My Night at Chillingham Castle
Podcast
Episode:
My Night at Chillingham Castle
by Danielle Searancke
I polled my Instagram audience to choose the topic for this episode and the choices were either energy, or my trip to Chillingham Castle. Obviously, Chillingham Castle won! I decided to begin with the audio from a TikTok by @historyhit that gives some historical context before I share my experience. I spent years as a documenter for a paranormal investigators group in Vancouver, so visiting the castle was on my bucket list!
In addition to the eerie encounters, I also talked about my evolving beliefs around ghosts and earthbound spirits. As I’ve said on the podcast before, it’s important to remain flexible in our beliefs so that we can meet new experiences with curiosity. Grasping firmly to beliefs can also invalidate the lived experiences of others, and I think there is divinity in having differing perspectives.
I would love to hear your experiences with haunted places over in the free Spirit School community!
@historyhit TikTok:https://www.tiktok.com/@historyhit
Episode:
My Night at Chillingham Castle
Spirit School Podcast
In this episode:
History of Chillingham Castle (@historyhit):
Chillingham Castle was a monastery in the 12th Century
Edward the first, the hammer of the Scots, led his Scottish campaigns from this location
The first recorded accounts of the ghosts were penned by Lady Leonora Tankerville
There was an increase in occult spiritualism during Edwardian and Victorian times
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle commended Lady Tankerville on her reports of the Chillingham ghosts
The current owner is from the original Gray family owners and has overseen renovations
Guests still report seeing flashes of blue similar to ghosts sightings of the past
A priest who traveled to get rid of ghosts said there were too many there
My Experience of Chillingham Castle:
I went when I was 19 years old in 2002, right out of high school and obsessed with Most Haunted
Putting this show together was fun because it brought up so much nostalgia
Paranormal things and ghosts tend to be our entry into the spiritual space
At that time, I was immersed in books and TV shows with Sylvia Brown and John Edwards
I joined a paranormal investigation group when the first Most Haunted episode came out
I was so excited at that time and didn’t know that I was a medium yet
I validated what the mediums got and went through photos and audio recordings of our outings
I caught some EVPs from those recordings and overnight ones from my bedside
My ex husband was from England and we traveled once a year
We stayed in the tower at Chillingham Castle in the off season and I was so excited
My memories of this time are piecemeal because it was not a healthy relationship
Scotland has my heart and I still want to visit there again
I couldn’t believe how much I missed the mountains when traveling
My ex-husband and I were the only people there other than the caretaker
We stayed in the tower, which was used for Scottish prisoners of war
I was in awe of how much history was there compared to somewhere like Vancouver
Going to the bathroom in the middle of the night was terrifying in the castle
The strangest thing that happened was not being able to see the castle on the only road
The keeper gave us a midnight tour of the torture chamber that scared me
One paranormal thing that happened was light coming in and a loud popping noise that woke me
I have heard a voice yelling my name in my ear a couple of times
A friend’s mom came to me and I saw the Almost Famous poster and her name was Penny
My friend wasn’t initially receptive and that is part of why I don’t do drive-by readings
I am still unsure of my belief in earthbound spirits or if they have passed on and choose to visit
Part of the reason I am undecided is that some teachers I respect believe in them
We never caught anything definitive in my paranormal investigation years
Beautiful music or framing it as an angel experience could change your perspective
Our beliefs are our choices and we have free will
The more spiritually aware we become, the more we realize we don’t know
Because of Mavis’ beliefs, I firmly believed earthbound spirits didn’t exist a couple years ago
I think there are reasons for mysteries, including the opportunity to expand our beliefs
Some Spirit School Collective members share their experiences with haunted places
Being stuck on specific beliefs limits our potential for spiritual growth and expansion
I saw a full apparition of a little boy by my husband’s side of the bed when I was pregnant
I lost that pregnancy and learned through a medium that it was my child that I saw
Before my trauma informed training I would negate people’s lived experiences
I like to straddle both sides of the conversation without imposing my beliefs
Each of us having our own truth does not make it the capital T truth
I believe there is a divine reason for us to be divided in spiritual beliefs
Spirit School Links
The Initiation Summer 2023 Waitlist: https://view.flodesk.com/pages/63d3191cde520bd60dc33d63
The Initiation 2.0 Summer 2023 Waitlist: https://view.flodesk.com/pages/641a55f4dc3789176b6944ea
Spirit School Collective: https://www.squamishmedium.com/spiritschoolcollective
Join us on the FREE Spirit School platform: https://myspiritschoolcollective.com/plans/
Trauma Informed Lightworker Waitlist: https://view.flodesk.com/pages/6398f03888aca7e15696b1fa
Visit Spirit School at https://www.squamishmedium.com/ for all courses and upcoming programs
View full transcripts of podcast episodes at https://www.squamishmedium.com/blog
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My Night at Chillingham Castle aud
Hello everyone and welcome back to Spirit School, another solo episode for you. This episode was actually inspired by my Instagram audience. I ran a poll asking if you guys wanted me to do my next episode on energy, which I've just been so inspired about lately. Spirit has been really impressing upon me to teach a little bit more about energy. The Initiation, which registration is now open, we're starting May 19th, so this is the Mediumship Foundations Experience, will have a focus on the first class on energy. Again, every round of The Initiation is different. I've taught over 300 classes in three years, and I've never taught the same class twice. So they did inspire me that this first class is gonna be on energy and making first contact. And just so you know too, The Initiation is actually a foundation's mediumship course, but it's good for people who are in their first three years of mediumship development. And basically, you know what it is, it's like giving you a space to practice and play, right? And so I teach a ton. We have a lot of Q and As. There is a self-study portion of it as well, partner pairings every week. We're gonna have group practice readings, which will be new to The Initiation this round.
