Help! My House Is Haunted: Calverton, Nottinghamshire - Series 2, Episode 12 Review

In the final investigation of the series, Barri Ghai, Chris Fleming, and Jayne Harris are in the historic village of Calverton. The team have been called to investigate unusual paranormal activity in not just one building, but the whole village.

They start in one of Calverton's pubs, the Admiral Rodney, where landlords Richard Stevenson and his partner Kristy say they are plagued by paranormal activity and strange sightings. Kristy says "quite a lot of stuff has happened here since we've lived here." A man in a tweed suit with a big beard has been seen in the pub's snug, the landlords believe his name is Tom.

There's another spirit that resides in the pub too, one that likes to mess with electrical items. Kristy says, "Tom's definitely not one of the stronger ones, there's one lady in particular, she's called Sarah." She first showed herself to Kristy on the day they moved in and made her presence known by unscrewing the lightbulb in the living room. Richard thinks that Sarah is a former landlady of the pub. He says, "everyone in the village knows about Sarah".

Richard adds, "we've got some more ghosts upstairs, they're known as 'the children of the hallway'." Kristy has heard their footsteps walking through the upstairs corridor at night.

The team's psychic medium, Chris, always insists on being kept in the dark about the location, but while the team were travelling to the property in their ghost-hunting camper van, he had a vision of what awaits them. He said, "it's funny because I've got a raven popping into my head, like a black bird or raven." He thinks this is a male spirit who doesn't want them there. Jayne says, "the raven is interesting. Some people believe that the raven is symbolic of the dark arts and the occult."

As they drive through Calverton, getting closer to the pub, Chris says "I'm seeing like dark horses and stuff. I'm just hearing like voices and whispers. Voices like multiple spirits talking at once, whispering about us."

While Barri and Jayne head off to try to uncover more about the local area and what links the village with the paranormal, Chris started the investigation with a solo walk around the Admiral Rodney. As Chris walked into the pub, something pulls him towards the cellar and he feels there might be something haunting the bottom of the pub.

In the very old cellar, he uncovers what he thinks might have once been a secret tunnel. He picks up on residual energy passing through the cellar and through what is now a wall.

Chris felt like he was being drawn elsewhere and continued his investigation outside, where he was aware of the energy of someone standing across the street from the pub. Chris says, "it's clear that the paranormal activity in Calverton is not just confined to the pub."

With the help of the crew, he decides to fly a drone over the area to get a better idea of what he's dealing with. In the aerial footage, Chris found what he thought looked like the site of a grave. Using his digital audio recorder, he asked "are you buried here?" He played back the recording and heard what he believed to be an EVP, this is when a spirit's voice is captured in a recording. The voice seemed to be saying "yes, I'm buried".

Chris moves on saying "powerful forces are drawing me up the hill towards of foreboding wooded area." As he walked along the lane, he came across a field with horses in it, something he'd mentioned back in the van. He stopped to make friends, until one of the horses nodded towards the direction of the woods. Chris took this as a sign and continued. Chris thinks he could be on the trail of spirits of souls that used to live in the forest or near the forest.

Barri said, "I knew this investigation would be about more than just the pub, as there have been accounts of wider activity in and around the village". To find out more, he went to meet a local taxi driver named John, who had some ghost stories to tell.

John took Barri for a paranormal tour of the village. As they drove along a country road called George's Lane, he told Barri, "before I moved to Calverton, every time I came down this road the hairs on the back of my neck used to stand up." He's even seen a figure in the road in the middle of the night. He said, "I couldn't make out if it was a man or woman, it was just the shape of a person."

John says that other locals have experienced the awareness of somebody getting into their car as they drive down to the village, but the feeling passes once they've completed the journey to the bottom of the road. Some have described this as being a female apparition.

Their next stop is a lay-by halfway up George's Hill, where John tells Barri that locals think the apparition is that of a woman who was walking up the hill on her wedding day in the snow, but collapsed and died partway up the hill.

Jayne wanted to find out more about the area and uncover any potential dark secrets. She went to meet local historian, Chris Peck, for a stroll through the village. He tells Jayne that 250 years ago a landowner donated a plot of their land to a man called John Roe, who had set up his own religious sect in the village - an offshoot of Quakerism that put Calverton on the map.

Roe's chapel no longer exists, but Chris took Jayne to the site where it once stood and pointed out the location of his followers', The Roeites, graves. The headstones are now buried beneath a row of modern houses in unconsecrated ground. Jayne thinks this could explain some of the paranormal activity in the village.

Her next stop is to meet a local resident who tells Jayne about the many paranormal experiences he's had in the village. He says he often feels as if he's being watched or followed in certain parts of the village. He said, "I know there has been witchcraft practiced in the woods."

This leads Jayne to Foxwood, where she meets with Ashley Mortimer, a local witchcraft expert. Ashley tells Jayne that the area of woodland on George's Hill is known by some locals as "witches' wood". Ashley says, "there has to be a legend of some sort, there has to be something back then that's caused people to refer to is as witches' wood."

