The Tape Library - Archive of the Paranormal & the Unexplained - Disturbing Haunting of a Witches' Prison | The True Story of The Cage

Episode Date: June 21, 2024

The Cage in St Osyth is often referred to as the most haunted house in England. The former site of a prison used to keep witches imprisoned was later turned into a home.  When Vanessa Mitchell moved in during the early 2000s, she would experience one of the most extreme hauntings ever reported.  Do you have a supernatural story to share? Drop me an email at [e-mail] You can check out The Tape Library in video form at www.youtube.com/thetapelibrary Tiktok - https://www.tiktok.com/@thetapelibrary Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/people/The-Tape-Library/100094332411836/ Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/thetapelibrary Archive of the Paranormal, the strange and the unexplained. The Tape Library brings you the creepiest stories, to keep you horror junkies up all night. True scary stories of ghosts, cryptids, UFOs and true crime. Additional footage and audio from Evanto, Singularity, Midjourney and Pexels. All other footage used under fair use. CHAPTERS 00:00 The Witches' Prison 02:49 Ursula Kemp 06:40 The Cage 15:21 Infestation 25:54 All Alone 32:18 Man on the Stairs 39:19 Escaping The Cage 44:43 What Really Happened? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I knew the first day, something was in the house. But once you live in a place like something, she can't argue against it. It's just a fact, it's in your face every day. I've tried to rent it out and nobody stays here long. I feel like when I'm in here, it's very depressing. It's a depressing place to be in. This house was so active. It was men, women. You could hear the children.

You could hear them running about upstairs. You can hear them talking. You could hear them laughing. You could hear women talking. My fascination with this story all began with a viral ghost investigation clip. I'm sure many of you have seen it. A group of investigators stood around a table in a small room. Camera streaming to a monitor in the other room allowed the other investigators to watch what was going on.

To their surprise, they witnessed something extremely unusual. Their co-investigator Debbie was taking part in a seance. when it appeared her face began to change. Only for a few moments, but it looked as if her face was transformed. Her mouth stretched out to a disturbing degree. Her eyes darkened. It seemingly freaked the investigators out enough that they pulled her out of the room, and according to one study on the location I read, left soon after,

packing up their gear outside the property, to avoid spending more time inside than they needed to. While I am skeptical about what we are seeing in this clip, it is captivating and damn creepy to say the least. Twelve months after seeing this clip for the first time, I was having a weekend away in a small seaside resort in Essex when I discovered, while researching the local area, that there was a house nearby that is often described

as the most haunted in the UK. The same house that clip had been filmed in. So why not go take a look? Even if it was just from the outside. There, I got to see the cage, a former holding cell that was famously used to house witches before being taken to trial that has curiously been converted into a small cottage.

A quite unique situation. This sent me down a rabbit hole and I've been waiting to bring you this story for about six months now. It's a story of dark local history of a genuinely terrifying haunting of paranormal investigators. A story that not everyone would survive. So get yourself a warm drink, dim the lights and get comfortable.

It's time to delve into the disturbing story of the cage. It's a beautiful little cottage and it's got the old prison door and it's a little slice of English history. The bulk of our story tonight takes place in the mid-2000s. But to get a better understanding of what's going on here, we need to go a long way back to 1582. Sentosif is a relatively small, unassuming village. But as with much of Essex, the dark shadow of the witch trials hangs over it. This was an area of the country that the witchfinder general himself, Matthew Hopkins, was very active in. Across Essex, it is estimated that around 1,000 people were accused of witchcraft during this time.

arguably the most famous of which is the story of Ursula Kemp. Ursula was a 27-year-old woman, born in Sentosif, where she lived with her 8-year-old son Tom. She had separated from the boy's father and was raising him alone, making ends meet by being a midwife and wet nurse to the other women in the village. She was also a cunning woman. After falling sick herself previously, she had learnt about natural remedies. and folk magic from another woman and began using these practices herself. One day a woman named Grace came to visit Ursula and asked her to help her ill son, which she did, gladly and for free.

The boy made a full recovery. However, shortly after this, Grace herself would fall ill. She made an agreement with Ursula. She would pay her to cure her. But once cured, she told Ursula that she couldn't afford it. Not long after this, Grace's three-month-old daughter fell from her cot, breaking her neck. Then both Grace and her son became ill again. All of this, Grace saw as the work of Ursula.

