Spooked Ireland Review - Episode Two - King John's Castle
Ghost/Paranormal
Wednesday 25th, October 2023
This week, the second in a ten episode series, Spooked Ireland visit's King John's Castle in Limerick, with Spooked Ireland taking over our Friday nights in the run up to one of the spookiest nights of the calendar year, what has Spooked Ireland been telling us about the other side of Ireland that most of us are used to hearing whispers of in stories.
We're going to approach the Spooked Ireland series from a purely fact based and reasonable assumption based on common knowledge and societal intelligence. Due to this approach it is hard to either prove or disprove any of the personal experiences that are presented in the Spooked Ireland series.
The second episode, aired on the 6th of October 2023 and is based at King John's Castle in County Limerick, a lesser known gem of a castle in Ireland. King John's Castle offers just as much mysticism, history and ghostly entities as Charleville Castle did, if not more.
The Spooked Ireland team consists of presenter Vogue Williams, spiritual medium Chris Fleming, technology guru Ryan O'Niell and consultant parapsychologist Dr. Evelyn Hollow.
This week the Spooked Ireland team is joined by Anthony Kerrigan of GhostÉire, an Irish paranormal investigation group based in the south-west of Ireland.
Based on the shores of the Shannon river in County Limerick, King John's Castle would have most likely seen many attacks with the ability of the attacker to sail right up to the walls of the castle. Located on King’s Island and named after Richard the Lionheart's brother, John. The castle was built in the 13th Century, and it’s stated that there is evidence of a viking community as far back as 922 AD.
The Spooked Ireland team led by Vogue Williams states their aim as,
In the opening scenes of the episode it's stated that this is the first time the castle has opened its doors to a paranormal investigation team and presenter Vogue goes on to state that 'the people of Limerick need help' which we think is a bit of a reach, but makes for engaging TV though.
Starting off in the castle Chris and Ryan venture into one of the towers of the castle with Chris stating that he hears men yelling as if the castle was under siege, followed by Chris stating that the walls will record the past, a reference to the stone tape theory.
Chris goes on to state that he hears heavy footsteps coming up the stairs and what they are wearing is heavy, Ryan goes on to state that he likes to monitor the atmosphere when walking around a location especially when Chris ‘is coming through with information’ to see if anything out of the ordinary is happening at the same time.
Next Chris and Ryan move out onto the top of one of the towers where Chris states that he sees cannons firing in towards the castle and sacks of coffee being thrown, further going on to state that he sees men coughing and getting sick or feverish.
Chris gets straight into it in this episode compared to the first episode where it was more gradual. Within the first few minutes of the episode Chris states what most if not all are very reasonable statements to make about any castle of this era built near or on a waterway, there is nothing here that is spiritual, paranormal, surprising or impressive as any of the team or even visitors to the castle could have thrown these few statements together with a basic knowledge of history in Ireland.
The episode turns to Vogue and Evelyn meeting up with employee James in the undercroft of the castle, James goes on to reveal that he feels that the undercroft is the spookiest part of the castle.
James goes into a bit of what seems like a tour guide spiel about the castle and more specifically the undercroft. James states that the castle’s first brick was placed around 1190, with the castle only being completed in 1280, with Vogue asking ‘over a hundred years to build’ and James confirming Vogue’s statement/question.
James states that the town moto for Limerick is, ‘An ancient walled city well versed in the ways of war.’
James goes on to state that there were five sieges with siege tombs found in the castle in the undercroft and after the use of most likely some type of ground penetrating radar (it was stated x-rays were used in the show) it’s stated by James that it was estimated that 500 to 600 skulls were found in the undercroft of the castle.
James goes on to talk about the siege of 1652 where he states that one of the most notable aspects of this siege was where plague victims were fired back over the castle walls into the defenders.
Moving back to Chris and Ryan, they attempt to make contact with any spirits in the castle when Chris states that he sees a soldier walking away from them on the walkway outside of the room they’re in and Chris further states that he went up the stairs so they follow.
At the top of the stairs and along a small walkway into a room Chris states that he no longer sees the soldier but that he must be watching and listening which leads to an EVP session being conducted by Chris and Ryan.
