Most Haunted Halloween Week PT1 Review

Introduction

On the 31st of October 2023, Most Haunted posted the first of a brand new five part investigation. As of writing this review, I have only seen the first part so that I can treat each segment as it's own video with it's own positives and negatives. This way I won't be at all swayed by anything which may or may not occur in the future parts. As I said at the start of my previous Most Haunted review, I try to be as fair as I can which means I will include all positives and negatives I see. I will praise any evidence they may capture, but I will acknowledge, and possibly even argue towards, a skeptical point of view. 

I have to acknowledge here that I feel I have been quite critical in this review, but this isn't because I want to drag the Most Haunted team down, it's because I want to try and pull them up. As far as I'm aware, they're the most well known paranormal investigation team in the UK so should try to do everything they can to limit the amount of criticism a skeptic can give against their investigations. This means if there is anything at all I can criticise, because I know a skeptic will criticise it, then I will mention it but try to be fair about it.

Also, this review may be slightly different to my previous one as this first part I'm discussing isn't a 'proper' or complete investigation like what I reviewed previously. This first video I'm reviewing shows the opening, various unexpected occurrences during the day, and then the walkaround. I assume the proper investigation will start in the next video I will review. I do have lots of notes though on this first part video, and a few significant events do occur which I'm really looking forward to discussing. I will break down and discuss each segment, of what is still a video a little over an hour long, in their own sections. 

The Opening

Once more it is a delight to see the episode open with 'the following programme is definitely NOT for entertainment purposes only. We stand by the legitimacy of this investigation'. As I discussed when reviewing Most Haunted's previous investigation, this card being shown puts responsibility onto the team for what they capture, and so credibility. By, right at the start, saying they stand by the footage they capture being legitimate, they are putting their careers on the line as if anything was to ever come out regarding them faking things, then that's it, game over due to the presence of this card. As I've said previously, I know Yvette and the team have had issues in the past with Most Haunted being branded as 'for entertainment purposes only' while on TV, and that Yvette has been vocal about disagreeing with this. I can see why too, as when your investigation is branded as being 'for entertainment purposes only', then it heavily implies it cannot be trusted as being a legitimate investigation. So, I like that they've taken it into their own hands with posting on youtube and including the card saying it isn't 'for entertainment purposes only'. I feel it definitely makes them seem more credible and is something I will continue to praise for as long as they include this detail.

After this card shows, we are then treated to the iconic Most Haunted intro. It's here I want to quickly point out the length of the video once more. This video, being only the first in a five part investigation, is just over one hour and nine minutes long and that isn't even footage from the investigation. It is all footage captured from the walkaround and from the time spent capturing general shots of the location. While this video length is impressive, and all of the five parts seem to be around an hour long, I would still prefer if they had instead live streamed the investigation for that time. With it not being live, it leaves questions such as 'why have they cut to a different camera there?' Or 'is all of this footage definitely from the same day?' It sounds like a really nit-picky criticism, but when investigating the paranormal, you either need multiple overlapping shots as the team excellently did in their previous video I reviewed, or it needs to be live. I do, however, appreciate lives aren't always possible due to signal in the area, and this could very well have been the case for this location.

Once the Most Haunted intro finishes, we are treated to a super zoomed in image of a stone face followed by general shots of a fancy ceiling and a not-so-fancy view through a window. One thing I do appreciate with this episode is that it really points out how much work goes into creating an episode of Most Haunted. These kinds of images are usually quick flashes on the screen which we, the audience, tend to pay no real attention to beside maybe thinking 'that looks spooky', but as activity occurs during the time the team is capturing these shots, it really shows the work for them doesn't begin the moment Yvette and the team walk through the door of a property with the cameras rolling. It shows the work begins the moment the team arrives at the property and that there is so much preparation, such as capturing these shots, which occurs beforehand. I like that about this video as you don't often see a behind the scenes look as you do with this episode.

Yvette is then shown again on the camera, and explains that this episode they're investigating multiple buildings within a thousand acre estate. She also says each building 'has a haunted history all of its own' and that 'it's all in the shadow of our nemesis: Pendle Hill'. It's impressive that the team has found a location where every single building is actively haunted, as Yvette does say later in the episode, although I personally am not fond of her referring to Pendle Hill as their nemesis. I feel it's needlessly over-dramatic and adds too much personification to the hill, taking away from any potential hauntings. Having said that though, I do find that point of the hill being somewhat alive particularly interesting, and will be extremely excited with the team if in future episodes they build on what Yvette touches on during this episode about the hauntings possibly being due to the land. I still think using the word 'nemesis' is a bit much though as that implies the Most Haunted team has been locked in a constant battle with the Hill, and as far as I'm aware, they have not been. Again, it's a really small nit-pick, but still valid to mention.

A dramatic shot of Pendle Hill is then shown followed by more shots of the location and general scenery of the area. There is dramatic music playing, but it isn't too intense, so I liked that. There was a random shot of a pile of flies I want to briefly mention as that seemed incredibly random, but there is somewhat of a reference to it later on in the episode and I will discuss the thing with flies in that part of this review. All of these images end with another shot of Pendle Hill which zooms out to show they can see it clearly through one of the windows of a building they will be investigating. I like this shot as it really does a great job of showing exactly how close to Pendle Hill they are. 

Narration from Yvette then goes into more detail about the location, which she says is Ribblesdale Hall, and the surrounding estate. She then tells us that, in 1648, Oliver Cromwell visited the hall with his troops. She also says that after the Titanic sunk one of the victim's widow became the first lady Ribblesdale, that Winston Churchill stayed at the hall, and that even Queen Elizabeth II, and who was then 'Prince' Charles, visited the hall. Yvette also says that the hall has been owned by two families and one owner, Robert Lister, was murdered by Jenet Preston, one of the Pendle witches who were hung for their alledged crimes. Yvette then goes more into the history of the hall itself, saying that in October 1985, part of the hall was expanded and converted to become a private hospital. She explains the hospital ran for thirty five years before it closed and the building returned to its original owner. 

I think at a first glance this is a good amount of history for Yvette to have mentioned, although upon further inspection not all of it is particularly relevant to any hauntings. Usually in these kinds of programmes we would hear about how some sort of tragedy has occured, such as what is mentioned regarding Robert Lister, and how that is why the haunting occurs. If not this, then we would hear about various people with a significant connection to the hall who then died somehow. Out of all the names and history mentioned, I think Lister is the only one who would be justified in haunting the hall. He was an owner of the hall and was murdered; this ticks both the personal connection to the hall box and the cliche tragic death box which alledged hauntings tend to have behind them. The rest of the names are people who have briefly stayed there and are clearly only mentioned due to their fame. The only exception is the first lady Ribblesdale, however there is no information given on if her husband who died tragically on the Titanic, an extremely famous ship, ever lived in the hall, although the way this segment is phrased implies it would be the lady who would haunt it and not her husband due to the cliche of a grieving widow haunting an old Manor house. For a location where it's believed every inch of it is haunted, I feel it is especially important to explain the hauntings through the history and I feel this hasn't been done particularly well here. 

The programme then cuts back to Yvette, who is standing with the hall in the background, and says a little segway leading into more narration about each location and the hauntings present. We get an aerial view of the hall and Yvette informs us that dark shadows, heavy footsteps, and mournful cries are all said to occur there. She also says a figure of a lady endlessly wandering the corridors has been seen on multiple occasions. Next, she tells us that attached to the house is a large private hospital wing where doors slam on their own, sounds of people walking and moving around have been heard when no one is there, moans and cries are heard, and that 'figures have been seen lurking in the dark corridors'. Again, I'm not a fan of the over-dramatic use of 'lurking in the dark corridors', but I get it. It's a special investigation for Halloween, and as this is only the build up narration, it is somewhat expected.

Yvette then tells us about a psychiatric unit which is seperate to the main hall. She tells us this building 'is said to be home to at least four different spirits' and that 'poltergeist activity is said to be rife within these walls', heavy footsteps can be heard with regularity, doors open and close on their own, and cries of the long departed echo through its corridors. I really like when Yvette says 'is said to be'. I made a similar point in my previous review about her using the word 'alledgedly' when referring to activity she has been told about. Her saying things like this highlights that regardless of how many stories and experiences you hear about a place, until you have been there and investigated it yourself, you simply do not know for sure. I think there needs to be further emphasis from investigators on this point, and so I'm glad to hear Yvette not take anything for certain regarding what she has been told about the locations. 

