Walton Colliery Disaster

Well I haven’t blogged for a while so hello everyone….

As a group of investigators we decided to investigate the area of the 1959 Walton Colliery Disaster….

We generally don’t investigate events which are so recent out of respect for the people that lost their lives and also for the families they left behind..

We undertook this investigation with love and respect to all who were affected by this tragedy.

At 1pm on 22nd April 1959 a explosion occurred underground which resulted in the loss of 5 men.

May these men forever rest in eternal peace.

We first went to investigate a few weeks ago, just after this years anniversary date, we started at the Walton Colliery site (which in itself has another tragic event connected to)

After walking around Walton nature reserve we did a quick investigation around the disused air shaft and yielded some results….

We then decided to go to the site where the deceased men were brought back to the surface after the tragic disaster, this was Haw Park pit shaft, located in Haw Park Woods.

On our first visit, not knowing where the shaft was located and in the darkness we walked around for 3 hours, our searches were in vain…

We didn’t give up, we had to tell their story, we had to let them know they weren’t forgotten.

We did some research and looked back at the old maps of the area and asked many people about its location.

We returned to the site where we thought the shaft was and we were overjoyed to find it hidden amongst the trees…..

We set up our equipment which included K2, Rempods, SB7 spirit box and numerous motion sensor balls.

We got results straight away, the equipment was going off the scale, our empath said it was like the spirits we queuing up to be heard and we were there to listern……

Unfortunately the weather was against us and due to the equipment we took the decision to relocate to another location nearby.

Not far from the shaft is a canal bridge over the Barnsley Canal (now disused) we decided to relocate to that area and continue our investigation.

We couldn’t believe the amount of activity we were getting here, eventhough we couldn’t get a phone signal to go live we recorded some of the events that happened….

During the investigation Wayne lit a candle which continued to burn, after a little while the candle went out and Wayne went to relight, it was very obvious that the miners didn’t like the naked flame as the lighter was thrown out of Wayne’s hand and landed far into the disused canal….. Thankfully no water in the canal which enabled Wayne to retrieve his lighter….

Our historian Cliff kindly looked into the colliery and found a further 27 reported incidents of fatalities associated around the colliery.

After a couple of hours of Investigations under the bridge with constant activity on our equipment we decided to leave the spirits with our love and respect but told them we’d come back again soon to talk again with them…..

With loads of thanks to Chris Campbell for his initial insight into this disaster and his guidance in helping us to locate the shaft.