ALEXANDRA’S HOLZER FILES: Love is in the scare as Alexandra explores

SaturdayQuick chew on a slice of toast with a scrape of marmite spread. Showers. And after a diversion down to Sherwood Forest to fetch their (admittedly impressive) rock, we have an interesting jaunt around the graveyards and woodland trails of the haunts of Robin Hood (surely the sheriff of Nottingham would have twigged, that he kept hiding in the trunk of that Major Oak?) a lovely warm up to the trials to come, nothing out of the ordinary, we did stumble across the intensely curious undercarriage of a coffin sized “pony pulled hearse cart” (we assumed) the rotted wooden remnants of anyway! An attempt at psychometry of it didn’t enlighten us. After an hour’s drive south, we find and book into the hotel which comes with a licensed history that stems back to 1533 and all the absorbed grisliness that goes with such establishments. “Whilst explaining our planned intentions for the night ahead we are told by the receptionist that she herself has seen a ghostly woman with a child, walking semi transparently around the hotel lobby” We do actually sense something otherworldly in a small room just off reception and as we walk into the eerily closed bar room and lounge I catch a small light anomaly floating around Sarah’s appendages, knee height, whilst she mentions a sensing of something slightly off... A short walk to locate the new, unknown venue is determined, perhaps with a light meal stop included. Nothing worse than leaving it to the last minute then not knowing where you’re going as the clock ticks inexorably toward the start time, and as we set off on foot down towards town, we get slightly distracted by an old abandoned pub, coaching inn, brewhouse building, right next to the old magisterial court house. I’ve looked at this decrepit structure before and was magnetically drawn to it back then, but it was fenced off on that occasion. The courtyard was open right through now, so we wandered in and roamed around a while, not sensing anything particularly but all three of us were slightly entranced without realising at the time. We left that place and resumed our mission to head toward the old cinema using Sarah’s phone for GPS, it directed us to turn right, and we blithely followed the directions down what turned out to be a tortuous trail toward the nether regions of the town. Suddenly, Sarah declared from out of the blue that she “Felt like a cowboy” wearing chaps, Stetson, holster and spurs!! Andy, her hubby, looked at her gone out, the thought crossed my mind that I had once read of a visiting rodeo, she assumed I was joking her on when I told her that *Buffalo Bill* had actually performed one of his ‘Wild West shows’ at that town (in 1903 it seems, later research proved). Sarah had obviously picked up on the residual energy of that turn of the last century event that she didn’t even know had happened amazed us both. I was very impressed with her ever growing psychic ability anyway, this just crowned her talent, sadly she spent the rest of the night walking bow legged and facing people off in go for your gun fighter mode. I was just relieved she didn’t get her hands on an actual six shooter as she was getting well cheesed off with all the extraneous plodding about!! Several twists and turns later and we were hopelessly lost, I turned my phone on and the directions that my google maps gave us were as convoluted and misleading as hers had been. Also, I’d completely lost my bearings embarrassedly, as I have visited the town often and normally have no problems. For what seemed hours we traipsed up and down, panicking somewhat as our planned pre-event rest period was being eaten into, somehow we stumbled across a ‘Bella Italian’ and staggered in, weak through lack of refreshment, a bowl of Funghi Crema Gnocchetti sorted us out, and we were informed by the waiter that we were two minutes from the old, closed cinema. Unfortunately, once we found it, we got lost again trying to return to the hotel! What should have been a twenty-minute walk there and back to our hostelry, turned into a near three hour vacuum of black hole spacial time voidness. At Last the Event... So, finally, the time came. Rested, bathed, we joyously met up with Ghost Book Lorien and her party outside the old, closed cinema. This was when the night took a turn toward the pear-shaped side of paranormal eventing. I don’t intend to dwell too much on the negative as the event company running the night were good enough to accept us openly, I am a bit of a ponce personally after all and tend to over dress rather at these things, sticking out like a sore thumb at a hitch-hiking festival, I should try to keep a lower profile. It’s a defenseman mechanism type of thing, I suppose, I’m actually a very insecure Paranormalist but they seemed to grudgingly accept us/ me? The issues stemmed from the opening introduction, or rather lack of, team not introduced, their paranormal experience not explained, a tight schedule of the usual trite ghost hunting scenarios was dictated toward us, protection ritual, break, silent vigil, break, ouija session, break, human pendulum, break, break, break, we would find there would be quite a few breaks, long breaks, no opportunity to go off on our own investigation due to alcohol being all around the building and the ‘team’ not wanting to mar their pitch with the current owner/tenants (turns out it’s used as a banqueting suite now, there were laid out tables everywhere). One part, the *highly active* foyer, didn’t actually belong to the catering company that has the place so we couldn’t use any torches in there in case the police snooped, and the council got uppity, oh and the paranormal event team have exclusivity so the leader, a self-declared ambassador to the spirit realm was “mega hyped to get going” after a quick fag coffee break before we started.

