NEIL PACKER HAUNTED ANTIQUES PARANORMAL RESEARCH ANTIQUE CENTRE

Neil Packer...

I was born on the 25th January 1960 and my fascination with the paranormal began when I was a teenager. That’s when I first saw an apparition.

I was out camping with a group of friends one Saturday night. In the middle of the night I had to go out of the tent that we were all sleeping in. As I looked towards the church I saw a lady in a long flowing white dress walking from the church towards the back of the village pub. I admit it scared me half to death and I quickly made my exit and back into the tent where my friends were all sleeping. I never spoke a word to anyone about what I had seen, and I remember spending a terrified night huddled down in my sleeping bag. The experience remained a secret for many years until I bought a book that had been written about the village. It was only then that I found out that this spectre had been witnessed many times over the years. That’s when I realised that I hadn’t made it up in my mind. I had actually seen a full bodied apparition. Since then I’ve wanted to discover the truth for myself!

Is there life after death?

It wasn’t until 2015 that I could look deeper into the paranormal realm and I got together with another like minded soul and we started running a venue group. However ‘being in charge’ of a venue group meant that my passion for research and investigating just wasn’t being met, so I decided to leave that and go it alone.

In 2017, with a little bit of equipment and a big desire, I decided to start my research with objects. I truly believed that objects held energy, I didn’t feel that they would be ‘haunted’ as such, I felt that was a Hollywood film makers scare factor, but I was prepared to proved wrong!

So I set out to research and prove or disprove, that spirits could be attached to objects.

I emailed lots of antique shops in the area and surrounding area, but the only person to respond to me was Phil Sims at Sims Vintage Antique Centre at Wootton Wawen. He agreed to let me into his shop to investigate, and boy what a night!

I must admit I was very nervous to start with as this project is so important to me. What would happen if it all went wrong? End of my dream I guess.

I did believe that the initial haunted antiques' format was very, very good. After this first Saturday evening I knew where I could tweak it and the changes were made for the second visit to the antique centre. Having said that the end result was even better than I imagined it would be.

My original idea for Haunted Antiques was to record our evenings at the antique centre then edit and produce a series of highlight videos. It was in this format that our first two evenings were done, and I have produced two videos based on our first two nights. ‘The boy in the photograph’ & ‘Bronze African Statue’ are still available to watch on the Haunted Antiques Paranormal Research Centre YouTube channel.

Almost immediately there was a number of spirits coming forward. I guess they were interested in what we were doing as no other paranormal group had been there. One in particular was a baby girl crying. It became obvious to Ian that this infant was buried in what is now the corner of the centre. At the end of the evening Ian helped her into the light and she moved on and was greeted by her mother.

Ian my guest medium for the night did work on three objects. Each totally different. Each leaving us with questions. One, especially, will stay in my mind for a very long time as we'd never experienced anything like it before. This was the boy in the photograph. As we sat having a short break, Ian saw a you f child leap out of one of the photographs. It was a picture of a large house which we think is in Derbyshire. This little boy ran around the shop in an excited frenzy. He set off the rem pod as he raced past it. I asked him some questions which he answered. He’d never come out of the photo before, but he’d seen us and