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Location: Margam castle
Address: Port Talbot,
Neath
Port Talbot
SA13 2TJ
Aprox. year Built: 1100’s
The History -Margam Castle sits in the grounds of Margam Country Park. The Land on which the Castle sits has had dwellings on well before the 1100’s which is when the first documented buildings are known to be on the grounds. This was in the from of an Abbey built in 1147 and remained for hundreds of years. You can still see the ruins of the monastery there today just a few hundred meters from the castle. There are also tombs and graves next to the monastery which hold some of the later owners of the grounds and castle. The Castle itself is a large Victorian era country house, for Christopher Rice Mansel Talbot (1803–1890). It was constructed over a ten-year period, from 1830 to 1840, Although called a "castle", the building is really a large comfortable country house, one of many "mock" castles built in the 19th century during the Gothic Revival. William Henry Fox Talbot was a frequent visitor to Margam, and the castle featured as an image in some of his early photographic experiments. Margam's links with photography also include being the location of the earliest known Welsh photograph, a daguerreotype of the castle taken on 9 March 1841 by the Reverend Calvert Richard Jones. After the death of Emily Charlotte Talbot, the daughter of its first owner, the castle passed to her nephew and continued to be used by the Talbot family until 1941, when it was sold. David Evans-Bevan, who bought it, found it too large to live in, but could not find any public organisation interested in taking it on, and it fell into disrepair. For many years it belonged to the local authority, but was not open to the public. In 1977, a fire caused substantial damage, and it was only after this that a restoration project began in earnest. Today Margam Castle is a Grade I listed building and is in the care of Neath Port Talbot County Borough Council.
As you can see from the photo above Margam Castle is a very impressive building. As you go inside as see the staircase it seems to be even more impressive. While a very cold and very dark when the lights go out it also has that spooky feel from the moment you walk through the door.
Are evening started with the normal briefings and then we had the walk round with the nights medium (Sam). We started on the large rooms located on the ground floor, these were three large rooms that all connected through doors and faced out over the gardens that you can see in the photo above. From here we moved onto the stairs located in the middle of the castle. These had a centre staircase that then split left and right and back round to the rooms on the first floor. While there was some sort of carpeting going up the centre of the stairs these were made of solid stone. On the first floor was more rooms which felt a little bit like a maze. They all connected with interior door and located in one of these rooms was what Sam called a vortex, A spirit hotspot from one plain to the other.
The last room we went to was the Nursery which was the darkest and for some of the other guests a a horrid room with a dark feeling about it. On this walk round Sam had picked up on a few spirits which were keeping there distance. There was some young ladies, children and some men one of which had a very potent smell of BO. There was also the smell of sweet flowers and burning that was picked up on in different parts of the walk round.
Vigil One -We then started with are first vigil in the ground floor room at the front of the castle that over looked the gardens. For the first vigil we was going to start with some table tipping on a large table that was in the room. After a few minutes we changes to try and get the spirits to levitate a chair. We spit into two small groups of four with a chair each. We all put two fingers from one one hand just under the rim of the chair and started to ask the spirits to come forward and lift the chair. This had nothing happen so we moved to just use one chair. The results this time were better. The back of the chair lifted up and at one point the chair went onto one leg. How much of it was the spirits I am not sure as while my side of the chair did rise up as soon as I took away the little pressure that I had on the chair that side dropped.
Vigil Two -After a small break we started vigil two. For this vigil we headed to The Nursery with Paul from HH. Our group was made up of about 10 of us.. In the video below you can see the evidence that we collected with in the first 10 minutes of the vigil. We had someone seeing a dark figure behind the rest of the group, as the vigil was in the dark there is no way that this would have been coursed by any light source in the room. We started by creating an energy circle and it was not long before we had activity on the K2 meter that had been placed on the table behind the group. We then moved the K2 into the circle and the K2 was still going all the way up to red which is the maximum limit on the meter. There was also personal experiences felt by other members of the group. We then placed Paula into on of the corners and from the moment that she stood in the corner she could feel as if something was holding her arm at the elbow. As she was wearing a jump and a fleece she decide to take of the fleece just incase this was the jump gripping rather than something else. After removing the fleece she could still feel the same with the sensation that someone was leaning against her.
