The Old Lamb Hotel is situated west of Reading town centre, in a small village named Theale. Theale owes much of its past and present prosperity to its good road communications links. In the pre-railway era, the village was an important staging post on the old Bath Road, as witnessed by the number of old pubs to be found on its High Street, and the former brewery that served them. One local legend claims that Theale got its name, "The Ale" from when it was the first staging post out of London along the Bath Road. Another claims that the village once held the record for having the most Public Houses in the smallest area - and indeed at one time the village was home to at least nine. Most likely neither story is true. The name possibly derives from an original meaning of "crossing over water".

This was the first investigation to have ever taken place at The Old Lamb Hotel, and it was also my third with the ISP team. The location was relatively small so only a small group of us attended this event. We were welcomed by Mike who was the Manager of the Hotel, and I quickly went about understanding what sort of experiences he had encountered during his time there. It seemed that there had only been two specific encounters he could recall, both identical, and both involving a full apparition. In the recent past he had twice found himself wandering through the Dining Area of the Hotel between 10pm and midnight when he witnessed the image of a woman, who he described as wearing Elizabethan clothing, standing by the fireplace. Each encounter was only momentary, and as quick as this translucent image appeared it would fade away. Mike could not recall any other activity of note, no strange noises or objects moving around apparently by themselves. It would therefore appear that we were probably dealing with a residual haunting - an image, being replaced from the past.

Upon setting up the CCTV equipment in the Reception Area I decided to start taking baseline EMF readings of the property. Initially I noticed a high peak within the Reception, which seemed to follow a relatively straight line through the extension at the front of the Hotel. The readings would range from 1.5 to 2.3 and stretched from the wall on one side to the window on the other. Initial thoughts were that this was an electrical cable of some kind, however this was not easily supported considering that the readings appeared higher when the meter was midway between the floor and the ceiling. Of equal interest was the fact that the readings continued in the same line outside of the property on both sides. This was not easy to explain, as there were no direct overhead cables, and it would seem unlikely that power companies would have routed an electrical pip directly under the front part of a 16th Century building. Although the cause was unlikely to be paranormal, it was still an interesting discovery. We even considered the possibility that a ley line may run through this building, and that this may have been what I was picking up.

Initially we locked off the Dining Room for the period of the evening which coincided with the time when Mike had witnessed the apparition by the fireplace. We had placed 2 CCTC Night Vision cameras to cover the full breadth of the room together with motion sensors with side of the fireplace. We waited in the faint hope of capturing some illusive evidence, and undertook our first vigil of the night in the Reception Area. We attempted Glass Divination using the letter and number cards and although there was slight movement, most likely subconscious, there was nothing of significance recorded as far as actual activity.

My second vigil took place with Lee in the old bedroom in the original wing of the property. For the most part we relaxed and went about asking for signs of presence hoping to witness some kind of activity. Unfortunately this was another uneventful vigil, so we decided to gather the group together in the Dining Room for a séance. We sat in the half of the room opposite the fireplace, and again tried to link in and encourage some activity. The only thing of significance what that Jim took regular temperature readings from midway within the room and was noticing a gradual fall. Some of the team felt this coldness, although I did put this down to the open door to the side of us which led to the hallway at the rear of the property. Although the temperature did appear to drop as we were asking for it to do so, the fall was not overly significant (maybe 2 degrees Celsius in 10 minutes), and this might simply have been explained by the initial rise caused by the number of people entering the room together with the gradual efforts of the temperature gauge to find am ambient reading. Jim did at one point move to scan the area near the fireplace, where the temperature did rise a few degrees and this was put down to moving away from the natural draught from the open doorway. When Jim returned to his original position however the temperature remained static and no longer fell back to its previous lower reading. Of course this is not evidence of external paranormal influences causing the temperature to fall earlier, however it was still something of a mystery.

Me final vigil of the night took place in Mike's bedroom which belonged to the newer part of the building. Although no activity had been reported by him in this room it seemed wise to thoroughly investigate all areas of the building on the off chance of recording something. Expectedly however the vigil was again very quiet and at this time we decided to call it a night. Although nothing of significance was actually witnessed by any of the team during the vigils, we still have to analyse the footage from the two hour lock off in the dining room. In that regard we still remain hopeful of capturing something, and should any activity have been recorded I will be sure to post it here.