Ursula was accused of witchcraft and arrested on the 20th of February 1582. She was thrown into the cage, a small holding cell in the village. She was repeatedly interrogated. as was her eight-year-old son. After some time it is claimed that Ursula admitted to having four familiars and that she sent one to kill the baby. She also then apparently went on to incriminate

12 other women in the village for similar practices who would all join her in the cage as they awaited trial. When she was finally taken to trial in late March of that year, after over a month of interrogation and being held in cramped cells, Ursula would suffer one final heartbreak. Her son Tom was the first witness at her trial.

The young boy claimed that his mother was in fact a witch and did have four familiars that on occasion he had seen sucking blood from her. Ursula Kemp, along with six of the other women who had been accused, were hanged. Her body apparently returned to St. Ossif, where she was buried in a seemingly unmarked grave. The cage where they had been kept continued to be used as a holding cell for the area until the early 1900s.

Next to it a small cottage was built sometime in the 1800s, and at some point in the 1970s, these two buildings were connected, creating the odd scenario of a cottage with a modern extension on the first floor, with a literal prison as one of the downstairs rooms, the chain still on the wall and a plaque on the outside, marking it out for all those who would enter, as the former site that the legendary Ursula Kemp was kept. Little did anyone know what combining these two buildings would unleash. The bulk of the information about the haunting of the cage comes from a woman who purchased the property in 2004, but she has been able to fill in a few details about the previous residence. It appears no one keeps ownership of the cage for very long.

On average, the property was sold every three to four years prior to the purchase in 2004, including one strange incident where the property was sold for 150 pounds and then put back on the market just weeks later for £100. A loss that in today's money would be tens of thousands of pounds. What we do know is that a young couple who lived there in the 1990s reported strange, goings on, including one evening where they had friends over to visit. The evening had been totally normal, but then suddenly they all heard a loud crash coming from upstairs. They rushed up and found all the books that had been on a

bookcase on the upstairs landing, had been thrown all across the floor. The bookcase itself was standing totally intact. On another evening, the woman who lived in the house at the time, closed. claimed that she got into bed, when she felt something, climb onto the bed, and snuggle into her. She thought it felt like a child. In 2004, the property would be purchased by Vanessa Mitchell. Vanessa had grown up in St. Joseph, but had spent a good chunk of her life living abroad. She had decided to move back to her childhood village, and was delighted to discover that the cage was up for sale.

This was a property she had been fascinated with since she was a kid. The plaque on the outside sharing its history was burned into her imagination as a child. She had heard rumours that it was haunted. But that didn't put Vanessa off. In fact, she was very open to the idea of the paranormal. Vanessa claims that she has been able to see ghosts her entire life, but that this has never caused her of any real concern. Vanessa would later go on to claim that she believed the caged chose her,

to live there. Despite its many shortcomings as a home, she felt this unrelenting desire to purchase the cottage. The fact that its previous owner had hung himself inside the property, only one year earlier, did nothing to stop this dream, becoming a reality. The home is tiny, made up of the original holding cell, a small reception room and kitchen. Then there are stairs that are closed off by a door, with two bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs. Behind the property is a pathway that is referred to by locals as Coffin Alley. This is down to the fact that it used to be used back in the day to carry coffins up to the nearby graveyard. Shortly after purchasing the cage, Vanessa moved in with her childhood friend Nicole. It wouldn't be long before she would have her first experience in the home.

They had unpacked a few essentials and Vanessa was stood in the kitchen alone, glancing out the window to coffin alley, thinking about how lucky she was to finally call this place her home, when she heard something. Footsteps coming from behind her. She didn't think anything of it at first, simply assuming it was Nicole entering the kitchen. But when she turned to greet her now housemate,

she was stunned by what she saw. There, and right behind her, stood a tall, shadowy figure. She described it as being human-like in shape, but the edges were all blurred. Standing around six feet tall, with what she claimed looked like the build of a man, Vanessa was frozen to the spot.

Again, she had experienced what she believed to be paranormal sightings throughout her life, but not like this. Not so close and in broad daylight. Whatever this was, was also blocking her only means of escape. It was just standing there in the doorway, staring directly at her. If you could call it staring, it didn't have any facial features.

