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Taping the GHOSTS

 Taping the GHOSTS

By SHANE COCHRANE

 

From: Ireland’s Own (November 20, 2020)

 

Gill Hall mansion, Dromore, Co. Down

 

WHEN THE Ulster Tape Recording Society was formed in 1958, its sole purpose was to bring together people who liked messing about with tape recorders. But soon after its formation, the society started receiving requests for help.

It began when a resident at a care home, who was too frail to go to church, asked if they could record a church service for him so that he could listen to it in the home. They could - and they did.

Then, an elderly farmer, who’d been placed in a care home many miles from his beloved farm, asked if they could record the sounds of the farm that he missed so much. They could - and they did.

And so it continued for the society.

Then, in 1960, they received their strangest request: could they record a ghost?

So, at 10pm on Saturday, 11 June 1960, twelve members of the Ulster Tape Recording Society arrived at Gill Hall mansion, outside Dromore, in County Down, to capture a ghost on tape.

Gill Hall was selected because it was the location of a very famous ghost story. In October 1693, Lady Beresford, who was staying as a guest at Gill Hall, was visited by the ghost of her childhood friend, Lord Tyrone.

As children, Beresford and Tyrone had promised each other that the first of them to die would return to tell the other about the ‘other side’. However, Lord Tyrone, as far as Lady Beresford knew, was very much alive.

“Know that I departed this life on Tuesday last at four o’clock,” said the ghost, “and have been permitted to appear to you to give you assurances that reveal our religion is the true and only religion by which we can be saved.”

Then, after telling her that she would die on her 47^th birthday, the ghost grabbed her wrist and said: “While you live let no mortal behold this wrist.”

The next day, Lady Beresford received word that her friend, Lord Tyrone, had indeed died. As his ghost had requested, she covered her wrist with a piece of black silk, and kept it covered until her death - on her 47^th birthday.

 

AT THE mansion, the Ulster Tape Recording Society placed microphones throughout the old building and set up a control room from which they could monitor and record any ghostly goings-on.

Then they all gathered in the control room - and waited.

A few things happened that night that the group couldn’t easily explain. The microphones picked up a strange metallic tapping sound that would stop as soon as someone from the team left the control room to investigate. A key in a door turned on its own. And a number of objects mysteriously moved.

It was enough to convince most of the society members that they had encountered a ghost. But just in case they were being pranked, they planned another - secret - visit to the mansion.

And so, at 10pm on Saturday, 25 June, the team returned to Gill Hall. This time they were joined by Sheila St Clair, an expert in the paranormal.

As before, once the microphones had been placed around the mansion, everybody gathered in the control room and waited for something to happen.

They didn’t have to wait long. Just before midnight, there was an almighty crash from the cellar - followed by another, a few minutes later.

Then, on the stroke of midnight, a gong was heard to sound in the cellar. It seemed to announce the beginning of proceedings.

For the rest of the night, a whole range of sounds was heard coming from the cellar: a squawking bird; the rumble of a distant engine; a scraping noise followed by a cough; more crashes; and, at one point, a fierce growling noise.

The strange noises in the cellar continued throughout the night. Yet, when the team finally re-opened the cellar, just before dawn, it was pretty much as they’d left it. There were no gongs, squawking birds or growling animals. And there was no evidence that anyone had gotten into the cellar to fake the noises.

So, had the team really recorded a ghost?

Sheila St Clair was convinced they had, saying at the time that she could find “no reasonable explanation other than the supernatural” for the sounds she’d heard that night.

But there had been something else that happened that night - something that hadn’t been recorded on tape - that convinced everyone who was there that they had encountered a ghost.

When Sheila and the guys from the Ulster Tape Recording Society were making their way down the main drive of Gill Hall after a very eventful night, they stopped to take one last look at the house. And that’s when the ‘phantom lights’ appeared - flickering in every window of the house.

They didn’t make a third visit.