Ashley thinks it should be possible for the team to pick up on the imprint energy of witches or other Pagans who practiced here, he said "psychic researchers say that they can pick up the imprint energy of action and activity that has taken place, and obviously ritual activity is very heightened."

With their own individual investigations completed, the team re-group in their mobile nerve centre with a better understanding of the area and the spirits they might be facing. They share what they've learnt and put a plan of action together. The base of their investigation is at the Admiral Rodney, but they plot a route around the village where they can investigate several of Calverton's paranormal hotspots throughout the night.

With a plan in place, Barri is first to head out into the countryside. He retraces the route of his taxi journey, taking him along George's Lane, the road where a female apparition is said to join drivers in their cars. As it's now night time, Barri could be about to pick up phantom hitchhiker.

Other than a scare on the road caused by a living human, Barri safely arrived at his destination, Foxwood, where he met up with Chris and Jayne, who had made their way up the hill and into the woods on foot.

As the three of them ventured deeper into the dark and eerie woodland, Jayne said "I haven't felt spooked at any point at all, until now." Jayne suggested forming a circle in the forest, as any witches coven would once have done on the same spot. Chris became aware of countless energies moving past them.

Jayne pulled out her audio recorder in the hopes of capturing some EVPs and asked out, "have any witches ever practiced rituals here?" When they played back the audio a voice seemed to be saying "yes". Then moments later Jayne was shocked after seeing what she described as a tall dark shadow near them.

Rejoining the circle, Jayne said "we soon sense a strange energy beginning to affect us." Oddly, Jayne and Barri found that their linked hands were raising, even though they both said they weren't intentionally doing it. The unexplained movement continued until all three team members were left in a circle with their arms stretched upwards as if in worship. Feeling that they have inadvertently become part of a long-forgotten witches' ritual, they turn their palms up to the sky, but the activity ends here.

Barri and Chris then head back to the camper and return to the pub, leaving Jayne alone in the woods with just a camera and a small light. Jayne finds a clearing and once again tries to make contact with the spirits of the woods. As she started to call out, she heard something knock on a tree nearby.

Jayne braved 30 minutes in the woods on her own, but the whole time felt like she wasn't alone and eventually her natural instincts kicked in and she flees the woods, saying "that's it, I'm done. I can hear it. Too much."

Jayne meets the others back at the pub. Barri tells us "I'm getting the impression this village is too big for just the three of us in the available timeframe, but hopefully at least we can address some of the issues here in the pub."

Barri leaves the others in the bar and heads down to the cellar with his SLS camera. This ghost hunting gadget works by using an invisible laser grid that maps anomalies the human eye can't see by measuring changes in its grid.

As Barri nears the bricked up tunnel entrance that Chris had found earlier, the device detects an anomaly and displayed it on its screen in the form of a stickman. He asked the figure its name and encourages it to step forward, but suddenly it vanishes.

Meanwhile Chris and Jayne were in the bar where they encountered a male spirit. Using his audio recorder, Chris captured an EVP which he thinks revealed the presence's identity. The crackly sound on the recorder seems to say "little Timmy". Jayne describes this as confusing, as it's not the name they were expecting... but who's to say a mischievous spirit isn't just having a laugh with them?

To try and get some more answers, they placed a REM-Pod on a table, a ghost hunting gadget that radiates its own electromagnetic field, if something gets close and interferes with that field then the device emits a tone and flashes. As they continued to call out, the device suddenly lit up. Chris says "clearly something here is trying to attract our attention. Timmy seems to be indicating that there are other children present."

Later a similar EVP seems to contain the words "help me". At this point, Barri rejoins them in the bar.Jayne and Chris share with him their belief that they've uncovered a female spirit, a male spirit called Timmy, and the spirit of children - however no Tom. Jayne said, "my personal feeling is that there is a male spirit here but the name's wrong."

Jayne concludes that the apparition spotted in the pub and in the locations the team have visited around it could be the same spirit. She says, "if it is the same apparition, then there's a good chance it's John Roe".

As always the investigation ended with Chris performing a cleansing ritual to help any spirits in the pub to move on.

The final episode in the series felt bigger than others, it was more of an adventure and had a different tone and pace to the rest of the series. Up to now the episodes have been very formulaic, something that makes the show very slick and watchable.

The majority of the episode was shot outside. This back to nature approach to ghost hunting was different and potentially quite well suited to Chris and Barri in particular who seem to be firm believers in elemental spirits. The only downside to this approach in a television show is perhaps that the history of the places you'll end up at are a bit less defined, compared to buildings where each room might have their own ghost story. These detailed stories are important to 'Help! My House Is Haunted' as the show relies so heavily on a strong narrative running throughout.

The tails of witchcraft and John Roe's religious society, the Roeites, was genuinely interesting and is likely to put Foxwood on the map for ghost hunting teams.

It should also be pointed out that Chris mentioned a raven in the van at the start of the episode. Jayne suggested that this bird often symbolises witchcraft and the occult. So it seems Chris was right about this.

Sadly, this investigation marked the last in the current series, but Really channel's #Freakend continues next week with two nights of paranormal entertainment every Thursday and Friday.