Ghost hunters have released a video recorded in the early hours at Chester’s 16th century Stanley Palace in which the sound of piano keys being pressed and disembodied footsteps can be clearly heard.
Cameras and Electronic Voice Phenomenon (EVP) recorders were installed overnight on August 6 last year in what is reputed to be Chester’s most haunted building.
The building, in Lower Watergate Street, was left completely empty.
Yet paranormal investigators from the Haunted Hunts team were astonished on reviewing the tape to hear the sound of disembodied footsteps between 3.30am until around 8am. And at 4.13am the piano can be heard as though the keys were being pressed by a child messing around.
The team say in the text accompanying the video: “We have no explanation for this incredible footage. The house does not suffer with any mice or rats so we can rule out the possibility of anything running across the piano keys.
“Our investigations at Stanley Palace are often very active with the sound of someone pacing up and down the gallery.”
The Haunted Hunts website says Stanley Palace, formerly known as ‘Derby House’, is a 16th century building on a site previously occupied by the Dominican Friars (The ‘Black Friars’) in medieval times.
It was built for a knight called Peter Warburton, a Chester Lawyer who became a sergeant-at-law and MP for Chester, a county finance manager and a judge.
The house was passed to his daughter Elizabeth in 1621. She married Sir Thomas Stanley who gave his name to the house.
It is known that Hesketh, a sporting gentleman, who held parties for the race-goers, once occupied the house before it deteriorated and became ‘three shabby cottages’. The cottages passed from owner to owner and in 1866 the Americans wished to transport the house to the US but this was blocked by Chester Archaeological Society.
In 1889, Edward Henry Stanley, 15th Earl of Derby, came to the rescue by buying it for the community. In 1911 it opened as a museum and the three cottages merged to form one house again. Tunnels were found under a trap door which led to Chester Castle and the Watergate.
Finally, in 1928 the 17th Earl of Derby passed the house over to Chester City Council on a 999-year lease.
The team say they are ‘hardly surprised’ it is Chester’s most haunted building given it ‘has so much history behind it’.
Elizabeth’s spirit has apparently been seen on many occasions by guests and still roams the hallways.
And there is a connection with James, the 7th Earl of Derby, who campaigned for the royalist cause but was captured and held in Chester Castle. He escaped but was recaptured on the riverbank and spent his last few days inside Stanley Palace,
He was later executed in Bolton by Cromwell’s followers. It is said that he was betrayed by his trusted manservant, a Cromwell sympathiser. The spirit of the servant is said to have ‘been seen on numerous occasions’.
Victorian children have also been seen running around the house and an old man with a stick has been seen chasing them.
The sound of crying, loud footsteps and arguing are frequently heard in the house and white mist has been caught on camera ‘on many occasions’ flying up the main stairway.
Haunted Hunts run tours at various haunted locations across the region including Stanley Palace and Ye Olde King’s Head in Chester. The next available tour of Stanley Palace, priced £35, runs on Saturday, April 8, between 9pm and 2am. The team insist: “None of our events are fixed or staged in any way, whatever happens is for real.”
For more details, visit: www.thehauntedhunts.co.uk
