Most Haunted At Halsham House - Series 19, Episode 3 Review

What will the Most Haunted team uncover at Halsham House in East Yorkshire, a grand building with a vibrant history and a host of resident ghosts. Unlike most locations Yvette Fielding and her team visit are popular with paranormal researchers and are well documented, but Halsham House is a little different as all the reports come from the home's current owner.

Halsham House stands alone in the village of Halsham and was established as a school in 1584 under the terms of the will of Sir John Constable. Who provided for eight boys, sir John's wife Catherine contributed an endowment for an Oxford scholarship. It provided education for the village until 1947.

As well as being a grammar school, throughout its history the mansion has also been used as an arms house, a hospital, a convent, and a private dwelling.

With twisting corridors connecting a labyrinth of rooms and dark spaces, not to mention the age of the property and its past occupants, it's no wonder that this house has so many ghost stories attached to it.

As always, the episode started with Yvette walking around the building with skeptic Glen Hunt and the show's resident demonologist, Fred Batt. Yvette filled us in on why this house has such a spooky reputation.

For once the Most Haunted team weren't following in the footsteps of other ghost hunters, this is new ground. The team had been asked to visit the house by its current owner, Marcus. He and his friends who've visited the house have reported experiencing uneasy feelings, or an overwhelming presence in the house. Marcus' dog often barks at apparently nothing. Guests are often said to be driven out of the house by this unnerving feeling.

People have reported an unnerving feeling that someone is watching there every move in parts of the house, particularly powerful on the stairs.

Elsewhere in the house, a friendly but shy ghostly figure has been seen in the sitting room, it's believed this sprit could be that of a child, perhaps one of the young boys that attended the school and still thinks of Halsham House as his home.

As Fred took in the unique character of the house, he said he'd experienced "strange feelings in some parts of the house, especially upstairs in the attic area where I believe some bones were found," and he's right.

When the house underwent some restoration in the 1970s, small bones were found in the attic. No one is sure of their origin, or whether they are human or animal bones. Fred says even if they're animal bones this could indicate witchcraft as people used to use bones to protect their homes, "they would put them in chimneys, they'd put them in the brickwork."

Glen had some thoughts on the bones too, "it's an old house, it could just be some old bones found in the attic, it's not unheard for a bird to fly in and get caught," but Glen did add that Halsham House is the "quintessential haunted property. If it isn't haunted, it should be, in some people's eyes anyway."

Whatever the origins of these bones, this part of the house, which was once used by the school master, is said to be rife with poltergeist activity. Objects move on their own accord, lights swing and voices can be heard.

Yvette agreed with Glen, "it's got that classic haunted house feel for me." And, Fred said, "there's something special about this house," quoting Henry Wadsworth Longfellow he said, "all houses wherein men have lived and died. Are haunted houses."

With the lights out, it was time to split up. Stuart Torevell headed to the living room where he saw a door open on its own, as Stuart said himself "it maybe the draught making that happen."

Yvette went to the guest parlour with cameraman Gregg Smith and sound recordist Darren Hutchinson. The team tried calling out to the spirit, "hello, can you hear me?" While they did hear some taps in response, there wasn't much dialogue with the spirits of Halsham House.

So, they moved on to some table tipping instead. Yvette and Darren placed their hands on the table, while Gregg manned the camera. They felt a little movement, and lots of tapping, but their vigil was pretty uneventful.

The attic proved a little more exciting for Fred, who was joined by Karl Beattie who said, "as soon as we get in here, this part of the house feels completely different to me, the last room we were in felt really comfortable, this one doesn't."

While at the bottom of the open staircase to the attic, Karl shouted "for crying out loud!" as he heard a bang, spinning around with the camera to show us the source of the sound, he discovers the noise was the result of a book hitting the floor. Karl pans the camera up and spots a pile of books on a high ledge, then suddenly another book feel and hit the camera, knocking it out of focus.

The pair climbed the stairs in to the cozy looking attic space. Fred started to tell Karl his theory on the bones found in this area, "I think they're something to do with something sacrifice, because in those days, you're talking about the 16th century...." but Karl seemed to get bored and walked off with the camera, leaving Fred talking to himself on the landing.

While checking through the rest of the attic, Fred told Karl that "I'm not going to say it's demonic, but it's something to do with those bones." When they came back out on to the landing, they found the three light fittings at the top of the shares were swinging.

The team had places locked off cameras in this area which showed the chandelier start to swing on its own at another point during the investigation. The cameras also captured some trigger objects in the form of four ping pong balls rolling down the stairs.

Due to all of this activity, Karl gather the rest of the team in the attic to end the show. Calling out to the spirits, Glen asked what their name was. Eamonn Van-Harris was recording the conversation on a laptop in the hope of catching some spirit voices, and he did get a response which sounded a little like "Elizabeth."

For a house which isn't known for its hauntings, Halsham House proved to be an interesting location for the Most Haunted team.