We then hear that close to the main house is a small abandoned cottage 'where something unworldly is said to dwell'. Yvette also says 'a gaunt figure has been seen passing the windows when the house is empty' and that strange sounds are heard from within the deserted rooms, along with people feeling a sense of unease. She also says phantom footsteps walk from room to room, doors slam shut, and that poltergeist activity is witnessed with stark regularity. Again, I'm glad she's said 'is said to' as nothing about this entity is proven and nothing has yet been experienced by the team. 

When watching the episode, I was then quite surprised that the witches cottage makes a return as one of the many locations. I was also a little disappointed that the team didn't change up the narration or shots of the location when discussing it, and instead reuse lots of footage from the standalone witches cottage investigation. I also wasn't too pleased with Yvette saying the cottage is 'known as the witches cottage' without going into further detail regarding her dubbing it as that as she said during the previous investigation there. A big thing which would have improved this little segment is they should have shown footage from their previous investigation there, aside from general shots of the location, and Yvette's narration should have discussed the activity they had witnessed last time; particularly the audio of a child they captured and played at the end of that video. I found the lack of any reference at all to this incredible evidence to be quite odd. I would expect teams to build on their past investigations, not to treat each one as a standalone, especially when capturing something as significant as that audio. 

Yvette then refers to this investigation as 'their biggest and widest investigation to date' which I completely believe given there are technically five seperate locations to investigate, four if you include the hospital wing as part of the hall. There are then plenty of dramatic black and white shots building up the suspense for the rest of the episode, and this is when we are treated to a shot of the abandoned cottage and narration from Yvette tells us that the spirits made themselves known to the team as they were still capturing their general shots.

The Abandoned Cottage: Karl

Karl's short segment starts with him filming the entrance to the abandoned cottage the team intend on investigating. As Yvette explained, the reason for this is because the team needed to capture general shots of the locations before the main investigation could occur. The general shots are the usually brief glimpses we get of locations during the buildup, such as the image of Pendle Hill through the window I included earlier in this post. This explains not only why Karl is, from a certain point of view, seemingly waiting for something to happen, but it also explains why he is seemingly alone given I assume the rest of the team are also capturing general shots of the other locations around and including the hall. 

We then see the door of the cottage open and what I really like here is that Karl says it could be the wind. He doesn't gasp, or scream, or act in any way panicked, instead he just calmly says it could be the wind with a hint of questioning in his tone. I really like when investigators react calmly to things others in the field would react irrationally at. What I'm not too fond of is Karl's indecision as to whether or not to enter the building. As a paranormal investigator, he should investigate any potential instance of the paranormal. I get he isn't there for that at the time, he is there to capture general shots, however if you experience something you have so very clearly caught on camera then you should always keep the camera rolling and try your best to debunk it and document it. Thankfully this is what he ends up doing.

Unfortunately as Karl enters the cottage, he doesn't immediately zoom out on the camera. This means while he tries to show us no one is downstairs, we see lots of blurred and super zoomed in footage which really isn't of good quality. I do appreciate him trying though, for example, when he enters the cottage the door closes behind him and so he tries his best to see if it was the vibrations from his feet which caused it. It was very good that he said it could have just been him moving past the door which caused it to close, and it was very good of him to try to replicate it closing by stamping his feet beside it while it was open. 

I would have done a couple of things here which Karl did not do. I would have walked in normal fashion through the door a couple of times, and I would have moved the door to varying positions of open to see if there was a point where it could naturally close. The odd thing here though, is that assuming Karl is alone, we know the door has both opened and closed by itself. This leaves a logical explanation possibly as being the wind blew it open, and then the door possibly naturally closes. If you rule out any potential of the door naturally closing, then that is what makes it odd. An issue here with the door is that a camera didn't film Karl entering the building from either side of the door. This means Karl didn't capture it close on camera, and so you can't for sure know how or why it closed when it did.

As said earlier, Karl then does a walkaround of the downstairs area, and then only zooms out when he starts going up the stairs. As you can see from the image above, the stairs are in a really bad state and you can even see a step is missing. Karl does point all of this out as he goes upstairs. He even says he told the team not to go upstairs due to it being dangerous, but also says he can't stop them if they want to go up there. He then very clearly shows there is no one upstairs by showing each room, which is a really good thing to have done.

As Karl is about to go downstairs, a door behind him slams. Again, we don't see the slam on camera but you can see the door was left open while Karl was doing his walkaround. It takes Karl a bit of forcing to open the door, and once it's open Karl does the amazing thing of standing in the doorway and spinning the camera around to show out of the room. He then walks backwards into the room to show there is no one behind the door, and that no one has left the room upon him entering it. As Karl is by himself, I get that he can't debunk as well as if there was more than one camera, so I really appreciate seeing him do things like this to debunk and document the best he can with what he has. 

I know in the past I've criticised Karl a fair bit due to him working so closely with the team even though he is a producer, and there is an odd coincidence of things happening to him which I will definitely discuss more later, but I think the determination to show there are no wires, no smoke or mirrors, and there is no one else there is brilliant and in a way counter balances his own personal producer stakes in the programme. 

Karl then calls out asking for another door to slam, and one does. This one is downstairs, and he does go without indecision this time. I just want to make another point here about the stairs. In the picture above you can see the view as Karl goes down the stairs, and you can see all the bits and pieces on them. What is fantastic about this footage is you can clearly hear the crunching sounds as Karl goes down the stairs. He tries to go down them slowly and carefully too, while commenting about how he needs to not put much weight on them, and we can still hear loud crunching. We only hear crunching to this extent while Karl is going up and down the stairs, and I would assume if someone was messing with him then we would hear their footsteps crunching too, and we don't. Granted there could be someone hiding upstairs, and there could be someone downstairs, but with Karl so excellently showing all of upstairs and downstairs, I don't see how someone would be able to dodge the camera in such a way as to avoid being seen or heard.

When downstairs, Karl shows us the back door which leads to the main location via a narrow pathway. He tries to close that door the best he can, but it's too old to properly close. His search for the slammed door is then interrupted by constant banging occuring from upstairs. As mentioned earlier, I don't know how this kind of stuff can be faked. The only explanations I can think of are audio overlays, either of the crunching or of the banging, and well hidden cuts in the video which I haven't noticed. Outside of these explanations, I don't know how this stuff can be faked. I'm going to give the benefit of the doubt and say if it is faked then it is faked extremely well. The things that suggest to me that this isn't faked are Karl's insistence on showing no one is there, the loud crunching sounds as Karl walks, and the fact all of this occurs pre-investigation. There is no reason to fake things before the investigation has even begun, and so benefit of the doubt is reasonable. 

There is some more indecision from Karl regarding going back upstairs, and I'm glad he decides to. Again, as mentioned earlier, Karl has witnessed alledged paranormal activity on camera via banging sounds coming from upstairs and so as a paranormal investigator should do another sweep of the upstairs to the property in order to show no one is up there. The only criticism I have here is that Karl heads directly to the room he suspected the banging to be coming from, and very quickly shows the insides of the rooms on the way there. This leaves one particular room unchecked and any skeptic would argue someone was up there making the noises and they're hiding in that unchecked room. A clunk/knock sound does occur too while Karl isn't checking that room, and he doesn't react to that loud sound. 

This is then it for Karl's short segment. He says he needs to keep getting shots and they're losing daylight, which is absolutely fair enough. I do think Karl did the best he could at trying to show nothing was being faked, although it does leave room for criticism here and there. I also think skeptics would likely make the same kind of comments I've acknowledged for this segment. However, as I said earlier, I think he did the best he could, and I do think that without technological aid of any kind fakery of this footage would be difficult to say the least. 

