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Above text reads - We kicked off with a tour of the castle with Paul and a telling of the ghost tales. We learned about the old hag drowned in the weir who stalks the battlements as a black dog; the spectre of murdered Sir Fulke Greville and his man servant Ralph Haywood, who killed himself after delivering the fatal blow to Fulke; and the lepers walking across the central courtyard. All spooky stuff, and it was to get much spookier. In the Barbican guardroom, just inside the entrance to the castle, we stood in darkness as Paul called out to any spirits. I stood on the edge of a step between one room and another - the site of a murder - and as silence fell, I felt a heaviness on my chest and it seemed it was suddenly more difficult to breathe. The tension was only broken when, in response to one of Paul's calls, the castle cat mewed a response. We gathered in the castle cafe to partake of coffee and biscuits, pick up our paranormal detecting paraphernalia and get a pep talk from our medium Ian Doherty. By now it was 1.50am, and as well as the coffee some had come prepared with caffeine drinks and sarnies - very sensible. The group was an electric bunch of all ages, with varying degrees of belief or scepticism. We'd all been asked to bring torches, though a couple had gone one step further and gone for "head lamps" like you'd see on a miner's helmet. Our little torch looked puny in comparison! Our team had and EMF reader, it picks up on electromagnetic frequencies - and a laser temperature gun to check for hot and cold spots. The idea of wandering around the castle in the dark wasn't as frightening as I thought it might be, it was quite exciting and buoyed by a desire to get stuck into the supernatural we set off for the Ghost Tower to see if Sir Fluke and Ralph Haywood would make themselves known. Sadly there wasn't much going on. Others in the party recorded temperature drops but seeing as this was on an open stone spiral staircase, I wasn't convinced. We revisited the Barbican and we three girls felt that chest constriction again, but after retracing our steps we concluded it was probably because we'd climbed stairs and felt nervous because we didn't like the dark.

The Ghost Tower

This time something even more inexplicable took place. In the study there's a round dais with a bewigged mannequin representing Ralph Haywood standing on it. We stood in a close circle in absolute darkness around the dais, and Ian did his bit, calling out and telling us when he felt a presence. Then we all turned our torches on, the wig wasn't on the dummy's head. It had been wedged between his fingers.

Confusion and disbelief circulated among the group. The wig was returned to the dummy's head and my hubby attempted to pull it off and put it in the fingers - it was no easy task as the wig fitted snugly and needed some persuading to say lodged in the hand. So how anyone managed to perform such a feat n the pitch black without making a noise or alerting a neighbour - goodness only knows. As one party said "if you were going to move the wig you'd just pull it off and drop it on the floor or drape it over the hand rather than try and mess about jamming it in the fingers"

Report by Karen Hambridge - Coventry Evening Telegraph.

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It is good to have the viewpoint of another person when looking at a seemingly paranormal event having occurred. Though in all fairness the people present within the room did try to recreate the situation, to no avail. Also of note is the fact that one of the group had a digital camcorder equipped with infrared vision, and captured nothing by way of anyone playing a trick. The wig on the dummy is secured by small velcro like claws which stick to the fabric of the dummy, in removing the wig, the head of the dummy moves also.

Below is an excerpt from my report of the evenings event, you can also download this from here

A notable event occurred when we put on our torches before ascending to the upper room. A member of the group had been filming throughout the vigil and suddenly screamed as she noticed the dummy attired in 16^th century garb and wearing a wig, was in fact minus his wig. I remember remarking that this must have been the previous group as they had filed out, taking the wig off and placing it in the hand of the dummy. The person with the camcorder however had it recorded that he had the wig on his head at the beginning of the vigil. You may think that this occurrence was of no consequence, yet no one had removed this wig, and we tried to replicate this by taking the wig off and letting it drop to the floor in case anyone had accidentally knocked into the dummy, yet we could not replicate this. People standing close to this dummy were vehemently convinced that no one from the group had been anywhere near the dummy.