The Publican goes ghost hunting

I'm standing in the first floor staff room of the Viaduct Tavern in Holborn, Central London, holding hands in a circle with 10 strangers and asking the great spirit to protect me.

It's 9pm on a Saturday night, and as revellers make their way across the city to start their nights out, this particular corner of London - with its law courts and financial offices - is fittingly dead.

I'm here with the Haunted Places Paranormal Investigations group to find out the truth about reports of poltergeist activity and the ghost of a murdered prostitute that have been circulating about this former gin palace for decades.

True or not, the rumours are good business for the Fuller's pub. Its colourful history means at least one paranormal group visits the pub every month to investigate.

This week it's my turn. And as we build up to turning off the lights I'm getting very scared indeed. The pub is built on the site of Giltspur Street Compter, a notorious debtors' prison of which five old cells survive in the pub's cellar.

Across the road used to stand the notorious Newgate Prison - a site of public hangings. William Wallace (aka Braveheart) was executed just round the corner, and the Great Fire of London ravaged the area in 1666. If there were going to be ghosts anywhere, surely this would be the place.

Something in the cells?​

We start with a tour of the building with mediums Andrea and Pete. No sooner have we stepped into the cellar and its cells than Pete starts to feel sick.

"Something is going on here," he says. "My head is spinning, I'm getting a small guy, a midget, with a flat cap, he goes around slapping people."

Now I wouldn't say I'm a hysterical sort of person, but I am very susceptible to the power of suggestion. I'm torn between wanting to laugh and wanting to hide under my duvet. Cobwebs hang from the low ceiling, there are iron bars everywhere and I just can't get a story about the barrel lift turning on by itself out of my head. I'm right next to it.

Andrea feels it too. "I want to say somebody didn't pay," she says, voice shaking, "but that doesn't feel right as they didn't have any money to pay."

Crash! Right on cue a cask in the corner of the room falls to the floor. No-one is standing anywhere near it. That's it. My nerves are shot. I head upstairs.

While the group wait in the bar, Sharon Slatter, founder of the group, sets up EVP recorders (voice activated recorders) and infra-red barrier beams in the cells and toilets. An alarm will sound if any movement is detected.

Lights out​

The lights go out and before we begin our glass divination - very similar to a ouija board - we join hands for psychic protection to stop bad spirits from making us feel ill or physically attacking us. Before then the thought hadn't crossed my mind, so I'm not exactly comforted.

Pete then asks me if I felt anything. I say no. "It's just that there is something standing behind you," he says. In the pitch dark I can feel my skin crease into goose pimples. The glass starts moving. Sharon gets excited.

"Sometimes it goes so fast it tips over," she says. "We had lots of angry spirits last week, but we won't go there." Quite.

Is anything there?​

After an hour or so of trying to get a response we stop. But the group seem particularly pleased that the spirit told us he was a 19-year-old male and correctly said there were five of us around the table.

It's now 2am and before its time to leave Sharon and sister Ginette take me down to the toilets in the basement to try some 'scrying' - when a group stare into a mirror at one person until they take on the form of a spirit. "I was an eskimo one time," comments Ginette, a blonde lady in her early forties, "and another time I turned into a black man."

We stare for a good 20 minutes or so and I must admit I couldn't see too much in the pitch black toilets. But both Ginette and Sharon are convinced they see the image of a woman with severe burns appearing. Shrrrrrrrrrmmmmmmm. The hand dryer turns itself on and that's it, I'm up the stairs fast as a whippet.

Proof?​

Were there spirits at the Viaduct Tavern? The group are convinced. When Sharon got home she found that her voice recorder in the cells had been set off and a low moaning sound and clinking metal sounds were recorded.

But for Sharon, Ginette, Pete and Andrea, the icing on the cake is a photo taken in the toilets with a night vision camera of Ginette wearing a sleevless top with an elaborate collar. She was actually wearing a black, short sleeved t-shirt.

• Tell us about your own haunted experiences in your pub! Email Claire at claired@thepublican.com.