THE LOCATION

Bannockburn House, located in a secluded area of Stirling, is a 17th century grand manor building with vast grounds.

The house is now open to the public. Here you can step back through time to discover how life would have been.

This location from the outside is one that gives you that haunted house feeling. The pale grey weathered bricks with small sections of ivy growing. Even the small single glass pane windows give you the sense of they are watching you! Once inside, this feeling is even more apparent as you meander through the corridors and walk the heavily worn staircases.

As you walk around, you’ll see many of the original features, almost eroded through time. With a keen eye, you may even be able to notice the Victorian era additions to the building as you make your way around.

This was Haunted Escapes first visit to this grand location and we were raring to get stuck into some ghost hunting north of the border.

PRE EVENT WALKAROUND

Stepping inside, you will find yourself in the main hall with the upper balcony area. This balcony is accessible from the first floor. As you take a moment to absorb the size of the hall, you get a real feel for how busy this area would have been, and it’s almost like you can hear the voices from the past going about their business entertaining and charming the well to do of society.

Heading through to the back room area is the drawing room with its high ceilings and large windows. This particular room was savaged by a fire, you can still smell the charred wood. Venturing further on the ground floor, you’ll discover the laundry and kitchen areas along with an exit door to the private cobbled courtyard.

Beginning again with the EVP session in the bonnie prince Charles bedroom, and after a demonstration of what to ask any potential spirits whilst also asking spirit to use their voice to respond. Each guest would in turn ask a single question before leaving a 10 to 15 second gap between the next question being asked.

With each guest asking their question, the playback of the recordings commenced. From the majority of recordings, sounds were picked up, but these could not be deciphered to anything specific. That was not true of the final recording to be played!

As we listened (and chuckled at hearing our voices on playback), a distinct response was heard immediately after a question was asked. This pricked everyone’s ears up and on closer inspection of this response, it was clear that this particular spirit presence didn’t appreciate us asking so many questions as the reply of an unknown voice clearly said, “close your mouth”.

It goes without saying that such a clear response provoked plenty of questions being asked. How is this possible? How can only this voice memo app pick up the response? We did spend quite some time discussing this particular recording and even attempted to recreate the moment. This proved impossible. It’s always good to try and debunk things and apply logic. However, in this instance the former was thrown out the window as we couldn’t explain that growling voice saying, “close your mouth”.

With only a very short amount of time remaining in this second vigil. We made our way back to the other bedroom to do some more glasswork. Again, this did yield results with another female connecting with the group and also some backup kit around the room being triggered.

VIGIL THREE

To end the night, a full group call and wait vigil was in order. This was centered around the main hall and balcony area with kit placed on the ground floor.

It was a night for female spirits to come forward as again we connected to another lady. This energy when asked if they are from the house, responded by triggering a piece of equipment. As we continued to uncover more about this energy, it was discovered that this female spirit had often been overlooked and wanted desperately to be heard.

This was a fitting close to the night. Guests being able to witness unexplainable activity. Also, a former female resident who had never been given the opportunity to interact.