Cambridgeshire ghost hunter encounters spirits at eerie Victorian operating theatre
Mark Eggerton has experienced things he can't explain in his life, from ghostly monks to communication with paranormal hospital patients
Fiona LeishmanContent Editor
Mark with Nick Groff and Katrina Weidman from Paranormal Lockdown UK (Image: via Mark Eggerton)
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A Cambridgeshire man who has spent more than 40 years investigating the paranormal has opened up about some of the more eerie experiences he's encountered, including the time he communicated with spirits at a Victorian operating theatre.
Historian and ghost hunter, Mark Eggerton, 60, had his first ghostly sighting when he was just 15.
From Southoe, Cambridgeshire originally, Mark used to cycle to Midloe to see a friend who lived on a farm, which turned out to be home to more than just his friend's family.
"I used to cycle up from the village," explained Mark, "and I used to leave my bicycle in a room that was part of the house, but more storage, a bit like a garage - it was called a washroom because the house they were in was a 16th-century farmhouse.
"It's where all the washing was done in the 16th century. It's all cobbled floors with a slight slope for the water to drain.
"As you leave this room to go outside of the house, on the right-hand side is an alcove and it's got some old rusty ovens they used to bake their own bread in.
"I'd been up there a number of times before, but this time it was the summer holidays, in the early afternoon, and I went and put my bike in this washroom, as I normally did.
"As I went to walk out it was like walking into a walk-in freezer. As I walked forward I looked over my right-hand shoulder to where the ovens are and I saw a monk.
"It was a figure, wearing a monk's habit, shorter than me, it was standing holding its hands crossed over its private area.
"I looked at it and couldn't believe my eyes, I was aware I was walking toward the door, so I looked forward to focus on the door, and I looked back and it was gone."
When Mark got outside his friend, Dave, could tell something was up.
"I said 'you're not going to believe this, I just saw a monk in your washroom!'
"He wasn't shocked by it."
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They decided not to tell Dave's younger sister, but found out Midloe Grange Farm was once owned, prior to the house being built, in around 12-13C by Ramsey Abbey.
The monks would walk from Ramsey Abbey to Southoe to farm the land.
"David then went on to tell me they had a lot of strange things happen in the house," explained Mark.
Clay pipes, thought to be smoked by the monks were often dug up on the land.
However, when Mark went home and told his parents, their response was "don't be so bloody stupid boy".
Paranormal activity in a Victorian operating theatre
Mark with his book The Haunted History of Huntingdonshire (Image: via Mark Eggerton)
Cambridgeshire is also home to an organisation called The Ghost Club. Founded in 1862, it is the oldest organisation in the world associated with psychical research.
The club actually dates back to the 1850s, when fellows at Trinity College began to discuss ghosts and other psychic phenomena.
It officially launched in London in 1862 and had some famous members over the years, including Charles Dickens, W.B. Yeats, Sigfried Sassoon, Peter Cushing and many other famous alumni.
Though Mark wasn't initially a member, he is now, and the group regularly meet, Covid permitting, to carry out investigations.
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One particularly interesting investigation was a vigil at the Peterborough Museum.
Mark and a group of fellow investigators were sat in the old Victorian operating theatre trying to communicate with any potential souls or energies.
Though the operating table had been pushed to the side to make room for the group, Mark was curious about the middle of the room, where it would have been placed in the more than 60 years the building was a hospital.
"We're in this operating theatre, I'm thinking that table would have been in the middle of the room, and over 60 to 70 years, there must have been hundreds of people who died on it from operations or other things they were being treated for."
So he took his electromagnetic field meter (EMF) reader and held it in the centre of the room at the level the operating table would have been.
When they began their investigations, he and the team took baseline readings, so they knew roughly what was 'normal' for the room.
An EMF meter and pendulum used for paranormal investigations (Image: via Mark Eggerton)
"I noticed if I moved it up I got nothing, if I moved it down to the level of the operating table I picked up EMF, and if I lowered it nothing again.
"It was a bit weird, and the others came and looked at it and said it was strange."
While Mark is aware that with wifi everywhere EMF readers are not as reliable as they could have been, he did note that the reading was constant at the operating table level.
"I'm a real sceptic", he said, "I tried to disprove everything.
"When you've got something you think is possibly paranormal, you've got to look at every possibility of what could explain what you've experienced. Nine times out of 10 you can do that."
So Mark and the group decided to ditch the tech and instead, use a small rubber bouncy ball to see if there were any spirits lurking there.
The Victorian operating theatre inside the Peterborough Museum - aka the 'most haunted' building in Cambs
"I stuck this ball in the middle of the room, where the operating table would have stood, we all lay down on our bellies with the ball two feet from our heads.
"So I called out and asked 'is there any spirit people here? If you are can you move the ball for us to show us?'
"Two minutes went by and nothing happened. Then all of a sudden the ball moved a full circle the size of a human head."
The floor wasn't on a slope, and if it was that did not explain why the ball went in a circle.
Mark still hasn't quite found a logical explanation for the phenomenon.
The reality of ghost hunting
Ghost hunting isn't quite how it's shown on TV.
Mark said: "I've done it for more than 40 years now. It's nothing like you see in the TV programmes."
In 2018, the hit TV show Paranormal Lockdown filmed an episode at Hinchingbrooke House, but needed someone who knew the house's history.
Mark stepped in, doing some extra research and tracing the history of the house back to the 1100s, when it was a dilapidated wooden church.
Explaining the premise of the show, Mark said: "They go into a haunted house. they get someone like me to come along and tell them the history, the haunted history, and then they go into a lockdown.
"They were in there for 72 hours on their own - or that's how it appears, they've actually got a film crew around them.
"After three days of them being in there, I came back and asked how they got on.
"They found more in three days in Hinchingbrooke than I've found in 40 odd years.
"In real life, paranormal investigating can be quite boring, having done it for that period of time, 50 per cent of the time nothing happens at all.
"40 per cent of the time what you have can be explained with a possible logic explanation.
"It's the 5-10 per cent of the time that you live for, and I've had some extraordinary experiences.
"Though I've never seen another ghost, that ghost I saw in broad daylight is the only one I've ever seen."
However, Mark has experienced things he struggled to explain.
During an investigation in an old stable block in Ramsey, he explained: "We encountered something in there, not particularly pleasant.
"It didn't harm us, but you could sense it didn't want us there."
He went on to explain: "I've never encountered anything demonic, what I've tended to encounter is poltergeist activity.
"Sounds, things moving, that seem to be moving by an unseen hand ... Most people, when they talk about poltergeists they think of the films with tables and chairs moving about.
"I've never experienced anything like that but I have seen things move."
Have you had a ghostly encounter? Tell us in the comments below or email newsdesk@cambridge-news.co.uk.
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