Mazehouse

Hello there. I think I’ve worked it out. It’s all in there, its just the wrong way round: everything is the wrong way round. It’s not what I said, not the past haunting the present, not at all. Its both past and present being haunted. Its the house, or something older, the place. Its all in the posts – all of them – it is him: he’s trying to tell me something. I’ve been rereading them all day over and over – didn’t want to talk to anyone else. He needed to tell the story, all the stories, he needed to warn us. It happened to him, I know it did. Once upon a time. It always happens. Every story down the years, what he says: the same story – three people – the vicar, the knight, the king. Me, Jon, Jo. Always the same story with the same ending, its in all of them: murder, death, blood. It happens every time. Its happening now, right here in the house, his clockwork he talks about, pushing us on. Pushing me on. It can only end one way. Murder, death and blood. We’re caught up in the machine, the awful workings. I can’t push against it. I can feel it beating in my brain. I must push against it. It will eat us alive. The house. It will destroy us or drive us mad. Drive me mad. Someone has to stop it. Someone has to stop.

Sensationalism in the Mazehouse

Hello there – I feel I must write online just to express my extreme frustration at where we seem to be going at the moment with this investigation – I feel that I have completely lost control of both the investigation and the TV programme – I feel that certain individuals have taken over and are just pursuing their own ends: we are embarking on sensationalist and stupid stunts that only serve demean our original purpose here. I just wanted to say that.

Amazing footage

Hello there, Stephen here – I just wanted to share the really exciting news about what happened last night – yet again we saw some really exciting EMF readings from round the house and this time we – in fact, I – actually recorded some physical phenomena accompanying them: what are commonly called orbs in paranormal circles. Of course, orbs are often derided as just artefacts of the equipment we use, or just natural effects taken out of context. but I think what I have recorded here is beyond anything I have seen before – partly helped by the fact that I was having to record in semi-darkness, right at the top of the house, while everyone blundered about below.

Add to this the other events of the evening – the possible psychokinetic activity with the crockery in the pantry and the strange behaviour of a lot of the electronic equipment in the house – along with some of the most impressive EMF activity we’ve seen to date, I think we can call this investigation a considerable success! It seems incontrovertible to me that there is paranormal phenomena in this house and that we’re uncovering some significant evidence for it.

We also, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, had another lot of mysterious text added to the site last night – I’m rapidly also becoming convinced that these additions are related to the EMF activity and to other pasranormal activity in the house. This is, I think, the largest amount of text we’ve had so far and the most specific in its references to people and places. There is a definite theme emerging, though, a rather grisly one of death and  murder – which is there, I suppose, in the history of the house – which is, really, what the text appears to be getting at – ewhat we’re all getting at, I suppose – some idea of how the past can haunt us in the present – us and the places we live in.

It definitely feels like something is gradually being revealed, though, growing in strength and clarity. I can only look forward to what the next few days bring.

The odd video blog

Hello there. I’ve just come from the very odd experience of watching myself on video and realising that not only do I have no idea what I’m talking about, but I also don’t really remember recording the piece at all. I’m talking about my video diary which was uploaded yesterday and in which Gary has noticed some very odd phenomena: a shadow that grows from the left-hand side of the screen across the wall behind me as I speak.

That in itself is an odd thing, as I don’t remember anything casting a shadow – but then I don’t actually remember recording the video diary at all. Jon asked me to record a few words, to get some private thoughts, I suppose, and I recall that I had something very specific I wanted to say, but watching the recording back I realise that whatever I meant to say, I certainly didn’t say it. In fact what I did say appears to make no sense whatsoever.

What I do recall is a sense of relief at being given an outlet, a place to express some of the misgivings I’m having about where our investigation is going at the moment, but in some way that relief seems to have just overwhelmed me. Its very odd – but it, even more oddly, it feels familiar – there have been a few moments in the last couple of days when I’ve felt dislocated from what I was doing – something which I’d put down to tiredness and stress from working on the project.

In fact my sleep has been very broken recently, which does at least mean that I’ve been able to note down my dreams for my dream diary – the most recent being a version of the one I’ve been having since I moved into the house – running around the house looking for someone – although in this case that someone being a figure I thought was our producer, Jon, but who, when I caught up with him, turned out to be the writer Ranulph Williams.

It worries me that I must stay focussed on the project and not let myself get too stressed out or worn out by the television nonsense – the Mazehouse is the thing that matters.

Stephen’s Video Diary

Interesting results

Hello there, Stephen here – as you may know if you were online with us last night, very little happened during our ‘seance’ – which, for me, doesn’t signify really, although I hoped those of you who joined in enjoyed yourselves, at least. What does matter is that later last night we had some very exciting EMF readings on our monitor network – something that you’ll see on the show this evening I expect. Sadly EMF readings is all we had at the time – no associated phenomena – or so I thought until this morning, when I discovered that we had had another text posting on our website during the night.

It’s tempting to suspect that the two things are related – the EMF readings and the posting on the blog, but without records to match up with past appearances of the text, its impossible to know for certain.

