Why I Visited The Ancient Ram Inn
If I’m being honest, I’ve always been a sceptic when it comes to anything ‘haunted’ or supernatural… that was up until my visit to the Ancient Ram Inn in Wotton-Under-Edge.
Table Of Content
- Why I Visited The Ancient Ram Inn
- My First Impressions Of The UK's Most Haunted Building
- A Tour Of The Ancient Ram Inn
- Experimenting With A Ouija Board
- We Were So Freaked Out We Left In The Middle Of The Night
- Is The Ancient Ram Inn Haunted?
- Nobody Will Believe Us
- Watch My Ancient Ram Inn Vlog Below
The reason for visiting this so called ‘most haunted building in the UK’ was purely down to my 16 year old son Jack, he has developed an interest in the paranormal and digests a lot of the ghost hunters type content on YouTube which has lead to him coming up with a list of places he wants to visit.
When he’s shown me footage from these paranormal investigators YouTube channels I’ve been the first to pick them a part, ‘they’re acting’ ‘it’s staged’ ‘it’s fake’ ‘yeah right’ are usually the words that leave my mouth.
I wasn’t just batting the paranormal claims away, I was looking for something which can be explained, a door shutting could be fishing wire, a story told could be totally made up and so on.
I guess the only way to find out is to find out for yourself…. so we booked a solo evening at The Ancient Ram Inn, no tour, no people around…. just us.
My First Impressions Of The UK's Most Haunted Building
It’s important to point out that before I visited The Ancient Ram Inn I asked my son Jack not to tell me anything about it, I hadn’t Googled it, I had no information about the place at all, I didn’t even go to the booking site to make the booking Zoe (Jacks mum) did that part.
I wanted to walk into it completely in the dark as to not have anything sway my mind or feelings, It is my belief that you can think into certain states, all I’d been told is that this building is apparently the UK’s most haunted…. but how many buildings have we heard that about.
From the outside as you can see in the pictures, it’s an old building, it’s accessed through locked gates, It’s clearly inhabitable and for some reason It has an old touring caravan outside overlooked by a block of new build houses.
The first thing you see when you enter the building is a glass interior door with a printed A4 sign on which reads:
“Protection. before entering the building. I seek protection and sound my alarm, may my body my mind my spirit be safe from harm. My aura my shield to help me stay strong. I block negativity and all that is wrong. And so may it be.
At first, I just thought this building is an old, damp building, it feels spooky because of how it looks, I can certainly see why at night time this is going to feel very uneasy.
I read this out loud (video’d the whole thing) and thought to myself, If I’m going into this, lets not be disrespectful, lets not be closed minded and arrogant, lets just experience whatever there is to experience and go from there.
A Tour Of The Ancient Ram Inn
The above images are screenshots taken from my full 50 minute video inside The Ancient Ram Inn listed at the bottom of this blog.
Inside The Ancient Ram Inn you will find:
- The Kitchen
- Living Area
- Children’s Grave
- The Barn
- The Witches Room
- The Bishops Room
- The Loft
There are lots of other little rooms and areas of the Inn, however, these are the most prominent.
Jack and Zoe had brought with them some electronic reader which apparently detects energy and cat balls, you know the round little bouncy ball type things cats play with which flash when they are touched.
We all spent a few minutes in each of the rooms together and alone, as we toured the building we would share how we felt in each room, Jack and Zoe more focussed on emotional feelings where I was explaining physical feelings, as you can imagine they are very dusty and cold, that alone gives it a bit of an eery feel and I was convinced there was bugs in the building, I kept asking Zoe if there was a fly on me because I felt like a bug had landed on my back and my neck, as I’d lay on the beds in each room I figured maybe some bed bugs or something.
The temperature in the rooms seemed to fluctuate from cold to freezing then back again, no double glazing, no heating and holes in the brickwork were my answer to that.
