Day 2: The Constitutional Club - The land that this building stands on 400 hundred years ago was alms houses and in more recent times in the 19th Century it was the towns post office. In 1905 it became the Constitutional Club refurbished by Baron Burton and other wealthy brewers to its splendour of today. A building that you literally walk back 100 years in time with all the original Victorian features you could be on a set of a hammer house of horror. This building has had paranormal activity of its own over the years, where items left in locked rooms have disappeared and reappeared with no logical reason for this to happen. Some club members have been wary to go up the staircase due to sightings of a grey figure lurking in the darkness. The area that the grey figure has been seen is in a very dark and dank corridor which has two rooms off it, while the temperature in the room where the spirit is seen is much colder than the room next door for no logical reason.

The second night of our investigation of Burton took us along to The Constitutional Club, located on a site with over 400 years of historical significance. We were once more joined for the night by special guest Phil Whyman who had not previously investigated the club together with his colleague and friend Nick.

My first vigil took a team to the Club's cellars, and this was to mark a moment of significance for the team I was leading, as well as for myself and Kelly, as it typically takes something remarkable for us to question any activity that we encounter. We began the vigil with a dowsing experiment as I asked each of the team to walk the full length of the cellars with dowsing rods to see of any of them could connect with any activity or energy around us. Linzie was the first to notice movement of the rods as they appeared to point to one of the cellar rooms near the stairs for which the door was currently closed. Scott then noticed more significant movement of the rods, this time pointing in the opposite direction towards the wall and the foot of the stairs. Here I thought an experiment would help reveal some more about this movement, and I asked Scott to walk up the stairs to see where the rods started to point. Amazingly this time they appeared to be drawn backwards as if pointing towards the spot between the bottom of the stairs and the adjacent room. So in an attempt to discern what this may be linked to I asked each of the team members to link together in a circle and concentrate on an image of the person who they felt might have connected to the cellar. Interestingly the trend was towards a female, while Scott revealed that not only was his temperature rising dramatically, but that he also felt the impression of this woman whilst dowsing and had a feeling that she may have lost her life at the foot of the stairs, possibly after a fall. This intrigued me as I would not have described Scott as the sort of person who is open to suggestion or whose imagination became overactive in such circumstances. This gave a certain genuine element to his information, while he was clearly experiencing some significant temperature changes. It was at this point that I felt it would be useful to get the four of them to link fingers in a circle and attempt to connect again, but this time at the junction between the foot of the stairs and the adjacent room. It was at this point that Scott started to feel much colder as we asked out for any spirit energy to knock for us or bang some of the metal pipes in the cellar to make us aware of their presence. After this request we heard clear, loud banging coming from either the closed off room adjacent to us or from the cellar from the building next door (which I was later told was an Insurance Office, and it was not expected that anyone would be in there in the early hours of a Sunday morning, let alone banging around in the cellar). So I made the decision to open the door to this room and continue the séance. Again we were getting noises in response to our plea for a sign of activity, while Kelly clearly felt uneasy as she later described the sensation of something breathing or blowing on the back of her neck (there were no obvious breezes or ventilation anywhere in the cellar). At this point the fear began to take hold as Linzie jerked forward after experiencing what she described as a definite 'poke' in the small of her back. The team were clearly shaken by this activity and nerves were becoming frayed, so much so that Kelly and Helena decided that they had experienced enough, and left the cellar. This left four us to link in while standing in the doorway of the room, again asking out for a clear sign, at which point 2 very clear taps could be heard immediately in response to my question. The atmosphere was thick with fear and tension, and to be honest even I began to imagine eyes in the dark peering towards us. At this point we heard the other 3 teams returning to base camp upstairs, and in some senses we were all relieved to make our way out of the cellar for what was definitely a well deserved and welcome break.

Vigil number two took place in the Billiard Room and Bar area where we had set up base camp for the night. This time we decided upon using the Planchette in an attempt to connect with possible spirit energies in the building. Initial activity was disappointing with no more than the odd jerk, which is easily put down to involuntary finger movements. We then decided to resort to having only females on the planchette while I asked out loud for a response. At this point we were joined by our Historian for the night, Carol, who had connected with energies in the room on other investigations, and she felt her additional help would aid our pursuit of activity. Sure enough, having 3 females on the object appeared to do the trick, as we started to get more pronounced movement from the pen, communicating that we had connected with a male energy who initially revealed himself to be Michael (Carol felt this might have been Michael Bass). However, further questioning only appeared to confuse the issue as we received a number of contradictory answers. The pen did manage to draw an almost perfect circle, which was interesting, while during the experiment Rich had picked up some anomalous readings on the Canum. The device began to indicate activity initially near to the table where we were attempting the automatic writing, while a high reading was also captured in the back corner of the room.

Our third vigil took a team up to the first floor dance hall, a room which had not been investigated on our previous investigation. The large square hall boasted 3 enormous mirrors at one end which suggested that maybe an attempt at Scrying would be a useful experiment to embark upon, especially as none of the team had tried this before. I split the 6 of us into 3 pairs, each of whom took turns in sitting on a chair in front of their mirror while the other stood behind them and observed any possible changes in features and appearance. My mother suggested that she had morphed into an American Indian, while my father suggested that he could see the image of an Eastern European muscle man followed by that of a Vulcan (of Star Trek fame). It just goes to show what sensory deprivation can do to the eyes at 4 o'clock in the morning! We then decided upon a linked circle séance sitting in the centre of the dance floor, where apart from a few creaks from the direction of the dressing room in the corner (it must be noted that it was very windy outside), no activity of any note took place. There was one instance however when Kelly took the reigns and decided to ask out, at which point the light in the hallway outside (which we had turned off when entering the room) suddenly came on, filling the room with light. And then shortly afterwards the light was turned off again, while at no time did we hear any noise or movement from outside the room. Upon investigating the source I did discover that there was an additional light switch at the bottom of the stairs, which could account for the fact that we did not hear the perpetrator, although their identity remained a mystery.

The fourth and final vigil of the night took us up to the notoriously creepy top floor apartments, where there was no electricity and each of the rooms were in a significant state of disrepair. Earlier in the night both of our mediums had suggested a negative energy in this area, while Andrew had also felt that there may have been something a little more 'elemental' than we would otherwise have expected. We began by attempting to connect with the spirit of a woman in the bathroom, who some had earlier suggested may have been drowned in the bath. Unfortunately we had no responses to our plea for activity, so it was decided that some smaller vigils in this room might create a more conducive atmosphere for activity, or at least for fear and imagination to take hold. Rich and Mark spent a short time on their own in the bathroom where unfortunately nothing happened, followed by a 15 minute solo vigil by yours truly, which again proved to be fruitless, if a little eerie at times. The clock had reached 5.30am and the sky began to lighten outside, heralding the end to our nights work.