Thackray Museum of Medicine, 19th November 2022

Thackray Museum of Medicine – Leeds
Saturday November 19^th 2022
9pm to 2am

The last time I spent a night investigating this location was my first event as a guest with Nicola and Brett at Visage Paranormal. It was their 1^st Birthday Celebration Event and Linda and I accidentally started on the buffet before anyone was supposed to. We loved the way the group was a lot more guest centred and relaxed than other Paranormal Event Groups and we started to attend more and more with Visage. Now here we both are as Team Members, so it would seem that our premature eating of the buffet spread has been forgiven.

The museum has had a refurb since Visage last held an event there and we were looking forward to seeing how our guests enjoyed the venue. Brett and I had taken a look around earlier the week and already had a good vibe about certain areas on the building.

We began the night as a large group in the lecture theatre area downstairs around an old operating table. Almost immediately several guests felt cold spots and an oppressive atmosphere. There was a very cold spot between myself and Nicola where the temperature had dropped by a good 3 degrees. Lisa and Jason were aware of a figure in the doorway, then Nicola told us there was a man standing between her and I who was “up in her face aggressively” and who smelled bad. Several guests said they could smell urine. Phones were playing up, K2s flickering and a guest who had bravely volunteered to lie on the operating slab, complained of a pushing sensation on their leg.
Just as quickly the vibe seemed to go flat, so we split into our two groups, ready to explore the upstairs and downstairs areas separately. We led Group A upstairs after having set up a Ouija Board Table in the Apothecary Room and a Rem Pod – which had been beeping wildly whilst Linda was outside of the room and nobody else was around. Thackray Museum was already waking up!

When we got to the Apothecary Room the Rem Pod battery had been drained, so Harry went off to get more batteries. I felt very antsy – wanting to pace around the room, constantly looking over my shoulder as the guests attempted a ouija board. They got the name ‘Ian’ who seemingly passed in ‘1818’. Confusingly when asked if he had been in an accident (‘yes’) he then also answered that he had died of ‘cancer’. The building was also not opened as a workhouse until 1861. Perhaps ‘Ian’ was attached to the land rather than the old workhouse?

A couple of guests and a team member began to feel lethargic and had headaches but wanted to persevere in that room. A smaller group split off with Ann Marie, Sally & Harry to investigate a different exhibit area on that floor. They reported hearing a sound like something being dragged – in fact Harry came back to our group to check that we had not moved anything or wheeled anything. The sound they heard was similar to “an old wheelchair or pram or trolley” but they could not replicate the sound they heard. They also saw a white dot of light with the naked eye, which they saw twice but could not explain.

Our group moved to another area upstairs and guests called out for one of them to be touched or affected in some way, to which the Alice Box app they were using said ‘disrespectful’. When Linda and I approached the area the Alice Box app said ‘Guide’. It also later said ‘Doctor’ and the name ‘Anna’.

When guests called out again for one of them to be touched, the box said ‘Do Not’. Guests heard what they described as a ‘wheeling sound’ – which backed up what the other group had heard earlier – we could not work out what we had heard or where it came from. There was also a sound we did replicate, which was as if someone or something had brushed past one of the display banners. In the Equipment Room we heard a 2 syllable word in real time but couldn’t work out what it said.

Group B reported the K2 making intermittent beeping sounds – almost like a morse code, they began smelling a strawberry scent ‘like retro bubblegum’ (but that could have been from the smells piped into the old street area).
Several words came up on a guest’s Alice Box app but they did seem to keep repeating the same words – ‘Bless’ came up at least 6 times and ‘hang’ or ‘hung’ came up a few times. Could that be a glitch in the app or coincidence?

Breaktime came and all the guests were enjoying themselves and ready to go for Round 2. Group A would now be downstairs and Group B upstairs. We took our group into various areas downstairs where they used the Ouija Board to interesting effect. They seemed to have made contact with a family member and a spirit from their own home. We did ask that these spirits step back to allow any spirits attached to the museum could come forward but they seemed persistent and kept returning.

The energy levels started to flag a little towards the end of the night so for the last 15 minutes we allowed our group to wander the museum on their own lone vigils before rounding them up for a final group photo and wishing them a safe journey home.

I am looking forward to joining Visage Paranormal again next year for more events. Until then, stay safe.

Kit Brewer