Bowes Railway Museum - The Joinery

Part of the once common style of colliery courtyard complexes, the group of stone buildings are believed to date from the opening of the railway in 1826. It is believed that the two storey joiners shop started life as a single storey building. Large materials cut within this building were taken into the courtyard for assembly. The upper floor was used as a store for fodder for both the pit ponies and horses that at one time shunted the colliery.

The lower floor contains a variety of woodworking machinery, which is still used. The upper floor today serves as the railway exhibition room and archive. However since preservation it was used as a stores when the railway had a job creation scheme run by the Manpower Services Commission (MSC). The upper floor was also for a time the home of the Washington Model Railway Club.

Baseline Report

Environment Readings

No baseline readings were taken in this location

Pre-Investigation Walkaround

Before any investigation starts some members of Northern Ghost Investigations including our own resident medium (or guest mediums if present) like to have a walk around the investigation site and then record their own first impressions. What follows are details of the first impressions of those who did do a walk around.

Medium Walkaround With Guest Medium Eddie Nicol

In the Joinery Eddie sensed 3 spirits. 1 male was frail and may have chest/breathing problems. Upstairs the other two appeared to him as though one was a youthful male of around 21-25 years old and seemed full of excitement. The third spirit seemed mischievous but Eddie could not determine the sex? Eddie said he felt, 'fuzziness' in his head.

Group Vigils

What follows are the group vigils that took place in this location.

Note : These vigils are presented purely in Group Order and in no way reflect the order
 in which each group visited the location during the night.

Group 1

NGIers - Jay, Claire

Guests - Joanne, Paul, Heidi, Steve, Carol

On a previous visit to Bowes Railway, this location had proven to be one of the most exciting locations as each group had reported objects being thrown, specifically in Jays case a hand-sized lump of wood.

It wasn't long before a strange thing began happenings again. After a few minutes of letting the location settle, the walkie talkie in Jays pocket suddenly burst into life with static just shortly after he began calling out.

He took it out of his pocket and placed it on a nearby bench so he wasn't touching it and it continued to spurt out static as Jay talked. Claire - who was on the video camera filming events - claimed that as Jay was talking to any spirit that may have been present and who may be affecting the walkie talkie he was being bombarded with Orbs which were buzzing around him (see photos on the right of an early picture before Jay put the walkie talkie down).

Claire suggested that Jay ask the spirit effecting the walkie talkie to stop to check if it would. The radio had been constantly giving off static for 2 or 3 minutes at this point and within 5 seconds of Jay making the request for it to stop .. it stopped.

Steve had picked up on the spirit of a young man in the joinery who he got the name Michael for. Michael had been picked up on the previous visit to Bowes and the Joinery by the NGI medium on the night. Steve claimed that the young man had been killed on the site in an accident and his body had been laid out in the joinery and was frustrated that he'd been trapped in there as ' .. he didn't belong there .. ".

We went upstairs into the old hayloft and got ourselves into a small circle and began a couple of energy raising excercises before calling out again. Jay had placed the radio on a nearby display cabinet and it wasn't long before the it spurted into action again - albeit only for short 30 second bursts.

It was during one of these bursts that a male voice was heard from the radio. Sadly, we couldn't make out the words but upon checking with the other groups in Bowes that night - nobody had been using the radios and so we could rule out any other NGI member making a call. Carol also reported at this time and it was visually confirmed that her torch was drained of power despite new batteries only being placed within that night. It certainly seemed as though something was messing with the electrics in the Joinery.

The incidents with the radio could have just been picking up on a stray signal but its strange that it only happenned in the joinery / hayloft (and did briefly again when we held a seance in there later) and no other group was transmitting at the time.

Jay got a sense that in one of the corners of the hayloft that there was a presence. At one point, during a torch passing nearby, he swore he saw a man standing there but the image was gone as soon as the torchlight moved elsewhere. Steve confirmed that he felt there was a man in the corner who seemed to be rushing out from the corner at us before moving back to hide away.