I tried out the electronic reader Jack and Zoe brought with them and yes it did flash in parts but being the sceptic, I put the case forward it could be metal in the walls, it could be all sorts of things and also don’t trust some made in China gadget off Amazon you bought for a tenner!
Experimenting With A Ouija Board
As it hit night time and I’d walked the building several times, read the artefacts on the wall and even discovered a mummified cat which was on display (apparently found in the walls of the building) we decided to experiment with a Ouija board.
I know this is going to be controversial and people haven’t held back in the YouTube comments under this video about how silly this is to do, I went to The Ancient Ram Inn to get answers so I was fully open to experiencing these things.
At first we set up a Ouija board (purchase online) in what looked like the old bar area of the inn adjacent to the children’s grave.
We took turns asking questions after opening the board and didn’t really get any response, the planchette didn’t move so I turned my camera off and we started the process again.
Our second attempt was like the first, silence and no activity to our questions until towards the end when we were about to give up.
We heard a bang from one of the rooms upstairs so we asked the board ‘do you want us to follow the bang’
The bang repeated…. so we decided to follow.
We Were So Freaked Out We Left In The Middle Of The Night
Above is a screenshot of the last video I took of The Ancient Ram Inn as we literally bolted and left in the early hours of the morning.
For me walking into a building a total sceptic, relaxed and open to experimenting, it’s safe to say I got the answers I was looking for,
Is The Ancient Ram Inn Haunted?
Ok, so here’s what happened during our evening at The Ancient Ram Inn… is it haunted? Maybe you can decide for yourself.
After hearing the knock/bang from upstairs during our second attempt at the Ouija board, we attempted to follow where we thought the bang came from, that was The Witches Room.
We set the Ouija board back up and began the process.
During the video below you will see during our attempt to use the Ouija board, the wooden planchette was difficult to move, the friction from the board and the planchette made it almost stick in parts of the board.
All of a sudden the planchette started to move, not just move but glide across the board as if it was on ice, initially I was sat there staring at Jack thinking ‘this is you’ ‘you wanted to come here, nothing has happened so you’re doing this to make me believe because you know i’m a sceptic’
I decided to try call Jacks bluff without him knowing by changing the force of my finger on the planchette, I released the pressure of my finger to the point I was barely touching it then after a couple more seconds pressed down firm, my thought process was that if it’s Jack moving it then if I release pressure the planchette speed would increase then when I add pressure it would slow down…. makes sense right?
It didn’t change speed at all!
We asked the board ‘Who are we communicating with’ the planchette hovered over the letters: WJXF. I asked the board ‘is that your name or initials’ the planchette repeated the movement, hovering over WXF.
At this point I’m still sat staring at Jacks (and now Zoes) fingers, trying to figure out which of the two are moving the planchette and how are they maintaining the same speed with me changing force.
We are all taking it in turns asking the board questions and some were being answered with slight movement and some weren’t so I chose to ask the board: ‘Is there a particular person you want to communicate with?
Expecting the planchette to go to YES or No or not move at all…. the planchette slowly but at the same speed started to move around the board.
I did my ‘pressure trick’ again and was focussing more now on Jack and Zoes fingers, I didn’t really pay much attention to where the planchette was heading on the board until it stopped on the letter J……then over to A, followed by C and K! The moment the board stopped on the letter K, Jacks face turned white, jumped out of his chair and was visibly in shock.
My thoughts changed from ‘he’s moving this’ to ‘there’s no way he’s putting this on, he was trembling, stuttering and visibly scared’.
We headed straight downstairs to the living area and spent the next 20 minutes bickering and pointing fingers ‘was it you’ ‘it must have been you’ ‘tell me now Jack, don’t lie to me, was it you’ was the sort of conversation we had.
I tried to take control of the situation as we were all visibly shaken up, at this point I was still thinking it was Jack and he’d taken the joke too far!
We calmed down and switched the conversation away from the Ouija board and decided to continue our experience and head into the Barn.
