Derek Acorah: Extreme Psychic

It is not, of course, the responsibility of a medium to provide protection for those who choose to enter a potentially haunted location. That is the responsibility of the individual. Any person who blames a medium for any resultant mishaps after an investigation is merely displaying gross ignorance of the paranormal in general and, in my opinion, displaying personal irresponsibility towards themselves. It has been known for an individual to blame an underlying and genetic health condition on a medium by claiming that ‘the medium did not protect them adequately’ during an investigation. This is utter rubbish. The person concerned would be better served seeking the advice of a member of the medical profession.

I made an arrangement to travel to Anne and Harry’s shop the following Tuesday. On that day, accompanied by Ray Rodaway, my tour manager, I travelled to Atherton and found the shop we were looking for.

As soon as I entered the premises I became aware that the shop had not always served the purpose of retailing hardware but had once dealt in metals of a finer and far more precious variety. I could see jewellery and pocket watches displayed in velvet-lined mahogany and glass cases. The name ‘John’ rang out and the spirit outline of a small, bustling but well-dressed man formed before me. He was pottering about, polishing a piece here and winding a watch there. He seemed totally oblivious to the fact that the years had moved on and changed the shop and that instead of the precious goods in which he dealt there were now wooden shelves lined with more mundane items such as screws, nails and pots of paint.

Anne took me behind the counter and through a doorway from which an open flight of wooden steps led down to the cellar. As soon as the door was opened I could sense a presence. It was the spirit form of a man lurking in the dark recesses of the cellar. Unlike the busy spirit gentleman in the shop area, this man wore an ugly expression on his face – a mixture of anger, fear and disillusionment.

I reached the bottom of the cellar steps, Ray following close behind me. Anne hovered halfway down, obviously afraid to descend any further. There were a number of large cardboard cartons stacked against one wall and on the floor lay a couple of stepladders. Against another wall were stacked plastic crates full of small boxes of the type that contain nails and drill bits or other such hardware paraphernalia. It was next to these crates that the spirit man stood.

‘Who are you?’ I shouted.

I received no reply. I edged a little closer. Suddenly a crate seemed to fly to the floor, scattering its contents everywhere.

‘William! I’m William!’ I clairaudiently heard the man growl. ‘Leave me alone!’ he commanded.

As I looked at the floor, now covered in small boxes, the impression of a man’s body lying in a bloody puddle came to me. I sensed that this man had not met his end as a result of an accident. This was murder!

I looked back at William and stepped a little closer to him.

‘I’m not afraid of you, William,’ I stated. ‘You know you must leave here.’

‘I will not! Take these people and go!’ he demanded. ‘I will stay here with him – Walter.’ He pointed towards the area where I had been impressed clairvoyantly with the sight of the bleeding corpse.

‘No, you will not, William!’ I told him. ‘You must go. You must leave these good people in peace.’

The spirit man lunged towards me and I staggered back with the force of his energy.

‘Careful, Derek!’ I heard Ray’s gruff voice behind me and I felt him steady my balance by placing his hand on my arm.

‘Just go!’ was William’s sneering response.

I began to feel quite ill. I had a feeling of nervous sickness in my stomach which almost made me retch. I knew I was picking up the emotions of William immediately prior to his passing from this physical life. I also picked up a sense of loss and hopelessness – a feeling of desolation at being let down. I realized that William had met an untimely end himself.

‘Man’s justice was meted out to him,’ I heard Sam tell me, ‘but in William’s case it was an injustice. He was innocent of the crime he was accused of. He is afraid to progress to the world of spirit for fear of what will happen to him. Man’s justice let him down. He is afraid that spiritual justice will do the same.’

It would be a difficult task, but I knew then that I had to convince William that he had to leave this place to which he had so recently come. It was not right that he should spend eternity with the ghostly body of a man he was accused of killing but in fact had not.

I drew closer to William once more, but again the force of his energy repelled me and I stumbled backwards. Each time I was repelled, however, I recovered myself and moved forward again. I knew that if I could get close to this spirit being I had more chance of convincing him to move away from this dark cellar and progress to the light.

‘Talk about Polly,’ Sam advised me. ‘Tell William she is waiting for him. He has nothing to fear.’

‘Polly!’ I shouted out. ‘Polly’s waiting for you.’

When he heard that, the expression on the spirit man’s face softened and an all-pervading sadness seemed to surround us. I knew then that this was no evil spirit come to wreak devastation on anyone, but a sad and suffering soul who was afraid to move on to meet his loved ones on the higher side of life.

William had been executed for a murder he did not commit and was frightened of that travesty of justice being repeated in the spirit world. He was afraid that he would have to spend all his time with souls who had not yet atoned for the horrendous deeds they had committed in their physical lives.

Eventually I was standing so close to William he was almost overshadowed by my aura. With a tremendous effort and the greatest depth of feeling and sincerity that I could convey, I pleaded with him to move towards the light.

‘Polly is waiting for you. She will meet you and show you the way. You do trust Polly, don’t you?’

He nodded. I felt a hesitation and then an enormous rush of spiritual energy, so great that I staggered back and, tripping over one of the ladders, fell heavily to the floor.

Ray rushed forward to help me up. There was a shriek from Anne, who was still standing on the cellar steps. ‘I saw a huge flash of white light, Derek!’ she cried.

‘Did you feel that?’ I asked them both.

