The Red House Museum

30th September 2017

2017 was turning out to be a cracking year for marvellous locations thanks to Dan and Tracy (our location managers).

Our next investigation took us to the Red House Museum in Christchurch, Hampshire.

History.

Before it was a museum, the red brick museum was a workhouse. The original workhouse dates from 1745 which was a thatched barn standing on the site of our art gallery. The current museum was first built as a workhouse in 1764.

The workhouse would have housed the poor, although everyone who was able had to work to earn their keep. Up to 200 men, woman and children lived in these buildings at one time!

After the Poor Law Act in 1834, when the Christchurch & Bournemouth Poor Law Union was created, families entering the workhouse would have been separated. The workhouse would have provided health care and education for the children. In 1881 a new workhouse was completed on Fairmile Road, now Christchurch Hospital and the Red House became the home for the Vicar of Christchurch, the Reverend Bush.

Investigation

It was a very stormy night so travelling down to and finding the location proved to be a bit tricky. Eventually we did manage to find a car park next to the Museum so we parked up and made our way to our exciting new location.

Once we had set our drinks, snacks and equipment in the chose area (we were using as our hub), we were treated to a tour of the building by our lovely hosts.

It was noted that during the tour, a big white feather was spotted on top of one of the glass cabinets which was definitely not there before.

Bearings gathered, we then split the team into 2 groups. Our team decided to set up a table tipping exercise on the ground floor by a mock up kitchen. Maria started to call out. Not much happened at first but then we started to hear the familiar creaks and cracking noises you hear when the energy is starting to build up. Not long after this, we started to hear knocking sounds (from under the table) which seemed to answer our questions intelligently. We seemed to be communicating with a female spirit. My son (James) accompanied me to this investigation and despite being only 12 years old, is a very confident investigator. James started to ask questions and seemed to get quite responsive replies.

While this experiment continued, James and I decided to relocate to one of the exhibit rooms upstairs. We chose the archaeological room. This room had an exhibit which was particularly interesting. The exhibit was an Iron Age grave with the imprint of where one of the bodies lay in the grave. James and I got comfortable and I started to ask out. At first it felt very comfortable in the room. Gradually though, we started to feel a bit uneasy. Dan came up to see if we were ok. We said that we were and just wanted to get away and do a lone vigil. Dan sat with us for a bit while we attempted to call out. About 10 minutes later, we heard something which sounded like an object falling to the floor. We had a look but couldn’t find anything. We were just talking about it when a few others came into the room. We sat around together for a while but James and I wanted to continue our lone vigil so we relocated to another room.

Just around the corner from where we were, was another smaller room. People had reported that they did not like this room so we decided this was a good place to try. We both sat at the far end of the room by the window. I started to ask out and James asked me not too. I asked why and he said that he was feeling very spooked. I assured him that we would be fine and reminded him that this is what we were here for. I called out, while I did, I heard something in the room that sounded like a shuffle. We both startled at this. I went to call out again (but admittedly this was reluctantly). We didn’t hear anything else but the room did feel very uncomfortable and I must admit I did feel quite scared in there. It almost felt like we were not supposed to be in there.

James and I decided to go and have a break so we went to the hub where we met back up with a few of the team.

After our break James and I went back downstairs and re-joined Maria. She had been getting some great results with the table tipping experiment and told us that the cauldron hung up behind her in the fireplace had started to swing at one point.

Maria had just decided to relocate as we re-joined her. We went into a side corridor which had lots of different dresses and suits behind a glass display case. This also looked very eerie in the semidarkness. We stayed in this area for a while but nothing much happened.

We went upstairs and back to the little room where James and I had got spooked earlier. I didn’t sense the ominous feeling that I had felt before but James wasn’t too happy to be back in this room. Everyone said how uncomfortable they felt. We called out but despite our best efforts, we didn’t really get any responses.

We walked around the museum but I didn’t sense anymore spirit activity.

The team decided to get everyone back together and try a séance in the mock kitchen where we started. As it was now getting late and James and I had a long journey back, we decided this was a good time to make our way home.

I would like to thank Tracy and Dan for securing this amazing location.