Simon Gregson has been seen screaming in terror after hearing mysterious knocking and breathing noises as he helps a team of ghost hunters investigate paranormal activity inside his Cheshire Home. In hair-raising scenes filmed for the brand-new series of Celebrity Help! My House Is Haunted, the Coronation Street star helps the team of paranormal experts uncover the ghostly mystery.
The actor, who is famed for playing Steve McDonald in the ITV soap for more than 30 years, has been looking for answers after spotting some ghostly activity in his family abode that has left him and his wife, Emma, shaken. This included the sighting of a ghostly female apparition.
Located in an affluent suburb of Cheshire dubbed 'celebrity central' due to its high-profile residents, Simon's shares how his home has felt eerie for some time. "Originally, the house was in two parts. There was the main house which we're in now, the other part of the house has a big tower," he says in his episode of the discovery+ show. "I think that part of the house goes back quite a long way. And it's spooky.” As Simon describes, the shadowy figure of a woman has been spotted roaming his halls. “It went from right to left across one of the landings upstairs." He then asks: "Are we going crazy or is the house haunted?!"
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Hoping to get the answers he’s looking for, Simon calls in the Help! My House Is Haunted team – dark arts specialist Ian Lawman, paranormal researcher and historian Jayne Harris, and investigator Barri Ghai – to investigate. Starting the investigation, Jayne meets local historian Neil Storey, who reveals a tragic tale, nicknamed 'The Wilmslow tragedy', that happened "literally, a stone throw from your house in 1893",. and sheds some light on who Simon’s mysterious 'Woman in White' could be.
Jayne recounts this tragic tale to Simon, where "two ladies, a mother and step-daughter, were found, in white nightdresses, with their throats slit". Upon hearing about the history surrounding the property, Simon is left speechless and his jaw hits the ground when Jayne reveals that the "woman killed was called Sarah-Ann", as it's eerily similar to the name he heard during his own paranormal investigation.
Meanwhile, medium Ian starts his part of the investigation by walking around the property, getting a measure of the paranormal activity inside the house. "Something about the house that makes me feel uncomfortable," he says. "There is a death linked to this property”. During his exploration, Ian hears sounds similar to that of a crying baby, sending shivers down his spine. "That feels like this adult has done something to this child," he says ominously.
Bringing Simon on board the investigation, the team tasks him with a spine-tingling challenge: to communicate with the other side in a spirit-triggering session. Simon's task is to speak aloud to the spirits and elicit a response that will be captured by their electronic voice phenomenon (EVP) box.
The device captures sounds and voices that are beyond human hearing, providing a tantalizing glimpse into the spirit world. Armed with a digital voice recorder, the team listen intently as Simon calls out to the spirits using the name they had uncovered. The reply from the spirit box draws Simon to the edge of his seat, and leads him to clap his hands in triumph and shout, "no way," when the spirit replies through the voice box: "I know."
Continuing the investigation, Simon leads Barri upstairs to his eldest son’s room, one of the parts of the house that has seen the most paranormal activity. As Simon’s wife Emma recalls, it was where she first saw the ghostly figure of the woman in a long dress roaming the upstairs rooms. "I see, like, a white figure in the entrance to my little boy's room all the time," she says.
"A white figure… An outline of what looked like a person… in a long dress, and female.” Using a spirit box, which generates a white noise frequency allowing disembodied voices to communicate, they hope "the spirits will provide answers to Emma’s questions". After Emma, in the downstairs room with Jayne and Ian, calls out to the spirits, Simon hears an eerie whistle, and "four or five small taps", to which Simon states: "You always feel as if you’re being watched in here."
Suddenly, midway through the investigation, the spirit box stops working. After feeling a draft on their skin and the temperature in the room drop, Simon is stopped in his tracks by the sound of a firm knocking coming from above him. "What was that?!” he screams in terror, to a startled Barri, as Ian and Jayne look on downstairs. Simon looks to the cameraman to confirm that he "heard that, yeah?" and recreates the sinister taps he just heard "coming from up there", referring to the ceiling. Simon exclaims he "doesn't want to go up there" and ventures downstairs with Barri to share the terrifying experience.
After the shocking experience - and with tangible evidence of the paranormal lingering throughout the property - Simon and Emma leave for the night, with Ian, Barri and Jayne all left alone to ramp up their investigation and to see if the figure roaming the halls of Simon’s home is that of the aforementioned ‘Lady in White', with one member of the team concluding the investigation as "an emotional one I'll never forget!"
Celebrity Help! My House Is Haunted is available to stream exclusively on discovery+
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