The Rachel Fowler Centre

Saturday 11th May 2013

On Saturday 11th May, our investigation for the night took place to the Rachel Fowler Centre In Melksham Wiltshire.

The Rachel Fowler Centre was formally a congregational united reform church which was founded in Melksham in 1778 by the Rev John Honeywell. Between the years 1883 to 1900, the building was completely renovated and school room was constructed on adjoining land owned by Miss Rachel Fowler. The church organ was installed in 1894 and even though it now does not work, it is still in its original place up on the upper gallery.

Miss Rachel Fowler was a member of a prominent business family in Melksham during the 19th Century. Rachel appeared to be an outstanding person who was dominant and determined and very much an individual who had an interest in the welfare of Melksham and its people. She had a particular concern with Widows and spinsters who had fallen on hard times and were unaccustomed to applying for ‘poor relief’

The centre today is used for a multitude of purposes from church meetings to musical rehearsals and much, much more.

I had previously lived in Melksham for many years and even though I was aware of the centre, I had actually never been inside it. When we went there for our initial meeting, I was pleasantly surprised and actually shocked at how beautiful the main hall is. When you walk inside the hall it takes your breath away at the almost regal feel to the place. The organ that sits on the upper floor in the gallery gazes majestically down at you and I can only marvel at what the hall was like when the church was originally commissioned. Another thing that struck me was the huge portrait they have of Miss Rachel Fowler in the reception hall. Just by looking at the portrait you get a distinct feeling that she was firm but fair. Even though Miss Rachel Fowler was buried in the churchyard of the Quaker Church, (now the spiritualist’s church) you can most definitely feel her presence in the building. Her headstone was donated back to the Centre in more recent times and it can be seen in the main hall.

Our team for tonight’s investigation consisted of me, Dave, Maria, Andrew and Tony. After a brief set up session where we placed monitors in the back room, trigger objects in the back room and upper gallery (trigger objects are items of interest placed on card or paper. It is hoped that they will encourage any spirit person to move them. Religious artefacts are mostly used. However I use money which I arrange on card and draw around. This will show if the object has been moved.) Several video camera’s with night vision and a digital voice recorder. Digital video recorders are very good at picking up light anomalies and orbs that are thought to be the first stage of a spirit manifestation. Digital voice recorders are also good for capturing Electronic Voice phenomena. (This is where a spirit voice can be captured which otherwise would not of been heard).

We decided to try table tipping for our first experiment. Table tipping has been a popular way of consulting spirits since 1852. The most popular method of ‘consulting the spirits’ was for several persons to sit round a table, with their hands resting on it, and wait for the table to move. If the experiment was successful the table would rotate with considerable rapidity, and would occasionally rise in the air, or perform other movements. We sat around a table in the middle of the church hall. We had turned out the lights (and only the emergency exit lights remained on which instantly gave a very eerie feel to the place. We placed our hands on the table and started to ask out to see if there were any spirit people in the room who wanted to make contact. This can sometimes take a while to build up enough energy. Quite quickly we were getting tapping noises from the table which at first we didn’t realise was a spirit trying to communicate with us we just thought it was us causing the noises as the table was a little rickety. We hear a noise from the upper gallery which sounds like loud tap and ask if this was a spirit person, could they do this again? We did not get a response to this request so we call out again. I ask if there are any spirit people with us, could they tap on the table. I then knock on the table to show what I mean. Listening back to the voice recording, it is now obvious that we were getting taps on the table but we still had not realised at this point that this was a spirit trying to communicate with us. We call out for a little while longer and it starts to dawn on us that the taps and clicks are not just the sounds from a rickety old table but is in fact starting to resemble the sound of long finger nails tapping on the table or even on a keyboard. We ask if the spirit is ready to communicate and it taps. We ask if the spirit is female and it taps. We ask if this is Rachel and there is no response. I apologise and explain that Rachel is the only name we know which would be associated with the building. We go on to ask if the spirit used to worship here when it was a church and it taps. We ask if the spirit likes to come back to visit the building and it taps. We ask if there are more spirit people here with her and we get a tap that goes 1, 2, 3. We ask are there 3 of you and it taps back in response. We ask if they are all happy and there is no reply. We ask if they are unhappy and there is a very faint tap. We ask “is it because this is no longer a church?” and we get a loud tap in response. We ask if they like what is done in the hall now and we get a faint tap. We ask “do you watch them?” and we get a tap. Maria asks “are you watching us?” and we get a loud tap. We ask “are you happy we are here?” There is a pause then we get another loud tap. This is always a relief to hear. We all laugh and say thank you. I say “thank you for coming through and talking to us.” And we get a tap that almost resembles the syllables used in the words ‘Thank you’ back.