The Witches Cottage: Karl, Yvette, Glen, and Gregg

The next short segment documents loud banging noises which Yvette, Karl, Glen, and Gregg all hear while capturing their general shots of the witches cottage. At the start of this footage, we see that Gregg is outside, and that Karl, Yvette, and Glen are all inside the cottage together. 

I will say I'm quite critical of this segment, and that this is one of the two segments I'm most critical of for this episode, both being for different reasons. For the previous segment, when it was only Karl, I gave lots of praise for how he went about documenting what he was experiencing and for how he tried debunking things even though it was only him with one camera. Here, my criticisms arise because it is not only Karl present. 

Firstly, it's important to say Stuart is unaccounted for. It is said he was over in the psychiatric unit while this happened, but this is where they need to do something such as call him and overlap footage of both sides of the call happening in the clearly different locations. Instead, we get no walkaround of the location, therefore no footage of there being no one upstairs, only the banging sounds and the team reacting to them. 

There is a point where Glen goes upstairs, which is fantastic, but he doesn't take a camera with him to show us there is no one up there aside from him. The team captures what sounds like footsteps copying Glen's footsteps while he is up there, kind of resulting in a horses gallop type sound, and this would have been fantastic footage if they had shown the footage Glen should have captured of him stomping upstairs with Karl's footage of hearing these sounds downstairs. 

Even when Yvette asks how many spirits there are, she counts fifteen knocks, but then Glen says 'Sixteen. What did I say to you earlier?' Which is something I have issue with as we don't see footage of that previous conversation. I counted fifteen knocks as the response, and it is possible I miscounted or didn't hear one that Glen heard, but in the moment for Glen it could be a form of confirmation bias where he's miscounted, or misheard, or assumed to have missed one due to it being so close to a number he had discussed with Yvette in an off camera conversation. 

I don't like that Glen seems to jump the gun a bit here and not acknowledge the possibility of confirmation bias, especially as he acts as the team's skeptic. It is then discussed how Glen had said there were sixteen people who used to live in the house. This makes me lean even more to confirmation bias as I struggle to believe all sixteen people who lived in the house would still be there after death. I could be wrong in that belief, but to me it seems unlikely. 

Earlier in the review I mentioned about a particular shot of flies being used, and it is in this segment that Karl zooms in on a fly which is on the ceiling. He says it feels quite negative, and I wanted to mention this part because I'm surprised Karl didn't go into more detail on this in the moment, especially as this is often a direction paranormal programmes seem to go. 

Flies, due to their presence around anthing rotting, have connotations of death. In the world of religion and the paranormal, they often are associated with the demonic. Nargal, Satan, and Beelzebub are all demonic names associated with flies, with Beelzebub even being called 'the Lord of the flies'. So, the fact a pile of dead flies is quickly shown earlier, and that Karl zooms in on a fly and says it feels quite negative, I think is no coincidence. A team as experienced as Most Haunted will absolutely know the significance of flies in the paranormal, and I really am surprised it isn't expanded on due to how quick TV investigators in particular are to shout about demons being present. 

Basically, I don't know if this shows a lack of knowledge or if it shows quite crafty production and a recognition that the general audience may be tired of hearing about demons, or perhaps the Most Haunted team thinks that if they mention the demonic then viewers will immediately be skeptical of the team. I really don't think it's lack of knowledge, but this really makes it odd that they've clearly pointed out the presence of flies, but haven't gone into it. 

It is important to note that upon a rewatch while writing this, I've noticed Karl does say 'I don't know why' as he is saying about the fly feeling quite negative. Taking this as truth, it shows Karl does indeed have a lack of paranormal knowledge, which I find quite concerning for an investigator as experienced as he. This does not reflect the knowledge of the Most Haunted team, and it may not be true regarding his lack of knowledge as to why flies are negative, but taking it as truth, this is what seems to be disclosed here.

Going back to when Glen returned from his journey upstairs, an interesting thing he mentions is that he didn't hear any banging or footsteps while he was up there. The reason I find it interesting and worth mentioning is because if there was a force making contact with the floor to cause the bang, such as with footsteps, then unless there is a physical form on one side of the floor muting the sound, such as a carpet, the bang should occur on both sides of the floor. When you stamp your feet you, and those beneath you, will hear it. I believe what this implies is that the banging wasn't footsteps, but was instead something banging on the ceiling, or it was the house itself.

One theory is if it was banging on the ceiling, Glen wouldn't hear it from where he was, especially if he was on carpeted floor, as the carpet, or floor, would have soaked up the vibrations and muted the sound. The team downstairs would still have heard it though as the banging was directly above them with no barrier between them and the sound. The issue with this theory is the banging does sound somewhat muffled at times and so not as crisp as if someone was to just bang on the ceiling.

This leads me into theory number two, which I'm really excited about, and is something I really hope Yvette and the team tries to investigate. Karl even has this thought in this segment, that thought being the spirit is literally in the material of the building. There may not even be a spirit, it could be the house itself, and this is a theory I will discuss in more detail in a seperate post as it discusses ideas around what life is. Either way, if it is a spirit literally in the walls of the building, or if it is the building itself, then it would be able to make the sounds of footsteps without requiring a physical force. With no physical force occuring on the floor Glen was standing on, he wouldn't hear a sound. It would kind of be like when people speak. Depending on which direction they talk in depends on where the sound goes and who can hear it. Perhaps a similar thing was occuring here? It's a weird theory, and that's why I'm excited about it, and that is also why I'm leaning towards this being the case. 

Of course another explanation could be Glen didn't hear anything because he was busy stomping and so drowned out anything he could have heard with his own stomps, and then there is the skeptical arguement of 'Stuart was up there all along'. Any one of these explanations could be the case, but we will never know as Glen never took a camera with him. 

Karl shows us that Gregg is outside to show the banging couldn't have been him, but no one mentions Stuart. Yvette then asks the team an excellent question. She asks why the banging started happening then, and Karl responds with some really good speculation saying that they've been there a while and that maybe it's because of their energy. Going with this idea, I would say while the team is in the building they are interacting with things and outputting a fair bit of energy into their environment. The spirit could be gathering this outputted energy until a point they can convert it and disperse it into the audible sounds captured on the camera. This could explain why it takes time for stuff to happen, and this could explain why it suddenly stops. When a team experiences paranormal activity, yes they may scream and panic, but if the team is calm then they stop everything they are doing. They are no longer outputting energy because they've experienced noises, and so the spirit runs out of energy to use and so it stops. That's my thoughts based on Karl's speculation, which is very good speculation, albeit lacking further explanation.

Yvette then asks how many people are present that the spirit can see, and four knocks occur. It's pointed out that this four would include Gregg who is visably outside. It made me laugh when Yvette accidentally called Gregg Glen as I quite often find myself mixing up their names for these reviews. Karl does ask if the spirit can see Glenn outside, and there are four knocks as a reply. 

'Do you mean us any harm?' Is then asked by Yvette, which is answered by two slow knocks. Yvette understandably says the response seemed menacing, and tells Karl not to say anything he wants to say. I found it really funny that Glen did instead, and Karl follows up on it by saying 'do what you like' to the spirit. It is really important to mention here that Karl also offers himself as a sacrifice and says 'do what you want with me'. The reason I say this is incredibly important is because, as I've said in the past, something always seems to happen to Karl. One reason for this, from a skeptic point of view, is he is the producer and so wants views on the video. However, from a believer point of view, it is moments like this you can blame as to why stuff happens to him. He calls out for it, and so it happens. Similar stories surround the famous Annabelle doll where people have insulted the spirit attached to the doll, or said things along the lines of 'you have no power' or 'do what you want to me' and as a result they've been injured shortly after. This could be the case with Karl. 

Following this, Yvette asks how many mean them harm. This is responded to with ten continuous knocks and then two which are slightly delayed. Karl initially counts them all as twelve meaning harm, but Glen corrects him by saying it was ten and then two for a yes. A smallish criticism I have here is there is no footage featured of the team telling the spirits that one knock means no and two means yes. I understand this was all unexpected activity during the time of capturing general shots, but this is the kind of thing I feel you need to capture on camera in order for the viewer to know 'the rules' have been established to the spirits. I also find it wierd for Glen to be so sure that it was ten meant harm and then a yes. Perhaps it was a case of twelve meant harm, but two of the twelve weren't as sure if they did, but then decided they did mean harm a little later than the ten who definitely did. It sounds a little absurd, but could be the case, which is why it's just a minor criticism. 

