In May of 2004, Widnes Library in Cheshire, UK was due for a major building refurbishment, but some staff at the library had spoken of various paranormal anomalies.  Janette Fleming of Halton Libraries obtained permission for MARA to carry out a paranormal investigation of the library before the refurbishment took place.  So on the 27th May, MARA assembled a team of investigators and stayed at the library overnight to monitor and record an array of sensors and cameras that we had set up.  What follows is a description of the events that were recorded and collated by Mark Rosney on that night.

Investigation

At 7pm, whilst waiting for the rest of the team, I went for a quick walk around the building in order to get the feel of the place. It was empty and in disarray (due to the library moving stock and fitting out the new facilities), but felt warm and welcoming, and not at all spooky! When all was quiet you could hear the distant traffic, the hum of the internet servers and hub, but apart from that everything was pretty much silent.

At 7:45, I began to set up the equipment I had brought with me. I took the wireless video camera for a ‘walk’ to see what its effective range was in the building, managing to get downstairs before the signal became too weak to pick up on the receiver.

By around 9pm all the team had arrived. I gave them guided tours of the vigil area but did not tell anyone about the history of the place, the experiences of the library staff or the previous functions of the rooms where the vigil would take place. To this end I gave the rooms ‘codenames’ for reference purposes as follows.

Kay’s room = Map room

Wendy’s office = Wendy’s room

Caretakers sleeping quarters = Railway room

Kitchen = God spot (Bit difficult to hide the function of this room, what with a fridge, microwave, cooker and kettle!)

Staff room = Old staff room (again, with a sign on the door it was a bit difficult to hide the rooms function)

Long corridor = Long corridor (does what it says on the tin!)

Over the next two hours the following equipment was set up and tested:

At 23:15 after solving a few technical problems (which was only to be expected as some of the kit was brand new!) we were ready to roll.

By 23:19 all the team assembled in the God Spot. We shut the door and began to monitor equipment. The rest of the building was empty.

The first event of the night occurred at 23:22 when Pete reported that he had lost weather station sensor channel 2. However it returned at 23:26. Possible system glitch?

At 23:28 we heard our first anomalous sound, a loud click noise, coming from Wendy’s room, via the FM bug and receiver.

A minute later Pete reported that Weather sensor channel 2 (in the old staff room) was reporting increases and decreases in temp. The changes, however, were not consistent with the rest of the sensors scattered around the area under investigation. Again, Pete wondered if it was the sensor playing up or if we were observing real temp changes. Tony suggested that we swap two sensors around to see if the problem persisted.

Meanwhile the clicks and knocks were coming more frequently from Wendy’s room. We began to think that there must be a natural cause for the sounds, as they were occurring far too frequently. Tony wondered if we were hearing radio frequency interference from the weather station, or from the wireless cameras. However this was ruled out as the clicks were sporadic, not coming at regular intervals.

At 23:32 Fiona and I saw an ‘orb’ fly past on the Infra-Red (IR) camera in Wendy’s room. Having seen this sort of thing before in Chingle Hall, we all came to the conclusion that there must be insects flying around. We made a note to inspect the room more carefully when we ended the first session.

At 23:34 most of the group heard a whistling or trilling noise coming from Wendy’s room over the FM bug. Could this be the bird that was stuck earlier in the unfinished lift shaft? However, that was reported as a pigeon. Don’t they coo rather than tweet?

More clicks and knocks were heard. At around 23:40. Pete asked everyone if we could hear or feel a low frequency beating sound inside the God spot. This was soon tracked down to its source, the refrigerator.

I checked out the views from the other cameras and left the receiver picking up the signal from the Long corridor cam. At 23:55 John, Mike, Dan and I thought we saw shadow movement at the bottom of the corridor (near the bathroom). However, playback of the video showed nothing unusual.

At 00:08 the whole team heard a loud bang over the FM bug, coming from Wendy’s room. It was loud enough to make us suspect that we had intruders. However, the FM bug boosts all quiet sounds with an automatic gain control, meaning that even very small sounds can appear enormous over the bug. At the time of writing, this event is still anomalous. 

For the duration of the session we heard more taps, knocks etc coming from the bug and saw more ‘orbs’ on the IR camera monitor. We ended the first session at 00:28 in order to change tapes, check rooms and have a breather. We also checked the whole building for intruders. In Wendy’s room, Tony found a can of fly spray and killed off the ‘orbs’ -  flies! - hundreds of them!

Fiona also spotted a possible cause of all the clicks and knocks: the round window vent in the window near the new lift shaft. The vent was loose and she postulated that it could be rattling in the breeze.

Pete swapped the inside and outside weather station sensors near the old staff room, tapes were changed, motion sensors reset and a location for us all to retire to was found downstairs. At 01:45 the whole team relocated downstairs away from all the equipment for a further session. We took the FM bug receiver with us so that we could listen in on Wendy’s room.

We heard more knocks. However, some of them were now sounding more metallic. Tony suggested that for the next session we should have two people in the room to see if we could pinpoint where the sounds were coming from. Just before the end of the session, Fiona and I went up to Wendy’s room to try to recreate the sounds by moving the window vent, however Tony and the others said that the sounds created were different to the earlier ones that we had heard.

Tony and John elected to stay in Wendy’s room for the next session and the rest of the team went back downstairs. We made a note of all the clicks and knocks heard in the room in order to compare with notes made by Tony and John. At the end of the session we compared notes. The noises we had been hearing were being caused by the overhead fluorescent strip lights. We decided to turn them off for the next session to see if this eliminated all the clunks.

Back in the God spot, I noticed two orbs fly past the camera. This was not due to insects, as they had all been ‘eliminated’ earlier. After a few minutes we discovered that the cause of these particular orbs was dust particles being thrown up from the air by the wake caused by people entering and leaving the room.

We began the next session at around 04:40. We were still getting the odd metallic clunk coming out of Wendy’s room, but these could not have been caused by the lights as we had turned them off. Further investigation via the tapes in the room is needed.

Another interesting thing occurred around this time (but was not logged!) when some of us were travelling down the Long corridor in order to change tapes etc. Just outside the staffroom door, a few of us encountered a noticeable ‘cold spot’. The puzzler is that there was only a 1 degree difference between the sensor that was located in the cold spot and its nearest neighbour, which was located about 11 feet away in the old staffroom. This is an interesting point, which mirrors something that happened to members of the team in Chingle Hall. Further investigation was needed to ensure that the weather station was working reliably at this stage.

Retiring to the God spot again for the final session, we continued to hear metallic clangs coming from Wendy’s room.

We eventually called it a day at 06:00.