After what felt like an eternity but was likely only a few seconds, the figure appeared to turn and began walking to the living room. As it did, the shadow slowly began to fade away, until it was just gone. That was when she spotted Nicole through the window. She had been outside unloading the car the whole time. The shadow man would go on to become a regular visitor in the cage. But at least at this time, Vanessa decided not to tell Nicole about it.

Nicole was due to have surgery soon. She had cancer, and her coming to live with Vanessa was supposed to be an opportunity. for her to rest as she prepared to battle the illness. Vanessa didn't want to ruin that by telling her that they might have at least one additional housemate. A few weeks passed and not a lot had happened. But then Vanessa made another strange discovery in the kitchen. She had once again walked in to make a cup of tea when she saw lying there on the kitchen counter a piece of paper. It looked perfect, uncrumpled, like it had just come out of a printer. She took a look and quickly realized it was a death certificate, specifically, one for the man who had lived inside the property before she purchased it, the one who had taken his own life.

Vanessa, assuming Nicole had found it, asked her about the certificate. Nicole had no idea what she was talking about. She had never seen this piece of paper before either. It would be years later that the man's widow would speak out. about this experience. She claimed that she is in possession of the one and only copy of his death certificate. There should be no reason that a copy was found, placed carefully on the kitchen counter, in the cage. Around summer of that first year, Vanessa's cousin, Kirsten, began to visit the house, often helping out with general jobs and cleaning when Vanessa was out, leaving Kirsten as one of the few people, other than Nicole and Vanessa.

to spend time in the cage alone during this time. One summer day, Kirsten picked up the key from under the mat and let herself in. She was in the kitchen, which was seemingly becoming something of a hot spot in the home. Much like Vanessa, she was looking out the window at Coffin Alley, when she was overcome with a strange feeling. A sort of icy coldness shot through her body on what was a warm day, and she was left feeling uneasy. Then, suddenly,

she felt a series of quick soft taps on the back of her head. Kirsten turned around nervously. There was no one there. But on the floor behind her was six small sachets of sugar. The same sachets she had seen on the kitchen counter,

not long before. Just weeks later, Vanessa and Nicole were relaxing after a long day of work, on the sofa, when they started to see something unusual, a slight glimmer of light on the ceiling. At first, Vanessa thought it was somehow being created by the lights in the room and just an optical illusion of some kind. But then she noticed there were multiple lights, all small and twinkling, moving around one another. It started with just a few and then more and more began to appear.

Vanessa claimed it felt like there were thousands of tiny lights, dancing on the ceiling. She asked Nicole if she was seeing things, but she wasn't. Nicole could see them too. The lights continued to dance for several minutes before slowly fading back out of existence. Vanessa believed at the time at least that this was a positive sign, that something was looking over them and didn't want them to be scared of what they were experienced. This would change, however. Over the coming months a whole host of strange incidents happened.

The first was an infestation of flies and maggots that seemed to come out of nowhere. Belongings would go missing and either turn up in strange places or just never return at all. The taps in the upstairs bathroom would turn themselves on seemingly at random. The kettle began turning itself on. The TV would jump up to full volume. the CD player in the living room would begin playing when no one else was in the room. Not just causing a sense of unease in the girls, but drastically increasing their bills as well.

While Vanessa still hadn't told Nicole about her experience with a Shadow Man, she was now obviously fully aware that something unusual was happening in their home. The days would grow shorter as autumn approached, and a new regular presence would make itself known, as the first first time. week of October began, Vanessa had gone downstairs first thing in the morning to start the fire burning. This is a ritual she had begun doing as the days were getting colder, although even during the summer, it was still oddly cold inside the cage. When she entered the living room though, she discovered every single electrical item was turned on. The CD player was playing, the TV was on,

the lights were on. As she took a step forward to start turning them all off, She heard it for the first time. A low but very distinct growl, as though an animal was right next to her right ear. She instinctively spun around, but there was nothing to be seen. This was the first event that made Vanessa feel genuine unbridled fear. This felt threatening, not just mischievous like much of the behaviour up until now. This growl has been reported not just by Vanessa. but has also been experienced by several investigators, who have visited the home in more recent years.

