Haunted Homes

Bob Stevens, his wife Shelley and their children Daniel, 13 and Alicia, 9 live in a 400 year old cottage in Lincolnshire. Strange things first began happening in 2003, when they were renovating the house. Objects go missing, things are constantly moved around without explanation and all their family and friends refuse to stay at the house.

Shelley took a photo of their home and a face appeared in an upstairs window, despite no-one being in the house. They have seen a woman and a young boy appear in different parts of the house and the latter plays with their daughter. They have named the female presence Mabel and whenever something strange happens in the house, they shout her name. The family have also measured temperature drops in their daughter’s room and find their electrical appliances constantly turned on and off.

During the psychometry analysis, Mia held Shelley’s engagement ring and picked up very strongly on the angst and stress that Shelley has been feeling. She was also very interested in a crucifix which she could tell had been blessed. The Steven’s confirmed that a padre, who had come to bless the house, had given them the crucifix.

Mia believed she found the ghost of a woman who had died in a fire and not gone over to the other side. Mia says: “The Stevens family was very interesting for me because even on the first walk round, I was not open psychically but I met the ghost. We had some great activity. It wasn’t evil but it was very active. They are going to feel so much better now, no more musical beds”.

The family is very happy that the ghost has gone and Shelley no longer works at night to avoid sleeping in her room. She believes they are generally much happier and the children will now go to bed comfortably at night.

What can you see when you are looking at someone’s aura?

“I normally start by looking above the head. It’s easier to see colours at the edge of your vision and you lock onto them and can see them properly. It starts as a white shimmer and then goes into colours. There are several basic colours which signify certain things but then there are all the shades of those colours. For instance, blue stands for people skills, caring, healer and all that sort of stuff. But you can go from darkest blue right the way through the colour spectrum to lightest blue and they all mean slightly different things.”

Do you believe in heaven and hell? What do you believe is on the other side?

“I believe that obviously there is a heaven but not in an orthodox way. I believe that there are different levels and I don’t believe that anyone can go from earth straight to hell, or from earth straight to the ultimate heaven. We’re all flawed, no-one one is ultimately truly evil and no-one is ultimately truly good.”

When you give someone a reading, what do you see?

“I start by using visualisation to get into the areas I want to get control of. I do a health scan and visualise a line of light above the person’s head. I send it travelling down and then take away my control and see what happens. It will normally bounce around somewhere there’s a problem, or flare up in colour in a certain area.”

“If I then go into ‘relationships’ I visualise the outline of somebody standing next to the person I’m doing a reading for. Then I sit back and wait to see what happens. They might be pushed a few feet away which means there are problems, or they get closer together which means the person is in a good relationship which is getting better.”

“Finally I go into what I call ‘the zone’ where you get random images. It’s like having memory pictures which aren’t my memories.”

What are guides?

“A guide is exactly the same thing as a guardian angel which means they are individual to each person. They are not random angels that come down and go away again. They get one person to stay with for the course of that person’s life.”

“The reason some people can contact them more easily then others, is just about being open to it. The real magical, strong key is the word ‘belief’. For instance if a mother sees a car on top of their child they won’t stop and think, ‘Can I move that car?’, they’ll be over there and they’ll move it. It’s the same with using the sixth sense, the more you believe you can, the easier it becomes. Igniting belief is the hardest thing. In every religious text ever written the word ‘belief’ appears over and over again. It’s like a secret magic that people don’t realise.”

What is the top thing someone could do to increase their psychic powers?

“Aside from belief, it’s all about control and using visualisation. The biggest thing is learning how to create a space in your mind for the information to come to and stopping your thoughts. You can use visualisation techniques like an empty space, an empty blackboard or a television screen that’s blank. Sit back and wait to see what happens but it takes a lot of practice.”

Do you think your physic ability has enabled you to remain stronger throughout the tragedy you have encountered in your life?

“No doubt whatsoever because the one thing that separates me from everyone else is that I don’t just ‘believe’ in life after death, I ‘know’. We are immortal and this is just one round before we come back for the next one. I know that I’ll meet the people I’ve lost in this life again.”

Have you ever glimpsed any of your other lives?