Then, a very interesting point is raised. Yvette is about to ask a question but is interrupted by two knocks. Before she is interrupted, she says 'are some of you in, were s'. What she says she was going to say is 'were some of you involved with witchcraft?' So, this definitely lines up with what she managed to say before she was interrupted. It's an interesting point because Yvette then says you've got to be really careful when it comes to asking questions, especially if you think you're talking to a relative, as you need to ask a question and think the wrong answer due to the spirits being able to read your mind. The idea of spirits reading your mind is again one I will elaborate on in a seperate post, but I find it fascinating and clearly Yvette does too in this episode. I really like the enthusiasm she shows here, and she seems genuinely intrigued by the fact her question seems to have been answered before she asked it.

Karl then says his phone is ringing and that it is Stuart calling him. Now, a huge criticism. This could very well be the call you see Stuart making to Karl later in the episode while Stuart is alone, but we don't know. If it was, then Karl should have answered the phone and put Stuart on speaker. Stuart should have done the same. If they had done this, the Most Haunted team could have played the footage of this phone call with Stuart being in a completely different location side by side. Had they done this, it would have clearly established Stuart was not making the noises, and it would have slightly redeemed the fact Glen didn't take a camera with him to show no one was upstairs. 

The stomping then continues upstairs and Glen asks for it to do a heartbeat, which it does. I think this was a fantastic ask from Glen and I can't recall a time I've seen another team do this when experiencing knocking or footsteps, so it really was a fantastic idea from him. It's also interesting how he seemed a little creeped out by hearing the heartbeat style knocks as this implies nothing here is faked.

Karl also asks a really interesting question, which i mentioned earlier, which is: 'are you in the fabric of this building?' When he asks it, the question comes across as a bit out of nowhere, but I really like that teams seem to be slowly moving into the territory of thinking that perhaps it isn't a spirit haunting the building, but perhaps it is the building itself. Who knows, maybe the building has a spirit of its own that we as humans can't clearly understand or communicate with? It is a wierd theory, and I will definitely be looking more into it in a seperate post. I just had to praise Karl for asking this question, and he gets lots of knocks as a response which Glen says he reckons is multiple yes answers. 

The team then says thank you to the spirits for their communication, and one knock occurs which is interpreted as a 'no thank you'. This could be ominous, or it could be the spirits saying there is no need to thank them. They explain they'll be back later and Karl repeats that the spirits can do anything they like to him, again possibly being the reason why stuff does tend to happen to him, and it's quite possibly why something does happen to him later in the episode. 

There is then lots of emphasis on just wanting to communicate with the spirits, and then Gregg enters the room. He asks if they've been hearing banging noises and replicates the noise he could hear from outside by whacking his arm against the door you can see beside him in the picture above. He tells the team that from outside it sounded like they've been hitting their arms against a wall, and that at one point it even sounded like a farmer with a gun as he'd never heard anything so loud. 

I find Greggs comments interesting as we know he was outside throughout this footage, and whenever bangs or knocks occur it's never brought up by the team regarding 'I wonder if we can hear this from outside?' It's some interesting food for thought. The team then laughs about it and everyone enthuses about the activity they've had. I liked seeing the team enjoying themselves like this as it shows they are a proper team who aren't at all strangers to one another. They've all been working with each other for a while, and it's good to see their friendship like this. 

The Psychiatric Ward: Stuart

The episode then shows the team leaving the witches cottage, and commentary from Yvette tells us that while they were experiencing sounds in the cottage, Stuart was in the psychiatric ward and experiencing things too. Once this footage begins, it clearly opens on what would be a general shot as the camera is looking out of the window with no one in view. We then hear a metallic rattle type of sound. None of this is shown on camera, but we hear the sound and we hear Stuart react to the sound. This implies that the event was unexpected, just as all of these bits of footage from before the walkaround seem to be. 

We hear Stuart call out and ask if anyone is there, and it's now that he picks up the camera, still on its stand, and places it so he and a metal table are in shot. He also zooms out pretty much immediately, which is what Karl should have done in his segment earlier, and says 'bear with me in the edit' which is one of the fantastic details of this segment as it highlights the hassle he is putting the editors of the programme through by filming all of this unexpected extra footage. He also starts to drop random screws onto the table, and messes with the back of it, to try and replicate the sound he heard. 

I think it's great that Stuart immediately films himself trying to figure out what the noise is, and it's great that he determines it must have been the screws. Just as when talking about Karl being alone earlier, I'm going to praise Stuart for trying his best given he's by himself in an unexpected situation with only the one camera. He also does and says a fair amount of good during his segment, such as when he then explains about getting general view shots in the other room at the time the sound happened. 

We then hear the sound of a door close, and Stuart thanks the spirit while also saying for the camera that a door had just closed. This is when he picks up the screws and throws them on the table while saying the noise from earlier could only have been them, and to give him credit here, the noise does seem to match. The only issue with this is that both he and the table were off camera when the noise originally occured, giving the skeptical argument of 'he had made the noise earlier' more weight than any investigator would want here. It isn't a fact that Stuart had dropped the screws off camera to make the sound, however, due to the lack of footage, it's a possibility that only Stuart knows the answer to. 

We can then hear what sounds to me like loud, heavy footsteps. Stuart points these out, and it really does sound like the footsteps are coming from the hallway Stuarts room is attached to. Stuart even seems quite perplexed and nervous while hearing the footsteps and says that the reason he isn't moving the camera or reacting is so that everyone watching can hear the sounds. I think this detail is excellent and an extremely good reason. One gripe I often find myself having with investigators is that they're too quick to react, meaning any further activity is hidden by the investigators own sounds and movements. 

A loud door slam then occurs, and I've got to mention Stuart's response here as it never fails to make me laugh despite having watched this scene at least ten times by now. The response he does of pointing and saying 'fuck me, that was loud' is something I think I'll always find funny, just because of how calm and matter of fact it is in a situation where usually utter panic would ensue. 

Stuart does pick up the camera after hearing the door slam and takes it out into the corridor. This is good, and you could argue it should have been done earlier to rule out the presence of any other team member, but as I said earlier, there are benefits to staying still and I do think he does great by himself. Instead of going room to room, like what Karl usually does to show no one is there, Stuart instead puts the camera down and tries replicating the sound by opening and closing a number of the doors. This has its advantages and disadvantages. He's finding out what the noise was, which is great because it's still fresh in his memory, but he's also potentially giving people a chance to hide or move to the next spot where a noise will emerge from. It's unfortunate because I think regardless of what he does here, with only one camera, he can't do right for doing wrong. So, I think he does well and probably makes the right choice to replicate the noise. Due to how big the corridor is, and how many doors there are, I don't think Stuart alone could have effectively ruled out there being no one else there for us at home. This isn't me saying there were or weren't other team members present, it's me saying Stuart made the best of a tricky situation.

Stuart says he isn't 100% sure which door it was that slammed, but he does find a couple of possibilities and even shows where he was in relation to the doors. This was all very good from him to give the viewer a good sense of direction, and it was great to hear an investigator admit they're unsure as to what caused the noise, but acknowledge they have found a possible cause. I find this very good because that's very much so what the paranormal is; no one knows for sure, but people can have a pretty good guess at it. 

There is then a bit of indecision, but I think here it serves as good discussion. Stuart says he doesn't know what to do and says everyone else is on the other side of the property. He questions whether or not to call them and tell them about what he's experienced, or if he shouldn't tell them and let them experience it for themselves. This is all brilliant as he says everyone is elsewhere and debates if he shouldn't tell them anything. Yes, there isn't any proof shown as to the team being elsewhere, but it's good for him to acknowledge where they should be. It's also great to hear him debate not telling them anything. I do think he should have called them, and as said earlier, they could then overlay the phone call footage, but not telling them anything is a great way of investigating. If you go to a location without knowing something which someone else knows, then you can each write it down, and then compare experiences based on what you've each written. This helps to rule out any kind of confirmation bias, which is what would occur if you went into a building you know the sound of footsteps occurs in. 