Throughout the month of October, things seemed to ramp up. Items around the fireplace would move without any wind to push them. The chains on the wall of the cage would move. The door at the bottom of the staircase began to violently slam at random. Cutlery would fly off the kitchen counters. Vanessa claimed that items would even be seen briefly levitating, along with all the other phenomena that had already been experiencing, continuing.

It was beginning to feel very much like a traditional poltergeist case. But what about that growl and the apparitions like the Shadow Man? Halloween arrived and Vanessa and Nicole decided to throw a Halloween party. As they were getting ready late that afternoon upstairs in the cage,

Vanessa was in her bedroom when she suddenly heard loud footsteps walking down the stairs. At first she thought Nicole was angry about something So she stepped out of her room to see what was wrong When she heard the front door slam Rattling the entire building with the force She was stunned when Nicole walked out of the bathroom behind her

And asked what was wrong The pair went downstairs to investigate but found all the doors locked No one could have been in there and left They managed to shake off to fear and continue to get in ready, Vanessa returned upstairs to the bathroom. She stood at the sink and looked up into the mirror. There, right behind her, standing over her right shoulder, was the shadow man. As clear as day, reflected in the mirror, with two deep white holes where its eyes should be, staring right at her reflection. She claimed she could actually feel the chill off of the present.

causing goosebumps to rise on her neck. It was right on top of her. There was no room to move without touching it. She held her breath not moving an inch with no idea what to do. She stood there for what felt like minutes until it slowly began to fade away before her very eyes.

But despite the fact that she could no longer see it, Vanessa knew that somehow it was still there. The sounds of footsteps and slamming doors also began to become pretty common in the home, as too did the sound of children, often heard running around upstairs, giggling and whispering to one another as they did. Something that was heard not just by Nicole and Vanessa, but also by friends who had come to visit. Then there was also the sound of grown women.

moaning and crying. Items began to be flung across the room with growing intensity, and as the winter months took hold, the cage became almost depressively cold. Vanessa was increasingly feeling the effects of depression and questioning why she ever bought this property to begin with. But as Christmas rolled around, her favourite time of year, she attempted to try and forget about what they were going through

and just enjoy this time. But early in December, another shadowy figure would make its presence known. Vanessa was relaxing with a cup of tea when she saw a dark cloud begin to fill the room. Gradually bit by bit, she watched that it took on the rough form of an adult man. This time, though, she felt something different to the other shallow men's appearance. Genuine hatred. It looked at Vanessa before turning away and walking out through the door into the other room. She can't explain exactly why, but Vanessa was convinced this entity meant her harm. It wanted to destroy her.

Nicole came home later that day to find Vanessa curled up in a ball, crying on the sofa. For Christmas itself, Vanessa was relieved when a friend of hers and her boyfriend came to stay. Her friend Jackie would be the first to experience the most detailed apparition of all, or at least up until this point. Jackie stood up to go and use the toilet. She opened the door at the bottom of the stairs, and Vanessa couldn't help but notice that she just froze there, only for a short while, staring directly up the stairs,

before briefly shooting Vanessa a concerned look, and then gingerly walking up them. It was only a couple of weeks later when Jackie came back to visit that she explained what had happened. She told Vanessa that she saw, stood at the top of the stairs, as clear as day, a man, dressed in old-fashioned dirty brown clothes, with a greasy dark ponytail, covered in dirt. Jackie had heard all about the haunting, and instantly knew that this man wasn't really there, or at least not there like you and I would be there, bravely. She slowly walked towards him, the man staring her down as she took each individual step towards him. A sense of anger and hatred seeping out of him.

As she approached him, it was the apparition that seemed to back down, taking a couple of steps back as she grew closer. Whatever this was wasn't an echo of the past. It could see Jackie and was interacting with her on some level. She took one more step and moved directly through the man. She continued walking to the bathroom door, only then daring to turn to see how the apparition had responded to her defiant behaviour. It was gone. Jackie, knowing what her friends were going through, didn't say a word when she came back down,

not wanting to spoil Christmas for them. that wouldn't be the only thing she experienced over the Christmas period. She also claims that while standing outside in the enclosed yard, having a cigarette, she saw what looked like an old funeral procession, coming through the wall of the kitchen and out into coffin alley. Too many long coats pulling a cart with a coffin, but unlike the man on the stairs, it was like they had no idea Jackie was there. An interesting detail is that the wall they moved through wouldn't have been there back when the alley was actually used to carry through coffins to the graveyard. Later that year, a third person moved into the cage, Nicole's boyfriend Jim, a man who was a self-declared