So for those of you who have already taken it as well, we have a really low alumni rate of $222. You can retake the experience because again, the only thing that's gonna be repeated is the self-study module. Everything else is gonna be different. So very excited. And this will be my last round of The Initiation, by the way. Things are gonna be changing come fall for Spirit School. I'm gonna be expanding in a lot of different ways, but this is gonna be the ninth and final round of The Initiation. So definitely come take it if you're interested in it. I am going to be moving towards a different way of teaching mediumship and psychic work and angels and stuff moving forward in September. So this will be the last kind of like bootcamp immersive like full blown over the top experience, which has been so fun to run for the past three years. But I think it's time to shift a little bit. So I'm excited because we have over a hundred people on the wait list already by the time I record this and I know it's gonna be an epic round. The last round was really epic. But I'm looking forward to experimenting a little bit in the future as well. So come take it. It's a really fun project. It's a huge experience. And I totally digressed there. This was not meant to be an ad for The Initiation. I just got stuck on the energy concept, but the options were between energy or my first and only visit to Chillingham Castle.
So before I go too far into my experience with Chillingham Castle, I wanted to share a TikTok video with you, which I have to give a plus one to Macs. Okay. Have to give a plus one to Macs because you can just upload a TikTok video into Garage Band, which is free with Macs, and it extracts the audio. So, the quality of sound's gonna be a little bit different than how I sound. So you might have to adjust your volume in a second just to give you heads up around that. But it's probably gonna sound better because I'm just popping it right in. But I wanted to give a shout out to the TikTok account just to give them, you know, full credit, but it's called History Hit, H I S T O R Y H I T. We'll make sure that it's in the show notes too, so that you can go check 'em out. But this will give you a more historical view on what Chillingham Castle is, and then I will come back to you in three minutes and 47 seconds and share with you how I first found out about Chillingham Castle, and how that was the very first place I visited when I was a kid. So, yeah, enjoy the history of Chillingham Castle.
" If I were to say the words haunted castle to you, your mind would probably conjure up an image, something like this. This is Chillingham Castle, and even the name sounds like something fantastic I've made up specifically to talk about ghosts. But I assure you this location has a long and storied history. In the 12th century, it was a home to a monastery. By the 13th century because of increasing incursions from Scottish forces, this castle was built. Edward the first, the hammer of the Scots, led his Scottish campaigns from this location. Over the years, it's been host to royals, been home to several noble families, but now it's probably best known as the home to dozens of ghosts.
But unlike other medieval ghost stories, these ones come to us from a little later in time. The first recorded accounts of the ghosts of Chillingham Castle were penned by Lady Leonora Tankerville. She moved here from the US after marrying the Earl of Tanker in 1895 during what was something of a golden age for ghost stories. Imagine, an American interested in medieval ghosts. Victorian and Edwardian eras were a time of great modernization and secularism with major shifts away from religious explanations of the natural world. But the flip side of all this worldly rationalism was that it actually increased interest in the occult spiritualism.
Ghost stories were a hugely popular part of fiction as people became increasingly interested in the paranormal seances and finding different ways of interacting with the dead. Places like Chillingham found themselves in the middle of the Spiritualist revival. Sherlock Holmes author and notable believer in the Supernatural, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, wrote to Lady Tankerville to commend her reports of the Chillingham ghosts. From the 15th century onwards, the castle had been a seat of the Gray, Bennett, and later Tankerville, families. I met with its current owner, married to a member of the original Gray family, Sir Humphrey, who has taken great care in the castle renovations.
This great castle was built really to keep the Scots out of England. Mm-hmm. Began being one strong tower. And then the 1200s, 1300s, they built three more towers. Mm-hmm. And then they built between the towers for the king to come and stay to make into a worthwhile palace. And so in this room here, you see ancient tower there, ancient tower there. And this room just built between the king and the rooms above. So it's been like that ever since, really. You know, with so much battle and action and, and so much back and forth, you know, on the Scottish borders here, it's really no wonder, I think, that we get so many reports of ghosts.
In the 18th century, there was a figure who spent his time waiting, moaning and shimmering in blue, digging between the castle walls, join up two rooms. They find the bones of a child and they buried it and that solved that problem. But when I restored that room, my guest kept saying, you must have electric fault there, cause there's a flash of blue on the edge of the door. Well, there's no electric there at all. We must have left the toone. Yeah. When I first came here, it had a reputation as a haunted place. Mm-hmm. There was a lovely priest who was one of the family. He said, well, look, I go all around the country getting rid of ghosts. Mm-hmm. So I'll do that. Mm-hmm. Yep. And so he came along and next morning he said, there's too many, I can't deal with them. So, that sounds fairly creepy. And it seems that the ghost Leonora documented over a hundred years ago are still hanging around and causing trouble for today's residents."
So there is a little bit of history about Chillingham Castle. Now, let me take you back to 2002. I was 19 years old, just graduated from high school, very, very young still, and a TV show came out called Most Haunted. Okay, so if you know, you know. Please, I wanna know if you've seen this show. It was a British Paranormal Investigation show, and it came out in 2002, and for some reason I ended up watching it from the very first episode and it was Chillingham Castle. Just for nostalgia purposes, I'm going to quickly play you the intro from that show because it just brought back so much nostalgia, and then I'll share my experiences here in a sec.
