Help! My House Is Haunted: The Bate Hall - Series 1, Episode 5 Review
August 10, 2018 6:00 PM ‐ Paranormal • Television
This article is more than six years old and was last updated in December 2019.
It's episode five of REALLY's newest ghost hunting show and this week the team of international paranormal investigators take on the spirits of a 16th century coaching inn in Cheshire, which is said to be haunted by the ghost of a young boy and a mysterious grey lady.
The team are travelling the length and breadth of the UK and using the latest ghost hunting gadgets to try to capture evidence of hauntings. This week's location is The Bate Hall in the historic market town of Macclesfield.
The paranormal activity in the pub includes staff being touched by unseen hands, glasses flying off of shelves and dark shadowy figures seen around the building. The activity is most commonly reported in the residential space above the pub. According to the owner, her daughter plays hide and seek with the ghost of the young boy called Billy, who is said to haunt the pub.
A business woman who runs a shop across the road from the pub even claims to have seen two ghostly figures through the pub's upstairs window.
The owners have called in the 'Help! My House Is Haunted' team to investigate their pub. The team consists of tech expert Barri Ghai, psychic medium Chris Fleming and French paranormal investigator Sandy Lakdar.
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.
As always, Chris doesn't know anything about the location they are visiting and heads off on his own initial walk around of the property, while Sandy and Barri meet the owners. Later Sandy went to research the property at the local library, she found evidence of the pub's past hauntings in old newspaper cuttings.
She also found documents that suggested that the pub was once owned by William Archer Smith, who lived there with his son William Jr., could this child be Billy who haunts the pub?
Before he even got in the pub, Chris said he heard the voice of a young child saying "hi". Chris described this as a "direct voice phenomena". He eventually ventured into the pub where he experienced a cold rush of air moving past him through a small doorway, which leads to a disused stairwell in the oldest part of the pub.
In one of the abandoned upstairs rooms, Chris takes out his audio record and attempts to contact the spirits, he ask aloud "who's in here with me right now, is this the woman?" When he plays the audio back, he says he can hear an "immediate and direct" response, which he thinks said "yes," although the word was inaudible.
In another of the upstairs rooms, Chris says that he feels there used to be a music box in the room. No sooner had he finished his sentence was a melodic tone heard. It sounded like the musical chimes of a clock, but the team couldn't find a cause of the sound.
Lockdown
At 10pm the team locked down the building for the night in order to begin their investigation as they try to track down both the child spirit and the malevolent spirit of the lady in grey.
The team start with a ghostly game of hide and seek, the game that the young girl living in the pub plays with the spirit of Billy. Barri reluctantly agrees to hide alone in the attic with a REM-Pod, while Sandy hid in an upstairs bathroom with a similar device. The idea was that if Billy found them, he would trigger the device.
After Sandy shouted "come for us Billy, we're ready for you" the pair settled down in their hiding places and waited, but it seemed he didn't want to play. In the attic Barri witnessed plenty of activity and heard strange sounds, but it didn't seem to be the activity of a playful child. He also experienced an icy cold blast of air, which stirred up a lot of dust in the air, eventually forcing him to leave the attic space.
Later, the team gather together in the room where Chris had previously heard the music. Chris had brought along an interesting ghost hunting tool. It was a small box which was made entirely of mirrors on the inside. Chris explains that this is thought to "create an energy loop that can encourage spirits to come through into the physical realm." There's a microphone attached to the base of the box, Chris' hope is that the spirit of Billy will manipulate the box or make a sound.
The experiment proved to be unsuccessful, so instead Sandy played some music hoping it might encourage the spirits to interact. Seconds later a crew member shouted for the team to come downstairs where one of them had heard music coming from a speaker. Although the moment was captured on camera, there was no sound being record at that location at the time.
Towards the end of the investigation, the team reviewed the audio recording from Chris' paranormal box. At a point where Sandy asked, "are you the William Smith?" A voice answered in the recording that seem to give response, "pray them home".
The team took this "emphatic" response to be the voice of William Smith senior, as it didn't sound like a child's voice. The team took this as a call to action to help the trapped child spirit of Billy move on. So, the investigation, as always, ended with Chris cleansing the building and a prayer ritual, inviting any trapped souls to leave the Bate Hall. Meanwhile, Sandy walked through the property spreading the purifying smoke from burning sage, blowing it around the rooms with feathers.
During the investigation, the team also caught strange light anomalies on camera in one of the bedrooms. The pair of orbs were seen moving together across the screen. Barri speculated that this could be the departing souls of William and his son Billy.
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