Stuart also leaves the camera recording just in case something else happens, says it's probably best to call out now, and shows the inside of one of the many rooms. Again, this is all fantastic. He's capturing pretty consistent activity, he should therefore leave the camera on, and he does. He reaches the right conclusion about it being the right time to call out and he even shows the inside of a room. Granted, it is just one of many rooms, but it's good that he's doing what he can with only the one camera. 

He does go into a different corridor and reiterates it being beneficial to keep the camera going. He even says you wouldn't usually do that as a rule and that you'd turn it off between shots as it makes it easier for the editors, but decides to break protocol due to what's happening. This is all brilliant. I really can't praise enough how he says what he is doing by keeping the camera going is just making more work for the editors of the programme. This is a great argument against this segment being faked as by faking things during this part, it is creating nothing but more work for the team and for the editors of the programme. He even says to the editor that for editing purposes he is going to keep the camera going just in case he captures something, and even apologises for it. Fantastic.

Stuart also says that if he turns the camera off then something is bound to happen, which is another reason why you can argue a live stream would be better for an investigation than doing it pre-recorded like this. I do understand though that signal may prevent them from doing a live stream from this location, and that Most Haunted has a particular format/style which prevents them from uploading continuous footage captured like what Stuart captures in this segment.

Stuart even says it feels strange for him to keep recording, which is great as it emphasises how unusual these long takes are. It also goes to further emphasise how unexpected this bout of activity was. He then captures another sound which to me sounds like something falling, but Stuart says it sounds like a door. The segment then ends with Stuart trying to phone Karl to let him know what's happening. This call could very well have been the call Karl was getting from Stuart while he was with everyone at the witches cottage. If this was the case, then Karl really should have answered the phone and the footage really should have been overlayed. Ideally it should at least have been pointed out, even if it was through narration, that these calls were the same. 

The thing that really drags down the witches cottage segment, and Stuarts segment, is the lack of placement for the absent members of the team. I'd even go as far as to argue the same applies with Karl on his own in the farm cottage. We have no knowledge of where the others are, and no footage of Yvette, Glen, and Gregg, without Karl being present. When showing paranormal evidence, you need to try and make it as watertight as possible. You need to show rooms are empty, you need to show where everyone is, and you need to try to always rule yourself out if you are alone. I do think Karl and Stuart do very well on their own, and I understand this was all unexpected and they probably didn't intend on showing this footage, but it's their job to capture paranormal evidence and to show it in as legitimate a way as possible. They know they're in a haunted location, and they know paranormal activity can't be turned on and off. For this reason, I think they shouldn't have included this unexpected footage in an episode, and should have released each segment as seperate clips with further emphasis on it (potentially) being extremely unusual to capture phenomena so early.

The Walkaround

This is now the point, roughly thirty five minutes into the episode, where the walkaround begins. The walkaround is usually the second of three parts that make up an episode, with the final part being the investigation, but for this episode the walkaround takes up the rest of the episode. The walkaround, just as with the previous witches cottage investigation, features Yvette and Glen walking around the main building discussing the location and what they're expecting from the investigation. 

Yvette explains that they're in the old manor house, but that they've also got an old farm house which is falling apart, along with an old hospital wing, and calls it all incredible. Lots of this segment is Yvette marveling, and quite rightly so, at the humongous building they're walking through. Glen even compares it to The Crystal Maze due to how you can split the site into different zones which are all vastly different. This point is further emphasised as the duo walk into the reception area of the building and Yvette points out how massive the room is with it's extremely high and remarkably grand ceiling. 

Glen makes a brilliant point here about how the nature of the location, with it's ever changing environment, would have an interesting psychological effect. He says that usually as you walk through a location, your surroundings stay the same and you can adjust to the setting, but with this location you can't adjust because it changes so frequently and drastically each time you turn a corner. This constantly changing environment would undoubtedly keep you on edge, and so you could argue an increased potential for paranormal activity when really it's your own paranoia of being in such an unstable environment.

I really like that Glen talks about how the location can mess with your head, and that he does try to think in a skeptical way about the paranormal. This is something I know I praised him for quite a bit in my previous review, and so I'm glad to see him still doing that here. Yvette also agrees with Glen, which is fantastic, and points out exactly what he means by saying the fact with a turn of a corner they've gone from the manor house and entered the corridor of a modern hospital. 

Yvette also says that lots of people will have died there due to it being a hospital, and Glen brings up the Oliver Cromwell history which was mentioned at the very start of the episode. This leads Yvette to say the Most Haunted team has encountered his ghost before during a past investigation. I like that she's referenced her team's past paranormal encounters as I do think teams should do that where relevant, and it's why I'm incredibly surprised their past investigation of the witches cottage isn't mentioned at all during this episode. 

The pair also discuss the fact neither of them really know where to start due to the building being so big and varied, especially with there also being smaller locations for them to investigate near to the manor house. Yvette points out that there are only five of them to cover all of these locations and that she's a little worried about it. I'm quite surprised the team were so ambitious to decide they'd investigate at least four locations with only five people during only one night. I appreciate their ambition, and I applaud them for attempting it, but I think they should have split the location across multiple nights. As of writing this, I am yet to see the next four parts of the Halloween special, so for all I know I could be completely wrong and they could have captured fantastic results. However, as of having not yet seen their results, I feel it would have been more beneficial for them to split the investigation across a number of days to ensure they capture the best evidence they can. I've already highlighted the issue with being by yourself in a location from a skeptical point of view, and Yvette really wasn't happy with everyone being in such small groups from a safety standpoint, but we will see.

Glen then asks what activity Yvette is looking for, and she says she wants the team to experience everything possible, aside from anything bad happening to Karl or Stuart. She even points out that bad things tend to happen to these two, but also points point that they do call out for it too. I'm really happy that even Yvette has acknowledged the trend I've noticed that something tends to happen to Karl. I remember episodes where things have happened to Stuart, and from memory it's usually things being thrown at him, but to me it does seem like lots does happen to Karl. So I was really happy that Yvette pointed this out, and I'm also glad she kind of acknowledged it could very well be because they call out for it. Yvette then asks Karl and Stuart to be sensible and Glen says that there is an EVP recording set up in the manor house. Yvette says there is also one in the farm house too, and this brings us to the first major incident of the walkaround.

The Snooker Ball Incident

The footage cuts from the walkaround, and narration from Yvette explains that while the team were resetting activity starts to happen. This is when footage resumes and it shows the team walking through a door into a new corridor. The footage is captured on Karl's camera, and all the footage that is shown, up to the image I've posted above, is really poor quality because according to the team only Karl had his camera on, and there was no intention to film anything just yet. I absolutely understand the poor and chaotic footage, and the team actually does what I criticised them for not doing during the general shots segment: they immediately investigate when they experience a noise occur. 

While going through the door, the team hears a loud noise from behind them. When the noise occurs only Yvette, Glen, and Karl are accounted for, but shortly after the noise you see Gregg move past Yvette which means Stuart was closest to the sound, and when the camera turns you can see him standing by the door they've all walked through. If this was his position when the noise occured, which I think is likely, then he couldn't have caused the noise if the noise did indeed occur from the room the team eventually suspects. This all means there are team members who are not clearly accounted for at the time of the noise, but I think due to how fast everything happens, the footage captured gives a good indication to where everyone was.

I find the team's reaction to the noise very interesting. Everyone, instead of going straight to the room they enter shortly, instead run down to the end of the corridor. Yvette even looks through the door at the end to see if anyone is there. The footage of them running down the corridor is unfortunately filled with wierd jumps between cameras, and so it all looks very messy and is quite hard to keep track of everyone, but it's great to see the team react this way. There is no uncertainty like with the footage before the walkaround, instead everyone immediately runs to see what caused the sound. 