We asked if the spirits were able to move the table using our energies to help them. We can hear the table creaking as if it is trying to move and we keep encouraging the spirits to try to move the table. The sounds coming from the table starts to resemble fingernails tapping again and takes on a more rhythmic sound that resembled Morse code. We ask the spirit if they know Morse code and we get a loud tap. The spirit then goes on to tap in a rhythmic way again then stops. I ask if the spirit can tap this out more loudly as my father can read Morse code and I say if I play the tape (approx. at 34.00mins in) back to him, he can decipher it for us. To our amazement we get much louder taps in exactly the same pattern. (I have yet to play it back to my father).

Dave says at this point that he is feeling much colder. We all agree that it appears as if the temperature has dropped considerably. I say to the spirit that there are 2 baby monitors in the room and it is known for some spirits to communicate through them. I ask if the spirit can speak to us through the monitor and say her name. I then say if they could it would be the quickest way to clear the room. This makes the team laugh. Listen back to the voice recording, as I say this and we laugh, there is a noise captured on the voice recorder that could be a chuckle. It may also just be a distortion in the recording that happened at the same time.

We talk amongst ourselves for a few minutes and the tapping appears to stop. We notice this and I ask if the spirit is still with us. There is no reply. We talk amongst ourselves a bit more and notice that the atmosphere is changing. There seems to be an icy chill and I see something in my peripheral vision towards the entrance to the front door. I ask out again to see if there are any spirit people in the room with us could they make a noise or move the table and Maria asks if they can shut a door or do all 3. We don’t seem to get an immediate response but as we are discussing if we have ever had doors shutting there is a series of events. Dave coughs; we hear a sound that sounds like 3 or 4 steps going up the stairs. Dave say’s “pardon me” and we say, “That wasn’t you!” He replies that it was and we said, “No there was another sound, it sounded like someone going up the stairs towards the gallery”. Listening back on the voice recorder and playing back the video tape. The 3 foot steps are clearly captured. However, it sounds more like they are coming down the stairs and not up as we had previously thought. We ask out to see if it was the spirit that we heard coming up (or down) and just as we ask Tony sees something at the far end of the hall. He describes it like a shadow over by the door to the far right of the hall. He also sees a light momentarily in the same area. We ask out again to see if we can get another response but we don’t seem to get any sort of reply. As we are talking Tony suddenly looks around to where I had previously seen something out of the corner of my eye. I ask him if he has seen something there and he says no, he heard voices. Dave also said he had heard voices. I call out “hello” then go and check to see if anyone has come in through the door. There is no-one there. We discuss what Dave and Tony had heard and they say it’s just like whispering. However they cannot decipher what is being said. We find that this is normally the case on investigations. On the rare occasion that you do hear an audible sound or voice, it usually presents itself just out of ear shot so all you catch is the voice pattern and tone.

