Advertiser reporter Marta Tavares joined Haunted Heritage at a paranormal investigation at Norwood Park, Southwell

A mysterious rattling window, a disembodied scream and whistling from the stairs, I experienced them all on a paranormal investigation – but the question remains, are ghosts real?

Events company Haunted Heritage hosted a paranormal investigation at Norwood Park in Southwell on Friday, and I went along to learn more about its history, heritage…. and hunt some ghosts.

It turned out to be quite different from Hollywood films which are made to terrify you with jump scares and creepy music. In fact, the experience was quite surreal – but it also left me questioning what is real.

I had never taken part in any paranormal investigations before, which made the whole experience even more curious and scarier.

By the end, would I say I believe in ghosts? I’m not sure. But would I do it again? Yes, for sure.

For the investigation, 20 of us were divided into three groups, led by experienced investigators, and given an hour at a time, each one of three floors – ground floor, first and second floors - to investigate before having a break to discuss what we’ve seen, experienced or what our mind led us to believe we did.

Despite my mind wanting to deny some of the experiences I had during the evening, I can’t fully find justification for all of them.

The house certainly has a lot of history.

First mentioned in the inquisition of Archbishop Neville’s property in 1388, it has hosted several marriage ceremonies and has been home to families including the Suttons and from 1881 until today, the Starkey family.

During the second world war, it was a convalescent home for injured service personnel, which has no doubt left a lot of questions about the property’s rooms and halls.

We used different equipment to contact spirits, from Ouija boards, the Alice box to capture words from the other side, EMF meters, ambient temperature measurements to robots and a scribbling board.

Despite wanting to stick to the belief, of – I believe it when I see it – I will also add that hearing, intuition and feeling add a lot to this experience.

I can’t justify how a bell in the corner of the room started ringing by itself, how the table we were all simply touching with our fingertips started moving, when the closet door opened by itself or when the Alice box started saying words that somehow related to the building's history.

There were two experiences that startled me – or were they mere coincidences?

Before the experience started I was talking to my friend, Evelyn, about it and how excited and nervous I was, and she told me about people being buried in the grounds.

Later, the word graveyard came up in the Alice box, followed not long after by ‘Evelyn’.

Throughout the evening, equipment captured many names which after research connected to Newark Cemetery and the crash of Lancaster ED823, which took place not far away from the site.

Words such as crash, graveyard, blood, and murder often showed up on the Alice box and phone apps, causing one to look for an open window as chills took over.

We heard screams that no one knew where they came from as investigators contacted each other through walkie-talkies to find out if we all heard the same or we were delusional.

A cheery whistling sound was heard from the stairs, but who was there?

When my group was on the first floor, we did the scrying method, which might have been one of the things that scared me the most that night.

The method includes staring into your own eyes in the mirror, and it might show you someone who is in the house or part of its memories.

I remember looking deep into my eyes and seeing my face morphing into an older woman with wrinkles and dark hair. Her hair was loose and she was drenched. I still don’t know how to justify or how I saw it, but it happened.

If it was someone who once lived there I don’t think I will ever know, but the image of that woman is still very clear in my mind.

We also tried table tapping, in which the investigator that was with us put some war time music, to try and awake some emotion or reaction from the spirits present in the venue.

Somehow, the table started moving slightly from side to side at the rhythm of the song and I can only remember the faces of the two sceptical men in my group looking at each other with the same question in their faces – Was this you? No, it wasn’t either of them.

The investigation was not about confirming if ghosts are real or meant to freak one out, but to research history, learn about what can be real or not and see how far the human brain can go to consider the paranormal to be more than a horror film.

Some people from the group have taken part in the investigations more than once, drawn by curiosity.

The company first started in 2011 was founded by Gillian Hibbert, a psychic medium and Michele Smith, who worked in haunted museums.

Michele, said: “A big chunk of ghost hunting is environmental things, if you hear the floorboards creak, it could be the building cooling down, if you feel a breeze it could be air conditioning, you have got to eliminate your environmental things.

“There is a chunk of psychological stuff, if someone jumps you might jump as well, you’re just reacting to them, it’s part of your instincts.

“And then you are going to have that institution bit, there are times when you know someone is looking at you from across the room, you just know it and that is your intuition kicking in, that’s what you use when you are doing an investigation.

“You have got to think outside your body and be a bit more aware of what is going on and then there is that tiny slither of – what is that? What could it have been?

“That is all what ghost hunting is about, breaking down all those barriers, not everything is paranormal but hopefully people will learn to think outside their skin and open their eyes in different ways.”

Joining the paranormal investigation was without a doubt an experience that I would like to repeat. It was a travel in time through history and learning, but also defying and questionable and that is extremely intriguing to sceptical minds.

To those who are sceptical about the paranormal, Haunted Heritage is the perfect first experience with the dark side.

It doesn’t tell you anything you don’t know, instead, it opens the doors to the strange and unknown, of the what, where and why.

Norwood Park has hundreds of years of history, thousands of people have been in and out of the property, and maybe some remain there, but that is for them to know and the public to find out.