I keep getting asked how did I get into the paranormal, so
rather then keep going over it time and again here we go. When I was aged from two until seven, I was brought up in a
house on the Belfast Road
in Bangor, I
can remember always having an interest in the paranormal and as a child
watching man landing and walking on the moon (or did they), and anyway that’s
another story.Everyone in my family
reported seeing this figure that looked like a monk that was seen to glide
through walls, and to stoop over and look at people in their beds.
I remember
my family talking about it and saying how scared they were, this was all done
in a hush hush was so not to scare me, and even going to the stage of getting a
minister in to bless the house, sadly I never seen a thing and was left with a
urge to show that there was no such thing as ghosts or the spirit world.
I
began to study anything on ghosts and the paranormal, UFO's, the Occult, Witchcraft, Ritual Magick, ESP and any other weird science I could find, my brothers
even got me books like the “Hamlin book of ghosts” and “Ghost stories for children”
for birthday and xmas gifts when I was eight year old, from then my interest
and knowledge grew more and more, I can remember at a friends house and being
asked to do a Séance because I had knowledge of the subject, and being asked advice on a haunted house when I was 11 year old, so from around most of my life i have been around and involved with the Paranormal world.
My big life change
was to come when I was forteen year old in Woburn cemetery in Millisle Co. Down, I had
heard several stories from locals regarding this graveyard and decided to see
for myself what was happening in it. So me and one of my friends went up at
10pm on a September evening to the graveyard and waited, for several hours
nothing was seen or heard, then we both felt a strange being watched and uneasy
feeling, we both watched as a column of grey swirling mist about seven foot
tall moved up the path and went through a thick hedge, the strange thing was when this was happening there was a very weird feeling around the whole area.
Both of us were taken
aback but there was no fear just excitement in what we had witnessed. Over the
years since then I count myself extremely lucky to have seen several other
spirits, in various locations and when I started developing my spiritual side and
doing development circle, my whole life came together and the more developed I
become the more at home I feel, i now believe with all my heart that spirits are around us at all times, just in a different dimension, and at times when we are in the right frame of mind and they have the energy to do so we do communiacte with each other. Yes there are such things as earthbound spirits, who for whatever reason cant or wont cross over, and this is the reason NIPRA and other groups are here, to help spirit move on to be with their loved ones again.
The whole thing with working with spirit was to be a life
changing point from there on I went to help communicate with the spirit world
and not to disproof it.
I also got interested in hypnosis and stage hypnosis, and in how things like creative visualisation can be of great benefit to everyone in every walk of life from sports improvment to helping to pass a driving test, I will some great results used hypnosis to help people undercover and develop their latent powers.
For years I had always been pulled towards Witchcraft and Wicca, and found that a lot of what I was reading and learning about Wicca, and Witchcraft, was like second nature to me, I was very lucky to meet up with Stewart and Jan Farrar and Gavin Bone from Kells Co, Meath, and used to stay with them several times per week, after a lot of time I was granted my second degree in
Witchcraft, a very misunderstood craft still feared by mislead people, but at least now more people are becoming more open and aware of it, as in Wicca the religious side of it.
But
in 1991 I started NIPRA and in the first weekend we got over 30 phone calls,
from people looking to join to people having paranormal activity in their
houses, we seen that there was a great need for a group like NIPRA and haven’t
looked back ever since, the group has changed over the years, with some members like my good friend Darren Ansell who has made a great team called PSI, other exmembers like Barry Fitzgerald who has made international fame with GHI.
We like to think that the old members can still be friends and drop in to chat at any time, in fact for any old members out there reading this please give me a phone, life is to short to wantch it all go by.
We have been very lucky over the years that we have had a
great amount of both, television, radio and local press coverage, we have been
on GMTV twice, first group to do a full investigation with Candy Devine in
Downtown radio in Newtownards in 1996, we are on Citybeat on a regular basis, and are asked to take part in U1-5 often, also UTV have done several interviews with us over the years.
We have been on national German television and
American radio twice, we were also lucky to get a four part documentary with
Gerry Anderson on BBC Radio Ulster, in which we investigated Derry/city Workhouse,
Opera House in Belfast, the Crumlin Gaol and Richhill castle in Co. Armagh.
We
started running open nights, castle trips and now ghost hunts in the Crumlin
Road Gaol in Belfast, we do all this to make people more aware of the
paranormal and for people who are living with paranormal activity in their
homes to show them that they are not alone, nor are they going crazy but
ghostly activity is a lot more common then people can imagine, but even more so that nothing bad will happen to them, that spirit wont harm or hurt them all spirit is trying to do is make themselfes known.
And for the
future, we are in talks with Most Haunted’s Richard Felix and hoping to work
with him in some new and interesting projects, we are also in talks with
several other television producers and hoping things will come from them, we
have been around for years, and even after bad times we have always been here,
and guess what we always will.
Well I hope this had been helpful and not to horn blowing,
all our private cases are still carried out free of charge the public (and as you can see from our site, no private cases go up), charging people is a thing I
could never come to terms with the thoughts of taking money from people who are
at their wits end, thanks for reading this and feel free to get in touch,
Warren Coates.
Please check out some of our links below, there will be more put up soon for you to watch, hope you like.
