The Highland Hotel, Doune - Paranormal Investigation Media Files
Use the links below to view some of our photos, view some video files and to listen to some of our EVP files captured at The Highland Hotel. Please listen to the EVP files before reading the report in order to maintain your own perception of what is being said. Some of the video clips include audio phenomena, please ensure that you have your speakers switched on.
Investigation Photographs>>>
EVP File 1- EVP File 2 - EVP File 3 - EVP File 4 - EVP File 5 - EVP File 6 - EVP File 7 -
EVP File 8 - EVP File 9 - EVP File 10 - EVP File 11 - EVP File 12 - EVP File 13 - EVP File 14 - EVP File 15
Video File 1 (Audio - Banging Noise)

Having video problems? Click here to download the latest version of Windows Media Player.

Date: 22/11/06
Outside Temp: 7 Degrees
Weather Conditions: Overcast, Wet
Moon Phase: New Moon, 0% approx

Investigation Team
Mark Turner, Lisa Lundie, Lynn O'Hara, John O'Hara

Equipment Used
Digital Night Vision Camcorders, Trifield Natural EM Meter, EMF Meters, Digital Cameras, Infrared Thermometers, Laser Thermometers, Two Way Radios, Infrared Motion Sensor Kit, Dowsing Rods, Infrared Booster Lights, Digital Voice Recorders, Panasonic RR-DR60 Recorders, Analogue Voice Recorders, Parabolic Microphone, Low Frequency Microphones, Trigger Objects, Wireless Night Vision Camera, Laptop PC.

Brief History
The Highland Hotel was formerly made up of five residences that have now been converted into one building. There are many reports of past paranormal activity. The figure of a dark haired woman has been witnessed on the stairs, a man wearing blue overalls has been spotted on a few occasions walking through the restaurant and in the bottom floor toilet before disappearing, the apparition of a large dog was witnessed in room 6, footsteps are heard regularly through the hallways, smells of pipe tobacco in the living room area, bottles moved and cutlery disappearing in the kitchen area, people hearing their names being shouted when nobody else is there, and a human bone that was found in one of the walls mysteriously disappeared.

Walkround
The team began the investigation by conducting a walkround of the entire building, taking temperature and EMF readings. The temperature readings taken were fairly normal given that some rooms had heating on and others did not. The EMF readings however were very unusual. The EMF meter was giving very high erratic readings in most of the rooms, especially on the ground and first floor levels. In many cases, the meter reading was off the scale and seemed to be extremely inconsistent. We have encountered high readings in various locations in the past, but never in so many rooms within one location. Oddly though, not a single reading was detected on the second floor of the building. We were unable to find natural explanations for these unusual EMF readings.

The team split into two groups as we had so many rooms to cover. The first team (Lisa & Lynn) went to the attic rooms on the second floor while the second team (Mark & John) headed for the first floor bedrooms

Attic Rooms – Team 1
Base Temp – 10 Degrees
Base EMF – No readings
The attic is split into 2 rooms, one of which has a smaller room and bathroom attached. We started in the single room and began our vigil by asking out for some communication while filming. During this vigil we heard 2 clicks coming from one corner of the room. We were unable to find an explanation for these noises. One of the team noticed movement at the door to the staircase, as if something had passed in front of the light on the other side of the door. As the other team had already started their vigil on the floor below us, we can rule out the possibility that they were responsible. On examining the camcorder footage, we had also managed to capture a couple of light anomalies although they were very small and faint. Cold ‘breezes’ were felt moving around the room, with no apparent source being identified. As things seemed to be very quiet, we decided to attempt some EVP recording. We activated our audio recorders and asked for someone to come forward and communicate with us. We listened to the files taken and although we could hear what seemed like voices in response to our questions, they seemed very faint and distant. We decided that this would be a good point to move into the other room of the attic to see if we could get clearer responses. After moving the equipment through to the larger room, we set up the camcorder to film the vigil. The team sat quietly while we tried some more EVP recording. Again using our audio recorders, we asked for communication and seemed to be getting clearer responses than before. Some of the files captured during this vigil were "Anthony Deacon"(EVP File 1), "this is Murray" and "we study you". We also captured "I'm here for Lisa but Lisa doesn’t know", "Lisa keep talking" (EVP File 2), "Eddie comes in here" (EVP File 3) and on asking if the person was happy where they are we recorded "yes" (EVP File 4). The file saying "Lisa keep talking" may have been referring to one of our team mebers as Lisa was asking the questions for the EVP recording, however we also had another Lisa accompanying us on this vigil, so the file saying "I’m here for Lisa but Lisa doesn’t know" could have been referring to either of them. During this vigil, another shadow was spotted moving in the smaller room next to us, but this did not show up on our film footage.