We then decided to site around the large round table where the K2 had originally been placed. After a few minutes of calling out with no activity I went and stood in the corner of the room on the other side to the table. In this part of the room there was a rectangle table which we had a large torch stood on the lens and two maglites. I called to the spirits and asked them to turn on one of the torches. They continued to call out from the table asking the spirits to throw something or to do something to let us know they was there. Near to the end of the vigil one of the maglites sat on the table in front of me was turned on. I was the closed person to the light and it was over 2 meters away from me. (See video footage below) No one was moving at the time the torch came on and we have no logical reason for it turning on.
Vigil Three -Our third vigil was to be held the the main staircase that runs up the middle of the castle. We started all sitting at the top of the stairs before it spit into two. We started by calling out but had little reply. We then slowly one at a time spread out around the stairs. Zei was first and walked all the way round to the top above the main stair case. Her she sat on a chair was Sam (the medium) asked her to hold out her hands and ask the spirits to pull one of her fingers. She did this and felt something pull at her little finger. This seemed to really be the only thing we had on the stairs, there was some clicks and bangs but nothing that we could say was really paranormal. So we moved into the room on the ground floor that over looked the gardens. This is the same room that we had vigil one in earlier. We started with the chair to see if we could get it to levitate again. This time we just used one chair and after calling out “spirits please left this chair” over and over in what on the video sounds like witches chanting a spell, the chair started to move and was completely off the floor. The chair then followed around the room spinning so fast at one point that it was hard for people to keep there fingers on the chair.
(See video below for the chair levitating)
Vigil Four -This was our own time. We headed straight up to the nursery joined by David and Zei. Here we sat at the rectangular table and started we the Oujia board. We called out and kept going but were not able to make contact with it and the room seemed lighter than it had earlier in the evening when we had been in there. As this was fee time was was later joined by more of the guests and the room seemed quite for the rest of the time that we was in there.
Vigil Five -After a short break we then all headed done to the ruins of the monastery and the graveyard. This seemed to be quite and eery place to me and while I am not a psychic in any way I could feel that we was being watched, the obvious would be to say monks but it felt more like a cult of some kind. Wearing white hooded cloaks and this could be is some way linked to the Hell Fire Club. (That was just my feeling). Sam the medium did pick up on hooded figures and sacrifices in the same area.
We formed a circle in the centre of the ruins and to build some energy up we sand ring a ring of roses and did the actions. This seemed to work as on three separate occasions we had stones or peddles thrown at the walls. This could have been some animal but they only happened when asked and even through it was dark I could not see that any animal would be in the area with 30 people stood around and making noises like the singing. We then moved to the hanging tree which is located next to the tomb which holders some of the Talbot's who owned the castle. While there was a spooky feeling nothing happened while we was around the tree.
Vigil Six -The last vigil of the night was in the ground floor room that over looked the gardens. The first room had the appearance of a theatre although this was probably a resent change not a use that the room would have had when a residence. We started with a Oujia board, this was very quite and the glass did not move. We broke into two smaller groups and tried glass work, this did not work so we tried table tipping. Again there did not seem to be any activity on the table. We were getting short of energy by this point and although we tried for some 40 minutes we did not have anything happen in the last vigil that we could see.
Summary -We had a great night at Margam Castle, Is it haunted? We would have to say yes from our own personal experiences and some of the evidence shown here. How many and who they are id a different matter. They all seemed to be a little shy with us and think you would need to investigate this location for three or four nights on the trot to get the most from who or what ever it is that haunts it. We still have some photos to develop and Audio clips to listen. If we have any more evidence we will post these to the page.
