Beamish Hall - The ParaPod Series 1, Episode 7 Review
This article is more than nine years old and was last updated in March 2018.
In this week's episode of The ParaPod, supernatural believer Barry Dodds' featured haunting is Beamish Hall in County Durham and its resident ghosts, but will he be able to convince skeptic Ray Peacock that paranormal is real?
Photo: © Bluespacecat
Beamish Hall is now a four start hotel in County Durham, but the historic building, which only recently became a hotel, has a history of hauntings and is the place where Barry had his first ever paranormal experience at the age of 15.
Barry started off by filling us in on the history of Beamish Hall, "it's been owned by aristocracy, earls and things like that." And over time, according to Barry, has had "extra wings built on." To which Ray joked, "but the bastard thing still won't take off."
Barry tells us about the property's most famous resident, the 18th-century British MP, Bobby Shafto, which prompter Barry to burst in to song, "Bobby Shafto went to sea, silver buckles on his knee..."
Barry went on to tell us that Bobby died in 1949 and the hall was sold on to the coal board, but that would have made Bobby 217-years-old when he died, so clearly Barry had something wrong. Eventually Barry worked out that there were two Bobbys in the Shafto family, and it was the former who is involved in the hauntings. The 20th-century Bobby is irrelevant, Barry says we should forget him.
The coal board used the hall as offices, but it eventually became surplus to requirements and fell into disrepair, before being purchased and renovated to become the current Beamish Hall Hotel.
So, what about the ghosts? Well, Barry tells us there there's a grey lady, who was in love with Bobby but she was promised to another man by her dad, Barry says, "I think that used to happen years ago."
Apparently, she ran away to Beamish Hall, and hid in a casket in the vaults below the building, but she got locked in and died. Barry says that her spirit now roams the hall looking for Bobby.
There's also said to be a man in a tweed suit who wanders the corridors, it's believed this is the ghost of Bobby Shafto himself. Barry says, "he's probably well happy cuz it's been done up."
The final ghost of note at Beamish Hall is, "a lady sat wearing pink in the eden room and she's got two friends with her. She's got a cat and she's got a parrot." Ray clarifies, "ghosts?" Barry confirms, "yes, a ghost cat and a ghost parrot."
Barry says there's also some "children in the attic" and "a nasty spirit in the kitchen," but he confesses, "I don't know anything about them."
Conclusion
It's hard to draw a conclusion from this week's episode, as it was revealed towards the end of the episode that Ray intentionally didn't challenge anything Ray said. He pointed out just one error, that being Barry's mention of the wrong Bobby Shafto.
The reason for Ray's lenience was partly because of the amount of abuse Barry had been getting on Twitter as a result of previous episodes and to see if Barry would notice that Ray had backed down.
I guess for this reason, we could conclude that this week's episode was a draw. But as Barry failed to notice Ray's ploy, this still highlights an issue in Barry ability to think critically, so the point goes to Ray.
Ray 7 - Barry 0
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