The Ghosts of Mitchell Laithes
A group of friends and I had always been interested in the paranormal and had attended several " ghost hunts " which had been arranged by some of the countries leading paranormal groups who charged quite a lot of money for the pleasure of accompanying them on an investigation in what they always stated in their adverts that the investigation was going to be held in one of the countries most haunted location and invaraibly the night panned out in just the same way whoever the group who due to taking money paying guests felt duty bound to put on a show for the fare paying public and put on a show they did, Onbe I remember well was held in Annesley Hall in Nottinghamshire which was the home of Mary Chaworth whos lover was none other than Thomas Lord Byron who often frequented the hall, they gave us a lot of history surrounding the building with the aid of their " historian " and walked us around the building and its out houses then it began getting quite boring and people were wanting to some concrete evidence of the spirit world so as if by magic it happened.
At thisnt in the investigation one of the team became possessed by only what I can describe as a very bad actor and another team member who was never more than a stones throw away from any noise that was heard and indeed any stone which was thrown alledgedly by spirit, the more investigations we attended we witnessed the same nonesense going on within the teams which in turn left us all feeling so dissillusioned by the whole thing and a sense that these teams were raking in large amounts of money by conning the public, so we decided to conduct our own paranormal investigation in an abandoned mental hospital which at one point in its history was also a hospital for infectious disease this hospital was just beneath the village of Earlsheaton a suberb of Dewsbury in west Yorkshire the name of the hospital was Mitchell Laithes.
We booked a taxi to take us and our equipment to our destination as we entered Earlsheaton the taxi driver pulled into the car park of the spangled bull public house we asked him why he had stopped there he told us that he could not, dare not take us to that place and warned us of the dangers of going there and told us of the many ghosts that were supposed to roam through the buildings and grounds, he gave us directions and told us it would take us fifteen minutes to get to the entrance gates. We thanked him and laughed to ourselves we made our way down the road chatting with each other about the taxi driver and his fears, we walked through an area called woodburn then arrived at the entrance gates to Mitchell Laithes hospital.
At the side of the gate ran a small stream which gurgled and bubbled as it passed under a small culvert into what was laughingly named " the Lagoon " which conjures up images in the mind of palm trees and a clear pool of water when in reality it is a sewerage treatment plant.
As we peered through the gates the whole sight looked quite eerie as it was shrouded in mist with the old building standing in the distance looking just has it had in its heyday with the exception of some broken windows and graffiti, from what we could see the building was surrounded by beautifully manicured gardens which were obviously still being tended by a proud gardener, there were trees and shrubs all around without a branch or twig out of place, the eerie thing was the silence which to be honest was deafening along with the mist which seemed to emanate from the ground as it rolled over the lawns and pathways like the scene from the very best of horror films very Gothic as though the set of a vampire story.
We pushed open the old ornate cast iron gate which creaked into life with each push due to its great age and the rust which had clung to the hinges, then we entered the grounds, as we walked up the driveway we noticed a small building to our left which stood a good distance from the main body of the house, this building seemed to attract us all as though something was willing us to enter if we dare.
Nervously we opened the door and a strange smell came from within a smell that we had not come across before we spoke about the smell and in the end put it down to the age of the building and the length of time it had stood empty we then opened an inner door which led to the mortuary room and standing in the center was was the old mortuary slab so cold looking and the porcelain was so white as our torchlight shone on it a slab which had obviously had many dead bodies upon it during the hospitals history the drainage channels were very clear where all the blood of those who had passed would have been washed away and into the drain during post mortem's, even the block where the dead persons head would be rested during that final invasion of their privacy, the smell of death lingered.
A cold shiver ran down our spines s we stood and looked and though about what had happened in that room and what the room had witnessed over the years, as we left the post mortem room all of us had in our minds that we had just seen what is the future for everyone alive on the earth today and that everyone of us would end up on some mortuary slab at some point as nobody gets out of life alive, we all agreed that we must come back and do an investigation there after dark.
The closer we got to the building the more the mist seemed to roll around the foundation stones and then spread out across the lawned areas as though stretching out to reach us, surely this building could not be as unnerving as the mortuary had been or could it ? The mist stretched up the walls and entered into the building through the broken window panes, we arrived at the front door where someone had written " all who enter here will die" sadly that was so true for many of the patients who who had entered those premises never to see the light of day again people who due to their mental illness were shut away from the larger society and for many years underwent some very dubious treatments and therapies which if you believe the stories were inflicted by some very sadistic doctors and nursing staff, some of the treatments were tantamount to torture from people who seemed to enjoy inflicting pain and suffering in a physical way to poor unfortunates who already had tortured minds.
