Jimmy Allen's Bar

When we arrived at midnight, the bar had just begun to pour its customers out of the doors. Off they flowed in various directions, some stumbled and required the use of walls for support, others sang a slur of incomprehensible garbage and the rest cheerfully continued their night out as they headed off to their next destination. All that remained inside was a few staff that cleared away the tables and tidied up while a few of their friends waited for them to finish.

The team and I explored the unusual building while the lights were still on. It was a little maze of floors, rooms and levels. A number of staff shared a few ghostly tales about the bar and the history of Jimmy Allen’s. I was quite impressed with the detail of the information they gave and felt that they believed they had a true encounter of some description – but as with all stories, they were based purely on their perspective. Given that the staff were so enthusiastic about the paranormal activity that apparently occurs quite often, I hoped that this would be reflected in tonight’s investigation.

After about an hour things had settled down and it was time to begin. We split into two groups. Myself, Jay, Claire and John were in one while Pam, Derek and Mark were in the other. The lights were turned off but the emergency lights remained on and provided more light than we were happy with, but these could not be turned off. Added to the excess light, the bar and other related equipment remained in operation, which gave a lot of excess noise to what was already a large amount of noise that came from a neighbouring bar across the lane.

My group sat quietly for a while to get used to the atmosphere. I snapped a few photos and measured the EMF levels. I didn’t take the levels too seriously as we were surrounded by a large amount of electrical equipment from speakers, sound decks, and fruit machines to emergency and various other lights. There was one area on the dance floor that measured around 3 to 4 milligauss on the EMF meter at a specific level of about 4 foot off the floor. It was unusual in that it measured 0 if you went much higher, lower or side-to-side. This maybe a strange occurrence but as we had no access to under the floor we could not rule out natural EMF’s from any of the equipment on show or hidden from view. Both mine, Mark and Derek’s EMF meters found this reading to occur but the source remained indistinct.

The first experiment was glass divination. Claire, Jay and I attempted this while Claire called out. Nothing had occurred after about 5 minutes and Claire said she felt there was not much energy in the room. Jay said that he had an image of a disheveled man who was dancing up and down as if he was trying to show him something. Jay also felt as if he was repeating the word "Trochre".

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I decided to go off on my own for a bit and so went behind the bar into a small storeroom. This room smelt of damp and had large sheets of plastic fixed to the walls to protect it from the drips that came through the stonework. It was a small and slightly claustrophobic room but didn’t marry up to the image I was painted by some staff of it being oppressive and one of the scariest places. I willed for something scary to happen and then tried the opposite and pretended to not be interested but either way, all remained quiet except for the buzz and hum of the cooling systems.

Just in front of this bar there have been claims made that digital cameras do not work and that batteries drain very quickly. I found the claim to be untrue as my camera functioned perfectly well without excess battery drainage. I took a number of photos of and around the area to ensure I gave the location the benefit of the doubt. Other team members concurred with this observation. So wherever this story originated it is without merit.

An old pathway runs up the side of Jimmy Allen’s that is no longer visible from outside. It once led from the prison cells up to the market where prisoners were to be executed. It is now completely covered over and sealed. Access is still possible from within the bar, but it is now used as storage space. I stood in this passageway for a while by myself. The emergency lights chased away much of the darkness and the far reaches of the pathway were not accessible for it lay behind a padlocked gate and a mountain of furniture and other junk. I felt irritated that a potentially interesting location had been mangled by its present incarnation but was resided to the fact that you cant preserve everything and at least the bar had maintained some of its original features.

The night seemed to drag very slowly and there was little in the way of activity other than people sensing or having a feeling about something. In fact in all the time I was there the most interesting thing to happen was a pain I had in my back while stood outside what was originally Jimmy Allen’s cell. What made it interesting is that both Jay and Claire had the pain in the same place in their backs, like a stabbing pain, while they stood in the same location.

To round this investigation up all I can say is how disappointed I was. Another night may have yielded better results but even when I first set foot in the place the atmosphere felt flat. This is not a claim that I’m able to sense energies of any kind but the bar had that, ‘just an ordinary building’ feeling about it. I left an hour earlier than the rest of the team and was later told that I didn't miss anything. So at least I benefitted from an extra hour of sleep that night!

Links

• Jimmy Allen's Photo Gallery
• History of Durham Prisons

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