Group 2

NGIers - Carl, Sharon

Guests - Pauline, Bekki, Paul, Lee, Jonny

Our first location was the Joinery - Humidity 71% Temperature 7.9 degrees. 30 seconds later Carl heard a noise and looked at the temperature gauge again - humidity 74% temperature7.9 degrees.

A light stick was placed close to the Ouija board and took a picture to determine the position. We settled into the dark and took several photos and started the video camera.

After a few minutes Carl and Sharon started to call out, they didn't get much downstairs so decided to go upstairs. After some noises at the other end of the room and one of the guests feeling like she was being pulled backwards by something wrapped around her neck, Sharon started to use her pendulum, asking some of the guests to try to use the spare ones we had.

The guests didn?t get much response from their pendulums, but Sharon got a positive reaction from hers, asking the spirit to identify itself. He was in his 20?s and worked at the railway station, he died there, being attacked from behind which seemed to correspond with what the female guest felt.

Carl and a guest proceeded downstairs after they thought they heard something being thrown but found nothing. While we were looking back at the photos taken during the night we noticed the light stick had been moved, but we couldn't be 100% sure it was paranormal.

Group 3

NGIers - Lee, Wayne

Guests - Viv, Paula, Vicky, Leigh

The final location of the night was the joinery. We?d been through here a number of times to reach other places. Now it was our turn to remain.

We started upstairs by taking photos of the empty room. I suggested we try the Ouija Board again. After the random smattering of letters from the previous attempt, I didn't have much faith in anything better occurring here. But we tried it and I was right. Nothing happened at all.

We tried calling out. We waited patiently and called again. I wandered about the room and stood in all four darkened corners. I?d heard earlier in the night that someone had sensed an entity in one of them. I sensed nothing and presumed that whatever was here had had enough of us invading its space and so left us to get on with it.

It seemed like there was no point to continue in this location. The group ?spirit? had lost its enthusiasm. We all went down stairs. Called out briefly then headed back to base. On route, for a bit of rebellious excitement, we all headed over to the out of bounds wagon shop but the cold wind and precarious, uneven, soft ground made the excursion less appealing. The group headed back while I took a few more photos.

The battery on the camera and camcorder was flashing low. This was my signal that the night was over and it was time to pack everything away. I sat alone in the base, my group?s guests had left for home and Wayne had joined another group. Ten minutes later and everyone else returned back to base full of joy and excitement as they relayed their paranormal events.

Group 4

NGIers - Kris, Sue

Guests - Kirk, Teresa, Jennifer, Stuart

We were here after the seance which had been very interesting. one of our guests, Teresa, didn't like a corner, she felt like there was something there, Eddie turned to her and said 'lets go there then', Kris in true fashion was off like a shot to the corner before Eddie had finished speaking, unfortunately Teresa couldn't make it all the way and burst into tears - no shame in that it was the spirit doing it as far as we were concerned, well Kris then decided to go right into the corner faced into it, in front of Kris was an old trolley (possibly for moving large heavy items in them days) he could feel that there was a man there who didn't like women, Eddie asked Kris what he felt, so Kris told him and Eddie said ?ask him why?, Kris then felt it was a case of because of his mum, it felt like she had not been that nice to him, so he had a hatred of women.

Kris carried on standing there staring into the corner with his hands on the trolley, he told the male spirit he was a coward for trying to scare women and all of a sudden the trolley wobbled and it felt to Kris like he had lunged at him, well Kris don't scare easy (or maybe he is just stupid) so he just stood there.

Every now and then this feeling of being rushed at would come over Kris and the trolley would wobble in his hands. Kris was well chuffed with this as this is what we were after, he knew it wasn't him wobbling the trolley. In the end Kris said that if the male spirit wanted Kris to get out of the spirits space and away from the corner then he would have to show himself to Kris.

Kris stood there and said that he did see a shadow taller than him appear, so true to his word he thank the male spirit and walked out of the corner. The only picture Kris got in his head while he was in the corner was of a male figure in a blue uniform of sorts with a blue porter style hat on. He also had a mustache.