There was constant experimentation with anti psychotic drugs which were like a chemical cosh which dulled the brain and put people into heavy sedation many of these drugs were responsible for the deaths of some of the patients, then there was electro convulsive therapy where an electrical current was passed through the head of those suffering with depression which induced epileptic fits often resulting in broken limbs due to the patient thrashing about and for some even death, then the treatment that they all feared more than any other the frontal lobotomy where a spike was put through the frontal lobe of the brain thus rendering it useless which left the patient without any emotion at all a sense of nothingness and again many suffered all manner of problems after the operation and again many died.
As we opened the door to the entrance lobby we saw a desk and a couple of chairs which were upturned against a wall and above an old Victorian style fireplace was a portrait of queen Victoria which was askew on the wall where wallpaper and plaster were peeling away from the structure of the building, we decided to make this our hub so that each investigator new where to return to should we become split up for any reason, as it was still light we decided to do our baseline tests through the building looking for any natural phenomena which could cause someone to think that there is something paranormal happening things like loose floorboards which creak, broken windows where wind can get through, animal life within the buildings which again could cause a variety of noises and listening for any external noises which could be misconstrued as being paranormal.
To our left was a doorway leading to ward one we approached the door and nervously pushed it open as we entered the room several of the investigators said they could smell surgical spirit which we put down to the fact we were in an old hospital and therefore open to suggestion from our own minds, there were several beds and trolleys which had been thrown about and an old style wheelchair in the corner, the interior of the ward was decaying and plaster was falling from the walls exposing bare brickwork, we began our tests in this area and through the other wards and doctors offices and nursing areas we had all the usual equipment such as emf meters which is supposed to give out an electro magnetic reading as to whether there is a spirit presence as spirits use electricity to build up their energy or indeed if there is something around which is giving a high electrical output most meters have a scale of one to ten the possibility of finding anything in this place with an electrical charge would be very slim as the hospital has been closed for years, we also used digital thermometers which would show any increase or drops in the ambient temperature of the building as should a spirit be around the temperature will drop significantly, as we walked around we found several areas where noises were heard but put it down to loose flooring and things moving in the breeze which came through the broken window panes causing drops in the temperature throughout the building.
We returned to the hub and chatted about what we had experienced and whether we thought that there was anything paranormal going on within the walls.
The darkness came all too soon and the whole building took on a completely different persona one of a scary old mental hospital one of which had been the subject of many horror movies, it was time to start the investigation in earnest but this time the lights were out and the only light we had was torch light and the light from our cameras the time was 2130 hours we made the decision to go back down the driveway to the mortuary building as though we wanted to get this part of the investigation out of the way as quickly as possible, we were all dreading opening those doors again and we felt a real sense of fear that something would be there waiting for us something that had returned from the behind the veil of death even though we were desperate to find something paranormal something to give us the knowledge that there are ghosts and that there is something beyond death.
We started the cameras rolling the entrance and slowly walked to the doors leading to the mortuary room that room where so many post mortems had taken place, it was pitch black in there we started taking photographs and as we did the flash from the cameras caught something on the mortuary slab we quickly directed our torches at it and there sat on the end of the slab resting on each side of the post mortem head rest were two teddy bears none of us could remember seeing them when we had been in the room earlier the teddy bears were very careworn and obviously of great age we were all stunned and had no idea as to how they could have appeared there, the cameraman informed us that he had just seen two light anomaly's passing the camera screen which at that point did not mean anything to us as there is a big debate as to the true nature of these light orbs. We decided to do some evp work electronic voice phenomena where a spirit is supposed to able to communicate with us through the voice recording equipment.This is again a much debated subject in the paranormal world as there is a school of thought who believe in something called the stone tape theory where the fabric of the building is thought to contain memories and voices from the past, we played back the evp recording and we had not picked up any voices but we could all hear what sounded like children laughing but it seemed to be in the distance we could not quite work out what it was so put it down to extraneous noise and left it at that. We walked away from the mortuary still scratching our heads about the appearance of the two teddy bears and the vague possibility that we could have missed them the first time we looked in there, we decided to return to the main building.
Once inside we entered through the double doors which led into ward one, there was an occasional flash of moonlight as it appeared form behind the clouds which cast an eerie glow across the ward we were investigating and as we were filming the cameraman told us that several light anomaly's had crossed the screen of his camera, none of us in the group fully understand these light anomaly's or orbs as they are more popularly known which can just as easily be caused by camera refraction or particles of dust, moisture or even insects flying past the lens on the other hand there are a good few people who are convinced that orbs are actually sentient energy and can be called on command again this area is indeed very sketchy to say the least, we heard a tapping noise coming from the corner of the ward so cautiously we walked towards the source of the noise and found that it was only the branch of a tree blowing against the window pane.
