Help! My House Is Haunted: Gedling House Of Cricket, Nottinghamshire - Series 2, Episode 10 Review
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Barri Ghai, Chris Fleming, and Jayne Harris head to Gedling in Nottinghamshire, to investigate a 19th century townhouse with a celebrated but unsettling past.
The team have been called in by the homeowners, Lizzie Webster and her partner Geoff, after they began noticing escalating levels of unexplained activity since moving in a year ago. Lizzie said, "things started happening about two or three months after we moved into the property." It started off as little things, like objects inexplicably moving around.
The activity soon increased to objects seemingly being thrown across the room, door handles rattling, and toys coming to life as if being played with by unseen hands. Perhaps the most disturbing incident involved Lizzie being touched on the bottom of her leg. She asks, "if there's something that can physically touch you in the property, is it going to get any worse?"
Lizzie and Geoff believe the spirit haunting their home is the ghost of a local man named Arthur Shrewsbury, he was a famous cricketer in the 1900s. According to Lizzie, he took his own life with a gun somewhere in their house.
The team's psychic medium, Chris, always insists on being kept in the dark about the location, but while the team were travelling to the property in their ghost-hunting camper van, he had a vision of what awaits them. He said, "it's like something just said 'how dare you?'. I don't know if this is a spirit actually talking to me right now." He thinks this is a male spirit who doesn't want them there.
More From 'Help! My House Is Haunted'
You can read more and the team's investigations on our 'Help! My House Is Haunted' hub, where you'll find detailed reviews of each episode, trivia quizzes and news on future episodes.
Chris' Walk Through
While Barri and Jayne head off to try to uncover more about the local area and the paranormal history of the house, Chris started the investigation with a solo walk around the property, but within minutes of getting out of the van and setting foot on the property, he was overcome by a domineering presence. Chris reported feeling overwhelmed by negative emotions and angry for no apparent reason.
Stood outside the house and looking agitated he said, "I can't even think straight, I've got this rage". Chris thinks he understands the cause, "there is a male spirit here who is really really angry and I have to come into contact with this in some way, and find out why it is so angry, and see if I can try and resolve that."
Stepping inside the house, he felt the negative energy had retreated and moved upstairs, but also felt another energy below him. Moments later he said, "I'm sensing two different energies here, I'm not sure which to investigate first."
Chris is later drawn to the garden where he's compelled to pickup a garden cane, and feels as if he wants to swing it. He likens the urge to his past of playing baseball, but it seems Chris is channeling the house's former resident, the cricket star.
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The House's Haunted History
While Chris investigated the house, Barri went to meet, Lizzie's daughter Steph who also lives in the house. She's been effected by the property and has actually had experiences in the house. Chatting in the safety of a nearby pub, Steph told Barri that she's witnessed objects moving and heard footsteps, including what sounds like someone coming up the stairs, only to never appear at the top.
Steph said, "I need answers. If this presence - Arthur - is like friendly in a way I'm not fussed," but she adds "my mum does get very upset about it sometimes when certain things happen that you can't explain."
Meanwhile, Jayne, went to see what she could uncover about the area. She met up with Graham Taverner, a local who knows all about the small village's past and it's connection to mining.
Graham told Jayne how miners had worked in coal mines below ground in the area since 1899 in poor conditions, and tragically there were many accidents resulting in the deaths of over 130 men. In fact, according to Graham, more men died in Gedling Colliery than in any other pit in Britain.
Later Jayne meets with local historian, Neil Kendrick, to find out more about Gedling's famous former resident, Arthur Shrewsbury. Neil tells the paranormal investigator how Arthur was a successful sportsman, playing for Nottinghamshire County Cricket Club, as well as England.
Sadly, despite a successful international cricketing career, fame and fortune didn't bring happiness. Eventually in 1903, Arthur committed suicide in the very house the team are investigating.
Re-Group
With their own individual investigations completed, the team re-group with a better understanding of the area and the spirits they might be facing. They share what they've learnt and put a plan of action together with Lizzie and Geoff. The team invite the couple to join them for their next stage of their investigation. They hope that their involvement might encourage any spirits in the house to interact with them.
Starting in the living room, the gang stand around a selection of trigger objects, including a photograph of the late Arthur Shrewsbury, a cricket bat and ball, and also a miner's safety lamp as this might appeal to any other spirits in the property, perhaps those Chris felt below him.
Barri explains that they're going to start out by using a digital audio recorder and attempt to capture EVPs. He clarifies, "EVP stands for electronic voice phenomena, and it's the technique whereby we try to capture ghost voices". Barri then asked Lizzie and Geoff to call out questions in turn while he captured the audio of the session. Barri played the audio back, and in the recording the words "someone's death" was heard by the team.
Jayne takes this as proof of a connection with the spirit, but to confirm this is the spirit of Arthur, she picks up on object and asks the spirit to confirm what she's touching, a response seems to say "cricket bat". The residents don't seem too convinced by the capture, but the team take this as confirmation, although a miner would know what a cricket bat is too.
