Lee Roberts Guest Column: WIN tickets to Newstead Abbey ghost night

After speaking with students recently at Vision West Notts on Derby Road I realised that this is something that runs through every generation.

There I was standing in the middle of around 10 to 15 17 year olds, all throwing location names at me and asking if it is haunted and what activity goes on there.

The simple answers to all those questions are I don’t actually know. What makes a location haunted? Is it that people often sees or hears strange things or is it the fact that the location has a lot of history to it or something else?

I was asked to run an event at the Court House pub in Mansfield over Hallowe’en for a Charity Event and was asked by a guest “Why did you choose this location? What ghosts are here?” When I replied “I don’t know, that’s what we are here to find out”. They were amazed. They had paid good money to come to a location I didn’t even know was haunted.

The truth of the matter is I’m not sure if anything is haunted, that is my job, to search for evidence of the other side or to prove it can be explained by other means.

Another query I often get is why run events at new buildings? I am running an event at the Barista Coffee shop on Outram Street in April, a brand new state of the art building with no cellar, dungeons, caves or grand halls.

Well, the reason is that that building is built on what was the Trading post building and a church before that and who knows what it was before that. Who knows what we may pick up on or evidence we may unearth.

The old big grand buildings are fantastic to spend a night looking round in the dark and seeing the rooms like you would never be able to see them during the day, but does that make them anymore haunted than any other building?

The answer again is I don’t know.

What I am trying to say is that anything can be haunted or have a spooky story or atmosphere; you just have to look in the right places and research what may have stood there before.

So, next time you want to find a great haunted location to go ghost hunting at and may not want to venture out far or even book with a company to guide you like Haunted Event UK, take a look around you. Maybe you have been at the most haunted location all along.

Haunted Event UK will be holding a ghost night at Barista in Sutton on 13th April, Newstead Abbey on 19th April and Sherwood Forest on 11th May and 13th July.

And Chad has a pair of tickets, worth £59.98, to give away for the event at Newstead Abbey.

For your chance to win, simply answer this question;

Where did I recently hold a Hallowe’en charity event?

Email your entries to [email protected] by no later than 5pm on Tuesday 5th March.

For more information on Haunted Events UK, or to buy tickets, visit www.hauntedeventsuk.com