skeptic and while he was sympathetic to how both girls were feeling, he didn't really believe any of it, but it wouldn't be long until Jim changed his mind. He experienced much the same phenomena that Vanessa and Nicole had. It got to such an extreme degree that none of them ever wanted to be in the home alone at any point. However, Jim was alone upstairs one day when he heard the distant sound of heavy footsteps coming from elsewhere in the cottage. Those footsteps were coming up the stairs, towards where he was. Jim stood in the bedroom, the door still shut, as the front of the door.

footsteps slowly came closer and closer. His fists clenched, even though he knew deep down that whatever was on the other side of that door was not something he could fight. Then the latch on the door started to rattle, something that would become a commonly cited experience by both the people living in the cage and the future investigators that would visit. The latch then lifted itself up and the door slowly swung open. No one was there. This was it for Jim. Nicole was pregnant with their baby, and he decided in that moment this was not somewhere they could raise a child. Nicole was worried about leaving Vanessa behind, but knew Jim was right.

The couple moved out soon after this. Vanessa told her friend she was doing the right thing, but for some reason, Vanessa thought she could still live with the phenomena that was taking place. As I mentioned previously, Vanessa has claimed to see spirits all her life. and after time has grown to live with this ability, but nothing she had experienced had prepared her for life in the cage. With Nicole leaving, Vanessa's mental health quickly declined. But there were incidents with the seemingly many spirits in the house that she saw as positive interactions, while there were what she described as evil entities in the property. On some occasion she met some friendly ones. One afternoon she was sat watching TV, when she glanced up and saw her

in the small lobby near the door. A young man with a face worn beyond his years. Again she didn't move an inch as both her and the man gazed into one another's eyes. She couldn't believe it. This wasn't a shadowy outline of a man. This was, much like her friend Jackie experienced, a solid human being that she could see as clear as day, or at least, so she thought. When she glanced down she could see He was only visible from the waist up. Yet again, after some time, he simply faded out of existence. I'm a little unsure when exactly the following event took place.

But another seemingly friendly apparition Vanessa met happened again in the same room. A woman walked into the room, sprinkling what looked like herbs and leaves around the room and over Vanessa's head. The woman didn't speak, she just smiled a warm and friendly, smile before disappearing. She believes this is the closest of any of the entities that could have potentially been Ursula Kemp herself. Her clothes matched up roughly to the correct period,

and she looked about the right age. She believes whoever this was was attempting to protect her from the other more negative energies in the home. Others have suggested that Ursula's son Tom may also be present in the home. EVPs have been recorded of the voice of a young boy, asking for his mama, and others have heard the name Tom spoken aloud by an unseen person.

Vanessa invited a local priest to visit the property, who proceeded to bless the house after a discussion with her. While there, the vicar did experience the sudden turning on of taps, despite no one being in the bathroom. Vanessa specifically asked him to help the young.

young man she had seen to cross over to the afterlife. She never did see the man again after this. Unfortunately, this act of kindness backfired. Vanessa claimed that the warmer friendlier side of the phenomena seemingly evaporated after the priest's visit, leaving behind the darker forces. It was shortly after this that Vanessa discovered that she was pregnant. Her relationship with the father had not ended well, and she was now feeling increasingly vulnerable and alone within the cage. To make matters worse, the locals in the area who were now very aware of the apparent haunting were beginning to question why Vanessa kept putting a mannequin of an old woman at the bedroom window of the home, a question that was asked of her on more than one occasion, that would

always chill her to the bone because she didn't own a mannequin. A close friend called Mikey became one of the few people who would still visit Vanessa regularly at her home. A fact that Vanessa appreciated all the more when it became apparent that something in the home wasn't keen on Mikey's presence. On one occasion he was fixing a bulb at the top of the stairs when he felt himself being pushed violently by an unseen force. Mikey went flying down the stairs, but was luckily unhurt by the ordeal. On another occasion, he was helping Vanessa change a light in the outside yard area, when it exploded, showering him in glass. Another visitors at a home at this time was Vanessa's cousin Toby,

