A Cumbrian ghost hunting group have gone viral on social media for keeping the county free of hauntings – and there’s a wholesome story behind how they got started.
Paranormal Investigations Cumbria have taken the internet by storm with their live investigations and ghost footage, leaving them with thousands of views and a whopping 54,000 followers.
The group is run by Sarah Simmons, 46, of Carlisle, who works as a tarot reader and reiki healer by day and a professional ghost hunter by night.
Sarah, who has 25 years of experience in paranormal investigation, also acts as the group’s psychic medium and said that the main driving force behind the group is helping people.
She said: “For us it’s all about helping people in their homes and businesses mainly, but it’s also about proving the paranormal exists and putting it out to Cumbria to let people know that we’re here if they need our help.
“We do two types of investigations, we do private investigations and live investigations. Live investigations are in places like old pubs which we share on Facebook and private investigations are generally in people’s homes.
“These are normally kept private because we understand that some people are scared in their home space. But the private investigations are primarily why we set out to do what we do, we just want to help people. We don’t charge people for the investigations either.”
Sarah first became involved with the group when it was established back in January. She had initially reached out to the page’s now former owner, Aiden, to offer her services as a paranormal investigator and medium.
She added: “I saw a post about a paranormal investigation team looking for places to investigate. I’d done training in being a medium, so I thought I could offer my services to Aiden who was running the page. We clicked and we did a few investigations together and took on some new team members before he eventually moved to Manchester and left the page to me.”
Once Sarah became owner of the group, she began doing Facebook live videos that can last for two hours or more during the team’s investigations, which led to their clips becoming popular on social media.
She said: “It began as a hobby and then turned into something more after we started to get subscribers from the viral videos, the first one that went viral was a live I did with my sister in a graveyard.
“It’s just mental the way it has gone, we’re starting to get Facebook stars now as well, so what started as a hobby has now grown into a business. It’s something I always said I would love to do as a job, but I never spoke about it and now it’s just happened.”
While other ghost hunting groups often take members of the public to investigations, Sarah’s team investigate homes and businesses as a professional group.
She added that there had been a few experiences during their private investigations that stood out in her memory, including a woman who felt unsafe after regularly seeing the shadowy head and shoulders of a man in her home.
Sarah said: “We had really good communication with the spirit and he came forward and said he didn’t mean her any harm and that he had lived in her home previously.
“So we asked the spirit to promise not to show itself again because it was scaring her and she’s never seen him since. She got all the answers that she needed and she’s still living there and she’s not frightened of it anymore.”
On another investigation, Sarah recalled poltergeist-like activity disappearing once the team had found the owners of the home answers.
She said: “As soon as I got there, I picked up on a male spirit in his 40s with some kind of learning difficulties and our client said that sounded like their uncle. They’d just moved into the house previously, and paranormal stuff had started to happen, like lights flickering and kitchen cabinets slamming.
“We found out it was actually his uncle, and once his uncle was recognised by us, the slamming and the lights just stopped, and would only re-start when our clients brother and dad visited, like he was trying to tell him he was there.
“But we got them answers, and that’s what our mission of what we try to achieve is, to get people answers, give the spirit a chance to communicate and help them as much as we can.”
Sarah added there had been occasions where the team had been left scared after they had experiences of door slamming, phantom touches and strange images captured on camera.
Sarah said: “We never provoke spirits, we’re very respectful, if we treat the living with respect then we should treat the dead with respect also.”
Despite her experiences, Sarah isn’t stopping in her quest to help Cumbrians and prove that the paranormal exists.
Talking about the team, Sarah said: “Everyone is a volunteer, they just love the paranormal and they just love the experience. We work together as a team and we all contribute towards diesel costs and it just works. They’re really a fantastic team.”
“We do mainly investigate just as the team but we’re open to change. We’re looking for two new investigators to join us at the moment as well, and previous experiences with the paranormal aren’t needed.”
She added: “It’s just a dream come true, I’m putting everything in this to make it work. The support I’ve got off the team and my family members is just so overwhelming but really exciting at the same time, I sit and pinch myself and ask, is this real? It’s all just down to the determination, the love for the job, a love for the paranormal and helping people.”
The team continue to offer their services to anyone who wants their home or business investigated and ask anyone interested to get in touch.
