First Ghost Hunt - The Beyond Series Books Research

A while back I decided to do some research for a book I was writing that featured ghosts and the paranormal.

I worked in an old mill converted into offices and I was hearing stories from some of the tenants who claimed they had heard noises such as factory machinery, people shouting when no-one else was in the building and two people told me they had seen a man in a brown foreman’s uniform on the stairs and in the corridor of the fourth floor then just disappeared in front of them. Both descriptions were almost identical and neither had told anyone else of the sightings.

Another claim was hearing voices of ladies chattering and laughing on the second floor. When I researched it I discovered that the foreman had died there and the loudest lady was known as Kathy who was the supervisor in the sewing room on the second floor. (This was all when the mill was a shoe factory that closed in the early eighties.)

I had a night vision camera so I decided to stay late one night when I knew a psychic was having a meeting with my boss.

I went wandering around the building in the dark armed only with my camera and began calling out for any spirits to make themselves known. I wasn’t in the least bit frightened of the dark, until I stood in the corridor on the second floor and began goading Kathy the loud and larger than life seamstress to show herself to me, saying things like “Come on I know you like playing jokes on people, show yourself unless your chicken.” Just then she appeared right at the side of my face, just for a brief second, but long enough to spook me so much I ran back up to the room where my boss was having the meeting. It was a real Most Haunted moment. I told them what had happened and the psychic just smiled and said, “Yes the foreman’s been keeping an eye on you, just in case Kathy went go too far, although he is curious why you would want to frighten yourself like that.”

My boss nor I had told the psychic anything about what I was doing there so late at night and she knew nothing of the history or the spirits in the building as she was visiting from another part of the country. It was so cool I would love to do a professional ghost hunt.

Surrealist Master Eddie Izzard - My Kind Of Comedy Genius

In few other circumstances would an audience find itself being asked to follow the logic of a story that unites The Bible and The Hobbit or a Cat Burgling Dressage Horse!!!
In an Eddie Izzard show, this is entirely normal comic territory.
And it’s a literature mash up that, by the close of his latest Force Majeure show, gets a whole lot more complicated with everyone from Cleopatra to Darth Vader taking a much needed tea break in the Death Star Canteen, God and Izzard’s long standing imaginary friend 'Steve'.

It has always been Eddie’s repertoire on stage to bumble his way into a surrealist grand finale that gathers together the crazy characters that occupy the show’s entire gag reel and for me the weirder the better, like his genius with Trouser Mountain..."The musical" and singing the lines delivered by Bruce Willis and Alan Rickman in Die Hard... "The Musical!"
"Give me my Detonators!!!" He sings low and menacingly. Then turns to himself as Bruce... "Yippee Ki Yay Mother F*****" Brilliant!!!

 Izzard’s comic skill has never really had anything to do with timing; instead he relies on a childlike charm that transports us all back to the experience of telling fantastical half truths in the playground.
His latest show is loosely based on the gods and monsters.Both, argues Izzard, being ludicrous.

His whimsical delivery has always been his tool and as a physical comic, he’s still the master especially when he’s pretending to be an unfit lion, a dressage performing horse, or a destructive kraken left me crying with laughter.