West View Day Nursery

30th April 2010

On the 30th April 2010 the team met up for their latest investigation which brought us to the heart of the lovely town of Bradford on Avon. We were invited by the owner of West View Day Nursery who had mentioned before to us that her staff had witnessed some spooky goings on at the nursery and she was interested to know what we might be able to find out.

When we arrived we were surprised at the size of the building which was formally a private residence before it became a children's Nursery. Before we even started our tour of the building Emma exclaimed that she felt her trouser pocket being tugged.

Before we started our investigation, Dave was told by a member of staff that when she went to let herself in, in the morning, she heard marbles being rolled along the floor as if being played. Naturally this alarmed her as she automatically though someone had arrived early but when she let herself in the rolling sound stopped and there would be nothing there. While we were having our mini tour Pete felt sure that Marbles had been heard rolling along the floor down on the ground floor and also a female possibly in her teens has been heard singing and was described as sounding like an angel. With this revelation Dave looked very startled. He had only just found the information out about the marbles before we started the investigation that night and to that point only I knew about them.

We decided to use the kitchen area as the team hub and split into 2 main teams and one small sub team. Team 1 was made up of Maria, Loretta and Emma, team 2 was made up of myself, Pete, Chris and Dave and in team 3 was Nettie and Ethen. Team 1 went to the top floor to start their investigation, team 2 started in the cellar and team 3 went off to explore the other rooms.

We descended down the steps to the cellar which we noted looked a lot older than the rest of the building. On the very bottom of the steps there is slate set into the stone that I noticed nearly everyone walked over being careful not to tread on it. We turned the lights out and after a brief period of quiet we started to call out. Dave felt very uncomfortable being stood in the left hand corner of the room and moved towards the doorway. Pete went to stand where Dave had been stood instead. I noticed that as Pete was talking, he had started to cough. I also noticed that Dave had started to cough too. Dave said that he felt like his chest was being crushed and Pete likened it to being in sand. Pete said that he had picked up on 2 male spirits. One he felt had died from asphyxiation possibly from a gas leak in the cellar and Pete also felt that this accident was witnessed by a male that was already in the spirit world. Chris and myself could smell incense but Dave and Pete could smell a more sour odour. During our time in the cellar 2 of the team did feel that they had come up with a few names but these are yet to be verified.

After our time in the cellar, we decided to move to the Minnows room what we now refer to as the marble room. Again we got ourselves comfortable, turn the lights off and sat quietly for a brief time. I was filming with my camera and caught an orb almost immediately. Orbs are light anomalies that some believe are the first stages of a spirit manifestation. Pete said that he sensed 2 children, both female, one aged 4 years old and the other 6 years old and he got the names Emily and Mabel. He felt that they were from around 1865 and dressed in traditional Edwardian clothing of tunic/smock dress. I tried calling out and Pete said that he could see the girls were attracted to my voice and were sitting on the floor right at my feet like I was telling them a story. He suggested I sing a few nursery Rhymes. I first of all tried Jack and Jill but apparently they did not recognise this. I then tried singing ring of roses, the Mulberry bush and then had an idea. As Pete had tuned into the two girls energy, he had witnessed a scene that he said filled him with warm. He saw a scene of the girls playing in the room we were now in, it was Christmas time and they were bathed in a lovely warm glowing light that was cast from the roaring fire they were in front of. I remembered from when I was in infant school a carol which I sang. The carol was Here we go a whastling. Pete said that he was suddenly overcome with emotion. This was a rhyme that their mother sang to them. He felt that the children wouldn't of seen their mother much and most of the childcare would of been from a Nanny. He said that this was a family that was very well off and it would of been expected of the mother to socialise which Pete felt the mother was not keen to do. He also felt that the room that we were sat in would of been the fathers study.

After a break we decided to move to the very top floor. While we were in the room it didn't take long for activity to start up. Almost as soon as we settled down we heard a large bang and cupboard door flew open. This made us all jump. We then noticed that there were some crayons on the floor spilling out of a pot. We just couldn't remember them being there before and what seemed even stranger was the crayons seemed to splay out of the pot even further but we we were watching them the whole time and didn't see them move. We also heard scratching noises that sounded like the wooden chairs moving ever so slightly against the carpet. We started to call out to see if we could get any paranormal activity happen. I felt like there was some energy building and felt it was female. Pete and Nettie were sat next to the doorway and I asked Pete if he could sense anyone materialising. When he asked me why I said that I could see a figure stood just behind him which I can only describe as a very hazy outline of a person approx just over 5 ft tall and I felt that it would be female. Pete said that he had gone very cold and said that he felt that this was a watcher. He also felt that with all the energy from the children playing that things would be scene or things would be moved but either this would go un-noticed or un mentioned for fear of being made fun of. He also felt that spirit children would be seen but not necessarily noticed.

Pete also wondered if there may of been a fire in the building at one point or another.

As it was getting late, we had to bid farewell to Pete and Nettie at this point.

We did continue for a short while after with not much else witnessed upstairs by us but we did notice a very strong smell of tobacco smoke and a very sudden drop in temperature in the nursery room on the ground floor and whilst Myself, Dave, Maria, Loretta and Emma were chatting over the nights events in the Kitchen we heard several sets of footsteps over head and also a male voice was heard up stairs on the next floor. Maria also captured a stunning light anomaly on Video Camera in the Cellar

We would like to thank Arlene Caddow for permission to investigate such a wonderful building and I would also like to thank the team for giving up their Friday evening and making the investigation a great success.