Living Room - Team 1
Base Temp – 20 Degrees
Base EMF – High erratic readings (Off Scale)
Our team then moved to the living room. This room is in a section of the building where the owners live. We set up a camcorder and then sat quietly to begin our vigil. There were a couple of clicking noises captured on film, but these were not heard at the time by the team. We tried again using the audio recorders for some EVP. We captured a voice saying "there’s a very big dog looking for me" (EVP File 5). The family do own a large Alsatian dog, which was downstairs at the time. The apparition of a large dog has previously been witnessed just along the corridor from the living room, in room 6. We also captured the name "Sarah Jane" when asking for a name followed by "Brady" (EVP File 6) when we asked for her last name. Some of the other files captured were "can someone help us", "one, two, three", "leave me alone" (EVP File 7) and "Pat's living room" (EVP File 8). The family who own the Highland Hotel have been carrying out a lot of repairs and refurbishing the hotel. We asked whoever was communicating with us what they thought of all the changes to the hotel and got the response "terrible". The last file that was captured in this room contained a voice which said "I can’t tell you that" after we had asked which year they thought it was. The file was very clear and several people could hear the words clearly. When analysing the files, this particular file had disappeared from the recorder. We are always extremely careful about making sure that no files are deleted until they are analysed and we cannot find any explanation for this happening.

Room 6 - Team 1
Base Temp - 12 Degrees
Base EMF - 0
Team 2 began the investigation in Room 6, one of the guest rooms in the hotel. We spent most of our time in this area operating three audio recorders, an analogue recorder fitted with a parabolic microphone in order to amplify any sounds in the immediate vicinity, this was also fitted wit a set of headphones to allow us to monitor the amplified sound as it occured, and two recorders with built in microphones. We proceeded to have a question and answer session in the hope of getting relevant responses. We did receive many responses to our questions but by far the clearest responses that we received all contained names, with two saying the name Dougal or Dougie, "Dougie", "its Dougal" and one with the name David, "my name is David" (EVP File 9). During our time in this room we heard footsteps that appeared to be coming from the hallway just outside the room but on investigating there was nobody present in the hallway and we knew the location of everyone in the building. One of our team also witnessed shadows moving on the radiator next to the open doorway of the room on two separate occasions, again the only cause for this could have come from somebody in the hallway, which was empty. There were three people in total conducting experiments in this room and everyone at the same time heard what sounded like the groaning voice of a man coming from the corner of the room just as we were about leave and move to the next investigation area. One light anomaly was picked up in this room on a digital still camera. It was noticed by the owner that the soap dispenser in the bathroom of room 6, which appears to have been inexplicably moved on many occasion in the past, was missing completely. A search of the room bore no fruit and the soap dispenser remained missing.