who came to help her and install a new bathroom. While he was working in the property, Vanessa went to her mum's house just a few minutes' away. He came banging on the door after just one hour, refusing to finish to work unless Vanessa stayed with him, claiming that he was hearing voices coming from parts of the building. Not just one, multiple voices, even hearing the supposed visitors walking up the stairs towards the bathroom that he was in. But of course, when he searched, there was no one, and all the doors were locked. One evening a few weeks later, Vanessa was brushing her teeth in the upstairs bathroom mirror,

the place where she saw the shadow man, and others have reported seeing faces behind them. When something smacked her across the ass, viciously, it was hard enough that she screamed, spitting her toothpaste out over the mirror as she did. Spinning around, shaking, she once again realized that she was alone. This was just the start of apparent frequent physical attacks that Vanessa doesn't really go into in detail. But she does discuss what she described as the scariest of them all. She was standing at the top of the stairs. The same place Mikey was shoved, the same place the previous resident had hung himself.

When she suddenly felt what she claims was the force of two hands shoving her. She luckily fell sideways into the spare room and not down the stairs. She lay there on the floor, crying, screaming, heavily pregnant, and all alone. The realization that whatever was in her home could cause not just her very real physical harm, but also endanger her baby. Vanessa gave birth in December of 2007. Her son being born was the first time she had felt genuine joy in a long time. It was an eye-opening moment that made her realise quite how much living in the cage had drained from her, both spiritually and mentally. She knew that she shouldn't take her son back there, but she had little other option.

She was a single mother who had invested what little money she had into this property. Moving wasn't really an option at that point, but she knew that long-term staying there wasn't an option either. While she formulated a plan, she would not let her son out of her sight, staying with him at all hours of the day and night when they were in the cottage. It was around this time that Vanessa basically retreated to the upstairs of the cage, barely leaving her bedroom unless she really had to. Within just a few weeks, she became very aware that her son seemed to be seeing and reacting to things in the house,

that she couldn't see. On one cold, dark night, her son had been with the babysitter while Vanessa worked. But obviously the sitter couldn't come to the cage, so instead she took the baby to them. She picked her son up and returned home. It was a bitter and freezing, cold, snowy night.

But Vanessa just couldn't bring herself to enter the property. She was truly at breaking point and was finding herself checking out all the windows to make sure she couldn't see anyone before walking in through the door. This night would be the final straw, the moment she decided that she had no other option but to leave. Vanessa finally plucked up the courage and entered, rushing upstairs with her baby and shutting the bedroom door behind her. She ate and watched a bit of TV.

Her son was now fast asleep at this point, when she made a realisation. She had no clothes ready in her room for work the next day. Her iron and an ironing board were downstairs in the former holding cell. The downstairs of the cage is always bitterly cold, but on this night in particular, it was almost painful to be down there. Vanessa decided for the first time to leave her sleeping baby in the warmth of the bedroom. and go down alone. As soon as she entered the room,

she quickly set up the ironing board. As she did, she heard a strange noise. It was the sound of her son's toy trains. He had three of them. They had been left on the floor of the holding cell a few weeks prior, and not touched since. Vanessa glanced down to see all three toys,

moving, making sounds, and riding around. her feet. Something had switched them all on, almost as though it were teasing her. She instantly felt a pang of fear and the realization that she had made a mistake. She grabbed her clothes and rushed out the room, eager to get back to her son, kicking herself for thinking she could leave him alone. She pushed open the door to the stairs and instantly stopped, dropping her clothes. Dropping her clothes. to the floor.

There, stood at the top of the stairs, was a man, but not the man her friend had described seeing on the stairs before. This man was different, and unlike anything else she had seen previously, he appeared to be wearing modern clothing, clean and well-groomed, and he wasn't looking down the stairs at Vanessa. He was looking through the doorway of her bedroom. staring at her sleeping sun. Generally, Vanessa had frozen with fear every time she saw one of these apparitions,

but this time, instinct kicked in. She ran up the stairs, screaming, desperately trying to get to her baby, running straight through the apparition of the man, slamming the bedroom door shut as she did. She grabbed her son and literally hid underneath the covers, shaking with fear as she did. She sat in silence for a long time but nothing happened. Eventually she managed to fall asleep,