“Briefly, but I don’t believe that we should spend time working on them because it negates this life, which is the important one. We spend too long trying to work out what we would have been in a past life and most of us would have been drudges. The time for dealing with your past lives is when you go back ‘home’ again to heaven and it all comes back up again.”

“I’ve seen my other lives in a mirror. If anyone wants to have a glance at what they looked like in a past life, sit very quietly with a mirror and keep looking at your eyes without blinking. It will slowly go out of focus and your face will change.”

Why do you think people are so fascinated with ‘the other side’?

“Because one of the scary things about living is dying. Nobody can get away from the fact that they are going to die, no matter what they do, how much money they have or how successful they are. Man has always wanted to know why we’re here and what we’re doing. Orthodox religion gave us structure and understanding in a certain way but it’s not enough now. People are intelligent beings and they want more.”

What are the best and worst things about being psychic?

“The best thing is being able to help people when others can’t. And knowing that there’s more to this life then you can see. Suddenly your life is not being valued on how much you’ve got in the bank, or what car you’re driving. It’s on how many people you’ve helped and what your contribution is.”

“On the downside it’s immersing your self in the pain of other people’s lives and being able to cope with it. Also, knowing when people don’t really like you, even if they are being nice to you. You have to get past that because everyone you know, even if they love you deeply, is going to find you irritating occasionally.”

Are any of the television adaptations about ‘psychics’ true to life?

“Afterlife was very near it. The way she looked and the way she out-focused. But you don’t get ghosts coming to you like that, dripping in blood and gore, the way she saw them. One of the best ghosts I’ve ever seen on television is from the film ‘Ghost’ with Patrick Swayze. At the end, just before he goes over, he’s made of light and it’s one of the most truthful likenesses I’ve seen.”

Do you ever wish you didn’t have this gift?

“I used to, terribly, but now it would be like being blind.”

What’s the worst spirit you’ve ever encountered and what was their story?

“I once brought an entity into a room by playing around. It was in my early 20’s and I was showing off when I took part in a séance. There were people fitting in the room, it was awful. The thing was just pure evil, it wasn’t even a ghost, it was just evil. I only got rid of it by luck and with the help of Eric, my guide. After that I learnt how to do it properly and took it seriously.”

Can you give an example of how your work has helped people?

“I’ve helped people who have been ill and didn’t know what was wrong. I’ve helped people live on from bereavement and those who think about killing themselves because they can’t see any hope for the future. I’ve helped people who think they are never going to recover from a broken heart and people who think they are bad forever and can never be good.”

“I had a letter from a prisoner doing life for murder saying that he’d read my book and that even though he was a bad person, he admired me and wished he could have been a good person in this life. I wrote back to say that one deed does not judge you for your whole life. We can still do good deeds. Even in prison you can still help other people and stop others going down that path, redress the balance. Give people the ability to come back because the biggest thing in life is choice. You can either be a victim or you can be a survivor.”

Can you tell us about the different type of ghosts?

“There are 3 types and the first one is ‘The Visitor’, which is like your Nan popping up at the end of the bed to say hello. That’s not a haunting because they visit and then they go again.”

“Then there’s ‘The Time Loop’, like when people see a Roman soldier walking down a road at the same time every year. The spirit of the soldier isn’t there, it’s like a time re-enactment or a video loop.”

“Finally there’s ‘The Haunting’. Even in death you have choice and nobody can force you to go over. Choice must never be taken away as it’s one of the fundamental rules and everyone knows they have this choice when they are dying. Most people choose bad reasons to stay such as anger, greed and jealously but occasionally it’s because someone is worrying about their family, or leaving someone on their own. They don’t want to leave them and they think they can still help. These gentle ones are people who are not really aware that they are here and need help to cross over to the other side. One woman I met was in her 70’s and the main carer for her husband. When she died she wouldn’t leave him and she got stuck. It’s almost like a safety switch kicks in because imagine how terrifying it would be to be stuck here and no-one could see you. You would be so lonely and scared and frightened. It’s would be too awful for them to be fully aware and know they can’t go anywhere. Although, 300 years appears to be the maximum time they stay here and then they dissipate and go over anyway. I’ve never come across a ghost more then 300 years old. I’ve seen older time loops but not ghosts.”

What have been the high and low points of filming Haunted Homes?

