Paranormal Lockdown UK: The Skegness Hell House

A Lincolnshire family troubled by decades of hauntings have called Nick Groff and Katrina Weidman for help, the duo will spend 72 hours locked inside one of the UK's most haunted houses as the attempt to get to the bottom of the strange goings on in this seemingly average family home.

Its postal address is 81 Skegness Road, but this normal looking house is known around the world as the "Skegness Hell House". It appears to be no different from any of the other houses on the tree-lined street in the costal town, but the Antor family have been plagued by a dark, aggressive haunting for more than 30 years.

Jalé Antor moved into the home when she was six, along with her brother Abrahim and her parents, Ottoman and Sylvia. On the very first night in the house she realised it was haunted, on that night she heard knocking on the front door, but found there was no one there. Jalé would play games with a little girl and see her sneaking around the house, then one day she realised that the little girl never aged and would disappear abruptly when they were together. The family believe that this is the spirit of a little girl who used to live at the property before she died.

Slowly the whole family started having paranormal experiences of their own. Jalé and her mother repeatedly encountered the same sinister a dark figure, which they call "the dark man". He is accompanied by a feeling of dread. Meanwhile, Jale's father and brother were deeply effected by the same hauntings, they became reclusive and refusing to speak about it to this day.

The family moved out of the house three years ago but still haven't been able to sell it and now, Jalé and her mother have reached out to Nick and Katrina to investigate the entities that reside in this house and help rid the family of the haunting that has been tormenting them for decades.

Upon entering number 81, Nick said "I don't know what it is about this house, but this house has a lot of resemblance to Hinsdale House and the 'Black Monk House'. I feel it's very oppressive, negative, it's completely overwhelming." Katrina says the aim of their investigation should be to answer the question, "is it the house that's haunted? Or is it the family that's haunted?"

With the light fading outside, the house was locked down and Nick and Katrina started their 72 hour long investigation of the property in the kitchen, where straight away they both smelt a putrid smell. Foul smells are often associated with demonic hauntings.

They heard knocking sounds coming from upstairs and went to investigate, but as they headed for the stairs both Nick and Katrina suddenly reported feeling dizzy. Nick was using a device called a Geoport, that scans through random phonetic sounds allowing entities to create intelligent responses to their questions. The responses they initially got weren't particularly intelligent, but were chilling. They heard the words "run" and the name "Lucien" several times.

Nick then said, "if you're up in the attic can you knock once?" Katrina said she heard a "little knock", but the sound wasn't picked up on camera. They went to investigate the attic, which is said to be one of the most active parts of the property. Jalé and Sylvia won't go up there and on several occasions Ottoman Antor passed out for no obvious reason up here. Once in the attic, Nick called out "did Lucien come up here?" A voice through the Geoport said, "he lay down".

Later the pair separated to find locations to sleep in. Nick decided to sleep in Sylvia's room where the "dark man" has been seen, often showing itself in a mirror. While Nick slept he wore an EEG, a medical device that measures brainwaves, Nick hoped it might give some insight into whether whatever haunts the house can affect his dreams. Katrina chose to sleep in Jalé's former bedroom, the part of the house where the paranormal activity first occurred 30 years ago.

After a peaceful but restless first night the pair awoke and began the day by reviewing the readings from Nick's EEG device. He said he did have several vivid dreams where he saw a man in the house. There did seem to be spikes on the chart of his brain activity, but it wasn't really clearl exactly what this meant.

Next they conducted an experiment in Syvlia's bedroom, they were hoping to see evidence of the dark figure who resides in the house, focussing their efforts around the mirror on the wardrobe where he's supposed to have been seen before. Nick set up some motion activated LED light panels on the bed and Katrina was using an SLS camera. This device looks for human-like shapes and maps their form, Katrina hopes it might show something their eyes or the cameras don't see.

Throughout the experiment they used the Geoport in the hopes that a spirit might use it to communicate. After a few minutes a glitchy stick figure showed on the screen of the SLS camera stood between Katrina and the mirror. It only appeared for a brief moment before vanishing again. They then heard a voice from the Geoport, which clearly said "Sylvia" before saying her surname, "Antor" and then mentioning "Lucien" again.

On night two, the investigators continued to focus their efforts on Sylvia's room. They set up another elaborate experiment involving lasers and a series of mirrors to bounce the laser light around the room. Talking about the mirror in the room, Nick said, "we want to open up, what we believe, could be a doorway to the other side and bring this negative entity back in, so we can try to confront it and get rid of it."

Katrina was also using a regular digital camera to take still photos throughout the investigation and Nick was monitoring a device called a tri-field meter that was places in the room. Not long after the device spiked and started beeping, Nick said he felt like the negative energy in the house was effecting him and making him feel aggressive.

Katrina then started taunting the spirits, "if you're so powerful, how come you can't do something more?" With that the pair jumped and a shocked Nick said "the whole building just f**king shook."

Minutes later the tri-field meter beeped again, which Katrina said was due to a spike in the electromagnetic field. They started asking questions again and listening to responses from the Geoport. Katrina asked "who sent you here?" And the echoey voice replied, "Beelzebub". Katrina reminds us that this is another name for the Devil, or a high-level demon. Katrina thinks that the ghost of the little girl and her mother aren't human spirits at all and that they are in fact the result of a demonic haunting trying to trick the family into letting their guard down.

That night, Nick decided to sleep in the attic, which is crazy, not because of the paranormal activity but because earlier in the episode they found it was full of huge spiders, while Katrina was sleeping downstairs on the ground floor in the living room, which was once Jalé's brother, Abrahim's room.

The pair slept throughout the night, although Nick said he did experience noises and weird sounds. Once they were up and ready, they started the third day of their investigation. To answer her question, "is it the house that's haunted? Or is it the family that's haunted," Katrina brought Jalé back in to see if that makes a difference.

Not long after Jalé entered the house, a voice through the Geoport seemed to say her name. A few minutes later they heard the word "Lucien" again, Nick asked Jalé if she knew what this word meant and Jalé said, "yeah, Lucien, that's one of the words I dreamt of, but I don't know what it means".

For the final night, Nick and Katrina set up ghost hunting equipment all over the house, including some LED light devices called "Shadow Trackers" in a doorway on the ground floor, they will indicate if anything passes through the door. Upstairs, they once again set up a laser grid in Sylvia's bedroom. They also placed a sensor on the mirror, that they believe is a doorway. The sensor will tell them if the mirror shakes or moves in any way.

It didn't take long for the motion detector to beep and moments later Nick felt like something had touched him. This was followed by a voice through the Geoport that said "it's Lucien". Katrina asked, "who invited you in?" and the disembodied voice seemed to reply, "mama" and moments later "mother opened it".

This indicates that it could have been Sylvia who somehow invited the demonic presence into the house. Not long after, the investigation came to and end and the duo welcomed Jalé and Sylvia back into the house to share their evidence with them. When questioned by Katrina, Sylvia confessed to using a Ouija board when she was 12-years-old. During this session she saw an apparition of a man dressed like a priest, she asked what he wanted and the figure said "you".

It also emerged that Ottoman's father, who's Jalé's grandfather, used to call upon Satan to help other people in his village. Nick and Katrina seem satisfied that these two factors could be the cause of the negative hauntings in the house. Katrina says, "the best thing the family can do is separate themselves from this house. Acknowledge what happened here and hopefully they can start healing from 25 years of haunting."