24 hours at Chillingham Castle scared us. Will it scare you? Hello, and welcome to Most Haunted. We've come to Northumberland to try and uncover the mystery of Chillingham Castle. Now over the years, it's made a name for itself as being one of the most haunted places in Great Britain. It's been called The Home of the Torturer, as one priest has described it as an embodiment of evil. So is Chillingham Castle haunted? Does it live up to its reputation or is it just an old drafted castle with creaky windows? Well, that's what the Most Haunted team are here to find out.
Okay, so I'm dying to know if anyone else watched the show Most Haunted, okay? So let me take you back to 2002 a little bit, and everything that happened before that. And I loved putting this episode together because so much nostalgia hit me and it just reminded me so much of my early spiritual days where I just followed every single curiosity. And you know, when we first open up to our spirituality, we do tend to lean towards ghosts and paranormal things first. I don't know why that is. It's just kind of like our baby entry into the spiritual space. And then we typically like expand our knowledge and perspectives, like as we venture on the path.
And I just wanna take you back to that time though. Now again, I was 19 years old when the show came out. I watched it from episode one. I watched every single episode of Most Haunted. It was on for eight years. Yvette Fielding, Derek Acorah. I won't give you my opinions to it now, but I wanna take you back to that time. And I even had the V H S box sets, and I would literally force people to watch it with me. My best friend Trina at the time, she watched every episode many times because I literally forced her to watch it with me. I was so obsessed with it. And leading up to this time when this episode on Chillingham Castle came out, which was their first episode, I had read all of Sylvia Brown's books at this time. There's over 30 books released by that time. You know, I'd been watching John Edwards on TV for about six years. I'd been watching Sylvia on Montell for about six years at this time. I knew about mediumship and I knew about, um, paranormal things because Sylvia would talk about ghosts all the time in her books. Like I still know the story of the Sarah Winchester house or the Sunnyville California Toys R Us, where there was like a little kid ghost that she used to always go see.
So paranormal, the occult, ghosts, were not a stranger to me. I was very, very, very interested in them. And in 2002, when this episode came out, literally right away I joined a paranormal investigation group called Vancouver Paranormal and I still have my ID badge. It's something I'm gonna keep for the rest of my life. But we used to spend every single weekend, Friday and Saturday night, at a supposed haunted location. We would typically go to people's houses because we would have people reach out to us and say, oh, so-and-so is experiencing this. There's a ghost here. And there would be about a group of eight of us. And there were a couple mediums. There was our leader, whose name was Jan at the time, and then I was a documenter. So I would follow the mediums and I would take notes and I would try to validate through either history or through interviewing the homeowners, what could be validated that the medium was able to bring forward.
And I still remember this. These were some of the best days of my life, right? Like so young. So excited. I had no idea I was a medium back then at all. Even following these mediums, I was like, oh my God, that's so cool you can do that. And it was a lot of fun. And I would spend every Friday and Saturday night doing this, and then every Sunday combing through thousands of pictures. We did have night vision cameras and stuff, but I just took photos with my camera and I took audio recordings and I did get some really cool EVPs. I actually used to go to bed every night at that time with a recorder next to my bed. Every morning I would get ready for work. I would play the audio from the night before, cause I had it set up so only if there was a noise would it record. And I would capture like cars going by mostly. But one morning I do remember doing my makeup and hearing a male's voice, and I was sleeping alone, I pretty much lived alone. I was married at the time, which I'll talk about in a second. But my husband at the time worked for NASCAR, so he was always gone. I think I saw him on Tuesdays for 40 weeks of the year. And we would go somewhere together for two weeks together, which I'll explain how come we went to Chillingham. And then for a month he would, apparently he had another family. This is for a whole nother book, but he had like a whole family somewhere else. Long story, it'll make my book one day, but he had a second life, so he wasn't around very much. And I didn't find that out till years later. It was a very abusive relationship, which I'll talk about a little bit later as well.
You know, I was home alone all the time and I captured this man's voice that said, I have something very exciting to tell you. Like, I lived for this stuff. Okay. I lived for this stuff. It consumed me. It was my only hobby back in the day. And gaming, I was a world ranked video gamer. I don't think you know that. But I was huge on Xbox and PC. I played Counterstrike and Burnout and Oblivion and Elder Scrolls like I, I was a bit of a geek, and I loved it. And I loved it. And I also worked for the motor sports community with Champ Car back then. If any of you knew who Champ Car was and Team Players, that's what I did for my career back then. And so I was traveling a little bit too. And um, yeah, it was just a lot of fun.
And so I remember this episode coming out with Chillingham Castle. And I remember thinking, I'm like, I have to go there. I have to get there. And my husband at the time was British and he was from England, somewhere in the middle of England. And Chillingham Castle was in the, as north as you can go in England on the Scotland, England border in Northumberland, if I'm remembering correctly, in Northumberland. And I remember meeting my husband, and I'm not gonna tell you guys how we got married. Again, that we'll have to stay for a book, but I basically married him the first day I met him. Just a long story, big mistake. I was 18 years old. Whatever. It is what it is. No regrets. No regerts, as they say. So we used to travel together just one time a year. We would go somewhere. For some reason, I loved Scotland. Now I do have family history in Scotland. My grandfather was born in Glasgow, Scotland, and so he was Glaswegian, very proud Scotsman.