Room 5 - Team 1
Base Temp - 12 Degrees
Base EMF - Maximum of 2.5 Milligauss
Team 2 then moved their investigation focus to Room 5, another guest room. We continued similar experiments to those carried out in Room 6 with three audio recorders being set up, one with a parabolic microphone and headphones. A previous owner of the hotel is known to have died in this room and we based our question and answer session around this fact. We asked many questions in order to attempt to strike up a communication and received some very interesting responses. We captured a file saying "his faither" (Scottish slang for father) (EVP File 10). On asking when the person died we recorded the response "yes, 87" (EVP File 11) , we also recorded clear voices saying "their breathing" (EVP File 12), "Peter" and "1972". The remainder of our time in this room passed very quietly and we took the decision to radio team 1 and gather together for a short break to recharge our energies before moving on to Room 4. An audio recorder was also left running in this area while the team went downstairs for a break and the sound of a door closing was picked up approximately ten minutes into the recording.

Room 4 - Team 1
Base Temp - 10.5 Degrees
Base EMF - Maximum of 1 Milligauss
Feeling recharged after the break, team 2 then moved into guest room 4 for our final experiments before joining together with the other team. Again as before, we conducted EVP experiments using three different audio recorders. We asked many questions and the responses were varied. At one point during this session, one of our torches appeared to switch itself on and off 3 times, on asking if any spirits that were present were responsible for this, we recorded the reply "yes" (EVP File 13) . Other clear voices that were picked up were "Mark"
(EVP File 14) , and in response to asking for a name we recorded "David Harris" (EVP File 15). Two other distinctively different voices were picked up on these recordings that appeared to be having their own conversation, they were speaking over the top us us which does not happen often in our recordings and we beleive that this could be explained as residual EVP. One of our investigators developed a bad headache in this room which seemed to ease on leaving the area. the rest of this session passed of without incident.

First Floor Hallway – Teams 1 & 2
Base Temp – 18 Degrees
Base EMF – High readings (Off Scale)
The two teams then joined together for the remainder of the investigation. We commenced by conducting a short vigil in the hallway of the first floor where much paranormal activity has occured in the past. The team spread out to cover the entire hallway which forms a 'u' shape and we all sat quietly while Mark asked for anyone present to come forward and communicate with us. This session was recorded using a digital camcorder and two audio recorders, one with a parabolic microphone fitted. We heard apparent responses to our questions during this session but they appeared to be heavily distorted, although they appeared to have definite voice characteristics we could not make out any clear words. The remainder of our time investigating the first floor hallway passed off with no further incidents and we decided to move our investigation to the ground floor.

Bar - Teams 1 & 2
Base Temp – 22 Degrees
Base EMF – High readings (Off Scale)
The team moved to the bar area to set up for our next vigil. Mark was recording using the parabolic microphone and the vigil was filmed using a digital camcorder. We set up the communication board and asked for someone to come forward. Although we felt a couple of very slight movements through the glass on the board, we did not get any results using this method of communication. During the board session, one of our team members felt that someone was gripping her arm. As the only people near her were taking part in the board session, we can discount that it was one of the team causing this. We also heard a noise coming from just a few feet away and it had sounded as though something had been dropped or thrown on the wooden floor. When we looked to see if we could find what had been dropped, all we could see was a piece of glass on the floor. We were unable to come up with a reasonable explanation for this. It has been noted that when this piece of glass was apparently thrown or moved, that we were asking for someone to step forward to move the glass on the communication board. We also heard a very loud banging noise coming from the corner of the room (Video File 1). We investigated this loud banging noise for a source but were unable to find any rational explanation.

Kitchen - Trigger Objects & Motion sensors
Many objects have been moved in the kitchen area in the past and we therefore decided to set up some trigger objects and motion sensors which stayed there for the duration of our investigation. Unfortunately the motion sensors did not pick up on any movement and the trigger objects remained in the same position for the whole night.

Summary
Overall this was a very successful investigation. Although we captured very little in the way of visual phenomena, our EVP recordings captured many clear voices and the majority of the phenomena that we experienced was audio based. One of the most unusual things about this investigation was getting so many high and inconsistent readings on the EMF meter, without any reasonable explanation being found. We would very much like to return to The Highland Hotel in the future to follow up on our findings from this investigation.

We would like to thank the owners of The Highland Hotel for their excellent hospitality.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------