Hello ghost hunters, and happy #WitchyWednesday on this cold and frosty January day! How are you experiencing our cold snap here in the UK? How’s the weather in your corner of the world?

Winter is a good time to share ghost stories and reflect on our spooky experiences, so today that is precisely what I will do. I want to share my story of a Christmas ghost hunt at Ruthin Castle Hotel in North Wales last December. I had a fantastic and eerie adventure while scrying in a large mirror. Read my blog post to see what happened.

Spooky Ghost Hunting Adventures for Adults and Children

My Christmas night out with friends was a ghost hunt. We attended a Most Haunted event which included a three-course meal, an introduction by Karl Beattie and Stuart Torevell, and an extensive ghost hunt inside Ruthin Castle Hotel. While it is a working hotel leaving us with some restrictions as to where we could investigate, we pretty much had freedom to explore all the nooks and crannies of the place.

I thoroughly enjoyed attending this event. The organisers greeted me like an old friend, and I quickly recognised that it is an extended family of ghost hunters that return to Most Haunted because it is familiar, professional and yet still feels intimate. We had time and space to explore the hotel’s most haunted room which has a strange, abandoned attic above it. I’ve never seen a hotel room set up like it! I suppose it was a suite back in the old days, since it has a small hallway with a separate doorway into the main bedroom and living area, a separate bathroom, and a stairwell leading up to the attic. That was a fascinating historical exploration, and my ghost hunting friends experienced some activity in the bathroom that they found exciting.

My Big Spooky Experience

My big spooky experience happened just inside the main bedroom. Having wandered between rooms observing a Ouija board séance in the living area and my friends in the bathroom asking for responses from the ghosts, I returned to the bedroom and as I stepped through the door, I felt a strange presence around me. It was as though I was overcome by a powerful energy, and I knew it was a man. I felt like I wasn’t big enough and I needed to expand my physical form to be taller. I’m only 5’ tall and petite build, so it was a strange sensation.

I stared into the large mirror and tried to focus inwardly on the presence that connected to me. He spoke inside my mind, his voice booming and loud, “I AM RICHARD!” When I asked him for more information, he seemed vague and I think he struggled to hold a connection with me. He conveyed to me that he was a powerful man in life, and that he was used to being obeyed, but he wasn’t unpleasant. I felt that he might be a military man, and he wore a red jacket. I haven’t been able to corroborate any historical information since the event, but the experience itself was fascinating.

Scrying with Strange Effects

One of the lead investigators watched me scrying in the mirror and she noticed that my features seemed to morph and change. My face sagged, my glasses disappeared, and it looked as though I had blood around my mouth. She took some photos, and I was surprised to see my transformation in the reflection. There was definitely something trying to communicate, but I just couldn’t keep up the connection for too long. Still, it was fun!

Freaky Portrait in the Hotel

There are lots of old paintings and portraits at Ruthin Castle Hotel, but one caught our attention. We got chatting to some fellow investigators during our meal, and they told us about an experience at the same event in the previous year, where they checked photographs and discovered something spooky in the reflection of a painting. They took us to view the painting after the meal and we were amazed. When you observe the portrait, you see a man who appears to have a mark on his forehead that could be a bullet wound, or maybe just a smudge on the painting due to deterioration over time.

When you look at the same painting reflected in an adjacent mirror, you see the same man completely intact with no mark on his forehead. It is clean and fresh, and the mirror itself is nondescript and simply there for ornamental decoration. We were flabbergasted! I took photos of the painting and its reflection. What do you make of it?

Exciting Ghost Hunts Planned for 2025

I’m still riding high from my Most Haunted ghost hunt, and I’m excited to do another one later this year if I can fit it into my calendar. In the meantime, I have booked a junior ghost hunting event for my daughters in February. They will be investigating Hallam Mill in Stockport under supervision from an experienced ghost hunting team that we met at Paracon. It will be their first official ghost hunt, and they are very excited! I recently introduced them to Ouija board seances at home and they loved doing that.

After that I am excited to visit Newsham Park Hospital in Liverpool with my ghost hunting friends. It’s a location that I’ve known about for several years and I can’t wait to visit. While I haven’t booked anything official after that, I do intend to visit the Secret Bunker in Nantwich that has evaded me for the past fifteen years. Whenever I was booked to attend, something seemed to intervene and stop it from happening. Something spooky, perhaps?

Do you have any ghost stories to share or ghost hunting adventures planned soon? Share them in the comments and stay spooky!

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