Help! My House Is Haunted: 'Ashes To Ashes' - Series 3, Episode 9 Review

July 11, 2021 1:00 AM ‐ Television • Paranormal

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Help! My House Is Haunted: Ashes To Ashes

In the ninth episode of the brand new third series of 'Help! My House Is Haunted', Barri Ghai, Jayne Harris and Ian Lawman investigate an evil paranormal force causing a young girl from Gloucestershire to experience disturbed nights.

The team have been called in by Kelly Peffers, who lives with her family in an 18th century cottage in the historic village of Little Dean on the edge of the Forest of Dean, close to the church and the town's famous former jail.

Kelly tells us, "there's lots of things in the property that are happening that I can't explain, some of it seems quite playful, but some of the energy within the house can be quite malevolent". Kelly says this included "Christmas lights that were flickering on and off in a weird way that seemed quite intelligent and was actually responding to our questions."

Kelly says a bible she owns has repeatedly fallen off of a shelf and landed open on the same page each time. Things have also moved, and gone missing, including some jewellery which she later found buried in the ground when she was digging in the garden. She also found some mysterious ash buried at the foot of a tree in the garden, which she thinks could be human remains.

Ian, the show's resident medium following just the sat nav to a mysterious location knows nothing about the case in advance, but before he even arrived he started to gain some psychic insight. He said, "I think we're dealing with several souls here, but there are two trapped souls that are significant. I'm also seeing some outside space that is relevant to the property."

Kelly confirms this when she tells us, "on multiple occasions I have seen a man stood in my courtyard, to begin with I thought it was a real person and I actually got quite scared."

She also adds, "in my eldest daughter's room, as soon as she goes into the room she'll just start crying for no reason. One thing we have found is it's only when she's lead in her bed and she looks to her left. I am a little bit worried that this could be a malevolent sort of energy that might feast on her emotions."

Kelly is concerned this could escalate, but hopes the team can put an end to the haunting.

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.

Ian Explores The Location

As always, Ian was the first on the scene to conduct his initial walk around to gain as much psychic insight on the property as possible. Upon stepping inside, Ian said "I've not even walked into the house properly yet, but this step here, as soon as I walk through, I feel quite nervous."

In the living room Ian picked up on the energy of more than one person, which ties in with his earlier feeling about two trapped souls. Later Ian felt as if he was bring drawn outside and opened the door, he said "as soon as you open the door it's like someone's shouting 'help me, help me'." But we don't actually see him go outside.

Ian wonders whether the activity could be linked to the nearby jail, especially as he's picking up on possible poltergeist activity in the form of the spirits taking things from the property. Again, this is something Kelly mentioned she had experienced at the house.

Later Ian headed upstairs where he said he picked up on an "energy change". He explained, "I just feel that somebody needs help". Once upstairs he said, "the male entities, or the male spirits that's in this property are very strong, very powerful and not nice people."

Ian backed up something that Kelly had said while in her daughter's bedroom. He said, "I feel somebody's been watched in here, so as they're trying to sleep. I'm just aware of someone standing over and watching them".

We next see Ian back downstairs, this time looking out of a window saying, "there's something there, there's something significant out there". Finally he goes out to find out what it is, but doesn't come to any conclusions.

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Jayne & Barri Look For Leads In The Local Area

Jayne set up a meeting with local historian and anthropologist, Tamsin Powell, to find out a little more about the history of the area. Tamsin tells Jayne about the mythical and magical reputation that the Forest of Dean has, "the forest is very ancient, it goes back to the pre-Roman period when the civilisations at that time were tribes and they lived in the Forest of Dean."

Tamsin then told Jayne about the history of the village the house stands in, "Little Dean is a very known non-conformist area. Non-conformist were likely to be quite political, likely to be miners, who always see the church as being the enemy in a way." She added, "it's also famous for Little Dean Jail," which she said is a "very powerful and scary place".

Jayne asked Tamsin about the ashes found in the garden and whether they could indeed be human. She said, "if this was the Victorian times, if these ashes go back to that sort of period, being a non-conformist area it may well have been that the miners and non-conformists perhaps might have to save money, and the fact they don't want the high church of England to have the bodies of their dead, they may well have cremated them themselves."

In the hopes of finding out more about the property, Barri went to meet Lynette, a friend of Kelly's who is a psychic medium. Lynette tells Barri, "when you enter through the front door, there's something in that area there that feels like very foreboding energy," this is something Ian also picked up on. Lynette also agrees with Ian that several spirits reside within the house.

