Celebrity Help! My House Is Haunted: Charlotte Crosby - Episode 2 Review

Barri Ghai, Jayne Harris and Ian Lawman head to Sunderland to spend a night in the haunted home of 'Geordie Shore' star Charlotte Crosby. It marks the team's second outing on 'Celebrity Help! My House Is Haunted' and proved to be one of their most intensive investigations ever.

Before they even arrive at the Sunderland town of Houghton-le-Spring, Ian gains some insight into Charlotte's property. As the show's resident psychic medium and an ordained exorcist, Ian is always kept in the dark about the location in advance, but as he was driven to the former coal town mining with his team mates, he said "I'm very conscious of something to do with the ground, are we going to a piece of land where the land is haunted?"

Ian also said, "I can see flat caps, I can see dirty, filthy hands, black faces. Are we talking about people who worked under the ground?" Ian is clearly picking up on the town's mining history, either that or minstrels with poor personal hygiene. Ian also feels a prominent link to at least one child, a strong male presence and perhaps something below the house.

At the start of the episode we meet Charlotte, who tells us "I don't think yous are ready for this." The 31-year-old shot to fame in MTV's 'Geordie Shores' in 2011. Since then she's appeared in pretty much every television show with the word "celebrity" in its title, including 'The Celebrity Circle', 'Celebrity Mastermind', 'Celebs Go Dating', Celebrity Coach Trip', Pointless Celebrities', 'Celebrity Ghost Hunt Live', 'Celebrity Storage Hunters' and the Australian version of I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here!' in 2020.

In 2013 she won 'Celebrity Big Brother' and in 2017 she presented the short-live series, 'Just Tattoo Of Us'. She also starred in eight seasons of her own reality series, 'The Charlotte Show' which aired for just over a year from 2018.

Charlotte, who says "I want help to find out if something's here," claims that she has experienced "endless freaky things" in her home, which was an empty shell when she bought it. She said, "it was just a shell, an empty shell, completely barren, it had a lot of work to be done."

Charlotte has inadvertently captured the moment when a dining room chair seemed to move on its own while filming a video tour of her home. She also has a problem with birds, she explained, "I can't even count on two hands how many dead birds I find on the outskirts of the whole property."

As always, Ian was the first to enter the property alone in order to conduct a psychic sweep, but is still unaware whose house it is. As he entered the swanky Sunderland mansion he said he felt something was taking his breath, and was instantly drawn towards the infamous dining table where chair was seen to move in Charlotte's video.

Ian took a seat at the table and said, "there's a massive burst of energy when I sit on this chair." He added, "I can hardly breathe, this is where the energy is getting pulled in." He mentioned a poltergeist in the dining room area.

After saying he felt like a 70-year-old with breathing problems, Ian moved into another room, which he felt quite apprehensive about. In the black-walled cinema room, Ian said he was very aware of "little people running about here." He said, "I think there's something below us, this property has been built on a piece of land, or there's something below us, that's causing problems for this homeowner."

As Ian headed up stairs, he said "this house is taking my oxygen. It's kind of weird, I just feel like there's a mining connection or something, this is why my lungs are burning, I'm struggling to breathe." In Charlotte's bedroom Ian said that spirit people were projecting themselves through the mirror.

This seems to conflict with the mining link, Ian questioned this, "why do we have a connection with spirit that would connect with this land also connected to the people that live here? There's a connection. The person who owns this house, spirit want them back here, or want them here. There's a name connection."

He finished is tour of the house on the top floor and summed up by saying, "I feel there's a gentleman walking around this house, looking at everything that goes on."

Barri went to meet with Charlotte's best friend, Lauren, to get her take on what's been happening at the house. She told Barri she definitely thinks Charlotte's home is haunted. She said, "I definitely do think there's a man on the top floor. If I ever try and sleep on the top floor, I can't get to sleep and I've never really known why."

Jayne went to meet local historian Paul Lanagan at Durham Mining Museum to try to find out more about the land Charlotte's house is built on. Paul tells Jayne that there's an old coal mine situated beneath the house. Paul then tells Jayne about an underground explosion in 1799, in which 39 people lost their lives. The youngest of these victims was just nine years old.

