Otherworld North East Research Society Journal 01 | Page 48

Otherworld North East

From June 1940, RAF Usworth was home to No. 607 Squadron and from September of the
same year No. 43 Squadron, with both squadrons operating Hurricanes.
Decades later, with Hurricanes now only being seen during airshows, the North East
Aircraft Museum occupied the land that had once been the northern camp of the base,
the southern camp and airfield destroyed during construction of the Nissan plant: but has
the War really left a ghostly footprint on the museum as others have claimed?
The investigation of the North East Aircraft Museum actually proved a lot more
interesting than I at first hoped, with a wide range of strange and inexplicable
occurrences being reported on the night.
The combined Otherworld and Mysteries team was divided into four groups, which took
turns in rotating through Hanger 1, Hangar 2, Hangar 3/Display Room and the Workshops.
Hangar 1 holds a number of aircraft from the last few decades and was also the area in
which I’d taken the peculiar mist image on my digital camera a week previously. The
hangar proved very interesting during the night with World War 2 medals being set in the
north-west corner as trigger objects. Over the course of the night’s investigations, one of
these medals was seen to have moved a couple of times, though sadly this movement was
not caught on camcorder - during vigils that had a camcorder present, the triggers didn’t
move: typical really!
A mobile aeroplane stairwell was also found to be a little odd, with occasional strong
electromagnetic fields appearing and disappearing around certain steps and the railing.
As an experiment just after midnight, Andrea
Snell - one of Mysteries’ founding members agreed to undertake a sensory deprivation
experiment on the stairwell during breaktime
for the rest of the group. She was sat on the
bottom step, blindfolded and left to report
what she could hear and feel: ten minutes
later, she reappeared in the base area, saying
that something had crashed onto the stairs
behind her, as if someone had jumped from the
plane down onto the metal steps - naturally
she was more than a little shaken by the
experience!

Right: NEAM. Mysteries’ Andrea Snell starts her
sensory deprivation experiment in Hangar 1.
Photography © Tony Liddell.

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