Ryan states that this is the first place that he has ever received nothing on the audio recorder and that this is very strange, Chris follows this up with that the spirits must be fearful, anxious or hiding which is why they are quiet.
The lack of events experienced by Chris and Ryan can’t be verified as anyone that's used an audio recorder and didn’t record anything apart from the people in the room would say the recorder is working fine and as expected. Unfortunately unverifiable.
Now we start to get into the stories of the castle with James being the first person to talk about an experience with Vogue and Evelyn that he had in the undercroft on his own once.
James describes his experience of entering the castle at 9 o’clock (not stated as morning or evening in the episode) and no one else was there, he felt what he described as a gush of wind in the undercroft, coming from where the siege tombs are located. Then James states this gush went ‘straight through’ him, James states he heard an exhale of breath, then he turned to look at the direction of the siege tombs, and saw a mist ‘that had mass’ to it and was ‘dark’, the mist is stated to have moved down and disappeared into one of the siege tunnels.
With what we can see in the episode the undercroft is not a completely sealed off area and there are clear gaps in the surrounding walls which would allow for a reasonable assumption that a gust of wind could make its way into the undercroft. Furthermore it’s plausible that a mist that had formed around the castle could have been caught in a gust of wind and brought into the undercroft.
This is just one plausible explanation to the story that James states in the episode but as with any personal experience it’s near impossible to verify and has to be taken on it’s own merit.
The episode jumps back to Chris and Ryan where Ryan is getting the SLS camera ready for use, Chris goes on to state that it’s the best piece of equipment to use in the situation they are in as he knows they are in the presence of spirits.
Chris goes on to explain how the SLS Kinect camera works and states that the spirits are mapped as anomalies on the screen and that they appear on the screen as kinect stick figures and almost a few seconds letter a stick figure is captured on a walkway outside the room, Chirs proceeds to walk to the other end of the walk way and the stick figure disappears as Chris passes it to then have the stick figure appear over Chris’s head on the screen.
We need to take a pause here for a minute to clear up what the SLS Kinect camera is, it’s a modified version of the Microsoft Xbox Kinect, which was an add-on to the Xbox entertainment console, in short the technology used was built for a different purpose.
The piece of hardware used and adapted was originally designed to allow motion control of the Xbox console. The version of the Kinect you see in this episode is modified to run off a battery instead of a mains power supply.
One of the first known uses of the Kinect in ghost investigations was seen in the movie ‘Paranormal Activity 4’, which is very likely where the idea came from to use this technology in paranormal investigations and it has now built a strong group of support from the many teams that use it.
Kinect was originally designed to identify a human body and track it’s movement for entertainment purposes, but ever since the release of the Kinect motion sensor controllers in 2010, users found that the device sometimes saw unexpected figures behind them or in their house when there was no one there with them, these stick figures are known as ‘Kinect Ghosts’.
Most Xbox users dismissed the Kinect Ghosts as a glitch and moved on, so keep this in mind when you see an SLS Kinect camera being used and don’t jump to conclusions based solely on one source of data or information.
Next the episode moves onto a video that was captured on a mobile phone by Ocean McCormac which shows a dark figure move left to right on the walkway that Chris and Ryan were just on with the SLS Kinect camera.
The video shown in the episode is convincing and shows a dark shadow figure moving from left to right on the walkway and appears to pass behind the stone columns in front of the walkway.
At this stage, without further examination of the footage we can’t say much more about the video, but do have a couple of suggestions that could be explored.
Ocean goes on to state his theory of the origin of the shadow figure is the black lady who is said to have been murdered by the Irish confederate army. Ocean further states that the black lady was an opera singer and hearing the black lady singing/wailing a foreboding or hideous melody then it was believed someone would die.
Evelyn goes to checkout the walkway where the shadow figure was captured on camera to state she isn’t able to explain the video at that moment in time.
The episode moves onto Chris introducing Irish paranormal investigator Anthony Kerrigan from GhostÉire who talks about a soldier spirit previously reported at the castle as well as the shadow captured on the mobile phone.
We also see the common reports of banging doors which are seen across a lot of paranormal cases.