We decide at this point it would be a good time to try the spirit board. (We don’t often use the spirit board in investigations. However as our mediums could not be present at this investigation it can sometimes be useful for spirits to communicate properly to us in this situation.) The first spirit we get through spells the name Jacob. When we say this name out loud it takes the planchett over to the word yes. Jacob then spells out the word kind. We say ‘Jacob kind’. The planchett goes to yes. We ask if this is his name and the planchett goes to no. We ask are you kind? The planchett goes to yes. We thank Jacob for coming through and it goes to the word female. We ask if he means he is saying hello to Maria and I. The planchett starts to spell out a word. The word is Harriet. I ask if Harriet is the female’s name that we were talking too and Jacob confirms this. I say hello to Harriet. The planchett then spells out ‘got to go’. We ask if Jacob has got to go. The planchett moves to no. I ask if they mean we have ‘got to go’. The planchett moves to yes. I ask “why do we have to go”? The board spells out ‘bad man’. I ask if they are worried he is going to harm us and the planchett moves to yes. We reassure the spirits we are talking too that no one can harm us and the planchett spells out ‘go’. I ask, “What will he do”? (The planchett spell out the word nasty.) We ask if the bad man is in the room with us and if he is watching us. The planchett moves to yes. We ask if they can tell us this man’s name. The planchett spells out the name Edward. Next I ask the question “What can he do to us”? The planchett starts to spell a few words but it doesn’t make sense. We ask if this Edwards is stopping the spirit people from speaking to us. The planchett goes to yes. We reassure the spirits that we have properly protected us all from any negative spirits from coming through and that they are protected too. As we are talking amongst ourselves I hear footsteps again. We return our attention back to the board and encourage the spirit to try again. This time they spell out the word frighten. We ask if they think Edward is going to frighten us. The board answers yes. We reassure the spirits again and say that we are used to spirits trying to scare us and it is what we want them to do. The planchett then spell out ‘be careful’. Maria replies that we will. I say that I am really touched for their concern for us. I ask if they can stay with us tonight and they move the planchett to yes. We ask if they stay here and protect the place from Edward. They spell out the word ‘unhappy’. We ask if they are stuck at the hall and cannot move on. The planchett moves to no. It then spells out ‘rite helm’. We are not sure what they meant by this. The planchett spells out the word unhappy again. We ask if they are unhappy we are here and the planchett moves to no. We are relieved once again to hear that. We determine that they are unhappy that Edward is here with us tonight. We ask if Edward will not move on. The planchett goes to no. We ask if he is stuck there and the planchett goes to no again. We ask if he just visits there and the planchett goes to yes. We reassure Jacob and Harriet and tell them not to worry. The planchett now goes to the word female. We ask if there is another female with us and the planchett goes to yes. The planchett starts to spell a name which doesn’t make sense at first. Eventually we decide that her name is Helen. Helen then goes on to spell ask nib. We realise she wants us to use the writing planchett.

We have a quick break while we go to get the writing planchett. When we resume we notice that the atmosphere has really changed again so we carry on a while longer with the spirit board. I am starting to feel a bit concerned that we have got 3 spirits that have expressed concern for us. Maria asks me why and just as I explain that it’s not usual for this to happen and to have 3 spirits come forward to warn us about Edward and I go on to say that this is something that has never happened before. Just as I say that the planchett suddenly moves in a very assertive manner to the left hand side of the board and carries on travelling until it is off the board completely and it goes to the far left hand corner of the table. Maria asks if this is where Edward is. Just after she says this we hear a noise and we all acknowledge it. As we are trying to decide what it was we heard I see something in my peripheral vision. The planchett starts to spell again. The planchett starts to spell ‘get out’. We are slightly amused by this as we feel we are now talking to Edward. The planchett goes to the word female the spells the words ‘get out’ again. The planchett then goes to the word female then spell outs the word evil. This we do find amusing. When I say, you had better believe it, the planchett goes to yes. We ask if he means that we are evil and the planchett goes to no. We ask if he means that a female spirit is evil and the planchett goes to yes. We suddenly realise this is not Edward and in fact a completely different spirit. We ask if the spirit can spell out his name. The planchett spells George. The planchett then goes to female. So we ask if George is in fact female. The planchett goes to no. We ask if he means does he want Maria and me to go. The planchett goes to no. I ask he wants a female spirit to go and the planchett went to yes. We ask him to spell out which female and he spelt out Harriet. We asked if Harriet likes George and the planchett goes to no. Maria asks if they knew each other when they were alive and the planchett goes to no. We then ask if Harriet was not kind and did George think she was going to be horrible to us. The planchett goes to yes. We say that Harriet was concerned for us because of Edward and that she was kind. The planchett then spells out Ace male. We find this amusing. I notice that Ace is quite a modern word to use when describing something or someone is good. I ask if George is from the 20th century. I then re-word the question and ask if George died in the 20th Century. He spells out 1980’s. I asked if he was young when he passed. The planchett went to yes. I then ask what his favourite pop group was. The planchett spells out ABC (which was a popular group in the early 80’s). We were all amazed by this. Say to George that this was quite early 80’s then and he confirms by going to yes. I tell George that I have just got back into Adam Ant again and asked if he remembered him. He spelt out ‘so cool’. He then spelt out YMCA. We all think this is amazing. It is very unusual to get a spirit that can hold a conversation that continues to make sense, let alone 4 independent spirits. We asked George how old he was when he passed. He spelt out 18. He then spelt out Car. We asked if he died in a car crash and the planchett went to yes. The planchett then spelt out ‘made me die’. We said we were sorry to hear that he had lost his life at 18. We then hear footsteps above us in the gallery. We all acknowledge it and you can just about hear them on the digital voice recorder. We ask George if there is someone walking about upstairs and the planchett goes to yes. We ask George to stay with us. The planchett then spells out Muskox. I ask the George to start again but Tony says its Muskox. I asked what that was and Tony replied it’s a perfume or rather an aftershave that was around in the early 80’s. The planchett then spelt ‘smell, call, dad’. We asked if that smelt like his dad. The planchett goes to yes. I notice that George is now making some mistakes when he is spelling words which suggest to me that he is getting tired. The planchett then spells ‘please get out’. We ask if he means that we should get out. The planchett goes to no. We ask who he means and the planchett spells out Edward. George confirms that he doesn’t like Edward. We say that we know he doesn’t like Harriet but she didn’t like Edward either. We noticed earlier that there are portrait pictures up in the gallery and we ask if any are of Edward. We ask George if he can go up to check the pictures and we decide to change our experiment. We say to George what we are doing and he goes to goodbye. We ask him to stay with us while we change over.

