Haunted Realm Paranormal Investigators

Every paranormal investigator dreams of that proverbial pot of gold at the end of the rainbow; the big case, The huge investigation, the groundbreaking event. Few ever see that dream made a reality, but Darren W. Ritson and Michael J. Hallowell did. As is usual in such cases, it came straight out of left field and took them both by surprise. A colleague of Darrens approached him in the early summer of 2006 and said, "Theres a friend of mine…shes worried. Her daughter thinks she has a ghost." Even now Darren muses over how eventful those words were, and how his reaction was to change the lives of one family from South Shields, and the two investigators, forever. Darren could have commiserated with the woman and left it at that, but he didnt. Working on a hunch he felt the case might be worth looking into. He phoned Mike and asked him if he'd like to come on board. A short while later they were paying their first visit to a two-bedroomed, unassuming terraced house that looked no more like a haunted location than your local KFC. As researchers know, poltergeists are notoriously camera-shy. This one wasnt. It delighted in playing up for the cameras and putting on a show. On the first visit it threw a number of objects across a bedroom, including a small plastic nut, a pencil and a pencil eraser. The householders were terrified. Darren and Mike were delighted; not for the ordeal the couple was going through, but because they actually had a polt that wanted to play. At first the polt seemed relatively benign, almost innocent. It would chuck a few things, make a few noises, but nothing that would excite the senses of a Hollywood producer. And then, slowly but surely, it turned. Like the family pet that goes bad, this polt turned very, very nasty. It left threats on a childs doodle board that warned Mike and Darren to back off. Mike wrote a message back that essentially told the polt what it could do with the doodle board, and it went crazy. Darren, by nature, is fastidiously methodical. Every bang or rap was catalogued, every thrown coin documented. The researchers could not stop the polt doing its thing, but neither could the polt stop Darren taking it all down for the record. It became a war of attrition, a test of who had the greatest stamina. In the early days the polt won hands down. It filled the toilet basin full of blood, slashed Marc’s torso to ribbons in front of the cameras. It would speak through the baby monitor, and in a dull, throaty voice call Marianne a bitch. The polt did not like Marianne, because she refused to play along with its tawdry little games. It started to send death threats to her mobile phone. "Tonight is the night you die, you f_cken bitch!" it texted her on one occasion. It could not spell, but it knew how to press Mariannes buttons. On another occasion it told her that it had followed her when she was awake, and would come for her when she was asleep. It seemed patently obvious that the modus operandi of the polt was to instil stark, naked terror into the hearts of this young couple, and it did. Mikes wife went with Mike in the middle of the night to comfort Marianne, who was emotionally on the edge. Did the polt show any compassion No. It just threw six-inch nails down the stairs at Mike’s wife and decapitated one of Mariannes sons toys. Charming. Oh, but this polt loved toys. On one occasion, when a TV crew was in the house filming, the cameraman made a comment about his father having passed away. A Bob the Builder toy, sitting on a beanbag chair in the corner, suddenly burst into life and answered him. Simultaneously, Scooby-Doo started to chuckle menacingly in the toy cupboard. Later, for good measure, the polt scratched the letters RIP in the bedroom wall. It was hardly subtle. Anyone who has watched the film The Haunting will know how soul-destroying it is when clerics, investigators and/or other would-be helpers walk away before the job is done. Darren and Mike swore that they would never do this to Marianne and Marc. They were there for the duration, no matter how rough it got. And it did get rough, much rougher; the details can be found in our book The South Shields Poltergeist, which is to be released by Sutton Publishing next March.

Guy Lyon Playfair, one of the principal investigators of the notorious Enfield case, has written the foreword for the book. Darren and Mike make no bones about it; they believe that the South Shields poltergeist was one of the nastiest, most malignant examples of polt infestation in living history. The polt has gone now, hopefully for good. What the couple endured for the best part of a year would have driven many to insanity. Scared Yes they were.The full details of this case, when they are made public, will shock everyone who reads them. Those who study the event will get some sense of what it was like to be there, what it was like to stare into the very heart of darkness.

Darren and Mike came out of the investigation more seasoned, better equipped. They came out the other side battle-hardened, in fact, and are no longer intimidated by poltergeists or their perverse obsession with frightening their victims. They look forward to their next case with relish, and if it turns out to be as bad as the previous one all the better. Fighting a poltergeist is a battle that can be won, and for those currently involved in such a skirmish there is hope indeed.

This Knife pictured below was thrown by the Poltergeist

This photo shows the head of a small, plastic toy which floated down from a toy hammock

on the wall above the chest of drawers.

Below shows another object thrown by the Poltergeist

The candles below were piled up by the Poltergeist

Copyright©-2007-Michael J. Hallowell & Darren W. Ritson

Submitted To Haunted Realm Paranormal Investigators