The Durham Mining Museum had a record of those killed in the blast, and on the list were several victims with the surname Crosby, including the nine-year-old, John Crosby.

After completing their initial investigations, the team re-group at the house to talk through what they've found out and put a plan together. They start by inviting Charlotte to join them for a "spirit triggers" session, where they hope that their presence will stir up the ghostly activity.

Before they got started, Jayne told Charlotte about the mining disaster with a link to her surname. Charlotte described this as "next-level strange," while Ian took this as confirmation of one of his prior insights.

Jayne tells Charlotte, "it could be that these Crosbys may have a connection to you and they may have drawn you here, because remember when a disaster happens like that, those souls aren't at rest." The reality star finds meaning in this and says, "I wasn't the first one that was drawn to it, it was me mam and dad."

They begin as Charlotte calls out to any spirits that might be present. Barri is using an app called Necrophonic, an app that is pre-loaded with partial words, reverse audio, and the phonetic sounds that make up words. The app randomly spews out these sounds and it's believed that spirits can affect the random nature of this app in order to form the words they are trying to communicate.

They heard several sounds coming through the device that they deemed to be intelligent responses, they also heard out loud what they thought was a boy's voice.

The group then head upstairs where they give Charlotte an SLS camera, a special type of camera that uses 3D mapping technology to detect human shapes and highlights them on its screen in the form of a stick figure. Charlotte got very excited by the figure she saw on the screen, but we weren't clearly shown what the device captured. This suggests that this was probably just Charlotte overreacting to a false positive, something SLS cameras are very prone to.

After talking Charlotte in to attempting some mirror scrying, she left the house, and Barri, Jayne and Ian were locked down inside and left alone to conduct their nightlong investigation.

With the cameras switched to night mode, the team's investigation began. They return to the top floor bedroom with the SLS camera to try to validate what Charlotte had seen earlier, but they soon switch to an audio recorder in an attempt to capture EVPs.

An EVP, or Electronic Voice Phenomenon, is a form of spirit communication that involves capturing the sound of spirit voices in audio recordings. They playback a recording and hear a voice that sounds like it's saying "Crosby".

Barri had placed a REM-Pod in the middle of the room. This is a ghost hunting gadget that radiates its own electrostatic field, if anything conductive enters and disturbs the field the gadget will alert them by beeping and lighting up. At the moment they heard what they thought was "Crosby" on the audio recorder, the REM-Pod lit up wildly.

Moments later, Barri was drawn towards an attic doorway at the side of the room as a foul stench filled the room. The team heard a strange belch-like noise. Ian said, "that's not good, is that what's in the mirror?" Jayne says, "well, we need to identify it and get rid of it if it is."

Later they move down to Charlotte's bedroom, to investigate the large mirror that Ian feels is a portal. While they're investigating they find they've been locked in the room, moments later it opens again without explanation. After this, it all goes quiet.

They moved down to the cinema room, where Barri use some spirit-sensing children's toys that are supposed to move when a spirit gets close. They hoped this might encourage the spirit of the young boy, John, to interact. They got some initial movement with a toy robot, but it failed to move again. Although Barri did move later when something touched his back.

The team felt that spirits were moving around the house via the mirrors, trying to draw Charlotte's attention to different areas of the house. Ian set to work blessing the property and tried to close the mirrors. He explained, "the only way I can close the portals and get rid of negative energy is by using positive, powerful prayers on all the mirrors around the house." Ian tells us that the prayers closed the portals. Meanwhile Jayne clears the negativity with burning sage.

Ian summed up by telling Charlotte, "I feel your house was haunted by your family ancestors, that's why you have been drawn to this house. You've got nothing at all to fear." It would have been great if there was some kind of conclusion and a confirmation of this. The team could have researched Charlotte's family tree for validation.

Another piece of reported phenomenon that seemingly wasn't investigated in the episode was the multiple birds that are frequently found dead around the property.

We know that there's an old coal mine beneath the house, and we also know that birds are very sensitive to some of the noxious gasses found underground, such as methane. Could this explain the numerous avian deaths?

It would have been nice to see the team address this possibility by testing the house and the surrounding area for the presence of dangerous gasses, especially since they also reported smelling a foul smell on the upper floor, something that is also characteristic of methane.