New Place was built in 1906, commissioned from a design by Sir Edwin (Landseer) Lutyens who was fwell known for his country houses combining Tudor and Elizabethan periods. The commission was requested in 1904 by Mrs A.S. Franklin to incorporate the interior of an early 17th century mansion she inherited in Bristol (which was to be demolished) and also to perpetuate the name of Shakespeare's house in Stratford-upon-Avon (also called New Place). The Franklyns were connected through the Arden family branch of Shakespeare’s mother, Mary Arden. The Franklyn family lived in the home until 1956 when it was sold to Patrick Harley who turned it into a boys school. The school closed in July 1978 and New Place and the grounds were purchased by the Simpact Company and run as a conference centre and was also used for weddings and dinner parties. Today it is a world class conference centre run by the De Vere group. The paranormal phenomena is wide and varied. During the school years the Dressing Room was used as a sick room and the main room was used as a dormitory. The resident schoolboys often claimed to see ghosts and it is thought that there is secret passageway. One of the managers had a hair-raising experience cleaning up after a party in the Dining Room one evening when a man appeared to come out from the fireplace, walk straight through him and disappear. The manager refused to ever enter that room again. Other reports include an apparition of a housemaid working away in the Bristol room and that of an Edwardian gentleman walking down the main staircase.

New Place was by far the most modern of all the locations I had investigated, but nevertheless it exuded charm and history. The ornate 17th Century staircase was the first thing to catch my eye, and original from a mansion in Bristol, as well as the Shakespearean themes to all the rooms. Our medium for the night, John Crowdey, revealed some of details of the history of New Place during the initial walk around correctly identifying its connection with a former boys school, the fact that it was a copy of another house and that parts of the building had been transported from elsewhere.

My first vigil of the night took place in the Falstaff Room where a few interesting experiences were had. Both Stuart and Sharon admitted to seeing a bright glowing orange light in the corner of the room, while another team member James started to get very emotional when we appeared to link in with a small boy in the room. Of course there was nothing so significant to validate any of these experiences, however many of the groups expressed to having a genuine sensation of some presence in the room.

The second vigil took place in the Yorick Room, where apart from a few knocks on the table which could not be easily identified the main activity experienced was during an experiment with one of the many televisions found in the conference rooms. I had decided to turn the television on, tuned to static and white noise, in an attempt to encourage a spirit to interact with it. After a period of about 15 minutes we had been asking out for a sign of activity after which the television turned itself off. Now typically this is due to an auto-timer which is present on most televisions which will turn off the power after a set period of time. The assumption was that this had been the cause, and knowing that roughly 15 minutes had passed we turned it back on with the expectation that after a similar period of time the power would again cut out. In fact this time the television remained on for the remainder of the vigil, which we estimated to be approximately 35 to 40 minutes. This certainly discounted the possibility of a repeating timer which turned the power off after equal intervals, however there was still no evidence that anything paranormal had indeed taken place.

The two remaining vigils in the Portia and Brutus rooms were for the most part uneventful, as our night came to a relatively quiet end. I am not sure whether it was the psychological fact of the building being relatively new compared to most locations I had visited, or if it was the modern conference room layout in each of the vigil locations, however I never felt anything but at complete ease during the investigation. At no point did I sense or imagine that this wonderful hotel and facility could have been haunted, and from speaking with some of the staff members it would appear that the stories of activity were few and far between. I did however fail to get the chance to investigate the cellars, where Sharon had previously imagined a sinister energy prior to arriving at New Place, so on another occasion I might get the opportunity to explore a little more of the building to see if such a presence might exist.