A ghost in scorched rags. Mysterious whispers. Appliances switching on by themselves. Strange sightings at the Sparkford Inn are the stuff of local legend—can ghost hunters prove the place is haunted?
Flickers of light dance within the fireplace of the Sparkford Inn’s dining room, the warmth overshadowed by rumours of ghosts lingering in the shadows. A team of paranormal investigators arrive one misty March evening to search for a giggling boy whom many guests have reportedly seen darting around the bar, across the dining room, and playing in the pool room. Witnesses have described him as about seven years old, dressed in scorched rags, and bearing burn marks—features that suggest he is no ordinary child. He is, they claim, a ghost.
Caroline Gibson, lead investigator at Somerset Paranormal Investigators UK (SPI UK), a group that has been probing paranormal phenomena since 2012, says that reports of the boy often coincide with unexplained events. “Several objects were mysteriously knocked off the kitchen counter, and the dishwasher switched on by itself, even when no one was nearby,” Gibson says. For years, staff and guests alike have reported strange occurrences: whispers in empty rooms, objects moving on their own, and other ghostly figures, including a domineering man and a woman who frequents Room No. 6.
These accounts, along with a local urban legend about the Inn’s haunted past, convinced the six members of SPI UK to investigate. Tucked away in the small village of Somerset in southwest England, the Sparkford Inn dates back to the late Middle Ages. Over the centuries, it has served as a stopover for horse-drawn coaches, a popular lodging place for visitors, and a meeting point for local hunters. Today, it’s a cozy hotel and pub. Gibson and company arrived here with the goal of not only cataloguing these apparitions, but proving they’re full-bodied spirits, which are interactive entities that can produce physical effects and respond to human contact.
For the investigators, the stakes are high. The popularity of shows like Ghost Hunters and Paranormal Witness have fueled a fascination with the supernatural. But for SPI UK, it’s more than a trend, it’s a pursuit for real answers. Tracking down the elusive ghosts at the Sparkford Inn will put their skills and equipment to the test. Capturing tangible evidence of the paranormal would be a major breakthrough, advancing ghost hunting as a legitimate field of study—far beyond mere entertainment or pseudoscience.
Following Gibson through the Inn’s dimly lit corridors, the investigators are carrying large cases of technical equipment. Their toolkit includes electromagnetic field meters (EFMs) and thermal imaging cameras. While none of the team members are formally trained scientists, they bring many years of hands-on experience to their investigations, approaching cases with what they consider to be scientific rigor. Paranormal investigations, they say, follow a structured process that includes on-site visits, interviews with witnesses, and data collection. Afterward, the team analyzes the data for patterns and anomalies, like reviewing audio recordings for electronic voice phenomena.
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