Isle of Wight Zoo

Isle of Wight Zoo

Ghosts of the Isle of Wight Zoo

Apart from it being a very cold night, we had other problems..  It was one of those nights when it just would not get dark !.

It was already quite late when we first arrived at the zoo, but you could have easily mistaken it for a late summers evening. Not good when you want to use Infra-red Night Cameras.

Thankfully most of the animals where bedded down for the night by the staff, that just left the nocturnal ones to worry about. And just for the record lions are nocturnal !!!. There’s something very strange about a zoo late at night – it makes you feel very humble. You can hear the animals making sounds that during a busy day you just wouldn’t be able to hear.

Unfortunately because of the daylight, we couldn’t start the proper investigation just yet – but that didn’t stop Janis from seeing what she says was a small brightly coloured light shining on the wall of the exhibition stand.

For a brief second I saw what I thought to be a torchlight shining on the wall! Thing is….. nobody had their torches turned on at the time !

 As the light began to fade, only to be replaced with a bright full moon – the animals quietened down. If only I could say the same for the ghosties !.

As you’ll see for yourself, for some reason it was my turn to experience a few strange things.

As the night went on, apart from a few minor things happening to us (Jasons camera shut itself off) – nothing really to report. I took it upon myself to bravely go off on my own with an infra-red camera, and see if I could pick up on anything…

I’d just walked past the old gun emplacements, talking to the camera about the spirits that are suppose to haunt the place – when very briefly I caught a shape moving off in-front of me. Now you might just say its a fly or insect, and to be honest I cant dismiss it.

Thats when the fun really started !

Although the video footage taken by the camera is pretty poor, you can actually see the shape moving off infront of me.

All around me I could hear small – what sounded like tapping sounds, although it could have been water dripping off of the old buildings or the tigers cage to the right of me.

On the way back to the team, I had yet another encounter with one the flying ‘shapes’. Roughly in the same position as I had seen the first. I’m not going to commit myself and say it was definitely an orb, because it could just have well been an insect of some sort. But I will say..

 

Its quite a coincidence that I saw it immediately after I started to talk about the ghosties. It was a clear, cold night – if it was an insect, its the only time that I saw one the whole time we where there !

 

Best thing for us to do, was to send someone else back down the path to see if they could experience the same thing. Jason was quite happy to go off – thankfully, with the nice new IR camera we’ve got. If anything was flying around down there, this lil baby would pick it up !.

While we where stood waiting around for Jason to come back, I started to film the lemurs in the cage behind me. A wisp of smoke passed infront of the camera !.

Looking back at the footage now, I cant help but think it was my breath – but the really strange thing was that I’d just filmed 20 minutes, and it hadn’t happened before.

Yes – it was a cold night, but I tried to recreate it straight after.. and I just couldn’t. (When I breathed out heavily, I could not see my breath). Just at the split second I saw the mist on camera the lemur also let out a large squeak. It’s quite a puzzle !!!.

Unfortunately for us, the night was all too quickly coming to an end..

This night for us had been quiite a unique experience, its a once in a lifetimes chance to get to walk around a haunted zoo in the middle of the night – fior that we will be ever grateful to staff and management at the Zoo for all their help and support.

Where the spirits trying to contact me ?,  or was it all a case of over-active imagination and coincidence ??.