And I remember when I first met my husband, my first husband, and I went over to England to go see him, I was like, let's go to Scotland. And I need to see Chillingham Castle. So he arranged everything where the first time I went over to England to meet his family, like after we were married and stuff like that already, it was just again, just a nightmare. He had never been to Scotland. Grew up in England, never been to Scotland. And so I was like, well, we have to go to Scotland. And on the way, I wanna go stay at Chillingham Castle because it was an episode on Most Haunted. And so he actually arranged it. It was in the off season at the time. And he actually arranged it so even during the off season, we were able to go stay one night in the tower of Chillingham Castle.
It was really only a two and a half hour drive from where he grew up in England, but I think things are very different over there. Like you can drive to Scotland like in a day where like in half a day, but in Canada, where I live, like you can't even get to the next major town without an 18 hour drive. You know, like out Edmonton or Calgary, like it's far. You have to drive, I mean, Canada's the second largest land mass in the world, and we are four time zones. That's how large Canada is. It's four time zones long. It was baffling to me that somebody could live somewhere where everything is a drivable distance and like had never been. But you know, you grew up in different spaces or places.
So, we made our way up to Chillingham Castle. I was so dang excited. You have no idea. Now keep in mind, this marriage I had was very abusive, not healthy in any way, shape, or form. I was essentially a mistress, so I was just like one person. I have blocked out a lot of the memories from this experience. I did divorce them four years later, and like we've been divorced obviously a very long time. Me and my current husband have been together I think like 10, 12 years now. I don't even know, 2009, however we can math that out. So this was a very, very long time ago. So I'm doing my best to remember some of the highlights of the time, but also understanding, I was like with somebody. I wish I went alone, but I was with somebody who just wasn't healthy, like wasn't good for me. So just have to give that context to it because the stories I have are kind of interesting, but they're piecemealed together because I have blocked out a lot of my time with this person.
And this was essentially the first time that we even traveled together, and he paid for everything. He flew me out to England, helped me get my passport, took me to Chillingham, took me to Scotland. And by the way, I visited Scotland every year for years after that. Scotland has my heart. I tried everything to figure out how to move there, but because my partner worked for NASCAR, it was too hard to live in the UK and work in North America. Later on, did work for Formula One and was able to travel a bit more, but it was really tricky, so I didn't get to go there. But I was obsessed with Scotland. I still am to this day. It's still the place I want to go back and visit, but my family loves beach holidays.
So it took us two days to drive up there, cause we stopped at a few different places. And I remember walking up to Chillingham Castle and it was the first castle I had ever seen, have ever been into. It was in the middle of nowhere. We had to get off the major road, drive through these little, if you've ever been to England, they have very narrow streets that is surprising that you could even have two cars go on them at the same time in opposite directions, like they were so narrow. It was like if you guys like rally racing, it was like a rally. It was like a rally forest road, and it was a small town, a small village. There wasn't a whole lot around. It was a very flat landscape. I remember, because I live in the mountains and I've always been surrounded by mountains because I grew up in Vancouver and of course live in Squamish now, so it was very interesting for me as I started traveling around, I couldn't believe how much I missed the mountains. I never missed the ocean, cause I grew up on the ocean as well, but I always missed mountains everywhere I go. And one thing that really stands out to me about being there was like how vast it was, and how much space there was, because I also lived in the big city, right, in Vancouver.
So I remember us pulling up to the castle and we were the only people there. Like there was the keeper, who you heard in that earlier video, and then there was me and my ex-husband at the time. That was it. There was no other people there other than us and the keeper. And it was an off season, so they didn't even have a running kitchen, so we couldn't even eat there. It was like, I don't even know what he did to get us into this place, to be honest with you, but we secured the tower, so we had the whole tower of Chillingham. There's four towers. It was used as a torture chamber and a place to imprison Scottish prisoners of war because obviously England and Scotland had been at war for so long. And my ex was British and I definitely identified more as First Nations always, but Scotland as well, and Canadian, of course. And so it just had this rich history. And where I live in Vancouver, Vancouver's only like 152 years old. This castle is made I think in 1066.
So, I'd never even touched anything with that much history to it, and I didn't realize I was a medium back then. I was interested in mediumship, of course. I think I have been since I was a little kid, but I think if I were to go back now, I would appreciate it in a whole nother level. But I remember being in complete awe of like the history and just how much history and what these walls had seen. It was a very eerie place, and the infrastructure in the UK is very different from the infrastructure in Canada, so I was still getting accustomed to the houses that had doors everywhere. Like I would go into like my ex's family's house and every room had a door that you had to close. And like in Canada we have like central heating, so it's like, you have all the doors open. It's an open space plan, and it's like warm and it's just different. So I was getting used to the infrastructure out there as well, and like being in older houses. And going into a castle, it is literally like brick walls. And that was kind of fascinating as well. And I remember there being a really whining stairwell going up to the tower. I remember that where we slept was like a big fireplace and surrounded by windows, and we had to take a little staircase down to like a little kitchen and seating area, and then another staircase down to go to the washroom.
Okay, so one of the things that really stands out about me in being in Chillingham Castle was how terrified I was to go to the bathroom by myself in the middle of the night. And keep in mind I was like very new in this relationship, even though we were married. We did not know each other, and I didn't know who I was back then either. I was like 19 years old. There was no sensibility to me back then, and so I remember being terrified going to the bathroom and like holding it in as much as possible because I was just so scared and my belief in ghosts at the time was so strong. Now, one of the most odd things that happened, and my ex was not a believer in ghosts, was not interested in the paranormal, I think they were just trying to like entertain me. They were much older than me too, which was like another problem, which we don't need to get into right now. But they were a lot older than me as well. And so I was like a young kid, just like green-eyed about ghosts and hauntings, and paranormal, wanting to catch things.