Anthony brings Chris to a nearby pub called JJ Bowles as there have been previous reports of paranormal activity.
Anthony and Chris talk to the bartender Mike, who goes on to describe a few events that stick out in his mind.
The first event was of a full bodied apparition that walked right passed Mike and disappeared, Mike stated that the apparition was wearing a trench coat and peak cap.
The second event that Mike described was one night when he had locked up the pub and his wife was outside collecting him, as Mike exited the pub to his wife, his wife asked if they were taking the old man home but as Mike states, there was no one else in the pub at the time. Mike goes on to state that the man looked to be in military uniform, wearing knee boats and a soft cap.
Lastly Mike describes glasses behind the bar shattering when just sitting on the counter, also Mike states that glasses have shattered in his hand.
After these few stories that Mike explains to Anthony and Chris, Chris goes behind the bar and asks Anthony to have a look as well with both individuals stating they feel a cold spot. Chris goes on to describe soldiers climbing over each other, gasping for air.
Jumping ahead a bit, back in the pub Chris suggests a temperature change in one of the rooms, this would not be uncommon for old buildings like this pub due to gaps in walls due to many years of putting in new cables and keeping the building up to date for health and safety reasons.
Chris states he feels a shift where energy is being absorbed by a spirit to do something when a noise of some sort is heard upstairs, Chris and Anthony move upstairs and as they walk up the stairs you can see the roof is lined with plastic sheeting which suggests leaks in an old building and gives an indication as to the possible state of repair of the building.
To be able to properly add further weight to any of the claims an in depth review of the pub building would need to be done to rule out common environment factors and common issues with older buildings.
Chris states that the ghostbox allows voices of the spirits to communicate, unfortunately there is no evidence to verify or dismiss this as there is no scientific evidence to back it either way.
Some words are reported to be heard on the ghostbox and Chris makes a link to the soldiers that died on the drawbridge. Chris goes on to state that he hears what sounds like drums on the ghostbox, there is a drum like sound heard on the episode. The pub is in an area that anything could be transmitted and be caught on the ghostbox so without further access to a recording of the sound or what frequencies the sound was heard on it’s impossible to verify or dismiss.
Now going back to Ryan on the walkway where the shadow was seen, setting up a step tracker to see if he can capture anytime something passes. Just to note that Ryan is behind the tracker after placing it so he would have to pass the tracker to exit the walkway as there is only one way in and out of that location.
The episode moves onto Vogue, Chris, Ryan and Evelyn reviewing the mobile phone footage of the shadow captured on the walkway.
Next Ryan and Evelyn proceed to check on the step tracking in the walkway to find that there is one event logged on the tracker and that the battery is dead. Looking at Ryan walk up the stairs you can clearly see his breath indicating that it’s cold outside, additionally the step tracker is sitting directly on stone, in this situation it’s highly probable that the battery died due to exposure to cold temperatures.
With regard to the one event logged, earlier we saw Ryan explain about the step tracker as he placed it and he was behind the tracker, to get out of the walkway would have caused one event to be logged, but it’s assumed someone would remember that the step tracker would have to be reset if a member of crew had to pass it to exit the walkway.
Chris goes on to state that one event indicates something went past the step tracker and didn’t return past it, followed by Chris’s statement that ‘a dead battery is a tell-tale sign of paranormal activity’.
There is a lot here to cover on this walkway but overall it’s impossible to verify or dismiss without further supporting evidence, but to add that a dead battery in a cold environment has been discussed previously (article linked below, 'Battery Drain, Is It Caused By A Ghost? Why Does It Happen?').
Moving back to the undercroft Vogue and Chris head down and as Vogue is telling Chris about Jame’s experience in the undercroft, Chris takes out the SLS Kinect camera to see if he can capture anything. A REM-pod goes off and Chris reports that the SLS Kinect camera freezes.
Chris reports that a gust of wind is felt in the undercroft and that it’s flying around, further stating that spirits don’t have a physical body, when another REM-pod goes off.
Vogue goes on to state that she was down in the undercroft for over 30 minutes with not one bit of wind, then Vogue claims that the smell in the undercroft has changed. While Chris conducts an EVP session a bang is heard from what appears to be under the walkway, under Vogue, Chris and the camera person.