We began to call out and ask if there were any spirit people or elemental spirits with us in the room and please could they make a noise or show us a sign by throwing something or touching one of us we heard nothing and felt nothing except for a drop in temperature which we put down to it being nightfall, we walked out through the double doors at the end of the ward which led into a stairwell to ward two we ascended the stairs and gently pushed open the doors to the ward and we entered inside this ward was very similar to ward one in appearance but had a few more beds and old screens thrown about the room right at the end by the nurses station was a table and some chairs so we made our way over to it and sat ourselves down we decided to hold a seance again calling out to any spirit person there to come forward and speak with us sadly again we drew a blank and our minds went back to the investigations we had been a part of in the past as paying guests when at this point in the evening there would have been a possession, stones thrown and the seance would be alive with spirit messages and once again the realization that these groups are really making a mockery of something which is so important to other people, we attempted some evp work when we replayed it again there were no voices but we could all hear the sound of very heavy breathing and this at one time being a tuberculosis hospital housing many people with this terrible lung issue gave us some hope and the sound of that heavy breathing whetted our appetites for more.
We left ward two and crossed the corridor which led to ward three as we entered this ward there was a very noticeable drop in temperature so much so that we all fastened up our coats against the cold as we stood there in the entrance our breath was visible which gives some indication as to how cold it really was, we took some photographs and as we looked back on them we could see some very interesting shapes within the mist and what looked like the faces of two children but we put it down to the natural mist of the room and of course our exhaled breath which the camera would pick up, we decided to do an Ouija session so we all sat around a table and placed our fingers on the planchette and asked the spirit of the Ouija to come and help us to contact any spirits within the hospital, we asked the board how many spirits were in the building slowly the planchette moved and spelled out the word "many" we were all a bit shocked and amazed that the board was actually working, we asked again how many spirits were in the room with us again the planchette moved and went to the number two so we knew that we had two spirits in the room with us we asked again if the spirits were male the planchette moved to "no" so we knew that the spirits with us were female we asked the board how old the females were the planchette moved to 10 and then moved to 11 so we had the spirits of two children who had passed away within the hospital walls, we asked the board if it could give us any names and the planchette moved and spelled out Maggie then moved again and spelled out Charlotte, we asked the board what year they had passed away in again the planchette moved to give us a date of 1825 we asked what the cause of death was and the planchette spelled out smallpox.
We set up the evp again and took some photographs around the room but again we sadly caught nothing with the exception of once again of a distant sound of children laughing.
We moved on to ward four which was just a decaying mess with a vile smell which we put down to the many dead pigeons on the floor along with piles of pigeon droppings everywhere, we could not stay in the room due to the terrible smell and the fact that the floorboards were rotting which would have made it unsafe to enter.
We made our way back through the wards feeling quiet disappointed that we had not really witnessed anything with our own eyes, no stones had been thrown none of us became possessed, nothing on the evp no figures in the photographs and no full bodied apparitions but I have to say that as we made our way back through the wards we all said that we felt as though we were being watched by some unseen eyes who seemed to be following us.
We got back to the hub and sat with a coffee and chatting about the events of the night and our feelings on what had occurred, we discussed the Ouija session and we all agreed that it was not any one of us who was pushing the planchette, we checked through some footage that had been filmed and all we could really see were orbs floating around but as we looked we could see that there were two orbs which were much brighter than the rest but we did not have an answer to what they were and why they were brighter than any other and we thought nothing more about it.
The sun was due to rise so we decided to pack all our stuff away and leave the old building on leaving we closed the door and looked back at the sign which stated " all who enter here will die " we were all happy to be alive, the sun was just beginning to appear over the brow of the hill, we walked down the pathway past the beautifully manicured gardens with the lawns full of dew which glistened in the early morning light, cobwebs hung from the shrubs as though encrusted with diamonds and everywhere around us was a beautiful silence.
As we walked further down past another lawn we noticed that someone had walked across the grass as the imprint of their feet was still there in the dew as we looked more closely we saw that it was two sets of footprints and stranger still they were the footprints of children but how could this be? it was early morning the sun was just rising in the sky the hospital was miles away from any housing, we all just stood there and stared and as we were looking we heard what sounded like children laughing, as we turned to look back up the drive leading to the hospital there at the very top stood two young girls both dressed in long night dresses each holding a teddy bear the children then waved at us before vanishing into the morning light.
Finally we had seen what we had been searching for, we vowed to return at a later date and see if we could catch sight of the spirit children again or maybe even the many more spirits who are said to haunt Mitchell Laithes
