5 September, 2008 4:33PM AWDT

Haunted prison?

Some people will refuse to go to the Old Fremantle Prison at night because it's haunted and it's that kind of reputation that got British medium David Wells there to take a ghost hunting tour.

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Some people will refuse to go to the Old Fremantle Prison at night because it's haunted and it's that kind of reputation that got British medium David Wells there to take a ghost hunting tour.

"What would normally happen in a full investigation," he explains, "is we would put sensors on the floor, we would have video cameras sending to a computer all the time, digital recorders, all keeping what we call the baseline.

"However, we too have a baseline, so you need to know how you feel when you came in to this space, emotionally, temperature, all of these things are your baseline."

Above the baseline, "for me, especially at the back of my neck, the hairs start to stand up," Wells describes. "If it's really strong, the hairs on my arms literally stand up."

For Wells, those signs are "the first impression they're there. Then I focus my inner vision, that starts to work and then I start to take on some of the conditions of the person and I know it's not mine, so I ask them to take it off and then I start to get a dialogue if I can."

To counter the sceptics, Wells does admit, "some [of it] is psychological. You need to be sure the psychology of this place isn't doing it [and] detach yourself from it."

Even Wells gets affected by those psychological prompts. As he describes, "when I first came in here I get the noise, that clatter, and I dismiss it immediately because I get it all the time when I'm in these places and it could be psychology."

The test for the inexperienced mediums was walking in to various cells. Two separate pairs of women gave independent descriptions of what they felt when inside a cell that was used to isolate one of the sexual offenders imprisoned at Fremantle. "Pressure, like it was warm and it surrounded you," one describes before her friend adds, "it was like a steam cloud condensing in on me." A third recounts she felt, "a feeling of cloudiness, and Helen felt like she was being dragged down to the bed."

The tour then passes a replica flogging post, through solitary confinement, and on to the gallows.

"It's clear what kind of emotions you're going to feel as a human being here," Wells says.

44 people were executed, all for murder. And, while in the gallows, Wells and two of the tour-goers hear a noise... "like tinkling, like keys, metallic," one notes, before the other adds, "almost like a rattle of keys and then almost like a scuffle."

So, do you believe?