Watch 'Most Haunted': The Botanic Garden Museum - Full Episode
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In this new online exclusive episode, which makes up part of the 'Most Haunted Extra' series, Yvette Fielding sends Karl Beattie and Stuart Torevell to the very haunted Botanic Gardens museum in Southport to conduct the first ever paranormal investigation into the strange occurrences in the remarkable building.
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The Botanic Gardens Museum in Southport was designed by the local architects Mellor & Sutton of London street and built by George Duxfield of Duxfield Brothers Southport, the museum opened its doors to the public in 1876. The world famous American showman politician and businessman Phineas T. Barnum, who founded the world renowned Barnum & Bailey Circus was used as an advisor in the construction of the museum, where his top hat was once displayed.
Sadly the museum collections were sold off in 1932. When the gardens, and the exhibition hall were closed. However, knowing that the community needed the museum. It was later triumphantly reopened by John Scoles, but with a new collection. Many of the artefacts were donated by local residents, as many of the exhibits dealt with local as well as natural history. The Cecily Bate collection of dolls was added, a Victorian room was constructed and many local artefacts relating to Southport heritage were for the first time available to be viewed in one place by the public.
Due to a cost cutting exercise by Sefton Council, the difficult decision to shut the museum down was made on the 24th of April 2011. The much love Botanic Gardens Museum, once again, closed its doors to the public.
Is The Botanic Garden Museum Haunted?
The museum has now been given a new lease of life by Most Haunted Experience, the show's spin-off paranormal events company. As well as serving as a venue for their public ghost hunting events, the Victorian building has become the home of Most Haunted's very own oddities museum, which houses exhibits detailing the history of paranormal research containing ghost hunting paraphernalia, through to one-of-a-kind and macabre artefacts relating to crime and punishment, and memorabilia and collectables charting the history of the show itself.
The paranormal activity in the building is pretty much untapped and documented accounts are hard to come by, but reports range from sightings of figures staring out of the window at night seen by people walking through the gardens, items on display in the museum are said to move of their own accord, and the sound of children playing has been heard in the empty exhibition spaces.
The Investigation
Karl and Stuart started their investigation on the ornate wooden stairs, on their way up to the top floor of exhibition spaces. While talking on the large upstairs landing, they heard a dragging sound coming from an adjoining room. This lead them into the large room, which was full of empty glass display cabinets. They soon concluded that the source of the sound was one of the wooden drawers beneath the display cabinets moving, while in the room they heard the sound several more times despite the fact the drawers didn't visibly move.
The investigators then crossed the landing into the adjacent exhibition room where there were cabinets full of eggs from the museum's natural history days. Stuart said, "this room is peculiar, it's full of eggs. There's literally thousands of eggs of all shapes, colours and size. Every egg you can think of."
After a quick look at the eggs, the pair started calling out and again heard strange sounds in the distance in the form of knocks. This lead them back to the room they had just been in, but moments later what sounded like footsteps had them running back to the room with all the eggs and then out on to the landing, where they heard a huge crash that they couldn't explain.
With so much more of the building left to investigate, the pair split up. Karl stayed on the upper floor alone where he heard some impressive disembodied footsteps on the stairs. Meanwhile, Stuart went down to the building's cellar, were he was terrified by more loud knocks and bangs coming from all around him in the darkness.
A little while later, Karl was downstairs in the Victorian room, which the team behind the show are slowly converting into a dedicated séance room. In this area of the building, Karl thought he was being played with by a child spirit.
The 'extra' ended with Karl saying to camera, "wow, what a night! That's been fantastic, it really has. I can't wait to come back and do a full shoot here, because that's just amazing."
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