only to be awoken later in the night. She wasn't sure what it was that had woken her up at first, but she could hear something. As she glanced around the room, she realised what it was. The latch on the bedroom door was rattling. moving up and down, growing faster and more vicious with every movement, building to an almost deafening crescendo, before it just stopped the cage falling silent once again. A few days later she spoke to a friend of hers named Kerry, who lived in Colchester, a city not too far from St. Ossive. She agreed to let Vanessa move in with her indefinitely

while she decided what to do once and for all with the cage. The move happened quickly and both Kerry Nicole and Mikey all came to help Vanessa pack up. Mikey was outside packing up the car when all three girls heard a loud crash coming from upstairs, followed by another and another. They quickly realised they were now hearing the familiar footsteps that was stamping around almost angrily above their heads,

before it then headed to the stairs, and started moving down them. When suddenly Mikey came bursting in through the front door, visibly shaken himself. They searched the house, but again, of course, they found nothing. Mikey explained that, while he was outside, he had seen someone. A man, as clear as they,

dirty looking and wearing old-fashioned clothes, staring down at him menacingly from the upstairs window. They quickly packed up the last of the belongings and slammed the door of the cage shut for what Vanessa hoped would be the last time. As she was about to leave, she looked through the downstairs window. There, standing in her living room, was the same shadowy figure she had seen, on the first day she moved in.

The depression that Vanessa had been suffering from, instantly lifted, as soon as they started living with Kerry. Still unsure what to do with the cage and in desperate need of money, she thought her prayers had been answered, when a friend of hers named Sharon asked if she could rent the cottage from her. Vanessa told her everything, explaining this wasn't a good idea, but Sharon was insistent that she would be fine. I'm unclear if Sharon believed the stories about the cage when she moved in

but after just a couple of months she began phoning Vanessa in a panic she was experiencing much the same phenomena that Vanessa had experienced including one incident where she claimed that something was pinning her down in her bed late at night she wouldn't stay in the cottage after this once again the cage was empty and this was when Vanessa was approached by a woman on the street one day. She introduced herself as Mandy and asked Vanessa if she was the owner of the cage. She then told Vanessa she had become interested in her property after walking past one day on her way to work

and seeing the same woman in the upstairs window that many others had now reported witnessing. She told Vanessa that she works with the dying in the nearby hospital. She knows very well what a corpse looks like. and that woman standing in the window looks like a corpse. Shortly after this, a woman named Kelly was introduced to Vanessa by a member of a nearby spiritualist church. Kelly and her husband visited the property and attempted to cleanse it of its spirits for Vanessa,

who at this point simply handed them the keys and refused to enter herself. Seemingly, this wasn't successful, even after several visits. but she did discuss with Vanessa what she believed was happening with the property, a theory that has been echoed by many spiritualists and paranormal investigators since, that there were in fact spirits that are trapped within the cage, but that it also seemed to be acting almost as a beacon for other entities,

attracting them, seemingly explaining the sheer number of different styles of haunting and sightings that were being reported, something that reminded me of the case of Helvanoch that we covered before. New tenants moved into the property. They lasted just four months before leaving with no explanation, leaving behind a number of their belongings. The water and electricity was then turned off.

The doors bolted shut. Vanessa decided that she shouldn't rent the property out again. A fact that she told an old friend when she bumped into her in the village, just a few weeks later. The friend asked Vanessa, if she had moved out, why had she left that mannequin, standing in the upstairs window? Vanessa then came up the idea of potentially renting the property out to paranormal investigators, approaching the SPR initially to see if they thought this was something people would be interested in. Over the following years, the property became a hotspot for paranormal investigators from all over the world,

Some serious, conducting in-depth research into the property and writing studies, interviewing witnesses and performing experiments in the home, others simply filming videos for their ghost-hunting YouTube channels. A number of interviews conducted back up many of the claims that Vanessa has made, and Vanessa herself told her entire story in a book she co-wrote with paranormal investigator, Richard Estep. A lot of evidence has been captured on camera. A quick search of YouTube will bring up plenty of interesting videos that have been filmed inside the property if you fancy going down that rabbit hole and seeing what has been captured. Vanessa makes a point to mention that many visitors to the property don't make it through an entire night, and she often refuses to step foot in the cage herself once night falls. During this period Vanessa began renting the bungalow in the village and put the house up for sale.