Jumping ahead in the episode again, Vogue and Ryan go to one of the tower roof tops, outside to use a K2 meter, Vogue states of the K2 that ‘it picks up abnormal spikes in electromagnetic energy’, and ‘the higher the lights flash the more apparent something out of the ordinary is happening’.
We did notice that there were many cuts in the filming from when questions were asked to when activation or activity was captured on the K2.
It’s impossible to verify any activation of the K2 without access to the original unedited film of the call out session on the tower roof.
For the last few minutes of the episode all four team members move down into the undercroft. Chris states that Ryan has a brand new, state of the art piece of kit. Ryan states that they have an ‘FBI type software’ called ‘faces’, this is used in conjunction with a yes/no device.
After creating a potential image of a spirit from the undercroft Chris infers that the face doesn’t look happy, a face just created by Ryan on software based on a yes/no device. Chris seems to infer that the individuals at the time would have been low on food and that the face Ryan created, Chris states in relation to the face and low food availability 'thats what that looks like’ seeming to reinforce the face created by Ryan was linked to a spirit in the castle.
Some observations on episode two, first off it’s an amazing location steeped in a rich history and splattered with death.
As previously stated about episode one, without being able to see the door slams on video or what direction the bangs were heard from by Ryan on the stairs it's impossible to verify any event that took place but similarly it's impossible to dismiss the events either.
With regard to the mobile phone video captured of the shadow figure, it does look very convincing from just seeing the footage on a television screen, but without being able to analyse the original video file it’s impossible to further verify but similarly dismiss the video. But the video is something we would be very interested to look into more.
One other note we would like to make readers aware of is that on the website for one of the compaines that make and supply the SLS Kinect camera they state,
Like episode one it was an enjoyable watch, and showcases an amazing castle that hasn’t seen paranormal investigators (on television) before.
We look forward to reviewing episode three which is located at Aughrim Village, County Galway.
We're going to approach the Spooked Ireland series from a purely fact based and reasonable assumption based on common knowledge and societal intelligence. Due to this approach it is hard to either prove or disprove any of the personal experiences that are presented in the Spooked Ireland series.
The second episode, aired on the 6th of October 2023 and is based at King John's Castle in County Limerick, a lesser known gem of a castle in Ireland. King John's Castle offers just as much mysticism, history and ghostly entities as Charleville Castle did, if not more.
The Spooked Ireland team consists of presenter Vogue Williams, spiritual medium Chris Fleming, technology guru Ryan O'Niell and consultant parapsychologist Dr. Evelyn Hollow.
This week the Spooked Ireland team is joined by Anthony Kerrigan of GhostÉire, an Irish paranormal investigation group based in the south-west of Ireland.
Based on the shores of the Shannon river in County Limerick, King John's Castle would have most likely seen many attacks with the ability of the attacker to sail right up to the walls of the castle. Located on King’s Island and named after Richard the Lionheart's brother, John. The castle was built in the 13th Century, and it’s stated that there is evidence of a viking community as far back as 922 AD.
The Spooked Ireland team led by Vogue Williams states their aim as,
Vogue Williams invites American medium Chris Fleming and his team to investigate a spike in paranormal activity across Ireland. With exclusive access, they uncover the mysteries, myths and murders behind some of Ireland's most haunted locations.
In the opening scenes of the episode it's stated that this is the first time the castle has opened its doors to a paranormal investigation team and presenter Vogue goes on to state that 'the people of Limerick need help' which we think is a bit of a reach, but makes for engaging TV though.
Starting off in the castle Chris and Ryan venture into one of the towers of the castle with Chris stating that he hears men yelling as if the castle was under siege, followed by Chris stating that the walls will record the past, a reference to the stone tape theory.
Chris goes on to state that he hears heavy footsteps coming up the stairs and what they are wearing is heavy, Ryan goes on to state that he likes to monitor the atmosphere when walking around a location especially when Chris ‘is coming through with information’ to see if anything out of the ordinary is happening at the same time.