The team heads back to where they originally hear the noise from and Yvette says it sounded like something falling. Now, this is where I become skeptical of the incident. As you can see, I've included an image above which is the moment Yvette enters the room it is believed the sound occured from. As the team is walking through the corridor, Yvette looks to the side into this room, stops the team, enters the room, and then picks up a yellow snooker ball she has spotted on the floor. The reason I'm skeptical is because of the extremely dark lighting in that room. I could be wrong here, and the ball was yellow, but I don't believe that you would spot that at a glance when walking past a room that dark. The camera might be making it seem darker in there than it was, but I don't know how Yvette spotted the ball.

Really, instead of immediately entering the room, Yvette should have stopped the team and told Karl to film the floor of the room before anyone entered. This shot would have shown us the snooker ball on the floor before Yvette picks it up, and before anyone could really have gone in there between the sound happening and this moment of finding the ball. I hate saying it, but the lack of this shot does open up the skeptical arguement that Yvette could have had the ball in her pocket, could have pretended to see something, and then pretended like she picked it up. The ball is even warm, which it could be if she had it in her pocket the whole time. I don't like raising this point, but without being there, this is a valid arguement a skeptic could make against this incident.

A good comeback would be 'then what made the initial sound?' And I agree, excluding possible audio overlays, I don't know how the sound was created. It does match the sound of the snooker ball falling, and it very well could have been that. Yvette does drop the ball after picking it up to recreate the sound, and it's great that she replicates it like this. I'll also say, when it comes to the ball being warm, some sort of thermal imaging should have been used to show this. It's possible that they didn't have the means with them to do this though as this isn't the investigation, only the walkaround. However, this goes back to my previous points about them needing to be prepared as an investigative team when it comes to walking around an alledgedly haunted location. 

Yvette then, after showing the team the snooker ball and enthusing about how it's the same sound, asks Glen what they had talked about earlier. He asks what about, and Yvette says snooker, to which the penny drops for Glen and he says snooker balls, properly enters the room, and only now seems to realise the sound came from a snooker ball despite Yvette already showing this to the team. Yvette drops it again, and Glen agrees it's the same sound. I'm not too sure why it took Glen so long to realise all of this as I'm pretty sure he was with the team and witnessed Yvette's first demonstration of the sound. He seems very oddly out of the loop when he enters the same room as her. It could just be a case of too many people being stood in the doorway, and so he missed everything until now though.

Karl then asks the really good question of how the ball has gotten there and the camera even shows where they were all stood in relation to where the ball was found. It's discussed how the ball will have had to have come from the lobby room with the snooker tables they walked through earlier, and that even if one of them had chucked it then there is an impossible angle on that throw. Gregg says if the ball was thrown then it would have to go directly into that room, and not hit a door, which would have been impossible. 

Yvette also points to the floor to show where she had picked it up from, although the footage of her picking it up does make it seem like the ball was closer to the back window of the room. Either way, it would have been really tough for anyone to throw the ball into the room. Karl and Glen check the cupboards in the room and any doors to check no one else is there, which is really good. The next really good thing is that when Yvette asks where they all were when it happens, Karl suggests they all go back there just to show everyone exactly how far they were from that room. 

Gregg also makes an almost great point here, which is that all of the cameras were off at the time of the noise. He says there's no point in them faking anything if the cameras are off. This is an almost great point because it kind of goes against the team due to Karl's camera still being on. As I have said a number of times, it seems to always be Karl who is involved in these kinds of skeptical situations, so it really doesn't help that only his camera was left on. Stuart even said earlier that it's unusual to leave your camera on between takes, which is exactly when this incident occured. Karl does acknowledge his camera was on, and pointing at the floor, which I think was good of him to say. 

Karl also makes a really accurate account of where everyone was in relation to the corridor at the time of the sound. It's also great that he points out the fact they all ran down the corridor after hearing the noise instead of heading straight to the room they find the snooker ball in. I think this works as a better arguement against them faking it than the one about having the cameras off, although a skeptic would just say they ran to the end to make it more believable. 

This is where Glen says about the ball having probably come from the snooker tables, which are a good distance away. Yvette also points out that it's impossible for someone to have stood at the door they had walked through and thrown the ball across the corridor into the room without it hitting the door. She also reiterates the cameras were off, which I found odd for her to latch onto given Karl had already admitted to his staying on. If his wasn't on, this point about cameras being off would be absolutely valid and really would work in their favour. 

Glen says that they only heard the sound of the ball dropping too, and that there was no rolling sound. This is an excellent point for Glen to have made as if someone had thrown it, then there would likely have been a rolling sound too. This is where Yvette brings up the ball being warm again, and Glen says it's still warm. Stuart makes an excellent point here which Yvette quickly shuts down by saying it was like that when she picked it up, and that point is that people have been holding the ball. To be fair, Glen also tells Stuart that the ball was warm when Yvette picked it up. This is where Yvette says she's gone very nervous, which is great for her to admit, and Karl says to keep the camera's running as they all keep moving through the corridors.

Yvette then asks Glen from a skeptical point of view what all of what they just experienced was, and he concedes that it was paranormal due to the impossible angles, only them being there, and everyone being accounted for. He also says it seems the ball dropped completely out of nowhere and in a completely seperate room from any of them. I like that Yvette asks Glen his view on it, given he acts as their skeptic, and I think Glen gives a perfectly reasonable response. He even says that for him being there and experiencing it, he knows there isn't a logical way that ball could have fallen there, and I think that's great. 

From my point of view, looking at the video, it is very easy to say 'maybe Yvette had the ball in her pocket' and 'maybe the audio was placed over the footage', but without actually being there we will never know, only the team present will ever know. The only reason I'm skeptical of this incident is because there was no clear footage of the snooker ball being in the room before Yvette enters the room, but who is to say that even if there was this footage that I, or others, wouldn't just say 'well, the ball was planted there before the noise happened'. This highlights just how difficult it can be to prove the paranormal, and it's why I really like Glen's response to Yvette as it is incredibly true.  

Glen even says people watching the video will likely say it was a breeze that caused the ball to fall, but he knows from being there that it wasn't. This causes Yvette to look extremely happy and even do a little happy dance which made me laugh. This was great to see as it really does emphasise Yvette's interest and belief in the paranormal and shows just how much she loves it when something happens which can't be explained by a skeptic.

The Walkaround: Continued

Everyone then moves into a different part of the hospital, which you can see pictured above. This leads to an amazing comment from Yvette about the hauntings possibly being because of the land. She raises this point because of the fact there are so many locations around the manor, yet every single one of them are haunted. She says usually in a place like that, they're told the main building is haunted, but there's nothing in the farm house, but here it is literally every single piece of property that's haunted. 

I think it's a really good conclusion Yvette makes about it being the land, and Glen mentions that they're near Pendle Hill. After he says this, Yvette brings up an excellent bit of past investigation knowledge which is that while investigating Pendle Hill, the crew were seriously effected by a choking sensation. She also says she believes that was the spirits of the witches affecting the crew, and says they even had red marks around their necks afterwards. Glen points out that they're on the other side of Pendle Hill to when that happened, but that the land around the hill could very well be cursed land. 

I like that Glen and Yvette have a discussion about the land possibly being cursed. It's something I know is brought up occasionally, but no one really puts much thought or explanation into it. So I like that they've connected the possibility of cursed land to why each property may be haunted. I know it isn't a particularly scientific reason, and it isn't too great that it's the skeptic who has brought up the idea of the land being cursed, but it's something I hope they build on in their investigation. Glen then says 'the proof will be in the pudding tonight if any of us suffer any ill effects', Yvette replies by saying she absolutely hopes not, and this is where the incident I am extremely skeptical of occurs.

The Karl Incident

This doesn't help Karl. Not one bit. Pretty much immediately after Glen and Yvette comment about the potential for an injury to happen to a crew member, we hear Karl make a noise and the next thing we know he's on the floor holding his back. He says something just hit him in the back, and Gregg points out that he has a red mark on his back. Yvette even backs this up by poking the mark to determine this is where the pain is, and then tells Glen that Karl has a mark on his back. She even makes a circle with her fingers to show how big the mark is. 

Surprisingly my criticism here isn't that Karl of all people has gone down saying they've been punched, but that two members of the team have said there was a red mark and they didn't show it on camera. Yvette even says it was a decent size, so we'd definitely have been able to see it. Gregg tells Karl to move around in various ways to help him, and Karl says it feels like someone's punched him with a cattle prod. 

