Taken from Newsletter Issue 26 - June 2005

I went with EMPRG (East Midlands Paranormal Research Group) which is a smaller group to LPS, as they were investigating the Station Hotel in Dudley. In its heyday it had stars of the stage staying there including Bob Hope, Laurel and Hardy and Jonny Ray and George Formby who performed there. Many people who have stayed in the corridors of rooms 213 to 217 have experienced strange happenings.

One story tells of a hotel manager who enticed a servant girl into the cellar. She spurned his advances and threatened to tell his wife, the girl was murdered by the hotel manager. He strangled and stabbed her then hid her body in a barrel. When psychic Derek Acorah came to the hotel, he reported the name of a male spirit George Williams/Williamson whom was having an affair with a female by the name of Elizabeth Hitchen. George Williams allegedly murdered Elizabeth by strangling and stabbing her. Derek then revealed that Williams disposed of Elizabeth’s body by means of a chute within the hotel, which would have been used, at the time, for the delivery of bottles and barrels. Williams was then reported to have buried the body near the front of the hotel. According to Derek Elizabeth’s body is still there. Another spirit that Derek picked up on was that of George Lawley, whom he described as a writer who knew of Elizabeth’s murder and wrote about it in a ledger that he is reported to have hid. To this day, the ledger has not been found. It appears that a character of this name was a local historian who, at the time worked as a writer for the brewery!

Derek also picked up on the spirits of two children. Catherine aged 6/7 who died under the wheels of a carriage and Richard aged 3/4 who passed away after a blood related illness. Yet another spirit who Derek picked up on is rumoured to be sitting, waiting for someone in the infamous room 214. I spent the night in room 216 going back and forth the various rooms throughout the night, and was all on my own. During the first part of the evening was getting a lot of activity in room 216, my EMF meter kept on going off at intermediate periods when doing baseline tests especially around the other bed, filmed orbs flying around the same bed right after the EMF meter was going off and while I was talking to the room to see if anything was there, I even noticed the atmosphere change in the room as well. We also did a séance in room 213, first spirit was all garbled and we managed to get that it was a boy who used to work in the kitchens in the 1930’s, the second spirit called itself Zachary Vit from Amsterdam who stayed in that room and got killed by his stepfather in the bathtub and wanted freeing by running the taps in the bath which I did.

The last spirit was where the glass kept on moving to words like “I want sex” and continued saying much more than that. Not quite sure if it was true or not as for all I know someone may have been moving the glass. So a very interesting and fun night, I finally got to sleep at about 5am when the paranormal activity settled down.