The Bear of Rodborough Investigation
The Bear of Rodborough - 23d November 2012
We approached 'The Bear of Rodborough' after a member of staff at a previous location who used to work there informed us about the history and stories of the hotel. Parts of the hotel are over 300 years old with the archway which would lead horses into the courtyard (now the restaurant) still visible and the original bell which would be rang to alert the owner is situated in the reception area. The hotel was used as a courthouse where people would be trialled and sentenced with stories that various rooms and the cellar were used to carry out any hangings ordered by the court. There are reports of a male spirit that haunts the bar area of the hotel but on researching we couldn't find any information on who this might be or where the story came from.
On arrival we made one of the rooms we had access to our base for the night and began setting up. A member of staff had stayed in this room and said he had woken up in the middle of the night with a noise coming from the cupboard, on opening the door he found all the coat hangers swaying and knocking into each other. He could not explain why this happened and felt very uneasy afterwards. We locked off a camera filming this cupboard but on review there was no movement of the hangers. We also carried out some EVP work in conjunction with a spirit box and while introducing ourselves and asking for any spirits to say hello, a clear reply comes from the spirit box that sounds like 'hello'. This was caught on camera and you can clearly see the team respond to the voice and agreeing on what it said. This was early on in the night and with the spirit box picking up various radio stations we cannot confirm if this was paranormal but the timing was spot on.
We proceeded to another room located in the oldest part of the hotel above the bar area which was being refurbished. After setting up we carried out an EVP session using a K2 meter and spirit box, after calling out and asking for communication by making the K2 lights flash we got an instant reading with the K2 lighting up. We asked again a couple of times and got an instant response each time. The K2 can pick up mobile phone signals and as the hotel had plenty of bookings that night we cannot rule this out as an explanation but again the timing was unnerving. What happened next is hard for us to explain, as we called out more we started getting hits through the spirit box (nothing was being picked up prior to this) and as this was happening one of the team started to feel cold and said he felt weird, he described a tingling sensation and he seemed overwhelmed by it so much he said 'I think I can feel you'. This is strange as the team member has never reacted this way on any other investigations and is out of character. This seemed to pass quickly and after calling out for a while after there was no more results from the K2 and spirit box. The team member could only describe his experience like something passing through him and although he was unnerved it was not an unpleasant feeling.
We moved on to investigate two more rooms but there was no experiences or results from our recordings. After a short break we made our way downstairs and into the cellars where we carried out EVP work and on review of our recordings may have caught a whisper voice saying 'no' in response to us asking a question in the cellar underneath reception.
We continued to investigate the ground floor and bar area but there were no experiences our findings to report. We leave this location (as usual) with more questions than answers about our experiences there and as much as we try to find the logical answers sometimes there just isn't one…… We would like to thank the manager and staff of The Bear of Rodborough for giving us access to this amazing location and we look forward to visiting again in the future.