While Karl is still on the floor, Glen makes a brilliant point which is that he needs something like this to happen to him. Glen is the skeptic, and so if this was to happen to him then it limits the possibility of him faking things as the whole point of him being there is to rule out the logical explanations. Yvette does snap a little at him when he says this by telling him to remember he nearly got some chairs thrown at him, but this is understandable given her husband has unexpectedly gone down in pain. 

Karl then gets up and Yvette looks at his back and says the mark is gone. Karl also does a bit of a stretch before saying he feels fine. This all comes across as very convenient. Not only is the evidence of the red mark gone before a camera can show it, but Karl is suffering no lingering effects once on his feet. I really don't like saying something is faked, and I really don't like being skeptical, but the error of not showing the mark on his back is too great to ignore. I've seen it before on programmes when someone says they feel like they've been scratched, and the investigators have shown it, so I don't know why the team fails to show it here. 

However, on the flip side, I also don't know why Karl would fake anything in this moment. It's too obvious a place given the discussion about team members being injured, and they've already had the incident with the ball. If Karl wanted to fake something then it would be because they haven't captured any activity, or because there's been lots of build up regarding something sinister haunting the location, but there hasn't been any of that. They've had the ball incident happen, and they've been vague as to what could be haunting the property. It isn't even the investigation yet, it's only the walkaround. There has been build up regarding stuff unexpectedly happening, so I suppose it could be tied to that, but it still seems odd.

Gregg makes an excellent point here as he asks Karl if it was just a spasm. Karl says it wasn't, that he knows the difference, and that he felt his air go before he felt the pain. It seems like he was winded by something, and from looking at the footage, my best guess was that he'd trapped a nerve in his back. The mark was likely from him rubbing his back, which would explain why it wasn't there for long, and the pain was just a trapped nerve. This is the most logical explanation assuming everything that happened was legitimate. 

Yvette then says she can hear tapping, like a rumble, and goes off to follow the noise. Unfortunately you can't hear the noise on the camera. Yvette also says she's feeling really out of breath, although that could just be the stress of witnessing what's just happened to Karl. 

The Face At The Door Incident

As the team is walking down the corridor, Karl is following Glen, Yvette, and Gregg, before he stops and turns to view a door to his right. The image above is his recreation of his movements when discussing with the team. He then walks towards the door and looks through into the corridor on the other side. He tells Stuart, who is behind him, that he just saw some movement through there and Yvette calls out to him asking if he's OK, asking where he's gone, and what's wrong. 

This is when Karl tells Yvette that he had just seen a face in the door window which he saw move. Yvette asks if it could just have been himself, but Gregg says it couldn't have been as you can barely see yourself in the door windows, especially at distance. This is when Karl reinacts what he was doing when he saw the face, and Yvette points out that he won't have caught it on camera as his head turned before his camera did. 

Again, I really don't like being critical or skeptical like this, but this is the third time now in this episode that Karl has been involved in something like this. He was the only person with his camera on during the snooker ball incident, he went down injured shortly after a discussion about crew members being injured, and then he's the only one to see a face in a window which he isn't pointing his camera at. If I was a member of the Most Haunted team, at this point in the episode I would seriously be asking 'why him?' 

I think if you look at it from a believer point of view, that question of 'why is it always Karl?' becomes so much more interesting too. If everything we see in this episode is legitimate, then why Karl? Is it because the spirits are trying to set him up? Is it because he calls out for spirits to do what they like to him? I think the team should be trying to investigate that, because it's too much of a pattern at this point that something always happens to or around Karl, and the alternative is that he's faking things. I don't want to say he's faking things, but the Most Haunted team's lack of questioning this pattern is leaving no alternative explanation. 

Yvette then voices concerns about everyone going off on their own as they'd initially intended due to it being clear how active the location is, especially with the injury Karl sustained earlier. She says she's got an awful feeling about it and that they should be sensible. I like this from Yvette as it shows how much she cares about the team and that she isn't willing to risk their safety for results, although, I do like Karl's response to this even more.

Gregg asks if she'd be OK with people pairing up, and Yvette just sighs. Karl then says he's the director of the show, and Gregg tells her to 'man the fuck up'. Karl's response to Yvette which I really like is that he tells her he gets her point but is more than happy to go on his own as 'anything else that happens is one step forward to proving the paranormal' and they should build on that. This is brilliant because it's the exact attitude paranormal investigators should have when it comes to investigating. There are so many rules of 'don't do this because something bad will happen' or 'don't go there because of demons', and investigators will not test that because of the risk. It hasn't been proven because of this. If they go there with a camera one of three things will happen. Either nothing will happen and so the bad thing is disproven, something will happen but not like the story and so it's been kind of proven, or something awful will happen and that story and the paranormal will be completely proven. 

I feel sometimes investigators don't want to investigate these extreme claims not because of safety concerns, but because of the hypothetical that they disprove that paranormal instance instead. So, I'm really glad to see Karl having the right attitude here. I don't doubt that Yvette's concerns are purely safety related, but still she's a paranormal investigator and so needs to recognise going alone or with few people is sometimes what it takes to gain good evidence. After Karl makes his point everyone aside Yvette is happy to go alone, but she settles on the idea of them all starting the vigils together before then splitting up.

The Key Incident

This is now when the next incident occurs. Yvette and Glen go through a door, but the team is stopped by the sound of what they discover is a key hitting the floor. This is followed by some very chaotic camerawork which occurs between the noise occuring and the key being found, which is very similar to the kind of camerawork which occured between the snookerball noise occuring and the snookerball being found. Luckily, you can mostly rule out the possibility of someone having thrown the key to where it landed and luckily the team do show this.

The initial footage of the sound being captured is on Gregg's camera, who is filming Yvette and Glen leave that area. When Gregg hears the noise, he turns the camera and you can see Karl and Stuart behind him also turn towards the noise. This is great as it gives you a good indication as to where everyone is, and it means if someone threw the key it would have to be either Karl or Stuart. I will discuss this a little more later.

Once Yvette finds the key, she drops it and this perfectly recreates the sound they heard. It's important to say there are lots of cuts between cameras as Yvette is finding the key, which is quite disorientating to watch, but the audio is consistent. Granted, the audio could just be overlayed, but I'm going to hope it isn't. After Yvette drops the key, Karl starts to show where everyone was standing at the time of the noise, but is interrupted by Stuart saying something has just fallen infront of him from mid-air. I found Gregg's comment of 'is that just a bit of shit off the ceiling?' very funny as Stuart is talking about this bit of plastic he's found. Gregg does then say it could be a curtain fastener for hanging up curtains.

Karl then shows where everyone was and everyone goes back into their original positions. This is great as it shows what was required for someone to have thrown the key into the corner it was found from where they were. It's great that Karl highlighted this, and what's even better is the replays of the noise but from everyone's camera. As you can see from the image above, Karl is quite close to that corner of the wall, so he would have had to curve the throw, although Stuart is in a better position for such a throw as you can see his camera to the right of that image. 

Now, the image above is from Stuarts camera at the time of the sound. It's an oddly low angle, but you can see Karl's right elbow in shot. This shows Karl is holding the camera with both hands, just as you see from Gregg's camera, which is great as it rules out Karl. Unfortunately there isn't a clear camera on Stuart, and his camera doesn't capture too well where he was in relation to that wall Karl would have had to curve the throw around. I'm not saying Stuart threw it, but that if someone did then it would have to be him. I should also point out that in Glen's shot, you can see Stuart with both hands on his camera, but you could argue his free hand grabbed the camera before Glen turned to put his hands in view.

I think it's absolutely brilliant that footage from every single camera was shown of the sound the key made as it hit the floor. This is what should always be done with events like this. If you capture evidence, even if it's just a noise, on multiple cameras then you should show that footage. If you don't want to show all the footage in one episode, then that is fine and understandable, but you need to then release it as seperate clips.