While we change over we chat about the footsteps. Tony also says that he thought he kept seeing a figure in the corner of his eye. We decide now is a goodtime to have a natural break and check our equipment.

When we go back to the investigation, we decide to first of all check the trigger object that I had placed upstairs in the gallery. I also remembered that the pictures upstairs had the surname of Maggs. While I was going up the steps, I felt a bit threatened just before I reached the top step. I didn’t say anything to anyone though. I went to check the trigger objects and a few had moved a little. We spend some time chatting upstairs in the gallery and then head back down the steps. Maria (who was first down) asks who was last up here. Tony said he was. She asks if Tony had shut the door up to the gallery. He said no then asked why. “Because it is closed now” came the reply. We try to see if we can get the door to close on its own. We can’t. Even if we give the door a gentle push it doesn’t close and it also creaked a little (which we had not heard). We are astounded. The door does not swing shut by itself and there is no draft. .

We decide to try the spirit boxes next. A spirit box is a device that scans radio waves and it is thought that a spirit can communicate through the white noise. While we are setting up Dave notices that the door to the gallery has closed once again. We decide to set up a camera on the door to see if it can capture this happening. We then get back to the investigation

While we are listening to the spirit box we hear something hit the ground. It is quite clearly picked up on the digital voice recorder. I ask if someone is throwing something at us. I ask if George can communicate through the spirit box but we don’t get any real reply. I then ask if Edward could communicate through the box and we hear ‘might do’. We then hear ‘yes’ and ‘go’. Maria asks him “why do you want us to go”? We ask this several times but get no response. We ask if they want us to go. No response. We ask if they want us to stay. We hear ‘yes’. We ask for their name. Some of us think it said Fred and some of us think it said Edward. We ask again for a name and we think we hear it say ‘stop asking me’. We keep asking for a while but we don’t really get anything definite from the spirit box. We are just asking if the spirit has a message when something drops to the floor with an even louder clatter than the one before. This is also clearly picked up on the digital voice recorder. We go to find the object that has just been dropped on the floor. All we can find is what looks like a hardened piece of chewing gum. As we are deciding if this had dropped from one of the underside of the tables (after being placed there once upon a time) Maria heard the word ‘dropped’ come from the spirit box. Tony also confirmed this. We don’t get a response from the spirit box again for some time. However, we do hear a strange noise that sounded like steam (from a coffee machine) or curtains been drawn. Listening back to the digital voice recorder I can clearly hear the hissing noise. I can also hear a voice just after this saying something quite close to the recorder which is none of us. However I cannot quite make out what is being said. It sounds like ‘masher’. We start to talk about the Tavern pub and that some of the noise might be down to that. As we are discussing this we hear a rude word come from the spirit box. We ask if they meant the people in the pub and asked if they annoyed the spirits. We heard ‘yes’ and another rude word. At this point Tony has to go home.

