Theatre Royal Investigation

By Joan Furman

 

 

The Isle of the Dead were invited by another local group to join them at an investigation at the Theatre Royal in Margate

Five of our members, Joan, Wendy, Denise, Elaine and Jeri attended the investigation which took place on 26^th Jan 2008.

The investigation began at 9.00 pm, after a brief introduction, which included the history of the theatre; we were given a tour of the building by our hosts.

During this tour, Denise immediately became aware of a male spirit dressed in evening wear and a top hat that was following us around, and appeared to be observing the proceedings with great interest.

At the end of the tour we were taken to the dressing rooms which had been allocated as the rest area for a brief break, we were then given half an hour’s free time to go around the building on our own and take pictures if we so wished.

The first part of the evening was a vigil, conducted under strict scientific conditions; people were divided into teams and allocated different areas of the building.

Joan went onto the stage, Denise, in the Royal Circle Box, Jeri and Elaine sat backstage and Wendy took up position at the bottom of a flight of stairs where there had been paranormal activity on a previous investigation in the early nineties.

(At the previous investigation Joan had been sitting in the same location and had heard footsteps coming down the stairs towards her, these footsteps had also been heard by Nigel Grainger the other member of the team and had been captured on Video, and to this day, no explanation has been found to explain them)

At 11.30pm the lights were switched off and the vigil began, almost immediately a loud knock was heard, and Joan began to sense a male presence standing in the wings to her left, he was wearing a black jerkin, with a white collarless shirt and dark trousers, she was given the name Edward, and felt that he might have been a stage hand.

At this point she took a photo, which did show a couple of orbs in that area.

A lot of noise was coming from this area, and from the back of the stage. As there is a large roller door backstage, much of this noise was discounted as having been caused by that.

Tapping could also be heard, but this appeared to come from the direction of the Gods and several people heard a noise which some identified as being a cat, others a squawking noise. (Seagulls could probably not be discounted as being a possible cause)

Just before Midnight, Denise began to feel very cold around her legs, and noted a 1 degree drop in temperature.

About the same time a beam of light was seen at the back of the Gods, this happened twice and was seen not only by those on the stage, but by Denise, and those actually in the Gods

We learnt later from the team that had been up there that a stage light had twice powered itself up for no apparent reason.

Several people had also noted tapping noises which appeared to come from that area.

Joan who was sitting on the stage, was aware of a woman in the right hand aisle dressed in dark clothing with her hair worn up in something resembling a bun, but she couldn’t quite describe it.

Later Wendy, who had been sitting backstage by the stairs, stretched a woman that she had ‘picked’ up on, and not only was the clothing very similar but the hairstyle was exactly as Joan had been attempting to describe.

Just after midnight Joan saw something move in the aisle, out of the corner of her eye as if someone had just walked down to the front of the theatre and passed out of view behind the box.

One of our hosts stationed in the stalls had also picked up on this, as did people sitting in the circle, and when notes were compared it was found that this had been witnessed from different parts of the building within 2 minutes of each other.

At 12.03, several team members toward the front of the theatre heard a sound like symbols. There were a set of symbols in the building, but they were under the stage and there was nobody down there.

Shortly after 12.08, there were two flashes of light to the back of the stage, and just after that a sound which sounded like a door shutting.

By 12.18 Denise was now starting to feel very  cold, her legs in particular were freezing and she was aware of several clicks within the box in which she was sitting, followed by a whistling sound, shortly after this she picked up on the name Michael.

At the end of the vigil, notes were compared, and then we had another short break.

After the break we were divided into three groups of five, the isle of the dead members forming their own group.

A series of experiments had been set up around the building on the respective levels, each overseen by at least one of our hosts.

A range of dowsing rods and pendulums were made available for us to use if we wished, although some people had bought their own.

Our team made their way to the Gods, where to try our hand at table tilting

Although we were able to make contact with a male entity, he did not seem strong enough to do anything other than cause the table to vibrate, but we did succeed in getting a response by using a pendulum.

Joan again picked up on the name Edward, while Denise was given the name George.

 When the time came for the groups to swap we made our way down to the Dress Circle, in addition to table tilting a planchette had also been set up on a side table, While Wendy, Elaine and Jeri, joined the host’s medium in another attempt at table tilting, Denise and  Joan opted to try their hand with the planchette.

Although the spirit appeared willing to communicate, it appeared unable to do so, Joan suggested this might be because it needed more energy than she and Denise alone could supply so they were joined by Wendy, Jeri and Elaine.

When asked its name the planchette did begin to move and appeared to be spelling out something, sadly it was discovered that the pen had not been adjusted properly and was not in contact with the paper, so the page was still blank.

At this point it was decide to see if it would be possible to use the planchette itself as a yes/no tool.

This seemed to work quite well,  Joan got the name Frederick, or Freddie as he seemed to respond to, Denise believe he was the man in the top hat she had picked up earlier, and although he confirmed this, Freddie claimed to have been a soldier who died in the Napoleonic wars, during an explosion, not from the actual explosion, but from the fire that resulted from it.

He said he was 27 when he died, which was about 1815, he did not seem able to give an exact year, he said that he was unable to leave the theatre.

 

Soon it was time for us to move to down to the stall area where a table had been set up displaying various pieces of equipment, our hosts explained to us how the equipment was used, and offered us the chance to try some of it out for ourselves.

Although we were familiar with most of the gadgets, there were a few that were new to us, so we amused ourselves for trying them out and adding them to our wish lists.

 

We took another break, after which we were asked to vote on whether we would like to conduct another scientific style vigil, or have a séance on the stage.

The vote was for a séance, so we all went on stage and linked hands.

Sadly the séance passed without much incident, other than several of us again hearing the faint sound of symbols. There were several raps from backstage, but again the roller door could not be discounted as the cause, and there was somebody filming the proceedings so it was possible he might have inadvertently brushed against something and caused at least some of the sounds.

After the séance had finished, Denise did a ‘closing down’ and the evening was bought to and end.

I apologise that the report is not as detailed as I would have liked, but obviously this was not our investigation, all notes were of course handed to our hosts at the end of the evening.

We all enjoyed ourselves immensely and I would like to thank our hosts for inviting us to take part in their investigation and we look forward to working with them much more in the coming year.

Blue orb captured by Wendy Starr.