I can’t help but feel that the online text is significant, however. The text that arrived during the night mentions Sir Francis Day by name and seems to be hinting at the tragedy of him and his half-sister. The references to Arthur and Guinevere certainly chime with a lot of Ranulph Williams’ interest in Arthurian myth and, in particular, that great betrayal of the King by Guinevere his Queen and Lancelot his trusted champion. There’s something else, though – something that definitely sounds like Williams’ other writings, with its fascination with myth and the effect of history on the present. I’m pretty convinced now that this text is coming from a piece of Williams’ writings, although how I don’t know.

One possibility that we have to admit is that, as Jo has very reasonably pointed out, it could simply be that whatever is causing the electro-magnetic field we are detecting could be interfering with our machines, causing the computers to post the text themselves, as a bug or glitch. And that’s a possibility that we really ought to take seriously – as tempting as it might be to get over-excited about these phenomena, Jo’s right to remind me that we’re here to investigate these things scientifically, not by having online seances!

Welcome to everyone

Hello there, Stephen here, just adding my welcome to the newest member of our team, Louisa McMurray. Louisa’s been brought on-board to give her point of view of the paranormal phenomena in the house – although she’s very insistent on not being a psychic – apparently she prefers the term sensitive.

I’m pleased to have her on board, though – I’ve worked with plenty of sensitives and psychics before in my work and its always useful to have an alternative point of view. Although we in the project are obviously a lot mroe focussed on a scientific approach to what might be happening in the house, it can be very helpful to have someone who can interpret things in a more human way.

So welcome to Louisa, and welcome to all the TV people who have joined us today to start the programmes. Its really very odd to have so many people about the house when I’ve got so used to it being empty and quiet. It’s already beyond hectic and we’ve hardly started.

Well, this should be interesting, at any rate

More puzzles

Hello there, Stephen here: as you may have seen, we’re adding another one of Ranulph Williams’ stories to the site today, and I’ve been thinking more about the strange messages we’ve been getting on the site: its something I’m worried we’re going to forget about in the confusion of the next week or so.

The more I think about it, the more interesting the strange messages become – I’m convinced now that they have something to do with the longer introduction to ‘Haunted Houses’ that my correspondent suggested appeared in the first edition of the collection.

Certainly it seems likely that the haunted house that Williams talks about in the shorter introduction that we have here on the site must surely be the Mazehouse itself. And if that’s true, the longer version may well have had more information about what happened to Williams here.

Although the text that’s appearing on the site is hopelessly jumbled, I can pick out, at least, the references to Flower Queans and Corn Dollies, that point us to the local traditions I’ve written about on the site already, and parts sound like references to the myth of the Woman of Flowers, that Ranulph Williams wrote about in his book ‘The Labyrinthine King’. Anything more defeinite if harder to figure out – beyond the fact that its not very cheerful, what with all that talk of murder and death.

The biggest puzzle of all, of course, is how the text is getting posted to the website at all. We’re all pretty sure now that no one in the house is sending the messages, and Gary is pretty sure that no one outside could be, either – so could this be something paranormal, could this be an online haunting? It’s not inconceivable, after all, if paranormal phenomena do have an influence on electro-magnetic fields, as we suspect (and as we’re hoping to discover with our monitor system) they why shouldn’t they be able to affect computers? It would certainly be a first, as far as I know, and an amazing discovery for our investigation.

Of course, if this is so, then we still have to ask, who is sending this text, and why? We have been talking about Ranulph Williams and his experiences here, in the house, is this some echo of those experiences? Or does it have some other meaning?

But that, of course, is what we’re here to do, isn’t? To investigate.

New message

Hello there, Stephen here, just pointing out that we had another message added to the site last night, added under my name, but, again, not by me, although, as before, I had left my computer over night switched on and logged into the website in my name.

In fact, this time, both Gary and Jo are reasonably convinced that there wasn’t any outside influence on the computer or the site, so quite where it might have come from has become a little more mysterious.

Once again the text seems to have been taken from Ranulph Williams’ introduction, although again there is text I don’t recognise, and I find myself wondering about that original draft of the introduction that I was talking about yesterday and whether some of the text might come from that.

Now that I am, at least, pretty convinced that the messages aren’t coming from anywhere else, I am going to start trying to analyse them in detail to see what I can discover. It could well be that the most interesting events of this whole investigation have been happening right here on the website, right in front of us all this time.

Wartime history

Hello there, Stephen here. I just wanted to say thankyou to the reader who got in touch with some details about Ranulph Williams and his history with the Mazehouse, which has allowed us to add a new article to the site about the history of the house during the War.

One mystery remains, which is what exactly happened in the house that affected Williams so much. My correspondent says he has heard that the first edition of ‘Haunted Houses’ had a foreword that included much more information about the Mazehouse but which was cut down to the one we have on the site for later editions.

I’d love to heard from anyone who could lay their hands on a copy. In the meantime I’m going to see what else I can find out.