EII012 - The Green Dragon
Write-up by Eerie Investigations, 2nd November 2005.
On Monday 31st October, Halloween, Eerie Investigations again returned to Waltham Abbey. This time they had been asked to visit and investigate the 400 year old Green Dragon pub, which has had a history of reported ghostly activity and is rumoured to have the ghost of a cavalier in residence.
One of the main areas of the activities is the cellar, which has tunnels (now bricked up) that once led into the Abbey and surrounding buildings and which were used as walkways for the abbey monks.
The landlady, Sue, told Eerie that she has seen many ghostly apparations appearing in the pub, particularly in the upstairs bathroom mirror. She believes that this is a doorway into another dimension. Sue wasn't frightened by these and said that they had never harmed her, but as the evening unfolded they would seem to make their presence known rather too well.
The team's guest medium, Faith, joined the investigation, and after setting up their equipment and trigger objects, and performing baseline energy and temperature readings, they settled in for a seance and vigil after the pub had closed.
Faith picked up on many presences in the building, in particular one of a man who seemed to had a clubbed hand and withered limbs, whom she felt worked at the pub many decades ago as a general helper and "cellar man". She felt that this person was somehow trapped in the building and couldn't find the doorway to move on from this world to the next. Faith also picked up the sound of a little girl crying, and the whole team felt cold breezes which came out of nowhere and stopped just as quickly.
Karen of Eerie Investigations felt most drawn to a downstairs alcove area of the bar which coincidentally was beneath the aforementioned bathroom, and so it was decided to set the seance up here.
While performing the seance, the sound of barrels being rolled around downstairs in the cellar could be clearly heard over six times, by everyone present and on camera. Also on camera footage a high speed "rod" of light can be seen moving above the team's head, and then seperately traversing the room. Analysis of the tape footage and images shows that this is not dust, nor light reflections, and it is moving far too fast to be an insect (based on distance and time, it can be seen to be moving over 15 feet in 1/8th of a second).
After about 45 minutes, Karen felt drawn to the upstairs of the building, and so it was decided to finish the seance and then move upstairs. Faith at the same time also felt that she was being pulled upstairs, and got a psychic message saying "Stop it, Stop it", but was unsure what she was supposed to stop.
The team got up from the seance, and packed their equipment in preparation to move everything upstairs. Halfway through this process someone heard loud sounds of running water and we realised that water was pouring through the ceiling just above where we had been sitting mere moments before.
Those present rushed to get buckets to catch the water, thinking it was just a water leak, and Sue ran upstairs to find the source of the flood. The next thing we heard was a yell of "Fire, fire, fire!" and the team ran upstairs to find it full of smoke and the bathroom blazing with flames four feet high.
Sue got her family out of the bedrooms, and herself and Ian then put out the fire with extinguishers, while other team members opened windows and vented the smoke out. Karen imemdiately rang the fire brigade, which was just as well as it was proving very hard to clear the room of smoke and to keep the flames fully extinguished. Two fire engines, an ambulance, and various police cars then turned up at the scene.
The source of the fire has still not conclusively been determined, however the bathroom was completed destroyed in one side, with the fire appearing to be concentrated around the very mirror where Sue said she had seen spirits.
All in all, the Green Dragon turned out to be one of Eerie's most memorable investigations to date. Due to the fire interruping the investigation, the team will be returning to the Green Dragon in the very near future to complete it.
Despite the unusual occurences, all of the mediums present felt and still feel that the Green Dragon has a very friendly and warm atmosphere, with nothing negative in its atmosphere.
A side-note, the next day after the investigation Karen received a telephone call from another local medium and friend of the team, whom coincidentally happened to be in the pub earlier that evening and who was sitting in the same area of the pub. Before even being told what had happened, she told us that she had seen a figure of a monk sitting in that alcove area wearing a hooded hessian-type habit.