Next Chris and Ryan move out onto the top of one of the towers where Chris states that he sees cannons firing in towards the castle and sacks of coffee being thrown, further going on to state that he sees men coughing and getting sick or feverish.
Chris gets straight into it in this episode compared to the first episode where it was more gradual. Within the first few minutes of the episode Chris states what most if not all are very reasonable statements to make about any castle of this era built near or on a waterway, there is nothing here that is spiritual, paranormal, surprising or impressive as any of the team or even visitors to the castle could have thrown these few statements together with a basic knowledge of history in Ireland.
The episode turns to Vogue and Evelyn meeting up with employee James in the undercroft of the castle, James goes on to reveal that he feels that the undercroft is the spookiest part of the castle.
James goes into a bit of what seems like a tour guide spiel about the castle and more specifically the undercroft. James states that the castle’s first brick was placed around 1190, with the castle only being completed in 1280, with Vogue asking ‘over a hundred years to build’ and James confirming Vogue’s statement/question.
James states that the town moto for Limerick is, ‘An ancient walled city well versed in the ways of war.’
James goes on to state that there were five sieges with siege tombs found in the castle in the undercroft and after the use of most likely some type of ground penetrating radar (it was stated x-rays were used in the show) it’s stated by James that it was estimated that 500 to 600 skulls were found in the undercroft of the castle.
James goes on to talk about the siege of 1652 where he states that one of the most notable aspects of this siege was where plague victims were fired back over the castle walls into the defenders.
Moving back to Chris and Ryan, they attempt to make contact with any spirits in the castle when Chris states that he sees a soldier walking away from them on the walkway outside of the room they’re in and Chris further states that he went up the stairs so they follow.
At the top of the stairs and along a small walkway into a room Chris states that he no longer sees the soldier but that he must be watching and listening which leads to an EVP session being conducted by Chris and Ryan.
Ryan states that this is the first place that he has ever received nothing on the audio recorder and that this is very strange, Chris follows this up with that the spirits must be fearful, anxious or hiding which is why they are quiet.
The lack of events experienced by Chris and Ryan can’t be verified as anyone that's used an audio recorder and didn’t record anything apart from the people in the room would say the recorder is working fine and as expected. Unfortunately unverifiable.
Now we start to get into the stories of the castle with James being the first person to talk about an experience with Vogue and Evelyn that he had in the undercroft on his own once.
James describes his experience of entering the castle at 9 o’clock (not stated as morning or evening in the episode) and no one else was there, he felt what he described as a gush of wind in the undercroft, coming from where the siege tombs are located. Then James states this gush went ‘straight through’ him, James states he heard an exhale of breath, then he turned to look at the direction of the siege tombs, and saw a mist ‘that had mass’ to it and was ‘dark’, the mist is stated to have moved down and disappeared into one of the siege tunnels.
With what we can see in the episode the undercroft is not a completely sealed off area and there are clear gaps in the surrounding walls which would allow for a reasonable assumption that a gust of wind could make its way into the undercroft. Furthermore it’s plausible that a mist that had formed around the castle could have been caught in a gust of wind and brought into the undercroft.
This is just one plausible explanation to the story that James states in the episode but as with any personal experience it’s near impossible to verify and has to be taken on it’s own merit.
The episode jumps back to Chris and Ryan where Ryan is getting the SLS camera ready for use, Chris goes on to state that it’s the best piece of equipment to use in the situation they are in as he knows they are in the presence of spirits.
Chris goes on to explain how the SLS Kinect camera works and states that the spirits are mapped as anomalies on the screen and that they appear on the screen as kinect stick figures and almost a few seconds letter a stick figure is captured on a walkway outside the room, Chirs proceeds to walk to the other end of the walk way and the stick figure disappears as Chris passes it to then have the stick figure appear over Chris’s head on the screen.
We need to take a pause here for a minute to clear up what the SLS Kinect camera is, it’s a modified version of the Microsoft Xbox Kinect, which was an add-on to the Xbox entertainment console, in short the technology used was built for a different purpose.
The piece of hardware used and adapted was originally designed to allow motion control of the Xbox console. The version of the Kinect you see in this episode is modified to run off a battery instead of a mains power supply.