Jayne then asked out, "are there the spirits of any miners here? Any men who died in the mine nearby?" The response through the audio recorder seemed to say, "killed". This lead Jayne to the conclusion that they were making connections to spirits from the right time period.
Lockdown
As the light fades outside, Lizzie and Geoff leave, and static cameras are rigged around the property. The team are then locked down inside the house for a 12 hour investigation throughout the night. The team begin their investigation at the room at the top of the stairs. This is the room where Arthur is said to have taken his life. The room was once a bedroom, it is now a spacious bathroom.
Jayne begins by using a spirit box, a device that rapidly scans through FM and AM radio frequencies producing bursts of white noise and random flashes of radio transmissions. The theory behind this is that spirits can communicate by manipulating these sounds.
Jayne asked, "where did you kill yourself?" A voice through the device said "upstairs... in... kids... bed... room". This suggested to the team that they were in the wrong room. As they said this a REM-Pod they'd placed in the kids' room started to trigger.
A REM-Pod is a ghost hunting gadget that radiates its own electromagnetic field, if something gets close and interferes with that field then the device emits a tone and flashes. This means, something in the kids' room has caused it to trigger. They move into the room, and suddenly Jayne becomes tearful and overcome by emotion. Moments later she said the phrase, "no babies, he left me with no babies" popped into her head.
Jayne think this means she's encountered the spirit of Arthur's girlfriend, Gertrude. According to Jayne, it was Gertrude who found Arthur after he took his life. They continue to use the spirit box and had several responses that they felt might be relevant and confirmed they were talking to Arthur. The clearest of which was when Barri asked out "who found your body?" The reply seemed to say "Gertrude".
After calling an end to the vigil in the bedroom, the team walked out onto the landing, and when they least expected it, heard what they described as a screech coming from the bathroom. Jayne thinks this could be a replay of Gertrude finding the body. Whatever it was, there was no denying it sounded like a female screaming.
As they were discussing this possibility, a crew members shouted up the stairs to tell them that they'd seen a light turn on. The moment was captured on the static camera Barri had placed on the second floor. The light was in fact a motion activated light that was placed outside of Steph's bedroom door - the team now wanted to know what triggered it.
As they made their way up to the top floor to investigate, a panicked Barri suddenly reported feeling "giddy". He said, "I'm going to be sick", as he fell to the floor on the landing. Chris rushed to his aid and told Barri, "it tried to enter into you. I can completely tell by the way that your legs buckled."
After Barri had recovered, the team continued up to Steph's bedroom on the top floor. Chris wanted to try to channel the residual energy in the property in order to workout exactly what happened in the house's past. Seconds later Chris is able to re-tell the final moments of Arthur's life, including Gertrude's attempt at an intervention and the moment of the fatal gun shot to his own head.
Chris concludes, "it seems Arthur's soul is in torment. Like his anguish and guilt have kept him here, but he wants release." Chris thinks he can help him move on and gives reassurance, which seem to appease Arthur, a he seems to relent after this moment.
Now satisfied that Arthur has been dealt with, the team want to understand some of the other spirits of the property, specifically those Chris has mentioned earlier as being underneath the property. They decide to go down into the cellar, but the area has serious damp issues, including the presence of dangerous black mould, so the team are forced to protect themselves with masks and safety gear.
Barri is armed with an SLS camera, a device that is supposed to be able to map anomalies invisible to the human eye and highlight these potential manifestations by showing them as stick figures drawn over the camera's image. Almost as soon as they walk into the cellar, an anomaly was detected by Barri's camera and a human-like stick figure showed up on its screen, but vanished seconds later.
The team weren't in the cellar long, perhaps because of the mould, or perhaps because as Jayne says, there's nothing residing in the cellar. Back on the ground floor, Jayne and Chris attempt to capture EVPs. Jayne calls out "we'd like to know, are there any miners here? Any men killed down the mine?" When they played the audio back, a voice seemed to be saying, "there's many outside".
As we know, there were many miners killed in the area, but at first the relevance of "outside" is unclear. Chris explains that the miners know that the team are here to help them move on and they're gathering from around the area outside as they want help. Chris perform his normal ritual to help these poor souls move on, and with that, the investigation came to an end.
Conclusion
There were a lot of EVPs captured in this episode. Some were very clear, including the name Gertrude. Others were a little muffled and unclear. Out of context it would be hard to determine if the sound the team thought was saying "cricket bat" was really that.
However, the episode was a good overview of what was clearly an emotional investigation. All of the team played an important role. Chris was relied on fairly heavily for his psychic insights, Barri's equipment rigged around the house yielded results, Jayne took an active role in leading spirit box sessions, and it was her who elicited a lot of the responses.
'Help! My House Is Haunted' continues next week on Really as part of the channel's #Freakend event, bringing viewers two nights of paranormal entertainment every Thursday and Friday.
You can watch in the United Kingdom and Ireland as part of the Discovery family of channels. You can watch Really on Freeview (17), Sky (142), Virgin Media (129) and Freesat (160), plus YouView, BT TV and TalkTalk TV. Or watch previous episodes on demand on dplay.
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