While the cage was becoming mainstream news, and seeing people from all around the world coming to step into its terrifying walls, no one wanted to buy the place. Vanessa claims that the reason she went public with her story was as a warning. She wants people to understand that not only does the paranormal exist, but there is a dark and dangerous side to it. A lot of evidence has been captured by the various paranormal groups. that have entered the property, but it does seem to boil down much to the same sort of thing you often see in ghost hunting videos. To my knowledge, Vanessa herself hasn't provided any photographic or video evidence of what she experienced.

But of course others have. Seemingly, one of her friends moved in at one point, both because they needed a place to stay, but also to investigate the phenomena for himself. setting up cameras in every room in the hope of capturing the moment of irrefutable evidence of the paranormal. So what can we make of this case? It's hard not to take into account the history of the cage when you think about what people have experienced inside it. There is literally a plaque on the wall telling you that a famous witch was imprisoned here as you walk in. If you were ever going to be primed for any location to be haunted, it's going to be this.

one. But while that may explain people seeing things out of the corner of their eyes, or believing they are hearing things that maybe aren't really there, it doesn't really explain some of the extremely vivid phenomena that many have reported. Vanessa herself obviously was a believer when she moved in, and that mindset could potentially cloud her judgment. But she is far from the only witness and has willingly opened her doors to anyone that wanted to come and experience what the cage had to offer. There is of course the idea that she has made this story up, simply for fame or to make money off of it. Again, totally possible. I don't think, however, that this has made her rich by any standards and she was very obviously desperately trying to sell the property and that going public

with the story made that extremely difficult she was also living with friends and renting out other places to live all while paying a mortgage on this home if her intention was to make money then she was not doing a good job of it it would also mean that she had gotten a lot of other people in on the lie including the numerous friends family and locals the paranormal investigators like John Fraser spoke to. The story feels so unbelievable but at the same time I don't think there are many obvious holes to pick at here. It's not like the haunting even really ramps up to a dramatic ending like in so many other so-called real-life ghost stories. Vanessa simply saw another apparition and decided this

wasn't somewhere that she could have her baby. It was more the accumulation of events that finally broke her down, rather than a big dramatic climax, as you may expect in a made-up story. With its infamy, many estate agents leaned into the haunting to try and sell the property, advertising it as a chance to own a famously haunted house. Eventually, after many years, Vanessa was able to sell the property in 2020, to a man who bought it because he saw it as a treasure in terms of its history. He stated that he didn't believe in ghosts and stopped the visits from paranormal investigators.

As of writing this, the house is up for sale again, less than four years later. This time, no mention of the haunting is made in the listing. I've been fascinated with this place ever since my brief visit. I even purchased a picture that is now hanging above me as I write this. It's from a local centosive artist, and depicts a skeleton that was famously found in the village. A skeleton that some claim belongs to Ursula Kemp herself.

If you all want to start a crowd funder, we only need to raise £260,000, and I can move in and turn the cage into the official offices of the tape library. So what do you all think about this one? Do you believe the accounts of Vanessa and her friends and family? Do you think the whole thing is a simple hoax to gain some fame or, as in many cases, does the truth lay somewhere in the middle? As always, I'd love to hear all your thoughts and theories on this case, so please do leave me a

comment below. It's also lovely to see people discussing theories with each other in the comments, but please do try and keep it respectful. We've got a really nice community growing here, with a lot of different beliefs and perspectives, and I'd like to be able to try and keep it as a positive environment to discuss ideas. This has ended up being another long one, so if you've stuck with me until the end, I really appreciate it as always. If you want to get more into this case, I strongly recommend the John Fraser book Poultergeist, as well as the book Spirits of the Cage by Richard Eastep and Vanessa Mitchell herself. Although annoyingly, it does seem to be out of print. Both of these books have been the main sources for this episode. You can also find

interviews with Vanessa and countless investigations on YouTube. If you come across any compelling pieces of evidence in any of those investigations, then please do share them with me. That's all for this entry into the tape library. As always, if you've enjoyed this episode, then please consider subscribing and liking the video. It really helps me reach more and more people. I'll be back next week with some more true paranormal tales. on our second show, Night Drive Paranormal, and then we'll be back here in two weeks with another submission to the tape library. Until then, pleasant dreams.