The weirdest thing that happened that entire time was, keeping in mind there's one road to get to Chillingham and we passed a little village on the way, and because they didn't have an operating kitchen because it was the off season, we couldn't eat there other than if we thought about bringing something. But we didn't, because I don't think we fully realized that we couldn't, there was nothing to eat there. And so we did have to get in our car and leave the castle to go to the village pub to get a meal. And we left, I don't know, I remember it was kind of like getting dark, but we left at like around dinnertime and we went to the village, which I think was about half an hour down the road that we ended up in. And we ate at the pub and then we were heading back to Chillingham because we had a midnight castle tour. The keeper of the castle was giving us a midnight candle lit, haunted tour of the whole space and the torture chambers and all that fun stuff. And of course I was like, yes, I'm in it. And keep in mind, by this time I had been in haunted locations like every weekend, and for years after that as well.
And so we went to the pub and we ate and we went back down the road and there was only one road. There was only one castle too. There wasn't even a whole lot of houses around, and we drove the way we came and we could not find the castle. Like we would drive and it was dark, like granted it was dark and you know, I'm being honest about that. But we could not find this castle. And what would happen is we would leave the pub, go down the road. It should have been on the right. There's nothing on the left other than open field, maybe it's changed now cause it's been, you know, 21 years. But it was just open field on the left and on the right, there should be a castle. This castle, we could not see. It like was not there. And I remember we took the road so far that there was a sign, and I remember laughing about this, the sign said, mind the creek. And I remember saying to him, cause I didn't even drive. I did not learn to drive until 2010 people. Okay. I did not learn to drive until I was like 27 years old. So I didn't know the rules of the road, especially in the UK. Everything was very, very different over there, obviously with driving. And I said to him, what does mind the creek mean? And then all of a sudden he screamed and slammed on his brakes. And we had gone so far down the road that we almost drove into a creek. It was like the end of the road. And he was like, that's so weird. We'd never seen this creek before.
So then we turned around and drove back and we drove up and down this road for like two hours and could not see this castle. And there's only one road. There's only one way to go. And then eventually, I think it was like our third or fourth pass, all of a sudden we can see the castle and we're like, okay, that's weird. That was like the weirdest thing that happened at Chillingham Castle. It like literally disappeared. And we did end up going back in, and like settling in the room. And then the keeper did take us around the castle for a midnight tour, and it was very damp and dark and nothing glamorous about it. And the torture chambers, they still had all, not all, but they still had pieces of equipment that they would use. Like they had a rack, they had chains, they had things that looked like bear traps or animal traps. It was like a horrible place to be and the keeper was just sharing a lot of different stories and the history and the experiences of it. And there was just three of us there. And it was a beautiful tour, I suppose, but scared the pants off of me.
If I had forethought about it, I probably would've brought some more equipment to do some like investigating around, but I really spent most of my time just like being amazed that one, I was in a castle. Two, I was kind of with this stranger. It was my first time leaving Canada, well, not Canada. I went to Disneyland when I was a kid, but it was my first time kind of traveling on my own. It was in a weird space back then. But one thing that did happen, and pretty much the only thing that happened that I think could be perceived as paranormal, if you will, was the sun was just starting to come up because I remember there being some light in the room and it was pitch black. I can't even describe pitch black enough to you, how dark it was, because again, there's no light pollution around. It's not by a major city or anything like that. I remember being awoken to this loud popping sound, like this incredibly loud pop. And I remember I bolted up outta bed and it was like this deafening sound on one side of my ear.
And I will say that since I started developing mediumship, I have had that happen a few times, where I'll be laying down in bed, and on the ear that is against the pillow, I will get a deafening like yelling of my name and it happened. I remember the first time that I became aware of that. It was actually when I was a teenager. I remember my boyfriend, who was a total loser at the time, being on the computer and I was laying on my parents' couch just watching tv. I was fully awake. It was broad daylight, and I heard someone say, Danielle, and it was like literally yelling in the ear that was against the pillow.
And that happened again when I was in my first two years of mediumship development. I was laying next to my husband in bed, lights are on, we're both looking at magazines, and I rolled over to go to sleep. And the same thing happened. And this was like, you know, a decade later at least, somebody yelled my name Danielle in the ear that was against the pillow and my ear was ringing. But this time, I was able to, okay, I feel like this is something. I feel this is energy. I feel like this is spirit. And so I started just like centering myself and feeling into it. And I was only in my first two years of development at the time, and I started thinking about my friend's mom who made herself known to me a couple months before. So interesting enough, I reached out to my friend and said to her, and this took a lot of courage to do. I was like, I feel like your mom's here. I feel like she just like yelled my name. And my friend did not wanna talk about it, like she wasn't very receptive to it. This is also one of the reasons why I don't do drive by readings and I don't just like tell people willy-nilly, I'm thinking of them or they came to me, et cetera, et cetera, because I have encountered a few people who I have opened up to about that, that just we're not responsive to it, and this was one of those situations.
