This is probably a difficult report to write for the website as we have decided, due to some of the information that Laura picked up, not to disclose either the location or the exact nature of what Laura sensed.

This is not due to the information being of a controversial nature, but because of the risk of some of this information being borrowed, with good intentions and presented as fact elsewhere – thus possibly building a false haunted history for the location and making muddy waters even murkier.

The hotel has a well known legend stretching back four centuries, with sporadic reports of alleged paranormal phenomenon over the years - although an investigation by members of The Ghost Club had established that some of the reported phenomena were of a more mundane origin.

We arrived at the hotel during the early evening, as the night was drawing in. As most of the reported phenomena appeared to be reported in the public areas, we decided to keep equipment to a minimum within our base room, using a digital stills camera, camcorder and mini-disc audio recorder.

Walking around the public areas of the hotel it was clear that conditions were far from ideal to undertake any focused observations so we decided to focus our attention on the base room for the evening.

We set up the camcorder on a tripod in one corner of the room, recording in ‘night vision’, using an infra red extender to illuminate the room (under IR conditions). From this position, the camera would be able to cover most of the room and provide a record of events as well as record any potential phenomena should it occur.

Once the equipment was set up, the lights were turned out whereupon Mark though that he saw a dark shadow in front of the mirror, before it quickly disappeared.

Mark dismissed this as an optical illusion, perhaps caused by the mirror, but he observed the same phenomenon again on two further occasions during the course of the investigation.

Mark chose not to mention this occurrence to Laura at the time due to his aforementioned opinion that it was most likely an illusion caused by a combination of his position in relation to the mirror and the near darkness of the room.

As an investigation, things were relatively quiet until 1:05am, when Laura suddenly picked up details of an ‘event’ outside the room, in the main corridor.

Later Laura advised that she ‘viewed’ this as if she had opened the door, with events unfolded in the corridor front of her.

Although Laura wasn’t aware of this at the time, what she had ‘seen’ tallies with previous witness reports, although they appeared to place the ‘event’ in a different part of the hotel. This information is in the public domain, but Laura was not (knowingly) familiar with the history of the location at the time of the investigation.

This turned out, from Laura’s perspective, to be the trigger for 25 minutes of ‘activity’, where she picked up several other incidents and events relating to the hotel and surrounding locality, along with a couple of names.

This period of activity ended when Laura ‘saw’ the silhouette of a man standing in front of the mirror. At this point Mark took an interest because of his earlier experience and was able to establish that the shadow (for want of a better word) was located in the same position where Mark had observed something similar. However, whereas Mark had seen a black shape, Laura’s sighting had been of a dark brown shape.

Neither of us have any explanation for seeing something similar in the same spot, albeit over 30 minutes apart. It could be an illusion, as discussed previously, but as it was prone not to hang about it was difficult to establish a cause for what they saw. The mirror could be one explanation, although it should be noted that we observed the phenomena from different positions yet saw it in exactly the same spot.

As usual, upon checking the video footage, nothing was to be seen.

As we stated at the start of this report, at this particular moment in time we have decided not to provide the exact details of what Laura picked up.

However, Mark has been able to establish, from official records, one piece of obscure information that Laura picked up on.

Mark spent a number of hours on Monday and Tuesday researching several books concerning the history of the hotel and the ‘information’ that Laura provided, along with the now obligatory internet search, but this all drew a blank.

Faced with a trip to the local records office, Mark contacted a local historian who knew the history of the location, to see if he was aware of one particular piece of information.

Unfortunately, although very helpful, the historian was not aware of this bit of information, indeed, as he said himself, if anyone could have been expected to know this information if would have been himself, but he had never heard this before. So at this point, sadly, it appeared that we had drawn a blank already.

However, the information we provided took his interest and he said that he would look into it further on our behalf, even if it was to find out if the information was definitely incorrect.

Naturally, we didn’t expect the matter to progress any further, but, to our surprise we were contacted a couple of days later by the historian to advise that he had spoken to a researcher at the Suffolk Records Office, who had managed to find the information we sought hidden away in the last will and testament of a local man from several hundred years ago. Not only that, Laura was correct. Result!

Now taking the proverbial step back, we fully accept that this information could just be a lucky guess.

On the other hand, this information was so obscure and not held in the public domain (other than a will from several hundred years ago that was not easily accessible) where Laura could have encountered it, even unknowingly.
Either way, we both found the experience when we were told this news in some ways both pleasing, yet leaving us hungry to establish the position with the rest of the information that Laura picked up.

Needless to say, we’re now researching the other information that Laura had picked up and will issue a further update should we have any further news on this score.

At the time of publishing this report, we have yet to finish our review of the video footage and audio, but we’ll add to this report once this work is complete.

Finally, we would like to extend our thanks Roger and Liz for the thankless task of searching for this information for little else other than adding to their knowledge of the location.


L&M.