There are then good points made about the key situation being very similar to the ball situation regarding funny angles. Yvette is also asked if the key was also warm, and she says it was cold. She drops it again, and it really does replicate the sound they initially heard. Yvette also asks if the key means anything, and a great moment here is she hears a squeak and asks what it was, and Glen admits it was just his shoe. I like this moment because it does show the team aren't claiming anything and everything is paranormal activity, it shows they are saying when certain sounds, such as their shoes, and the doors, are just those ordinary sounds. I know I said this in my previous review and so I will repeat it here, if the team wanted to fake things, then why wouldn't they claim these natural sounds to also be paranormal? If we hear a door close, why would they say its just a door closing, why not claim a door has slammed in the distance? This is a thing I like about the Most Haunted team, and it's why I can never make my mind up about them.

Yvette does call out to ask if anyone is there, and she thanks them for the key. She also says she can hear a faint noise, and Glen backs her up on this. When listening to this moment on full volume with headphones, you can make out a sound but I'm not sure if that's just someone adjusting their grip on the camera. Karl then points out the curtain rails, possibly relating to the bit of plastic Stuart found earlier.

Glen then makes an amazing suggestion. He says to the team that they should try to fake it to show that the key incident couldn't have been faked if they tried from where they were all standing at the time. Yvette asks who was at the back, presumably as they would have to have been the one to have done it, and they rightly determine it would have been Stuart. Karl says he had both hands on the camera, which we can see through the replayed footage, and he also says there is a reflection in the door window so even if it was Stuart then he would have seen. 

Stuart then tries, as pictured above, to throw the key into the corner Yvette found it in, but throws it into the wrong corner. It's a different sound that occurs, and Karl makes a good point by saying his camera shot would have moved if he had thrown the key, and it didn't when the real event occured. Karl also says he could see Stuarts reflection throw the key when he tried to replicate it, and points out that the key landed in a completely different spot. Now, I have a couple of issues here. Firstly, I would assume the hospital door windows are all the same, and earlier on Gregg said you couldn't see any reflections in a door window when saying the face Karl saw couldn't have been himself. This goes against what Karl says here. Granted, lighting could be different, and maybe the other window was dirtier, but it still doesn't quite add up.

The next point is that any skeptic would say if Stuart had thrown the key initially, why would he try to perfectly replicate it here? They'd say he would throw it towards the wrong corner on purpose. Finally, I pointed out earlier that Stuart's camera shot seemed to be quite low to the ground. This could indicate maybe he was only holding it with one hand, and maybe this prevented the shot from wobbling. I also pointed out earlier that Stuart seemed to be a bit behind Karl, which you see in his shot, not beside him as during the replication, and this could have been enough space for him to throw the key into the corner unseen by the team. I could be very wrong with that speculation, but the possibility is still important to mention.

The Walkaround: The Final Part

Now for much more of a positive segment. As the team all go to leave the area, there is the sound of a door closing behind them, and rightly this stops the team from progressing as they go back to see what it was. You don't see anything move on camera, but by the time the camera pans you see Yvette, Gregg, Glen, and Stuart were all in the seperate corridor to where the door slammed and Karl is holding the door they've all just walked through open. As far as I'm concerned, this rules out everyone. Karl is the only one it could have been, but I find it unlikely as he isn't that far behind the team and is in a doorway. A big criticism I have here is all the footage we see is of Gregg's camera, the furthest camera from the door closing. When we see Karl and Stuart, they have their cameras pointed towards where the noise came from. The team should have shown the footage from their cameras, and it makes me wonder why they didn't.

Karl makes quite a funny comment about Gregg being psychic as apparently Gregg was desperate to film in that area for the walkaround as apparently it felt wrong. The team then tries the key they found in the different doors and Yvette says she just heard a big boom above them. Karl then has an excellent idea. Karl suggests the team do what a paranormal investigation team should always do, and that is keep everyone in shot at all times, including the cameramen. So, Gregg walks backwards with his camera while filming Yvette and Glen leave, with both Karl and Stuart filming them leave too. Then, Karl and Stuart both continuously keep each other in their shot as they both leave the area. This means everyone is always on camera, and this really should always be done. If everyone was always on camera, then skeptics can't say it was the person off camera who did it. So for this, I really think it was a brilliant idea from Karl.

As the team keeps moving through the building, Yvette discusses how it's quite rare to capture stuff on camera and brings up instances where cameras have been moved or when things have happened just out of shot. She mentions Skinwalker Ranch here, a famous American location, and says the Most Haunted team have been very lucky to have captured what they have. Karl then builds on this camera discussion by bringing up the excellent question usually asked of 'why don't they always have locked off cameras?'. He also answers it really well by saying that it would take about sixteen cameras for them to cover the hallway they're in and eight per room, and that no one would give the budget for so many cameras as it's hundreds and thousands of pounds worth of equipment. 

However, despite it being a really good conversation, and Karl making a really good point, they are in what I would deem an extreme location regarding size. If they were only investigating somewhere such as the witches cottage, or the farm house, it would take significantly less cameras. The reason he gives definitely excuses why they don't have locked off cameras for big locations, but they should have at least one camera set up per room in small locations. 

A bang is then heard by the team and again everyone runs off to see where the noise has come from, which again means very chaotic camerawork. The team re-enters the manor house and Yvette again mentions just how amazing the location is. Karl says they're back where they started the walkaround, and this is where footsteps can be heard above the team. 

The camera pans up to show the ceiling while footsteps can be heard, and I don't like this camera choice as really the cameras should be pointing at everyone's feet. I never know why cameras always seem to look upwards when footsteps are heard. I think teams should really say where footsteps are coming from, and then that leaves the cameras to show everyone's feet and rule out it being the team. 

Yvette then asks if they were followed from the hospital. More stomps can be heard after she asks this, and so then the question 'do you mean us harm' is asked and two stomps can be heard as a response. Karl says to do it, and a number of stomps follow. This leads Yvette to say they should just crack on and Karl agrees or they'll never start. 

The episode then cuts away from the walkaround and features narration from Yvette saying she sent Glen to the living quarters, Gregg to the hospital wing, Stuart to the cottage, and she ends the narration by saying herself and Karl went to the psychiatric building. The video ends with Karl and Yvette entering this building. 

Summary Of Activity

1. Door opening

2. Doors slamming

3. Intelligent knocking

4. Footsteps

5. Snooker ball falls out of nowhere

6. Snooker Ball moving across rooms

7. Karl punched in the back

8. Karl sees a face in a window

9. Key falls out of nowhere

10. Footsteps copying footsteps

11. Footsteps replicating a heartbeat

My Thoughts

As mentioned in the review, I feel I was incredibly positive towards the Most Haunted team during my previous review of them, and so I'm really disappointed to feel like I've been much more negative towards their footage for this review. There are definitely positives in this video, and there are definitely great conversations which occur, but there are too many things to critique. Granted, most of my criticism comes from the choice to include the footage captured while the team captured general shots. I think if they hadn't included this footage, then my review would be far more positive. 

I think the general shots footage makes the team look ill prepared to investigate the paranormal. As I said earlier, they are in a supposedly haunted location, they will have heard how active it is, so they should be expecting anything to happen at any point they are there; so I don't know why the team seems to be so off guard during this footage. As a result, I would have still released the footage as it does show activity, but as seperate behind the scenes clips to the episode with narration emphasising they really were not prepared or expecting for any of that to happen. 

Excluding the general shots footage from the episode, I think the history segment was brief but good, the discussion about locations was good but should have included reference to their past investigation, and that the walkaround was surprisingly eventful. The episode hasn't helped me be any less skeptical of Karl, which is disappointing, but there are paranormal reasons why he could be targeted in the way he is. I think the team should investigate these reasons, such as him calling out for things to happen to him, and if they do then they'll really boost Karl's credibility on the programme. 

I will keep watching and reviewing Most Haunted as they're quite possibly the most well known paranormal investigation team in the UK, and so are the example for how investigating the paranormal should be done, and what results you should expect. I will be keeping an eye on Karl though, which is why I've named him during the summary of activity so that I can easily keep a track of any patterns. 

If you want to watch the full episode for yourself then you can click the link below:

Most Haunted Halloween 2023 P1

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