So one thing I do with the world of spirit, I say, if you want me to serve you, if you want me to work with your loved one, bring them to me, have them reach out to me, so that I'm not just like, hitting someone up saying, Hey, so-and-so is here. I'm like, I feel you. I hear you. I will work for you. Just bring your person to me and I'll happily serve you. And that always works for me. And that always happens. And so I remember being really uncomfortable saying that. The funny thing was, is that when my friend's mom yelled my name in my ear, again lights on, there was somebody else there. I immediately saw a flash of the Almost Famous poster in my head, and I remember saying that to my friend. I'm like, I don't know why, but I'm seeing the Almost Famous movie poster with Kate so-and-so. She was the main actress in that movie. I was like, was your mom's name Kate? And she was like, no, my mom's name was Penny. I was like, oh, the character was actually Penny Lane. Okay, that's interesting.
So a really uncomfortable situation with my friend, ended up driving to work the next morning. I used to have to leave the house at 6:00 AM. It was pitch black. I'm driving on the highway. The first song that comes up and the name is screening across my car stereo is Penny Lane. So her mom just like kept coming to me. So just to kind of give you some background, I had had that experience a couple times in my life and that's what happened at Chillingham Castle. It was like, this pop. And then as I kind of learned about like energy and I did some paranormal investigation work, I know that there can be sounds that come with like an atmospherical change as well. So like sometimes you might be on a plane and your ears will pop, but this was a very clairaudient pop and it was enough to wake me up, and I remember my nervous system being like very activated at the time. And I remember waking up and hitting my husband at the time. I was like, okay, did you just hear that? And he's like, hear what? And so that was like a really interesting situation that happened as well. And I do believe that it would be an atmospheric change.
Now, is it ghosts? Is it departed loved ones? I'm still up in the air about all of this, okay, because I did do paranormal investigation work for years. We did capture like light anomalies and even on Most Haunted, they had some fantastic video footage of like, you know, apparitions, like really good ones, like people walking by and you can see an arm and a leg, like clear as day, but it's like light. And so, like there have been things captured, but as far as the belief around are they earthbound, are they stuck here versus are they simply passed on and choose to come back and check the place out, or visit it, or offer people different experiences, meaning that they have crossed over? I'm still kind of, I flip between them a little bit. And the reason is because, you know, I've studied under some fantastic teachers through my years. And some of the teachers that I respect so much and I believe in, they bring through a lot of evidence what they bring through makes a lot of sense, absolutely do believe in earthbound spirits and ghosts. And so it's hard for me to like completely deny or discredit that.
And then I have other amazing teachers, who I respect, who I feel are truthful, are honest, are integral, who say there are absolutely not ghosts and earthbound spirits. So I have had amazing teachers and influences in my mediumship journey on both sides of the fence, and I have been torn about it my entire like life, pretty much, because the truth is when I was a paranormal investigator for years, and visited dozens of different houses, we never really caught anything that could definitively be haunting or paranormal in nature. The medium was always to bring through a loved one in spirit, who through evidence, the homeowner would be able to kind of validate. And so I guess one of the assumptions was, well, if we're able to pick up on this energy, if we're able to pick up on the evidence that this person is around, this is probably them just trying to make themselves known, right?
If we look at something like Most Haunted, and we catch these anomalies, and we catch these apparitions, what if they put on beautiful music? What if the music was loving? What if the presentation of the evidence was an angel was visiting while we were at this location that is known to have a lot of buildup of energy because of all the things that have happened here. So one side of the camp will be like, that's a ghost. It's haunted, it's earthbound. Another side of the camp will be, it's a loved one in spirit. It could be an angel showing themselves and a real gift of an experience that our creator aligned for us. So depending on what music, and I'm just using this as an analogy with the Most Haunted music, oh my God, it's a haunting. But if you put some beautiful music to it and presented it in this other way, could that not also be considered?
So you're talking to somebody who is still balancing the fence on this, because the truth is like when I look at some of my teachers who have EVP evidence that, you know, through electronic voice phenomenon that they capture. Okay, there's an earthbound spirit there, right? And then I have other teachers who are like, it just doesn't make sense. The world of spirit, like doesn't need us to like transition them or to help them and it's impossible to be stuck, et cetera, et cetera. So there's a lot of different teachings out there, and I think that all of us are doing the best we can, you know, leaning into our beliefs and keeping in mind that our beliefs are our choices. Right. We have free will to believe what we want, and we have to understand that our beliefs are gonna be formed based off of our interpretation of our experiences, right? It's either our personal experiences that we've had, or it's something that has been taught to us. And for a lot of us in our younger years, our beliefs are formed around what our parents believed or what are teachers or the institutions that we were in taught us. And then as we get older and we have more experiences and we start to look at those experiences and expand our perspective on those experiences, new beliefs are formed, and expanded beliefs are formed. It's not even like crushing an old belief and creating a new one. It's expanding on a belief.
I feel that the more spiritual aware we become in nature, the more we realize that we don't know very much. And that's part of the spiritual maturity and growing is that none of us have the definitive answer. I would say run away from a teacher who says, this is how it is, it's black and white. I have the answer. I'd be a little bit nervous about that, about the ego that is behind that. I'm curious. I'm staying curious. If you listen to my podcast from a couple years ago, I was definitely in the no, it doesn't exist camp, but that was Mavis belief and I studied under Mavis for years. And I remember being in a retreat with her in 2015 and it blew my mind guys, okay, because I watched most haunted for eight years. Paranormal State, anyone? Huge crush on Ryan. And so, I loved these shows. And these shows were my youth and my childhood. And so I blindly believed in it. Absolutely. I was like, well, this is evidence. I mean, there's shows on it. There's, there's mediums bringing out evidence on it. I mean, I didn't question it one single bit. Not one single bit.
