Publishing, Newcastle Libraries’ local history publisher. I was working on a two year project digitising a portion of the libraries’ old and delicate photographic collection (which included some beautiful old lantern slides) and the topic of my interest in ghost stories came up, as TBP’s editor was Vanessa Histon, who’d written the fantastic Nightmare on Grey Street: Newcastle’s Darker Side in 2000 and Ghosts of Grainger Town: Further tales from Newcastle’s Darker Side in 2001. Both blended real-life ghost stories into local history. Subsequently I agreed to write a new book for them: this time as well as the stories and history, they wanted investigation as well, and in October 2004 Otherworld North East: Ghosts and Hauntings Explored was published. Looking back on this, it was definitely a book of its time, but did the job promoting local history, even if now, looking back, most of the investigative elements are known I believe as facepalm moments. The team I’d put together to investigate for the book decided to stay together and continue our investigative forays into the paranormal. We were Otherworld North East (OWNE), with the organisation running in one form or another right the way through to 2022.

Looking back, its interesting to see how the team developed. Early on, I got very suspicious over multiple elements of the ‘accepted’ investigation procedure, and as such started removing those elements from our methodology. This started with removing alleged mediums from the process – at which point a portion of the team also departed and I realised that for them, it wasn’t as much about investigating the paranormal as it was about simple entertainment.

As more methods were removed, the team in the end dwindled to a core handful who agreed with what was essentially a data collection methodology rather than the traditional ghost hunt you see on TV. We continued along this vein until 2016, but it was becoming increasingly difficult to get into locations, as there’d been a paradigm shift in the field away from investigation into commercial ghost hunts, and simply put we couldn’t afford to pay locations the fees that commercial groups could. We’d also developed a reputation as a debunking group as well… this wasn’t actually the case: we simply investigated with results usually suggesting a debunking – not the same thing. This also restricted our access to some locations who didn’t want their, in some cases, made up stories debunked. By 2016, the core team also had very busy lives, and the team went on the back burner, though we kept an active social media presence until 2022, when I eventually made the decision to close the organisation down.

Later that year I made the decision to set up Within the Boggart Wood. I’d had a near scrape with finding out whether or not the afterlife existed first hand, and I decided to get back into the field of anomalous phenomena studies (more as a distraction at the time than anything else – though these things aren’t mutually linked, as I do not believe personally that ghostly phenomena has any link to an alleged afterlife). One of my pet hates has always been public speaking and I’d decided it was time to face my fears – the first episode of Within the Boggart Wood went live in February 2023.