Spirit Trigger Experiment

The team came together to share the findings from their initial investigations, before asking Kelly to help them with a spirit trigger experiment. This literally involves using Kelly as someone who is familiar to the spirits to try to trigger them and engage with them.

They kick things off using the bible which has repeatedly fallen off of Kelly's shelf and ask her to read a significant passage from the page it has landed on each time. While Kelly reads aloud, Barri will be attempting to capture EVPs using his audio recorder. An EVP, or Electronic Voice Phenomenon, is a form of spirit communication that involves capturing the sound of spirit voices in audio recordings.

He also sets up a REM-Pod, a ghost hunting gadget that radiates its own electrostatic field, if anything conductive enters and disturbs the field the gadget will alert the team by beeping and lighting up. As soon as Kelly started reading, the device lit up.

Jayne then placed some of the jewellery that Kelly had found buried outside on the table they were stood around, she also fired up her EchoVox app. This app is pre-loaded with the phonetic sounds that make up every English word. The app randomly spews out these sounds and it's believed that spirits can affect the random nature of this app in order to form the words they are trying to communicate.

Jayne calls out, "is there a male spirit in the house?" There is an unclear response, so Ian says, "tell me your name the please?" And they interpret the response as "Adam". Barri asks, are you a thief, and the response seems to say, "yes, boss". Barri then confirms, were you in Little Dean Jail, and again they thought the voice said "yes, boss" in response.

Lockdown

As darkness falls, Kelly locks up and leaves for the night as the team prepare for their night-long investigation. The team started their investigation where they left off, in the living room. They were once again using the EchoVox.

Ian called out "how can I help you?" And a noise through the box sounded like it was saying "outside," this was followed by the confusing phrase "the apple". The team believed they were once again communicating with Adam, but after asking about the second spirit in the house and getting the response "he is up," the team went to investigate the first floor.

As soon as they got there, Ian heard a sound behind him and spun around to find a door opening on its own. Barri said, "the latch lifting up on its own is clear poltergeist activity." Moments later, the same thing happened again.

The team then split up and went into adjoining rooms on the first floor. Barri was in the bathroom, where he was once again trying to capture EVPs with his audio recorder. Jayne placed a REM-Pod down which was chirping away as they called out. When Jayne asked "do you know anything about the ashes that were in the garden?" the REM-Pod beeped furiously at them.

This lead the team to the garden where Barri was using a thermal imaging camera to look for more evidence, while Jayne used a set of rods for dowsing, a technique which is traditionally used to locate ground water, but paranormal investigators believe the method can also be used to tap into spiritual energy.

After a while the rods seemed to be pointing in the direction of some trees in the garden. Remembering that the word "apple" had come through on the EchoVox, they asked any spirits present to point towards whichever tree was the apple tree, the rods pointing to the one on Jayne's right. Although this is quite good evidence for the use of dowsing rods, they could have obtained this information much more easily and quickly by just asking Kelly which tree the ashes were found under, the information also seemed a little unimportant because as soon as they uncovered what they believed to be the correct tree, they headed inside to join Ian.

They are once again gathered in the living room where they attempt to put together the final pieces of the puzzle, several responses that the team get through another ghost hunting app seem to help.

Jayne is using ParaTek, an app that can generate words based on the belief that spirits can influence the magnetometer and accelerometer sensors in a mobile phone. Based on variations in these sensors' inputs, the app selects words from a pre-loaded database.

The words "paragraph" and "creator" lead them back to Kelly's bible. As Barri read a passage from the page, they heard a very strange noise, the sound was never explained - it wasn't clear whether it came from the room around them or the ParaTek app.

Ian then asked, "who's ashes are on the table?" The app said "Kelly". The team got excited, and Ian confirmed, "are you saying Kelly brought these ashes inside?" Well, no that wasn't the question that was originally asked, it was "who's ashes are on the table?" But the response was enough to convince the team, Jayne said, "this confirms to me that this bible falling was significant, it wasn't random."

Conclusion

Like most 'Help! My House Is Haunted' investigations, the case is nicely wrapped up at the end of the episode when the team are able to workout who the two trapped spirits are and their connection to one an other. They also come up with a plan to try to decrease the paranormal activity in the house.

You can watch the whole third season of 'Help! My House Is Haunted' right now on Discovery+, as well as the show's whole back catalogue.

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