Hello! It's Charlie here, an actor and Community Manager at Zombie Infection. At ZI we have loads of amazing venues, some with incredible history to them. I'm sure if you've watched any horror film you know that if there's a giant old building involved it is for sure, haunted! So… I hope you know where this is going.
I'm going to be telling you some of the terrifying experiences I've had inside our creepy venues! One of them being our 18th Century Courthouse in Birmingham where we run our award winning Zombie Experience.
I'll start here, only because this place is ghost fucking central. I shit you not, I will not go into the jail cells alone unless absolutely necessary, especially after this incident... Not only is it old but its seen some famous death sentences and a number of spiritual unexplained claims through its 200 year life.
It was a chilly winter evening in 2018 and when I say chilly, its was freaking cold, like death cold... Nathan (a fellow Zombie Infection employee) and I were inside the Birmingham Courthouse early on an event day to charge our equipment and do some routine maintenance.
As we approached towards the stairs down to the cells we hear a loud metal screeching sound echoing from below us. Like Pyramid Head, straight out of Silent Hill. I'm instantly bricking it and matters were made worse when Nathan was equally shitting it (You know somethings wrong when your tough mate is terrified). Anyway, before we could say or do anything we heard this sound again, this time much louder. Nathan said it sounded like one of the cell doors had been ripped off and was being dragged across the floor.
Now… We HAD to go down their to investigate, at the time we thought someone had broken in. Being the brave trooper I am I sent Nathan down first and I supported the back to make sure no one "attacked from behind us". That walk down the stairs was painful as the sound continued. When we got down there in the pitch black, I ran and switched the lights on… The sound stopped.
There it was.. Absolutely. Nothing. Safe to say we needed a new pair of pants...
Then we realised right next to the cells were the gallows (pictured right).
That's right, where they hung people. We connected two and two together and decided it's probably best to say adios to the cells and run back to the safety of the green room.
My second most terrifying ghostly experience was at our old venue at the Stanley Tools Factory in Sheffield. Abbie (My Event Manager at the Courthouse) and I were doing a sweep of the building at the end of the day to make sure we grabbed everything. As far as we knew, we were the last people in the factory and we had only a single torch between the two of us. Now we knew how our guests felt 😂, it wasn't the most calming of walks we've been on. We found ourselves at the bottom of one flight of stairs after accidentally going the wrong way which led to a dead end...
We heard a massive thump, we couldn't tell where it came from but we did know that it was our cue to run! We sprinted back up the stairs and attempted to find our way back to the office side poorly! When running it only exaggerates the sense panic! Something we like to think we do pretty darn well in our events!
Fear got the best of us and we ended up taking more incorrect routes leaving us sweating and panting when we finally got back.
Now that I think of it, the sound was probably just the wind hitting the doors making them rattle. I should really stop and think rather than run more often... Hmm.
So there you go, two personal haunting experiences I've faced at our venues and proof that our Zombie Infection crew get just as scared as our guests do!
If you'd like to maybe hire one of our venues for a Ghost Hunt, why not email our team and enquire! info@zombeinfection.co.uk and don't forget to join me, Charlie, weekday evenings for more ghost and zombie chat over on our exclusive Twitch Channel twitch.tv/zombieinfection.
To take part on one of our new 2020 events head over to our website www.zombieinfection.co.uk and follow us across social!
Facebook: www.facebook.com/zombieinfection
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Join Charlie for all things horror on our live Twitch channel: twitch.tv/zombieinfection