“A low point was filming until 6 or 7am in the morning. It was like being in another time zone. And the ultimate knowledge that when it came down to the clearing, it was up to me. No-one else could step in and help if it got out of hand and I was responsible for the people there.”

“The high point was giving people their lives and their homes back. Plus the crew were brilliant. They were quite a sceptical crew to start with but by the end no-one was sceptical at all. They were a great team to work with.”

What was your favourite episode?

“It was the episode with the Munday’s, who played around with the Ouija board. So many people play around with things and don’t realise what they are doing. It could help a lot of people stop getting into trouble.”

“All the families were lovely, they were just terrified. The deal I made with the production company was that if I got there and the place wasn’t haunted, then regardless of how much work they’d done, I would tell them it wasn’t. I devised a questionnaire for the families but then I couldn’t be included in the choosing because I wasn’t allowed to know anything about them before the filming of the show. I was going in cold. It was scary for them and for me.”

“When I did the psychometry beforehand I knew nothing at all about the families. It could have been two old people, or a young couple with kids. I knew nothing, not even the address. I was told which county they were in but that’s it.”

Theresa Hassett, 50 and her husband Philip, 52 from Yorkshire, have lived in their house for 20 years. Throughout this time they have experienced noises, cold spots, moving objects, ghosts, and the sensation of being touched by something.

Theresa says that there is constant activity in their house, which they believe was once a Coaching Inn. They sense a cold spot in one of the sitting rooms and the couple can hear voices all the time, similar to the hum of a crowd. However, when they investigate, there is no one around. According to Theresa, there is an old well in her cellar which she finds very creepy and in the past their dogs have refused to go near it.

Theresa believes that whatever is haunting their house has a particular dislike of Philip. He recently woke to find a figure in the bedroom and believing they were being burgled, he jumped out of bed, only for the image to disappear. Philip has also had a near miss when a painting fell from the wall whilst he was on the stairwell. The picture hooks and wires were not damaged and the painting had been taken off and thrown down by another force. Theresa confirms that the pictures and paintings in the house never stay straight on the walls.

Mia carried out psychometry on some of the family’s most treasured items. An ornament told her that the family had once owned a sheep dog and that his spirit still visited them. During the clearing she contacted the ghost of a man who was looking after 3 prisoners. He had shackled them in the cellar and all of them were murdered.

Mia says: “With the Hassett family I was not prepared for the blood, the pain and the fear I saw in the cellar. There is such a difference now it’s gone, it was awful”.

The couple are ecstatic that the ghost has gone. Teresa says “We’ve lived with it and it’s been part of our life for so long that it will be strange not having it here. It’s like a new era has dawned on the Hassett household”

Katrina Elvin, 29, her husband John, 32 and their three children, Jonathan, 14 Nathan, 5 and Jasmine, 3 have seen ghosts, heard strange noises and suffered uncomfortable feelings in their three bedroomed house, built 42 years ago in Newbiggin, near Newcastle.

Katrina and the children regularly see the solid figure of a man standing in their bedrooms and on the upstairs landing. Jonathan believes there is a man watching him while he’s on his computer and when their son Nathan spotted the mysterious figure, he was frozen to the spot.

The brother’s shared bedroom is an eerie place for Katrina. Nathan has always disliked the bedroom cupboard and claims it is occupied by a man. When Jonathan was 12 he was climbing up to the top bunk when he suddenly saw a man climbing up the ladder with him. Terrified, he came flying down the staircase describing the scene in detail but saw just a face and no body.

Mia picked up a strong sense of burning from two of the psychometry objects, a candelabra and a bookend. Later, during the clearing, she located the ghost of a man who had died in a mining accident which caused a fire. Investigations by the family confirmed that the house was indeed built on land above mining shafts.

Mia says: “With the Elvin family I cannot believe I jumped twice and I was quite pleased when Mark jumped as well the second time. It deliberately wanted to cause fear. It took pleasure in it and I took pleasure in getting rid of it.”

The family is very happy that the ghost has gone. Katrina no longer works at night, the family are much happier and leading a far more normal life. Katrina says “Since Mia was here the whole atmosphere of the house is totally different”.

Heather Harris, 25 and her two children; Carly Beth, 5 and Casey, 1, moved into their two bedroom terrace in Huthwaite, Nottinghamshire a year ago. At first everything was perfect but after taking a holiday the family returned to constant paranormal activity, which has worsened over time. The situation has become so bad that Heather and the children regularly leave home in the middle of the night, to take refuge at one of her sisters’ houses.

