In late 2009 I was invited to go on a ghosthunting event at Inveraray
Jail in Argyll by a tour operator. I wrote up my escapades for two
magazines, a short piece for Scottish Memories, and a longer piece for Discover my Past Scotland. As we get closer to Hallowe'en, here's the article from DMPS (with a couple of links updated) - enjoy!
Ghostbusting in Inveraray
Chris Paton goes in search of the paranormal at a 19th century jail…
A few years ago a discussion was aired in British genealogical magazines
about whether the use of mediums was a valid tool for family history
research. Personally speaking, I don’t believe in ghosts at all and am a
complete sceptic, so have never paid attention to any of this in a
professional capacity.
I should add, though, that this actually flies in the face of family
tradition! In my mother’s paternal ancestry, the Grahams were members of
a spiritualist church on Belfast’s Shankill Road. My two times great
grandfather, Edwin Graham (see pic on right - he's on the back row at
the right), was in fact the secretary of the Ulster Christian
Spiritualists Society and rather dramatically made the newspapers across
the UK in 1926 when he organised an experiment in Belfast City Cemetery
to photograph a funeral, inviting well over a hundred spiritualists to
bring their cameras along to take photographs as the deceased was
lowered into the ground. Edwin believed that it might have been possible
to capture images of other spirits in attendance, and a press report
later claimed that he had been convinced that he had seen the ghost of
his brother at the graveside. I have no doubt Edwin must have seen a
spirit of some kind on that day, though whether we are taking the
floaty, spooky kind is in my mind very open to question.
Nevertheless, having said all of that, I dearly want to believe that
there is something true about the paranormal. After all, wouldn’t life
be just ever so much more exciting? My wife and I regularly watched the
television series “Most Haunted”, myself as an enthusiastic sceptic –
how did they do that, what could have caused that noise? – and my wife
with a view that there could be more to it than meets the eye. So it was
with a great deal of enthusiasm that we recently took up an invitation
from Ghost Events Scotland to attend one of its ghost hunting vigils at Inveraray Castle.
Coincidentally, “Most Haunted” had actually visited both Inveraray Jail
and the town’s nearby castle just a few weeks prior to our invitation,
recording all sorts of apparent poltergeists and spooks. The Ghost
Events Scotland night would be a similar sort of endeavour, with
séances, Ouija boards, and a friendly medium to guide us around. Would
things truly go bump in the night - or would we just keep bumping into
things?
Inveraray Jail
Located
on the shores of Loch Fyne in the heart of Campbell country, Inveraray
Jail was first opened for business in 1820 as a prison of eight cells,
where both male and female criminals, and debtors, could be locked up
after a trial in the adjacent courtroom. A new prison block with a
further twelve cells was opened in 1848, and the whole operation
continued until 1889 when it was finally closed. Having been to the
prison several times before, it was never hard to imagine the horrendous
lives of the prisoners who resided there. From a genealogical point of
view, the museum also provides many useful resources for family
historians, not least of which is its online database of prisoners
located at
http://www.inverarayjail.co.uk/our-history/,
providing information on those convicted, their crimes and in some
cases details of transportation, though it does not provide case notes
for any of those said to still be haunting the place! Prisoners faced a
gruesome time within, having limited facilities, poor food, a small
courtyard for exercise, and the occasional whipping with the birch.
Arriving at the Jail at 10.00pm on the Saturday evening of the event, we
were hastily gathered into a room for a briefing on the forthcoming six
hour vigil, which initially started with some ‘training’. This was in
the form of acquiring ‘protection’ against any prospective baddies out
to get us through the vigil, mainly by imagining some sort of white
light around us – an interesting start, I thought. We were divided into
two teams, and our team, led by a lady called Linda claiming to be a
medium, was soon being escorted to the prison’s new block.
Once inside, with all the lights switched off, Linda apparently began to
sense the spirits of a John and Hugh Campbell pacing up and down their
cell. They seemed fairly quiet to me, so instead I began to wonder what
life must have been like each night for the prisoners, particularly in
the winter with its short daylight hours. It was minus eight degrees
outside, and not much warmer inside. As we left the ground floor, Linda
announced that we were now being followed by a violent sheep stealer
called Robert Stewart. Not one for having my sheep stolen, I quickly
moved upstairs with everybody else. (In fact, a consultation of the
database after the event did reveal that a person of that name from
Glencoe was imprisoned in 1855 for 15 months for sheep stealing from
three farms.)
In
an upstairs room, we were then asked to try to talk to spirits using a
Ouija board. People get awfully spooked by Ouija boards, but not being a
believer in the paranormal, I did not worry about having a go! I duly
stuck my finger firmly on the glass, and after several minutes I was
soon receiving the message loudly and clearly that my finger was getting
very cold, but nothing more. Clearly 19th century prison discipline
must have worked, because none of the spirits there were attempting to
say boo to a goose.
But what about the notorious cell ten? A malevolent spirit was said to
physically throw people from the single hammock fixed to its walls. We
were all asked to squeeze in and a volunteer was asked for to lie on the
bed. Too good an opportunity to put my feet up for a few minutes, I
duly volunteered. I was surprised at how comfortable the bunk actually
was, but sadly surprised by nothing more. I have to concede though that
there is something distinctly surreal about lying on a bunk with ten
people standing around you in the pitch black waiting for you to be
violently attacked.
After swapping Linda for the organiser’s parapsychologist, we then
proceeded to do an ‘EVP’ experiment. This involved asking three
questions into a voice recorder, and leaving gaps in between. Once
played back, some weird noises did emerge in the gaps. Some believed
that these were spirits trying to break through, but I was not at all
convinced.
The
final event of the night, once again with Linda, was a visit to the
court room. In total darkness we had to perform a role play, apparently
seeing a trial underway may have excited spirits to come out and play!
So rather bizarrely I suddenly found myself as the judge, standing
beside the mannequin of the museum’s judge, sentencing some poor wee
woman I had never met before in our team for having stolen her
neighbour’s dog (I should add that no animals were harmed in the making
of this production!). A séance was then held in the middle of the room.
As one of the party excitedly yelled out “I challenge you in the name of God, and even he who cannot be named, to show yourself!”, my wife, a big fan of the Harry Potter books, looked to me and said “Who, Voldemort?”
So was it worth the visit? For me, nothing spooky happened, and as my
wife put it, she went in a believer and came out a sceptic. But it was
most definitely worth it to be allowed a free run around the museum and
to experience it in a way that one normally cannot get the chance to. It
was also a lot of fun. Would I go again? Definitely! And those ghosts
know that this arrogant, sceptical genealogist has yet to be broken -
they have as yet got everything to play for...!
Chris
Order Tracing Your Belfast Ancestors in the UK at https://bit.ly/BelfastAncestors. Also available - Tracing Your Irish Ancestors Through Land Records, Sharing Your Family History Online, Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet, Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed), and Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records - to purchase, please visit https://bit.ly/ChrisPatonPSbooks. For purchase in tthe USA visit https://www.penandswordbooks.com. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page, on Threads at @scottishgenesblog and via Mastodon at https://mastodon.scot/@ScottishGENES.
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