And then I remember being in a retreat with Mavis in 2015 and she said this, and it, my whole life changed after this. And she said, there is no such thing as earthbound spirits. You don't need to go around rescuing anyone. And it was like all my insides dropped on the floor and my mouth dropped open. And this was the first time I ever heard anyone say anything like that. And then she spent a lot of philosophy and time on philosophy, and that's what Mavis was really known for, was her spiritual philosophy on why it doesn't make sense that there would be earthbound spirits, right? And she starts talking about the seven layers of heaven, et cetera, et cetera. And I actually still have that recording of that philosophy as well.
I remember reaching out to my mentor who was hosting Mavis at her studio. And I was like, I need to talk to you because I'm having a literal internal crisis right now. Because if you knew how much time, energy, money, resources, I have spent investigating paranormal activity only to have a world renowned teacher say it doesn't exist. I was in major conflict. And then I started becoming more aware of different teachers who were saying it doesn't exist. And so I ended up starting to lean towards that camp a little bit where it's like, yeah, I mean, looking back at my experiences, even the popping that woke me up at Chillingham Castle could be an atmospheric change, but who's to say the atmospheric change was an earthbound spirit? Who's to say it wasn't my grandfather in spirit coming to say, Hey, you're going to Scotland. I'm gonna be with you. Right? You're gonna go see Glasgow for the first time. The Gorbals where I grew up, like who's to say it wouldn't be a loved one coming near right. I don't know. I don't have the answer.
I've had some fun experiences. I love thinking about it. I am not thick enough here to tell you I have the ultimate capital T truth. Think that there is a reason why there's mysteries like this. I think that mysteries like this are what gets a lot of us on the spiritual path, and asking the right questions, and being open enough to different viewpoints, and even having some solid firm beliefs on our current understanding of some of our experiences. Maybe they'll start to loosen up a little bit and there'll be space in those cracks and new philosophies can come in, expanded philosophies can come in, and new beliefs can be formed and expanded on.
But this topic is definitely very hot in the community. I will read you a couple things because I did ask my Spirit School Collective members. It's only been a couple hours, so only a few people have responded, but I said to them, I said, have you guys ever visited a like famous haunted location and what happened? And so I just wanna share some of those experiences with you. They're very short in nature. But I love hearing what other people's experiences are and what their understanding of their experiences are as well. I think it's how we grow. I think it's how we find commonality with one another. So Payton says, I lived in a couple very old buildings in my old hometown of Normal, Illinois, which is such a funny name for a town, Normal, Illinois, both of which I had very real objective experiences with Spirit whose faces I can still remember to this day. I had the works. Temperature change, sounds that shouldn't be there, and electronics turning on and off. The makings of a good scary movie. All that being said, I still haven't landed if I feel like these were ghosts or hauntings, or my psychic receptors just kicking in while being in places that had so much energetic and history to them. Yes, I love that, Payton.
So I like to, I love people who are open to it being like, whatever, like I'm just following this curiosity, right? I think that once we land on something and we're like, this is it, this is the belief, I think that we really cheapen spirituality and we really cut short the potential of our spiritual growth and evolution by not being open to it being all sorts of different possibilities. And I love that open curiosity. Erin here says, I grew up next to a sprawling psychiatric hospital and used to play with patients all the time as a child, some of whom were no longer living. The hospital closed when I was still a child and is completely abandoned and derelict these days. Now when I go back there, while most people find it creepy, I find it really peaceful and a bit sad. Very cool story, Erin. I love that.
And then Haily says, there is a famous hotel in Michigan called the Amway Grand Plaza. It's known for its historic beauty and architecture. It's also known for being really haunted. A couple of years ago, I was staying there with my husband. I woke up early one morning to the apparition of a man standing in the middle of the room. Even though his appearance was translucent, I could clearly see he was well dressed in his early 1900s suit. His hair was neatly combed, and I could even see the curl of his handlebar mustache. After a couple of seconds, he faded away into the wallpaper. Oh, Haily, I got shivers. So one story I've shared on this podcast before that's reminded of that. And thank you Haily and Erin and Payton for sharing your experiences in the community and allowing me to read them to the podcast audience. And if you have a story to share, come over to Spirit School's free community. Andrea will post a thread with the release of this podcast episode and get the conversation going. And I would love to hear more of these stories.
But before I was a medium, about the year before I became a medium, or was aware of my mediumship, I should say. I think we're all mediums, but became aware of my mediumship abilities. I was pregnant and I was laying in bed and me and my husband had just bought our first apartment. This is my current husband, my forever husband, had just bought our first apartment and we had been trying for family for a couple years, but kept having miscarriages. One night we were dead asleep in bed, no pun intended, and I woke up to a little boy who was probably about two or three years old, standing next to my husband's side of the bed, and he was moon lit from the inside out. He had a blue energy. He was like solid, but I could see through him, it was kind of like this weird thing. But he was blue. He literally looked moon lit from the inside out and had this blue light aura all around him. And I remember screaming and hitting my husband and hiding behind him and then looking up again, and he was still there. He was there for a good 30 seconds.
