The Psychic Investigators Casebook

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Extract from

“The Secret Morgue”

The Psychic Investigators Casebook

Volume 2

“Do you think that we can get in there? I feel I’ve got to make contact with some entity who is in there.”

I felt the hairs rise on the back of my neck.

Wanda checked that the door did not carry an alarm system and then together she and the medium worked away at the little-used bolts until the door could be pulled open creakily to reveal a dark void.

“Can you find a flashlight ?” I asked our guide as the eyes of our medium and myself were growing accustomed to the gloomy vault in front of us. Soon we were able to see that we were facing into the original 18th century basement stonework and a large stone arch curved in front of us with a further vault beyond.

“I feel there’s been another smaller arch here somewhere that has concealed something terrible!” said Francesca softly, as if that was an ordinary everyday statement that she was making. Wanda arrived with a battery-powered light that was more like a table lamp than a flashlight and while it gave off a poor illumination it was better than nothing at all. With it held in front of me I moved forward a little in front of the medium and shone it against the opposite wall.

The light reflected off a puddle of water on the floor and showed at the far side of the chamber what we thought, at that point, was merely a wall of well-cut stone. However, for some inexplicable reason, both the eyes of Francesca and myself centred on a particular section of this stone wall.

(Here I must explain that somehow, when we are together investigating, the medium’s abilities ‘rub off’ on me to a degree in some strange way: it is as if we are almost one person engaged in a single task)

“Look closely!” I whispered in the darkness. “Look there and you’ll see that there has once been a second and much smaller archway leading to somewhere under the street outside but it has been very cleverly blocked up!”

The more we looked the more obvious it all was. There had initially been a smaller stone archway about three feet tall and two feet broad leading to some third chamber under the city street above but at some point, stone of exactly the same type and color had been used to build in and block up the aperture. This had been done in such a skilful way that almost none of the original curvature of the arch remained visible: it almost looked as if there had never been an arch there in the first place!  I did not know at that point where our investigations were leading either psychically or physically and the question that immediately arose in my mind was,

“Why on earth should someone in the 18th century spend considerable money and time hiring a skilful stonemason to block up an opening in a damp and flooding basement so thoroughly that no one would ever realise that it had existed in the first place? Why had some old rubble not been thrown into the hole and cemented into place just to block it off? After all it was merely a damp and dismal cellar under a public street. Why had identical stone been used and chisel marks been put upon that stone to make it look identical to the original surrounding stone?”

At that point it all seemed meaningless until Francesca said.

“Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear! We have something very, very nasty here!”

Somehow I knew at once what she meant and my mouth opened in amazement, as I suppose Wanda’s must have done if I had turned to see her.

“You don’t mean bodysnatchers again?” I exclaimed, for we had discovered a similar cache in the basement of an 18th century surgeon’s house two streets away in 2002.

“I’m afraid so,” the medium almost wailed.

“And is there an entity present at the moment?”

“I’m afraid so,” Francesca repeated.

I couldn’t help myself,

“My God,” I said, “Don’t tell me it’s the same man as we found at the other place in Humberland Street?”

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