We continue on with the spirit box. We hear the words ‘come in’. Andrew asks “who is coming in?” We don’t seem to get a response to this question despite Andrew and Dave asking. Maria and I both see a flash. We are not sure where it came from. We don’t get a response from the box but we discuss what we have heard. Andrew points out that the rude words we heard would not have been from a radio transmission due to broadcasting rules. The Spirit box is not a digital radio so cannot pick up any podcasts that are not held to this restriction. Dave asks again for any spirits to communicate to us through the spirit box and tell us their name.

As the energy seems to of left the main hall we decide to locate to the back room. We start to set up and try Dave’s spirit box that is a bit different to Andrews. I start to take pictures and say ‘flash’ (to warn others to close their eyes). Maria thinks she hears the word flash from the spirit box but I say I thought I heard the word Melksham. We start to investigate the back room but with the noise from the pub garden make it very difficult to hear any of the subtle knocks or noises we may be looking out for. I also feel that we may draw attention to ourselves to the pub revellers in the garden so we decide not to continue in this room.

We go back to the main hall. We decide now would be a great time to try the writing planchett. This is not a piece of equipment that I normally use either so to see this in action was fascinating and also slightly disturbing. To use a writing planchett, you need quite a large piece of paper, and you place your finger on the planchett lightly like you would do a glass if you were using glass divination. The pen that is placed in the planchett then writes as the planchett is ‘supposedly’ moved by the spirit to write a message to you. The planchett moved quite quickly. I could see the pen lifting when the spirit had finished a word. It looked very odd and a little eerie. The first message we get is ‘yes my name is…’ We couldn’t work out what the name was. We ask again. The planchett writes the sentence again rather than just the name. The writing pattern looks very similar to the first sentence. We are not able to decipher it properly though so ask the spirit to try again. We get the planchett write a few other things. Each time it’s hard to decipher. I ask for the spirits to do something spectacular and it looks like the spirit wrote ‘yes, leave’. Maria asked the spirit not to be so grumpy. I then ask the spirits to do something amazing. The planchett starts to wright again. The sentence looks very similar to one that was written before. We realise it says ‘bang when you least expect it’. Meaning something amazing will happen when we are not paying attention and it will take us by surprise. We ask the spirit to confirm that’s what it meant. The planchett starts writing again and the message says ‘yes, when (and we think it says ‘you go at the end’). We ask if Edward is still with us. When the planchett starts to write we can make out the name George. It also looks like the word bed has been written. We ask if Drunk and noisy people annoy him. We can make out the words ‘yes, always’. I ask if they ever try to scare them away. We get yes in reply. Maria asks “how you scare them?” We get what looks like ‘yes, why do you ask?’ We ask what do they do to scare people in the pub next door. We are not sure what is written. Then Andrew realises it says ‘yes, Halloween’. We realise that no one would bat an eye lid at first if someone was in the pub garden in Period dress on Halloween.

We decide to give table tipping one last try. While we are changing over, Dave notices that the room is warmer than when we started after taking the temperature. It did not feel like it. We start to ask out again and we do get a small response. We ask if we have spoken to this person before. We don’t seem to get a response. We ask if we they can make the footsteps again. We ask if the spirit can move the table. It feels like the table it trying to move but we don’t really get much response. We do get slight movements. I ask if the spirit can lift the table on one side. The table does lift on one side. We thank the spirit and ask the spirit if they are able to lift the table so well, could they move one of the coins from my trigger objects or even knock on the table. We get light knocking noises from the table. Maria asks for a louder response. Dave says there were 3 little taps.

After this we don’t get much else in spirit activity. We decide to wind up the investigation and pack up for the night. We go and check the camera which has been filming the door to the upper gallery. The door is still open. We go around collecting our equipment and I go upstairs to check the trigger object. Again I feel threatened on the stairs in the same place as before. The trigger objects do not appear to of moved much more but some of the coins are not in their original place. We go back down the stairs and are astounded to find the door to the upper gallery has closed again. This is typical spirit behaviour. Nothing ever happens when you have the camera’s going. The trigger objects in the back room also had moved a little.

I would like to thank the staff at The Rachel Fowler Centre for allowing us permission to investigate at this amazing location. This really has been one of the best investigations to date.

I would also like to thank Maria, Andrew, Tony and Dave for giving up their Saturday evening. It is always a pleasure to go on investigations with you all.