And then my husband woke up and he couldn't see him. I'm like, you do not see him? He's like, no. And then I ended up, and my husband has no patience for this shit. Okay. And this was before I was a medium, which it's gotten worse since then, but I literally rolled over and looked the other way and like head under my blankets. And I was convinced it was a ghost because I didn't have the awareness I have now, of course. And you know, I ended up losing my pregnancy at the time and you know, it was really sad. It was try two, and it was like devastating for me and my husband. We were just about to open up a cat farm and like stop trying. And then I got pregnant again, and this time I had Katie Jane. And so, the big difference was I had acupuncture and I ended up having Katie Jane. Well, fast forward to after I have Katie Jane and I end up meeting my first mediumship teacher who gave me a private reading. Still to this day, best reading I've ever had. She no longer practices mediumship and it's such a shame because she's still one of the best mediums I've ever seen.
My grandma came through, my nana, my mom's mom. And she brought up this experience of me seeing this boy and I'm covered in shivers even thinking about this. And she could see it. And she was like, your Nana's saying that she has a boy child with her. And you saw this boy before he passed. Okay. And I totally forgot about the situation. And I said, yes. I saw this blue boy standing next to my husband. That was my child? And she's like, yeah, she's like, she said God, I say creator, but God didn't want you to suffer needlessly, so you had a visitation before he opted out, before he chose not to come in. Up until that time, ghost, a thousand percent. I was like, there was a ghost next to my husband. And then getting this incredible evidential mediumship reading where she saw it, I forgot all about it, and my nana coming through saying it was my son. It was my son's soul coming through to say, I'm not going to come through now. It's not my time. I love you. You know, thank you for carrying me, and I'll see you on the other side. Right.
Just to give you an example of how my beliefs and like the way I look at things changes and evolved over time. And I do think that there's divinity behind these conversations and why it's not cut and dry, and like why people are so divided on it, and why it's very telling of where we're at in our spirituality, on our thoughts on this because if we're super stuck on a belief or a way of thinking and a way of being, we're not growing and evolving. Right. So I like to be flexible on this. I don't doubt. One thing that you know, is a toxic behavior I used to have, that now I'm trauma informed I would never do, is because I was so firm in my belief that they did not exist, I would then unfortunately negate other people's experiences, their own lived experiences, and their own understanding of their lived experiences, because my belief, with a capital B at the time, was like they don't exist. There's always an answer to it. It's always the loved one. It's always a visitation from the heaven side of things. And I would like hurt people, and hurt people's feelings, and you know, it would piss people off. And I get it.
And so now I'm at a place where I kind of love straddling both sides of the conversation. I love hearing these experiences and I stopped doubting people. And I stopped imparting my beliefs on other people and creating that harm on them. So I don't negate people's experiences anymore. And I very rarely, and I learned this in end of life doula training, I don't always offer my perspective on it either because people will have their beliefs and it's their journey to continue to evolve those beliefs. If somebody says to me, what do you think? I'll be like, well, this is kind of what I feel and using it from that I perspective, right? Because sometimes people who have this spiritual connection can really like, and I saw this a lot during the pandemic when people were like the truth and freedom and all this stuff, and they were like literally sharing their truth as the truth, the capital T truth. I'm like, no, this is your truth. Right? But really saying, well, spirit said and my guides said, and the Lord said to me, and like really kind of like shutting down the conversation because it was so definitive and they were right. They had the ultimate capital T truth. And that to me is one of the biggest turnoffs of anyone who I wanna spend my time with.
So I try to present things when we're having these conversations like, this is what happened to me and this is my understanding of that experience at this point in my life. And like just being really flexible about it, because really we'll know when we go. And I used to have that saying, and then one time Skylar said to me, do we? Because I have all these curiosities, and I don't know if we'll get the full, solid answer while we're here in the ignorance of our human experience. Like we're just not privy to everything. Like, I think that there's a reason why the world of spirit comes through in like pieces, right? Like it's never really like this fluid, solid conversation. It's like pieces of information. I think that there's divinity to that, and I think there's a divine reason for that. I think there's a divine reason why we're all divided on if it's a ghost or a loved one in spirit. And I think that it's beautiful that it is like that. And I really like living in a world where we have the free will to follow our curiosities and form a belief and continue to expand that belief with new experiences and new spiritual enlightenment.
Yeah, so that's where I'm at today, 2023, April 5th, at the time, I'm recording this. That's where I stand right now on it. So, I loved going to Chillingham Castle. It was my first bucket list item. It was the first one I tackled. I would happily go back again. I would love to go back again, and I probably will if I can get my family away from beach holidays because I wanna go to Scotland. I wanna go to Germany. I wanna see Switzerland. I wanna go to Amsterdam. I wanna go check out that part of the world a bit more. And my family always wants to go to like California or Hawaii or Mexico, and I'm like just not a beach person myself. So anyways, I would go back. And, yeah, between the castle going completely missing, having that really loud popping sound and just this energy when it comes to all the horrific things that happened in that space. I remember just wanting to get out of the torture chambers. I'm like, Ugh. I was like, yeah, this is nice, but I will go back to my room now.
That's all I really experienced at Chillingham Castle, but I can guarantee you next time I go, I will be setting up my iPhone. I will be bringing a camera. I will be capturing EVP. I will be all over it because it was just a lot of fun to do that. So yeah, those are my experiences of Chillingham Castle. That was just one of the many, many, many haunted places that I intentionally visited. I hope you enjoy the conversation. I hope you got something fun out of it. Again, come into Spirit School's free community, which is off social media where we can continue this conversation and I look forward to hearing your experiences.