Mansion Family

Yesterday we went to Woodchester Mansion in Gloucestershire for the next episode of C.A.T.S Calamityville Horror. It was a fun day filled with getting lost, Ryan falling over numerous times, a possible spectral sighting, illness and casual nudity in a services car park.

That got your attention didn’t it? 😀 Ryan wanted to take his car and decided to wash some bird’s muck off her. Then, seeing the clean patch he’d created, he gave her a full wash, only for her to become covered in flies when we reached Woodchester. How we laughed. He also kept driving the wrong way, going right when we told him to go left etc and bought yoghurts with him for the trip, forgetting to bring a spoon to eat them with. Then his Sat Nav kept getting us lost.

Haunted sightings of Woodchester include a headless horseman, believed to be Sir Rupert de Lansigny who murdered his cousin and inherited Spring Park, where Woodchester Mansion currently stands; a floating coffin above a lake, believed to belong to a friar who committed suicide; a rider in Civil War clothing and possibly ghosts of other people who were murdered or died accidentally there. A servant girl was murdered there, as was a builder, around 1840. It was mysteriously abandoned during construction in 1868. There were 6 accidental deaths and 1 murder during its construction. A black dog has reputedly been seen inside, coinciding with the deaths of people closely associated with the building. The only dog we saw was an old mongrel called Woody who belonged to one of the workers and loved us giving him a cuddle. There was absolutely no phone signal around the mansion, the park surrounding it or even in the car park, which was a mile away, so if we’d been faced with murderous ghosts, we wouldn’t have been able to phone the Ghostbusters for assistance.

When we finally arrived at the mansion, we were setting up to film an introduction piece. Cat, who was side on to the mansion, saw someone pass by the second floor window, immediately assumed it was a tourist and joked to Ryan and Lynx about seeing someone, hoping to freak them out. It wasn’t until we got home and viewed the footage that we realised there is NO floor by that window. You enter the mansion and look straight up to the roof. It could’ve been a trick of the light, the way we often see things out the corner of our eyes. No-one else saw it and the camera wasn’t trained on that window. Being non believers, we’ll keep trying to find ways to explain what she saw. Maybe it was a case of too much Red Bull.

The mansion is stunning. It will look better when we take it over  and turn it into Casa Raven. But we’ll keep quiet about that for now, so they don’t suspect anything when we show up with a ramraiding party. The K2 meter didn’t respond at all through the mansion, though Lynx did become very ill in the chapel. She has a nasty cold and it was probably the dust, as most of the wood inside looks new, but she was struck by a coughing fit that got worse as we climbed up to a platform overlooking the chapel, leaving her unable to breathe. Once we left the chapel she recovered. We ducked into a little nook and waited for Ryan so we could jump out and frighten him. We waited. And waited. And waited. We accidentally frightened a teenage girl and when Ryan finally did show up, he wasn’t scared when we leapt out at him. We were gutted. His girly shrieks echoing through the mansion would’ve been immensely enjoyable.

The best bit of the entire trip was when Ryan handed his beloved iPhone and Steadicam to Lynx to film while he did a speech at the top of the cellar stairs. He pressed the record button, walked into the shot all professional, turned, and fell down the stairs. Our laughter probably frightened off tourists. He only fell down two steps but it was a classic Ryan moment that is forever immortalised on film. In the cellar itself, he freaked out when something touched his face. We attributed it to a cobweb and scanned him with the K2. There was nothing. So this was en episode that truly lived up to its name of Calamityville, though sadly, not the Horror part.

Watch the epsiode here – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciSYtKMzsVY