Medium warns of a bumpy ride at St Helens’ Museum of Road Transport Ghost Hunt

Acclaimed medium and ghost hunter Ian Wood is getting ready for his visit to The North West Museum of Road Transport in St Helens in March – and he’s warned people who join him they could be in for a bumpy ride!

“The last time we were there, we did an open circle and someone was elevated two feet off the floor.

“We asked the spirits to lift the person and they were carried, lying flat, into the air.

“Even I’m frightened every time I do a hunt,” he admits. “We don’t know for sure what we are dealing with. Some things we can explain but we don’t have explanations for a lot of the things we see.

“I’ve done around 5,000 clearances at people’s houses and seen children thrown out of their beds.

“Is it a gift?” he asks. “I think it can be a curse sometimes.

“But the paranormal is something a lot of people are fascinated by and interested in; they want to see evidence for themselves.

“And I’d say judging on what we have seen on our previous visits to the transport museum, they’ll definitely see something here.”

Care worker Ian, 59, from Leyland, travels all over the UK on ghost hunts.

He has more than 44 years’ experience of the paranormal after discovering his ability as a teenager – ‘I see dead people and animals every day more or less and can describe them in detail’ – and his work is not about making money but gathering evidence of what’s out there for himself as well as showing it to other people.

“I started ghost hunts and mediumship to prove to other people that I wasn’t going out of my mind and that these things exist.

“I set up Sixth Sense Ghost Hunters, my own business, and am now working with my third team of professional people travelling all over the country.

“We have a team of 11 and carry around hi-tech cameras and equipment to capture what we find and see, and we’ve had plenty of footage that even the best forensic people in the country can’t disprove.

“We went to an industrial estate in Leyland and the chap who owned it didn’t believe in anything at all.

“But I read for him about his daughter who had passed as a child, and he went to pieces and wanted to know how I knew.

Credit: North West Museum of Road Transport

“We went there because they’d caught a shadowy figure on a camera outside and his staff wanted to do a night. I asked if it was okay if we went up in the loft,, and the owner came up and he was lifted up and thrown into a wall and punched.

“He put the unit up for sale the following Monday and never went back.”

The ghost hunt at the North West Museum of Road Transport in Hall Street on Saturday, March 22, will be to raise money for the museum itself and for Rabbit Rescue North West, a charity that rescues, rehabilitates and rehomes rabbits across the region.

And it’s Sixth Sense’s fifth visit.

“It’s very very haunted,” says Ian. “Even the volunteers who work there are experiencing a lot of happenings.

“When we’ve been there in the past we’ve seen figures walking about – last time we saw a young man in jeans and a white t-shirt – we have had things thrown at us, and we’ve had messages for people on the ouija boards we’ve used.

“I have actually seen doormen who’ve come with us crack and cry for their mummies in there. It seems to have progressed even more, it’s very active, so we’ve been asked to go back in.

“I don’t know why it’s so haunted. Maybe it’s the history of the building because it goes back to the 1800s – or that it’s home to old buses that the spiritual folk seem to cling to. We sat on a double decker bus there and it began shaking from side to side, it was nearly off two wheels; and we learned that that bus killed someone.

“There’s a lot of buses in there that have been involved in accidents so maybe that’s why, and there are people who’ve owned the buses who’ve passed and we’ve been in touch with them.”

Every time they do a ghost hunt Ian and his team start with a meditation to open the door way through which any spirits can go in: “And we do it before we leave – I don’t want to go home with anything,” he says.

“From then we do our circle, and we break off into small groups with our equipment around the building, it’s not a walking tour.

“People who come are from all walks of life and they’re just interested in the paranormal and looking for evidence of anything. The people who are afraid are often the most interested and don’t want to leave – and the ones who say they aren’t scared are often the first to run!

“People come because it’s the excitement of the unknown and knowing anything can happen. It can be frightening and that gives you a buzz.

“Sometimes nothing can happen – but I don’t think that will be the case here.”