The Swan Hotel

The Swan Hotel

5th July 2009

On Sunday the 5th of July 2009 Phoenix of Wessex and Twilight Shadows had the privilege to investigate the lovely Swan Hotel situated in the middle of the picturesque town of Bradford on Avon. The Swan Hotel is a beautiful Grade II listed building dating back to the 1500's

A Brief History of Bradford-on-Avon

The earliest known settlement in Bradford-on Avon was over 2500 years ago when an Iron Age tribe arrived on the promontory above Tory, and Bradford on Avon has been in existence as a community more or less since then. These people remained in their small settlement during Roman times, gradually spreading towards Bath & Monkton Farleigh. The Saxons then arrived, probably settling on the high ground of what is now St Margaret's Hill, leaving as their main legacy the Saxon Church.

The Normans also had their turn in shaping the town - building the Church of Holy Trinity and the original Bradford-on Avon town bridge. The Romans too left their mark - part of a Roman road has been excavated in the grounds of the Old Ride School, and coffins, coins, and the remains of a prosperous Romano - British villa have been found on the site of the St Laurence playing fields.

Once we had been given a quick tour of the hotel by one the hotels manager Gareth, we headed into the cellar bar for the first of our vigils. As this is quite a large area I decided that splitting the team into 2 groups would be the best course of action. The cellar bar had a very oppressive atmosphere to it which you noticed as soon as you walked in. Gareth had told us during the quick tour that no one on the staff likes to be in the bar by themselves and this included Gareth also. I did wonder if the atmosphere and oppressive feeling was down to the ceiling being very low and the fact you knew you were submerged underground. Before we started I set up a trigger object experiment where I left a series of coins in the shape of a cross on a piece of plain card with pencil markings drawn around the outside of the coins. This shows if the coins have moved at all during the course of the night. After a few minutes trying to figure out how to turn off the lights myself, Dave and Chris sat in the main part of the bar and Maria and her team went to sit in the bunker. We were attempting some glass divination and at the same time Maria's team were attempting to try some table tipping.

After calling out for any spirit people to try to communicate our team did not experience any movement with the glass but we did hear running water during the glass divination experiment. The water seemed to be falling onto the stone floor and we could hear the water splashing on the ground. I went to look to see if anything had started to leak and at the same time a staff door opened and one of the managers came out with a cloth that I assumed was for the leak. I noticed there was a sizeable puddle on the floor and the manager slipped a little when he walked through the water. I went back to the team and we resumed the experiment. As it was fairly quiet in this room we decided to relocate and move to the function room. Whilst in the cellar bar all EMF readings were normal.

Myself, Dave and Chris took a little time to get used to the room. We set up another glass divination experiment and settled down at a table and started to call out. This room did not feel particularly oppressive or threatening but already it had an atmosphere building. We started to hear taps at the far end of the room where there is a coat rail and rest room. We asked questions to see if we could get a response to and to our amazement we would hear taps almost immediately after a question was asked. I started to feel that the presence was female and asked if this was correct. We heard a tap and took this to mean yes. Chris also said that he was sensing a female presence that he felt may of worked in the building but she was happy and not in any distress. Dave also exclaimed that he thought he could hear a violin being played and both Chris and Dave thought they saw someone walk passed the outside window whilst we were in the room but when we looked no-one was there. We all thought at one point we saw movement reflected in mirrors in the room. Whilst in the function room all EMF readings were normal.

Our next vigil was in room 11. This room had a beautiful four poster bed in it and had a lovely welcoming atmosphere to it. We settled in the room and sat in silence whilst we tuned into the room. We asked out for quite a while and at the time we thought that nothing we could call paranormal happened whilst we were in there. However. During our time in the room the tap started to drip in the bathroom which we discovered is not normal for this room at all.

As we thought that room 11 was quiet we decided to go back to the cellar bar for a final investigation. Maria's team was in the other room we were allowed to access too and in this room it was reported that the water would actually gurgle up the drain pipe and a spout of water would shoot out of the plug hole in the sink in the room. Even though this has been looked into by plumbers the problem has never been solved. We decided to go and sit in the lounge part of the cellar bar which was were Maria's team had been earlier. We turned out the lights and called out for a while. We did not experience any activity whilst in the room but the oppressive feeling was still very much there.

As it was a Sunday we decided that this would be a good time to call it a night. We were invited back into the main bar by the management and over a drink we discussed what we had experienced during the evenings events. During this chat we found out to our amazement that none of the staff know where the water comes from that appears on the floor in the cellar bar. I exclaimed that we had heard it falling and splashing on the floor and we assumed that David the manager I saw at the time was coming to clean the water up. He then told us that he had only come down to the cellar for something and had slipped in the puddle on his way out. As most of the team had now gone home Gareth thought it would be a good idea to show us some more mysteries of the hotel and have a look in the cellar bar again. We were shown a stairway to nowhere which is partly visible in the kitchen cupboard. We then went back to the cellar bar and noticed another puddle but not in the same place as before. We had a look at the arch way above the area where the first puddle appeared and this was bone dry. There were also no water marks down the wall or any holes in the floor. We again explained what we heard whilst down in the cellar and can only describe this as water falling from a height and splashing on the floor.

We discussed our collected information gathered from both teams with the staff and both teams felt there was a female presence in the hotel but she was harmless and totally happy.

My trigger object that I had placed in the cellar bar had not moved but Maria's trigger object she has set up also in the cellar bar had moved which I took a picture of.

We would like to thank the staff at the Swan Hotel for this amazing opportunity to investigate one of Bradford's long standing landmarks and hope to visit again soon.