The Bridge Tea Room

21st June 2014

The Bridge Tea Rooms.

Our next investigation took us to the picturesque building in the centre of equally picturesque Bradford-on-Avon, Wiltshire.

The Building has a superb old world look to it and has been in many guises over the years. It has been a bakery, a junk shop (to name a few), a residence and now a Tea Room. A plaque on the outside of the building bears initials carved into the stone of Anslem and Richard Halliday and has the date of the building 1675.

I was extremely excited about this investigation. The owner had told me that he himself had experienced a few strange things at the Tea Rooms while locking up by himself and members of staff often said they did not feel comfortable there when in the building on their own. One of the experiences the owner spoke about was one morning; he heard his name being called. Thinking it was one of his staff calling him he went to find out what was the matter. No one was there.

While we were waiting for members of the team to arrive, we were taken around the building on a little tour. There are 3 stories to the building. The ground, and 1st floor are both used as seating areas for guests and the 2nd floor is the kitchen. While walking up the stairs I thought I saw someone up there already but there wasn’t anyone there. This was to become relevant a little later on.

Eventually everyone arrived so we decided to split into 2 teams. Maria took some upstairs and we stayed on the ground floor.

As we had a few new members of the team with us, we took them through what sort of equipment might be used and showed them how to use them (or the principles behind using them). Despite collecting a few gadgets along the way, I always fall back on my stills camera (compact and DSLR), mini DV night vision recorder and digi voice recorder. We also demonstrated EMF readers, Geo phone, Ghost Box, crystal pendulum and our newest gadget on trial, The Ghost Talker 2. While we were using the EMF readers during the demonstration, we noticed that they were showing unusual patterns of high EMF frequencies around the room. This is a very old building with very thick stone walls and this struck us as odd. We spent time trying the various different EMF readers we had and they all demonstrated high readings in these areas. Though this isn’t necessarily paranormal, it was quite fun and gave the new members a really good demonstration of EMF readers in action.

As it was starting to get dark, we decided to try calling out and seeing if we could get any response. A little earlier, the owner had been telling me that a shade of a lady in old fashioned clothes have seen on the 1st floor. One particular sighting (seen through the banister) while the person was walking up the stairs turned out to be a pair of legs (that faded into nothing) just stood by some tables on that floor. We positioned ourselves around the room and Lesley set up her Geo phone on the mantel piece. I started to call out to see if I could get a response. At first it was very quiet which is normal. It often takes time to get energy going. Lesley Geo Phone started to flash after I had asked a question. Lesley asked out for any spirits to do that again just to confirm this was a form of communication. The Geo Phone light up. We asked if the spirit was female and the Geo phone light up, we asked if the spirit was a child but there was no response. We then asked if the spirit was an adult and the Geo phone lights activated again. We asked if the spirit had lived in this building, the lights remained still. Lesley asked if the spirit worked in the building and the lights lit up. Just as we were getting some really good energy, the owner decided to join us and unfortunately the energy seemed to dissipate. I felt disappointed for the owner as he was really eager to witness some activity.

We decided to take a break and then swap rooms.

Once our break was over, we headed upstairs. We positioned ourselves around the room and started to call out again. Lesley’s Geo Phone lit up a few times but it didn’t seem to respond to any questions. We tried calling out to see if we could get any taps or knocks in response to our questions but nothing happened. I did not want to try any table tipping as all the tables were already set up with very delicate bone china cups and I did not fancy having to pay for any damages should they occur. As it was very quiet we decided to try the Ghost Box. We switched them on and asked out. We got what could have been a few responses to questions through them but it was very hard to be sure. At one time we heard a male voice which seemed to answer our questions but it didn’t seem to bear any relevance to the building. The room felt very comfortable and any energy that had started to build again dissipated quickly. We tried to get the energy going but did not get any more responses of any kind to our questions. This was a shame as I had great hopes for this floor(with the sightings of the ghostly lady), however, she did not seem to want to come out and speak to us on this occasion. As it seemed very quiet, I thought it was a good time to wrap the evening up.

We went back downstairs and it was here that we discovered that the other team had been getting great results. They continued for a little while longer with their experiments and then we called it a night.

I would like to thank the owner of The Bridge Tea Rooms for allowing us to investigate this amazing building and I would also like to thank the members of the team for giving up their Saturday Night.