Previous owners of the house often heard banging noises and children crying in the night. Heather and Casey have been pushed down the stairs, where there are always noises of people running up and down. Jane, Heather’s sister has also heard these noises when she visits.

Heather has heard balls bouncing upstairs and children running across the landing. The children’s musical toys play on their own and she has heard voices through the baby monitor. Heather has a natural fear of the dark and the presence in the house is constantly switching the lights off in the house. There have also been smells of urine and pipe tobacco on various occasions. Carly Beth has been talking to the ghosts and tells her mother that they play games with her. She has even tied a ribbon around the handles on the cupboard door in her bedroom to, “Stop the ghosts coming out.” Heather says she is so terrified she would feel safer sleeping on a park bench than inside her home. All she wants is for her family to feel safe and secure and she admits to being too terrified to venture into the house alone.

Mia carried out pysychometry on some of the family’s most treasured items and picked up that bad vibes were coming from the girl’s dolls house. A picture she looked at also told her that something wanted the family out of the house. This all made perfect sense to Heather when she met Mia for the first time. Mia also discovered that the cupboard in the children’s bedroom was actually a portal to the spirit world. She successfully banished the ghost and closed the portal. Heather is thrilled that her daughter will now play happily in her room again. Mia says: “This was an amazing situation. There was a real portal in the children’s cupboard into the spirit world; we had spillage from that dimension. Thank god we fixed it, I’ll never forget it. You couldn’t make this stuff up.”

Prepare to be scared in TV2′s new series, Haunted Homes, where the cameras uncover the ghostly goings-on in the lives of frightened families, too scared to even live in their own homes.

To help the families discover what’s behind the hauntings, the Haunted Homes team sends in three experts – psychic Mia Dolan; paranormal investigator Mark Webb; and a professor of paranormal psychology Dr Chris French. They will take over the house for 48 hours in an attempt to find out what’s going on and see if they can rid them of their terrifying spirits.

The Hassetts from West Yorkshire have lived in their house for the last 20 years. The whole family claim to have experienced paranormal activity during this time. They have reported strange noises, cold spots and ghosts.

Nicola and Mel Munday live with Nicola’s five children. Mel and Nic are very interested in the paranormal and they run a web-based paranormal group. They claim that activity in the house appears to have increased when they started dabbling with a Ouija Board. Mel and Nic believe they have invited a bad spirit into their home and it needs to be purged, because of its negative nature.

Lorraine Scriven lives with her two children Emma and Stephen in Birmingham in what they claim is a haunted house. The Scriven family have experienced various forms of paranormal activity in their home over the last 18 years. They believe it was a harmless ghost, but recently say they have captured an image on camera of something far more sinister – a male figure in a dark hooded garment – which has completely freaked them out, particularly affecting 21-year-old Emma who will no longer sleep in her own room.

Heather Harris lives with her two children and claims their home is haunted. The Harris situation is so bad that Heather regularly leaves the house in the middle of the night, with her children, to take refuge at her sister’s home. Heather claims to hear balls bouncing upstairs and children running back and forth across the landing.

John and Katrina Elvin regularly see the solid figure of a man standing in their bedrooms and on the landing. Son Jonathan says there is a man watching him while he’s on his computer. When he spotted the mysterious figure, younger son Nathan was frozen to the spot.

Bob and Shelley Stevens live with their two children in a haunted house. Strange things started happening when the house renovations began. Objects went missing and things are constantly moved around without explanation. All their family and friends refuse to stay in the house. Bob’s wife took a photo of their home and they claim a face appears in an upstairs window although no one was in the house at the time.

Prepare to be spooked with Haunted Homes, TV2 Tuesday nights at 9.30pm.

Haunted Homes

This new series uncovers the ghostly goings on in the lives of six frightened families, too scared to even live in their own homes.

To help them discover what’s behind the hauntings we send in the experts: top Psychic Mia Dolan, a paranormal investigator and a professor of paranormal psychology.

They will take over their house for 48 hours in an attempt to find out whats going on and see if they can rid them of their terrifying spirits.

Prepare to be very scared….
Tuesdays at 9:30 on TV2.