As I walked around the Inn the feeling of bugs landing on me was more and more frequent and certainly more prominent, I kept asking Zoe ‘is there something on my back’ it was like when you go on holiday and a mosquito lands on you, it doesn’t hurt but you can feel it.
As we stood in the barn I got a feeling of being watched, I know this sounds completely ridiculous but it was like walking into a busy bar, feeling eyes on you then turning around to see a table of people staring at you, I quickly tried to shake it from my mind and told myself ‘you’re losing yourself in the moment here Tony, it’s dark, it’s cold, the building looks freaky and there’s some weird bangs going on, let alone the Ouija board thing’
The feeling grew stronger so I gestured we should go back into the living area.
Jack brought up a point that we weren’t sure if we closed off the Ouija board correctly. Apparently you are supposed to say thank you and goodbye in order to close it off, we rushed this part as Jack jumped up the moment the board spelt out his name.
We set the board up once again downstairs on the dining table, Zoe was visibly becoming very anxious and that feeling I had of being watched as if in a busy room magnified! We opened the board, started the process again where you rotate the planchette in a circle three times….. the movement reacting cat balls immediately started to flash the moment we finished the third circle, that was it for us…. stop messing around with this board. We closed it and returned to the sofa on the other side of the room!
Now I’m struggling to piece together what had just happened, OK Jack could have fooled me once with the Ouija board upstairs, but could he, the planchette glided like it wasn’t even on the board and the cat balls (which only light up when touched) were flashing, he was sat no where near them, nor was Zoe, nor was I.
I’m now on a dining table type chair next to the sofa trying to find answers, how did those balls flash, nobody touched them, how did that Ouija board move like that, then the bug landing feeling was that intense on the back of my calf my leg moved. Zoe saw and asked me what it was, I tried to brush it off but she saw it massively freaked me out.
I stood up and was trying to take control of the situation and calm my family down. ‘I think we should go’ I said, we came here all calm, now things are happening and It just doesn’t feel positive at all!
The atmosphere felt wrong, it was negative, for me it was like being a room where everyone hates you, I felt not wanted!
I started to explain once again, we should go home, we’ve paid for the experience until 7am but the way we all are now and the things happening here, it just doesn’t feel right.
That feeling of being watched became stronger and stronger, it wasn’t me freaking out, I wasn’t panicking I just didn’t at all feel right, then I looked up and across the room to the table where we’d just had the Ouija board experience… and this was the final straw.
A dark shadow moved from one side of the room to the other, not a figure, not something i could make out, just blackness! Not a shadow of something in the room just a slow movement of blackness from one wall to the other…. I cannot for the life of me explain that!
I now took full control, It wasn’t up for debate anymore, Jack’s 16, it’s my job to protect him and I felt as if being there gave me no control over that, I felt powerless and unwanted.
We got in the car and bolted home!
Nobody Will Believe Us
I know how all this sounds, I know If I read something like this I’d be eye rolling myself into a new universe! ‘happened off camera, that’s convenient isn’t it’
It’s also taken me several weeks to write this and also share the footage (below) partially because I know what joe public will say but more so because I still can’t explain it.
There is no explanation for that board, that blackness, those cat balls and the icing on the cake…. when I got home and undressed for bed, there was a visible bruise on my calf and visible marks across my back! Some bug that eh….
Below is my footage from our evening at The Ancient Ram Inn if you’d like to watch.
For now It’s left me totally scratching my head, I can’t piece together a scientific reason as to why the majority happened, even lets say if it was Jack (or Zoe) who moved the planchette on the board, which I honestly fully believe is not the case… the bruise, the cat balls, the darkness, there is just no explanation for it!
Now I have actually experienced ‘something’ Im not going to say I fully believe or don’t believe in the unexplained but I’m certainly now more open minded than I was before, so much so, I want to experience it again now I’ve come to terms that there might just be something else…
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