One of the first known uses of the Kinect in ghost investigations was seen in the movie ‘Paranormal Activity 4’, which is very likely where the idea came from to use this technology in paranormal investigations and it has now built a strong group of support from the many teams that use it.
Kinect was originally designed to identify a human body and track it’s movement for entertainment purposes, but ever since the release of the Kinect motion sensor controllers in 2010, users found that the device sometimes saw unexpected figures behind them or in their house when there was no one there with them, these stick figures are known as ‘Kinect Ghosts’.
Most Xbox users dismissed the Kinect Ghosts as a glitch and moved on, so keep this in mind when you see an SLS Kinect camera being used and don’t jump to conclusions based solely on one source of data or information.
Next the episode moves onto a video that was captured on a mobile phone by Ocean McCormac which shows a dark figure move left to right on the walkway that Chris and Ryan were just on with the SLS Kinect camera.
The video shown in the episode is convincing and shows a dark shadow figure moving from left to right on the walkway and appears to pass behind the stone columns in front of the walkway.
At this stage, without further examination of the footage we can’t say much more about the video, but do have a couple of suggestions that could be explored.
Ocean goes on to state his theory of the origin of the shadow figure is the black lady who is said to have been murdered by the Irish confederate army. Ocean further states that the black lady was an opera singer and hearing the black lady singing/wailing a foreboding or hideous melody then it was believed someone would die.
Evelyn goes to checkout the walkway where the shadow figure was captured on camera to state she isn’t able to explain the video at that moment in time.
The episode moves onto Chris introducing Irish paranormal investigator Anthony Kerrigan from GhostÉire who talks about a soldier spirit previously reported at the castle as well as the shadow captured on the mobile phone.
We also see the common reports of banging doors which are seen across a lot of paranormal cases.
Anthony brings Chris to a nearby pub called JJ Bowles as there have been previous reports of paranormal activity.
Anthony and Chris talk to the bartender Mike, who goes on to describe a few events that stick out in his mind.
The first event was of a full bodied apparition that walked right passed Mike and disappeared, Mike stated that the apparition was wearing a trench coat and peak cap.
The second event that Mike described was one night when he had locked up the pub and his wife was outside collecting him, as Mike exited the pub to his wife, his wife asked if they were taking the old man home but as Mike states, there was no one else in the pub at the time. Mike goes on to state that the man looked to be in military uniform, wearing knee boats and a soft cap.
Lastly Mike describes glasses behind the bar shattering when just sitting on the counter, also Mike states that glasses have shattered in his hand.
After these few stories that Mike explains to Anthony and Chris, Chris goes behind the bar and asks Anthony to have a look as well with both individuals stating they feel a cold spot. Chris goes on to describe soldiers climbing over each other, gasping for air.
Jumping ahead a bit, back in the pub Chris suggests a temperature change in one of the rooms, this would not be uncommon for old buildings like this pub due to gaps in walls due to many years of putting in new cables and keeping the building up to date for health and safety reasons.
Chris states he feels a shift where energy is being absorbed by a spirit to do something when a noise of some sort is heard upstairs, Chris and Anthony move upstairs and as they walk up the stairs you can see the roof is lined with plastic sheeting which suggests leaks in an old building and gives an indication as to the possible state of repair of the building.
To be able to properly add further weight to any of the claims an in depth review of the pub building would need to be done to rule out common environment factors and common issues with older buildings.
Chris states that the ghostbox allows voices of the spirits to communicate, unfortunately there is no evidence to verify or dismiss this as there is no scientific evidence to back it either way.
Some words are reported to be heard on the ghostbox and Chris makes a link to the soldiers that died on the drawbridge. Chris goes on to state that he hears what sounds like drums on the ghostbox, there is a drum like sound heard on the episode. The pub is in an area that anything could be transmitted and be caught on the ghostbox so without further access to a recording of the sound or what frequencies the sound was heard on it’s impossible to verify or dismiss.
Now going back to Ryan on the walkway where the shadow was seen, setting up a step tracker to see if he can capture anytime something passes. Just to note that Ryan is behind the tracker after placing it so he would have to pass the tracker to exit the walkway as there is only one way in and out of that location.