The opening protection ritual did not start well for me. As the white light mantra began, I closed my eyes and through my third, saw a tall, suited, blond haired spirit man march up to me and punch me straight on the nose! No messing, boxers jab! Didn’t hurt of course because it was all in the psyche, but the vision of that occurrence stayed with me most of night. Whilst holding vigil in the projector room later on we had chance to engage with him, a dominant spirit character of the place would seem? Luckily, we had split into our smaller gathering of friend groups by then and we were getting spirit actually approach us, only trouble being, as soon as a communication link was starting up, our hosts would stop everything flat by insisting we go “ for a tea and blood sugar break “ every time. Our party and several other guests were getting to the end of tether with that approach, being cajoled and corralled around the building somewhat. Noticeably his ‘regulars ‘ were content with the regime, so all was happy in their world. Andy, (Sarah’s hubby of course), has this peculiar trait of ‘frightening spirits off’ (long story) and Sarah unadvisedly mentioned that fact to the “ medium”. Unfortunately, ructions were caused by that statement, and something was commented on about the sensibility of bringing such a person to an inaugural event, captious, just relieved Sarah maintained restraint and didn’t deck anyone.

The spirits had not been overly responsive to calling out, but the amount of non-existent ‘knock’, ‘shadow’, ‘green mists’ and flashing mystery lights our attention was distracted to was amazing. I’m a big believer as you know but even I will not declare an experience if I have not actually experienced it. Why pull fantasy from the ether? However adventitiously misdirected, you’re only deluding yourselves! Even if you think you’ve got to provide your guests with value for money.

Plus the amount of spirits they were “communicating with “ and insisting on offering help to, “to cross over “if they’re wanting to work the place on the regular basis they’re talking of, better leave some ghosts to practice on hey? We were getting stuff, having a thoroughly pleasing night drawing a few, friendly but (perhaps understandably) nervous spirits and as the hosts realised we were finding them our welcome on the event was turning slightly sour. We are too cocky about our abilities I accept that, but we were drawing a definite mood of snideness, the night was turning fractious, could well have been the spirits in there, testing us all out as much as we were them. At the end of the night, the self-appointed *ambassador to the spirit realm* was complaining he had been scratched, possibly a portent of troubles to come there? “Time for the briefing break guys” 3am came around remarkably fast. The old cinema was a worthwhile place to visit, if only the event had been more considerately managed, to be fair they may improve. It is a thankless task trying to amuse, educate and host such demanding guests for little reward and critical aggravation, good go on their part, in their own eyes I’m sure but it didn’t encourage several of us to seek out their other events ... surely that’s what the business is all about? So, for Sarah Andy and me it was a ten-minute walk back to the haunted hotel and a little quiet vigil of our own sat in that eerie lounge we had encountered something earlier. Bang on 3:33am, Sarah saw a shadow flit across that little room, reflected in the shiny brush aluminium fridge door, we were then entranced by a shadow that seemed to linger about that fridge, the air turned staticky and I caught one of those contentious light anomalies shooting across and from the fridge but that’s another story, of course it is.

So that was the chronological events of choosing and attending a “paranormal investigation”, sometimes a disappointing venture, sometimes good. The secret is to find an events company with a good long reputation that you can trust implicitly, after all everyone that goes on a couple of paranormal nights thinks they could do that too, they soon get found out though. Oh and extend your nights interest by choosing a haunted hotel nearby to!

Sunday

Get up, bathe. Realise miserably that due to Covid the hotel are not preparing food. Buzz the room of my dear friends and Sarah drives me and Andy northwards homebound giving us chance to post mortem our endurance of the night before, concluding that what’s meant to be will be and if it didn’t kill us the whole experience merely made us stronger. we pull in at Tibshelf services before reaching home, we have Bagels and salmon for brunch. Intermittent showers; wind (that’s what happens with Salmon Bagels – Paul) I, Hubert Hobux was at a haunted old cinema.... Till next time…

Hubert Hobux

An Interview with Sarah Sumeray

It’s December, our latest

magazine has just hit the shelves. We’re in the office sharing it to social media (as we do), mug of Yorkshire Tea in one hand, Tunnock’s wafer in the other when the little bell thingy pings on Twitter. It does that quite often to be fair only this time we are in for a real treat. It’s Sarah Sumeray who as we soon discover turns out to be something of a rather talented artist with a penchant for the paranormal.

Sarah, thanks so much for getting in touch with Haunted Magazine. We absolutely love your art. As a voiceover artist, writer of comedy material a really interesting artist, how do all these different areas connect with your work life? Honestly, when a potentially fun profession has caught my eye, I’ve always gone for it without a second thought. Sometimes they’ve worked out, sometimes they haven’t, and it’s made for a somewhat... eclectic CV. I’ve always been a bit of a hustler, trying to find ways to make money from what I love, and art is something I’ve been doing since I was a kid, always with an undertone of creepiness.

Tell us more about your artwork. It’s a really unusual style to recreate some of the most iconic images of horror and paranormal films. What type of images inspire you and how do you create the pieces themselves?

Most of my work is done on Procreate on the iPad, and sometimes I work with ink on paper. I love everything about vintage cartoons and comics. With the comics, it’s the beautiful messy halftones that were so charming back in the day. Now, comics tend to be too slick and clean. It’s all about the errors, stained pages and worn-out ink, and I always include these effects in my comic-style work. I’m a big fan of Archie! When I’m doing my retro cartoon-style art, I’ll pop on