The Psychic Investigators Casebook

Niddrie Street Vault Murders

In this unholy, underground place we walked slowly up the dim, narrow and water-soaked lane and into any chambers which were not debarred to us by virtue of a gate or door or metal grill to keep us out. I kept my eye on the two mediums to see what reaction they had to various rooms and chambers as we passed them in turn but it was not until we arrived at the northern end of the short lane that I noted a reaction “of quality”. The three of us were looking into a chamber that was closed off to us by a very heavy metal grilled door: there was no light within but when I shone the flashlight through the grill we could see a large circle of very heavy stones covering the majority of the damp and uneven stone floor.

Gordon turned to Dronma,

“Do you see her?” he quietly asked.

I saw Dronma nod.

“The red-haired girl?”

“Yes, the one with the green dress? The one who is beckoning us?”

“That’s her!” said Dronma, “I wonder what she wants to tell us?”

There was no human girl there, of course: I looked and saw no one!

No unfortunate female had been accidentally locked into that stone-vaulted chamber by some unhappy mishap!

The girl, who both of those talented mediums were seeing, was from another world and indeed, from another time.

Our contact with the psychic world in that unpleasant place had truly begun!

Woodchester Mansion

The seven of us were soon strung out in almost total darkness as we climbed the main staircase and my right foot (I know for sure) was on the second bottom step with my bright flashlight shining down onto it for safety when all of a sudden there was an almighty and ear-shattering CRACK! above the heads of the people just in front of me, accompanied by an almighty rumble as of falling masonry. It sounded like a load of very large rocks being tipped off the back of truck I seem to remember.

Simultaneously with this CRACK! something even stranger took place, for my life instantaneously turned into slow motion somehow, although the utter panic that was taking place around me seemed to be happening at the correct speed: it was as if my mind was working at one speed while my body reacted at another!

I glanced up and I will swear that I saw long, vertical, dark shapes like long chunks of coal hurtling down onto the people on the steps ahead of me. I am also sure that in a downwards glance I saw a piece of yellow-white stone, about the size and shape of a large bath sponge, bounce next to my foot on step two and ricochet  past the left of my left foot and into the lower corridor.

I distinctly remember in my mind (that had changed to “slow-motion” thinking) that had I had my left foot on that step instead of my right it would have been hit fair and square by the large falling stone and, strange though it may seem, my brain had ample time to be pleased that I had not been injured in that way.

Still working in slow motion, my mind appeared to have time to consider at that point that I’d be visiting some of the party in hospital the next day for sure but somehow I had time to react positively too for, in the darkness as the masonry rained down upon us, I grabbed the young girl’s coat with my right hand and someone else’s shoulder with my left. I yanked them both back down into the comparative safety of the corridor while the second cameraman flung himself at us out of the darkness, impacting into my chest so that the four of us were left floundering in the lower corridor while the other three made their escape in an upwards direction to the safety of the upstairs landing.

Whatever happened at that strange event, heaven only knows, but the fact that the people on the staircase split naturally into an upper and a lower group when placed under sudden stress would indicate that whatever took place there, took place in the center of the staircase ....that is exactly where we heard the crack and rumble and saw the falling items.

It is important to know that we all heard the terrible rumble and that certainly three of us saw the stones falling down onto our heads and all of us took some sort of very rapid evasive action to move ourselves off that staircase.

As already explained, when the party split under the traumatic circumstances, three persons shot upwards to the landing while four cascaded downwards into the lower corridor.

Those who had rushed upwards now returned downstairs to be with the rest of the people who had come out of the drawingroom to see what had happened to us and the young girl who had been exceptionally “spooked out” by the incident had, by this time, run out of the building and into the pitch black night. She had to be found and persuaded to come back into the safety of the building for her own sake but this took some doing as she was not a “happy cookie” at what she’d seen and heard!

When comparative calm returned to the situation I was still the nearest person to the foot of the staircase and in the darkness I turned around and shone my flashlight up and down the steps to see what quantity of rubble had landed between us for at that point I was under the impression that we had all had a very ,very lucky escape from death!