Meet Into The Shadows who investigate the paranormal in and around King's Lynn

For some, the thought of communicating with the paranormal would be a nightmare, but for one Lynn-based group, it is not just their hobby but something they are looking to evolve into a business.

The group, Into The Shadows Paranormal Investigations King’s Lynn, came about after Nicky Proctor started a Facebook page with the same name for people interested in ghost stories during lockdown.

Nicky, who also runs The Original King’s Lynn Ghost Tour, was taken aback by the level of interest, and, before long, the paranormal team was formed.

A year on and Into The Shadows has investigated a number of buildings in and around Lynn and beyond, during which they have communicated with several spirits and even saw the landlord of one town pub possessed (he was fine after being taken away from the situation).

With the team set to welcome members of the public to investigations from next year, Into The Shadows invited me to experience an evening of seeking out the paranormal.

Before heading over to the site of Saturday evening’s investigation, I sat down with Nicky and the team to have a chat about what to expect.

“Our first investigation was at Cobbles Tea Room in Hanse House where we had the presence of a little boy called Tommy,” Nicky says. The staff there now say “morning Tommy” every day.

While some are enthusiastic about getting the team in to seek out the spirits, others are less keen - but the team would like to do more investigations in Lynn.

“It’s so hard to get into places, a lot of people don’t want to know ,” Nicky said.

They expect some people will be sceptical of what they do, with comparisons to TV shows like Most Haunted, but Into The Shadows are keen that people understand they do not exaggerate anything.

“There’s no point in bluffing, we like to be honest,” another team member, Charlene Walker, tells me.

“We don’t dramatise anything - there’s no point. We do this for our pleasure, and we won’t get anything out of making something up.”

With that, it’s time for us to head over to Hanse House, which now has a restaurant and hosts functions including weddings, but it has a long history dating back to the 1400s, though Nicky and the team don’t research the places they are visiting until afterwards, so they can’t inadvertently influence what they discover.

Trigger objects - such as light-up balls - and a K2 meter that detects changes in electromagnetic energy are placed around the room, before a protective prayer is said and we have to “open our chakras” in the hope of being more in tune with our spiritual energy. The reverse will be done at the end of the evening.

We take part in a “human pendulum”, in which group member Chris Baxter - who describes herself as “sensitive” to this activity - is involuntarily moved forwards for “yes” or backwards for “no” as a spirit called Donald communicates with us. He tells us he is 65 and is quite keen on another presence in the room, a nurse.

When I ask Chris if it’s quite normal for her to speak with spirits in this way, she says: “It’s fairly typical yes. It feels like someone’s pushing me.”

During the course of the evening, the use of a ouija board picked out the number nine and a bunch of seemingly random letters, and some “table tipping” - where we put our fingers on a table and ask to speak to a spirit - saw the furniture move quite substantially by itself. Donald was back with us once more.

While I may not have been as sensitive to it, the team says they heard a number of bangs and other noises too.

Having spent a few hours with Into The Shadows, it’s almost time for me to go, but I have one more question for the team and I have a quick word with Matt Laker, who tells me he has been doing paranormal investigations for around 15 years.

I want to know what he would say to anyone who was sceptical of what they do.

“What we do is try and gather experiences and evidence,” he says.

“We don’t go in and say it’s definitely haunted, it’s up to you to come to your own conclusions.”

Matt adds: “It’s about being open to it. Being sceptical is not a bad thing.”

He tells me that whatever happens during the evening, they are always looking for other explanations first, and don’t jump to conclusions that it must be caused by a spirit.

There’s a Sherlock Holmes quote, he says, that sums up their approach: “Once you have eliminated the impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

And with that, I leave, feeling far more fascinated by the paranormal than I had going in, and more open to the possibility of it.

For more information and to keep up-to-date with Into The Shadows’ events, visit their Facebook page, where they also post reports from their investigations.

To find out more about The Original King’s Lynn Ghost Tour, or to book onto a group tour or a private one, visit the Facebook page.