Ghost Hunting

As you may know from earlier blog posts, I love ghosts and the thought of the spirit world being all around us. I am also a bit of a family history geek and love researching the past from a family perspective, not learning loads of dates and facts that history classes were famous for.

I had the perfect opportunity to explore both on Friday. A student we have on placement at the school spoke to me at lunch in the staffroom on Friday asking if we had historic records for pupils going back many years. We are an old Victorian school which opened its doors to the city in 1892 and are lucky to have all the original school documents, log books and registers going back to the opening day. Amazingly, over 560 boys registered for the school on it's opening day in 1892.

Anyways, back to the story .... She (the student) had been to visit a medium with her mum the night before and had been gobsmacked at the information that the medium had shared. A great deal of it was personal information that very few knew about and this made her a little freaked out! The medium then interrupted to say that a young boy was trying to pass a message and then started to give loads of details about my school and it's past etc etc.

This young lad was called Daniel whose surname started with a W, and he apparently loved school and loved being in our school when he was a pupil. He hated the huge, heavy wooden doors but was really happy there and remains in the school to this day. He apparently died at the age of 12. He follows the student around the school at the moment, looking after her, and was telling the medium about incidents that had happened during her placement.

She was a little worried about this now because the medium had come up with this boys name which made things a little too real for her.

I jumped at the chance to investigate and after school on Friday we started to look through the original registration documents for all the children. We came across one pupil called Daniel whose surname started with a W. He was born on the 19th of June 1894.

Then came my family history enthusiasm! I have been searching the online documents and census information to find the boy and have currently drawn a blank!!! I am so disappointed and if truth be known, a little jealous of the student. I know that sounds a bit weird, but I love the thought of the spirit world and would love to think that a child from the schools past, who loved school, was looking after me when I was in the building.

I have many more school records to trawl through on the hunt for Daniel as this register only goes as far as 1912. I'll let you know if I find him :o)