The episode moves onto Vogue, Chris, Ryan and Evelyn reviewing the mobile phone footage of the shadow captured on the walkway.
Next Ryan and Evelyn proceed to check on the step tracking in the walkway to find that there is one event logged on the tracker and that the battery is dead. Looking at Ryan walk up the stairs you can clearly see his breath indicating that it’s cold outside, additionally the step tracker is sitting directly on stone, in this situation it’s highly probable that the battery died due to exposure to cold temperatures.
With regard to the one event logged, earlier we saw Ryan explain about the step tracker as he placed it and he was behind the tracker, to get out of the walkway would have caused one event to be logged, but it’s assumed someone would remember that the step tracker would have to be reset if a member of crew had to pass it to exit the walkway.
Chris goes on to state that one event indicates something went past the step tracker and didn’t return past it, followed by Chris’s statement that ‘a dead battery is a tell-tale sign of paranormal activity’.
There is a lot here to cover on this walkway but overall it’s impossible to verify or dismiss without further supporting evidence, but to add that a dead battery in a cold environment has been discussed previously (article linked below, 'Battery Drain, Is It Caused By A Ghost? Why Does It Happen?').
Moving back to the undercroft Vogue and Chris head down and as Vogue is telling Chris about Jame’s experience in the undercroft, Chris takes out the SLS Kinect camera to see if he can capture anything. A REM-pod goes off and Chris reports that the SLS Kinect camera freezes.
Chris reports that a gust of wind is felt in the undercroft and that it’s flying around, further stating that spirits don’t have a physical body, when another REM-pod goes off.
Vogue goes on to state that she was down in the undercroft for over 30 minutes with not one bit of wind, then Vogue claims that the smell in the undercroft has changed. While Chris conducts an EVP session a bang is heard from what appears to be under the walkway, under Vogue, Chris and the camera person.
Jumping ahead in the episode again, Vogue and Ryan go to one of the tower roof tops, outside to use a K2 meter, Vogue states of the K2 that ‘it picks up abnormal spikes in electromagnetic energy’, and ‘the higher the lights flash the more apparent something out of the ordinary is happening’.
We did notice that there were many cuts in the filming from when questions were asked to when activation or activity was captured on the K2.
It’s impossible to verify any activation of the K2 without access to the original unedited film of the call out session on the tower roof.
For the last few minutes of the episode all four team members move down into the undercroft. Chris states that Ryan has a brand new, state of the art piece of kit. Ryan states that they have an ‘FBI type software’ called ‘faces’, this is used in conjunction with a yes/no device.
After creating a potential image of a spirit from the undercroft Chris infers that the face doesn’t look happy, a face just created by Ryan on software based on a yes/no device. Chris seems to infer that the individuals at the time would have been low on food and that the face Ryan created, Chris states in relation to the face and low food availability 'thats what that looks like’ seeming to reinforce the face created by Ryan was linked to a spirit in the castle.
Some observations on episode two, first off it’s an amazing location steeped in a rich history and splattered with death.
As previously stated about episode one, without being able to see the door slams on video or what direction the bangs were heard from by Ryan on the stairs it's impossible to verify any event that took place but similarly it's impossible to dismiss the events either.
With regard to the mobile phone video captured of the shadow figure, it does look very convincing from just seeing the footage on a television screen, but without being able to analyse the original video file it’s impossible to further verify but similarly dismiss the video. But the video is something we would be very interested to look into more.
One other note we would like to make readers aware of is that on the website for one of the compaines that make and supply the SLS Kinect camera they state,
We do not guarantee that the stick figures the Kinect SLS Camera produce are of paranormal nature. As always it is up to the user to determine whether readings are showing intelligent patterns that can be suspected to be of paranormal nature. Always keep in mind that meters read the environment so there could always be a natural explanation to a reading. This has to always be ruled out before concluding that any readings are of paranormal nature.
Like episode one it was an enjoyable watch, and showcases an amazing castle that hasn’t seen paranormal investigators (on television) before.
We look forward to reviewing episode three which is located at Aughrim Village, County Galway.