‘I can’t feel anything,’ they replied.

‘Exactly! There’s nothing here anymore. Everything is back as it should be,’ I told them.

I spent the next 15 minutes or so clearing the atmosphere. No spirit would enter the premises again in order to cause upset and unrest. And I knew that William had entered the world of spirit and was now at peace with his beloved Polly.

CHAPTER FOUR

Black Magic in Underground Edinburgh

From the mid-nineties right up to 2001 I took part in psychic programmes for Granada Breeze, the satellite arm of Granada Television. This company ceased to broadcast live programming in July 2001 and ceased airing altogether at the end of December 2001.

During my time working at Granada Breeze I took part in programmes such as The Psychic Zone, Livetime and Psychic Livetime, but it was Predictions with Derek Acorah that really threw me into the televised psychic investigation arena.

Predictions with Derek Acorah comprised three sections, one of which involved investigating allegedly haunted locations throughout the UK. I would be collected from my home by a producer and her assistant and would then be taken to the chosen location, where we would be met by a camera and sound team. The investigation would then take place with me having no prior knowledge whatsoever of either the location or its history (sound familiar?)!

One such place that I was taken was the city of Edinburgh. Beneath the streets of modern Edinburgh lies another equally large city, a hidden city, known as the Edinburgh Vaults. In years gone by these vaults were inhabited by people who lived their lives underground. There were homes down there, and shops, industry and drinking establishments thrived. Some people even kept animals. It was not unknown for cattle and poultry to spend their lives living under the city streets.

There are many vaults now open to the visitor, Blair Street Vaults and Mary King’s Close being those I investigated with the LIVINGtv programme Most Haunted, but it was Granada Breeze and Predictions with Derek Acorah that first introduced me to the mysteries and horrors of one of Scotland’s most famous and beautiful cities.

* * *

Niddry Street Vaults are reached by travelling up Niddry Street itself, which is hardly wide enough to accommodate one vehicle, never mind two. Almost at the top of the street on the right-hand side is a sign proclaiming ‘Witchcraft Museum’. It is from here that you gain entry to Niddry Street Vaults.

To the left of the entrance is the museum itself, which is full of the instruments of torture used to extract confessions from those poor unfortunates accused, mostly without basis or proof, of witchcraft. These poor broken victims were then transported to a place where they were burned to death for their supposed crimes.

As I negotiated the steps to the vaults that first time I was made aware of a feeling of persecution – of women suffering at the hands of a nasty misogynistic man. I was sure that these feelings and impressions had nothing to do with the vaults I was about to enter but were the lasting impressions of the history of the tools of torture I had so recently viewed, some of which were authentic and dated back to the seventeenth century, when such atrocities took place.

I went down to a dark passageway, illuminated only by ghostly green lights that had been placed along the wall. Although it was a relatively chilly spring day outside, the temperature underground was surprisingly warm. The floors were covered in puddles of the condensation that was trickling perpetually down the walls. The air smelled stale, though not badly so – much like a room that has remained unopened for a number of years.

The first thing that I encountered on entering the vaults was a closed area to the left of me. On peering through the wrought-iron gateway, I could see that this ‘room’ was dedicated to some form of pagan worship. There was a pentacle on the floor and the walls were decked out with pagan regalia.

Outside the room there stood a wooden block. ‘This was used to chop people’s heads off,’ the guide who had accompanied us said with some relish. Although it was impressively marked and stained with ‘blood’, a quick touch told me that this story was untrue. My psychometric senses could pick up no such savagery having taken place anywhere near the block of wood – it had been placed there for effect and was no more than ‘window dressing’.

We moved forward along the passageway, visiting each room in turn. The camera rolled and I explained what I was receiving both clairvoyantly and clairaudiently. I picked up on children – lots of children. There were also workmen carrying out their daily workaday lives. In other parts of the vaults there were drinking houses and an air of industry. Each room told a story.

There was one room, however, that was different. This room I knew had been used in a way that none of the other rooms had. In the centre stood a stone circle. The atmosphere within this room held emanations that were not altogether pleasant. If I wanted to uncover the secrets of this vault, however, I would have to return at a later date.

Some four years later I found myself back in Edinburgh. I was there to appear at the Festival Theatre as part of my tour of the UK. What better opportunity was there to revisit the vaults at Niddry Street and delve further into the mysteries of the room containing the stone circle?

Together with Ray Rodaway, I once more descended the well-remembered steps into the vaults themselves.

As I did so, I heard somebody not of this physical world shout out, ‘Balfour! Balfour! Alison was innocent!’

I received a momentary clairvoyant image of a woman in her forties. She had two children with her. There was an air if extreme sadness about her, a feeling of loss – of unfinished business on the orders of James VI of Scotland, who was not particularly fond of women and was an ardent supporter of the witchcraft laws. I was later to discover that Alice Balfour had been burned at the stake as a witch. Her husband, also accused of witchcraft, had been beheaded in Germany.

In the vaults everything remained the same – nothing had changed in the time that I had been away. I bypassed the rooms I had previously investigated and headed straight for the vault containing the stone circle.

As we moved along the dimly lit passageway I was aware of hooded spectral figures in a regimented line entering the room to which I was walking. As I entered the room myself, I felt the air temperature grow colder and colder. Ray remarked to me how cold he felt. I felt the same. I was also feeling something else – a predatory watchfulness.

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