|
Dunstanburgh Castle gets a visit from Ghosts of the North East and Lost Johnnies!
We're heading north on the A1 following our sister car, a green Skoda Felicia. The anticipation is getting the better of us and neither car is paying much attention to the speed limits. Supposedly one of the most haunted places in the north east, Dunstanburgh castle awaits us, cradled in the Northumberland coastline.
As we head up the A1 things start to get a bit eerie. A dense fog begins to roll in, and Tubular Bells starts to play over the radio. Rob claims to have made his own 'spooky mix tape' but I think he's just trying to settle our nerves, faced with The Exorcist theme inexplicably playing through his French car stereo. Things take a turn for the even stranger when Rob's speedometer says he is doing 56mph but my GPS (with the help of 12 satellites owned by the US Government) says he's only actually only doing 54mph.
There are seven of us in total, Rob, Paul, Amy, Karl, all contributors to LJ. Then there's two bods Karl has brought along.
Oh, and me too. And due to once spending about a week and a half in the cub-scouts I was 'well prepared'. I had all the essentials: a change of underwear and socks, replacement trousers, a small battery-powered lantern, and a wind-up torch/radio contraption. Oh, and a box of Cadbury's Snaps (caramel crunch flavour, mmm). All the essentials for ghost-hunting really. And, of course, my GPS/satnav so I don't fall into some crevace or something.
Halfway up the A1, our Skoda-bound chums took a random right-turn and headed off towards the Coastal Route. Rob said he knew a much faster way, and kept going up the A1.
"I agree," said my Tomtom. So we continued on into the second densest fog I've ever seen.
Eventually we pulled into a small layby near a pub, Karl and his Skoda mates weren't to be seen. We pressed on - a long mile-and-a-half walk to Dunstanburgh Castle was ahead of us. We set off across the green grassy fields alongside the roaring North Sea.
We were well equipped as a team, us four (Rob, Paul, Amy and me - keep up!), Paul had a digital camcorder and an analogue SLR camera, Rob had a trusty Kodak digicam, I had my new camera-equipped PDA-phone, and Amy had her new Samsung 10megapixel digicam with a 2gb memory card in it. David Attenborough eat your heart out, lad.
As we were within a mile of the castle, Karl et al turned up. Or at least, we thought it was them. We started to see flashes of light behind us. Then darkness. The odd blip of red light flickered in the distance. Then darkness again. We all stood still awaiting either impending doom or the arrival of our cohorts.
Paul triple-flashed his torch in a 'We come in peace' kinda way, and were relieved whena triple-flash response came. Karl and his family caught up.
We started taking pictures of the moody castle in the distance, now nestling in a white shroud of fog around its base, but Paul's camcorder kept complaining of its lens-cap still being on, and Rob's Kodak kept whinging about needing its memory card formatting. the weird thing was, the fog was still rolling in and the closer we got to the mighty ruin of Dunstanburgh, the less of it we could see... it seemed to be slowly dissolving the nearer we got. For the last half-mile it was completely gone.
Standing by the main gates, those with powerful torches and flashes on their cameras started to snap away. I took a few pictures of people holding torches and a pic of the "Dunstanburgh Castle" sign. There was a hesitancy in the air. And a crap-load of fog too.
We crossed the threshold and went through the large stone archway into the ancient castle. The photos we were taking started to look crap, the fog in the air was causing big white blobs to appear on any pictures we took. Surely the spirits of thousands of people who died in horrific ways at Dunstanburgh! I hear you shout. But nay, it was only air-moisture.
I was quite unimpressed actually. I was expecting some intense feeling of foreboding and being watched, but I didn't feel anything (except dampness due to the thick fog drenching us all from head to toe). We wandered around a bit and eventualyl found our way to a spiral stone staircase reaching up into the castle's bowels (and a toilet). We climbed up the stairs and found an internal courtyard of sorts. The theme seemed to be 'lets try and shine a torch on a window in the distance and see if a dark, imposing shadow or figure looms there'.
We didn't see anything.
After a while, we got a bit bored and decided to walk back. The walk was long and tiring. The fog was at full strength now and it was after midnight so there was no natural light we could rely on. And we were in the middle of a field. It was hugely disorientating. The only thing that stopped us going round in a big circle back to Dunstanburgh was the nearby crashing of waves off to our left.
Suffice to say, we made it back in one piece, and Tomtom got us un-lost at one stage too. Nice one Tom.
One odd thing though... echoing Rob's memory card problems, absolutely none of the images I took last have remained on my memory card. Possible moisture damage! I thought that too. Only... Tomtom is software installed on my memory card too and that worked admirably. It's only the pictures of Dunstanburgh which are gone.
Odd that.
Pages: 1
|
login