23/11/2025 Episode One – Psychic Tests

They leave the Winthorpe Institute, driven home by Gerald in his courtesy car. They are all tired and get a good night’s sleep, though they are haunted by dreams of the events that have happened to them.

When he gets back to the shop, Sebastian puts the crystal shard into a hex box that he places inside a small magic circle, but it does not go very well. He is a little rusty with his magic and using protection circles brings back some bad memories.

Character Living Arrangements

Sebastian lives above the shop he owns. He has an assistant, Chris Rolson, who runs the shop day to day and looks after it when he is away.

Gerald lives with his family in a nice home just outside London.

Damien lives on his own in a flat in north London, where he has added extra security.

John lives on his own in a bedsit in a basement of a house in London. He works from home, but he likes to work in the communal area of The Third Eye, Sebastian’s shop, partly because he gets better reception from the “dark web” where he communicates with his deceased sister, Amanda.

Amy also lives with a flat mate, Sarah, in London. Sarah is a nurse in the same hospital that Amy was working from. She also has an older and younger sister.

Group Support

Sebastian sets up a group chat using their phone numbers and invites everyone to meet up in a few days to discuss their experiences. Amy is very pleased about this, as occult experiences are very new to her and she is a little shaken by them. She finds herself going to Sebastian’s shot even before then, in order to not feel so alone in the flat.

She finds that John is working from the shop that day. She spends the day chatting with him and Sebastian and feels a little better. She has been researching what an Accumulator is, but has been unable to find any references to it. Sebastian has a lot more experience of occultism and he thinks that Arachne have made that name up. He suspects it means something about her being able to commune and link with a spirit or more than one spirit, but there may be more to it than that. He recommends a book for her to read.

Reporting Events

Gerald returns to Hillingdale, his psychic research institute based at an old MOD site. He discusses the events at the Institute with his supervisor, Andrew Gosford and writes everything up in his report. Once it is submitted, Andrew asks him if his friends would be interested in visiting Hillingdale and going through the psychic testing that they do. He can offer them £200 expenses each. It has been cleared with George Campbell, the dour Scottish boss of Hillingdale.

Gerald agrees to ask them when he attends their post-institute meet up. He also agrees to be one of the test subjects, to act as a base-line because he knows he has no psychic talent and it will also help to reassure them.

Reunion

They go out for a meal as their reunion social event following their experiences at the Institute. They all attend and talk through some of the events that happened and some of the unanswered questions. Amy is still bothered about being labelled an Accumulator and would like to get rid of this power if she can. He tells her there are drugs that can inhibit that sort of thing, but they do mess with your brain. Working for the NHS, Amy is aware of some of them and does not like the idea.

She also tells them about her persistent feeling of not being alone and that someone or something is watching her. Sebastian wonders if that is her ability, which means she is sensing spirits around her.

Gerald then invites them to where he works, in case they can get some answers from having their psychic talents tested. They all agree in the end, though they are a little concerned that it is on an old military base. Amy and Sebastian are both keen, while Damien is a little reluctant, as he suspects it is still a government / military site, but he agrees to go as everyone else is going.

Hillingdale

A few days later, Gerald picks them up from an underground station in London and drives them to the test centre, which is in northern Kent. They see if it an old MOD site and there is security, but Gerald is known by the security people and he vouches for the rest.

The place is a series of low, pre-fab buildings that look a little like a school. The place is kept neat, but is nothing amazing. The car park is an old parade ground.

They are greeted by Andrew Gosford and taken into a large room where there is presentation equipment and lots of information charts about parapsychology. He tells them about some of the testing they will be doing, including Zena Cards, Psychometry Testing and Ganz Fields, where the receiver is put in a sensory deprivation state and see if Telepathic messages can reach them.

The head of the facility, George Campbell, briefly greets them, emphasising that the tests are based on scientific rigour. There’s no shilly-shallying here. Gerald comments that was him being charming.

Zena Card Test

They are asked to say what the symbol is on 20 cards.

Amy – gets none of them right. Even random chance is not in her favour. She is pleased about this.

Damien – gets a 2 right, an average result.

Gerald – gets 3 right, more right than he thought.

John – gets 5 right, which above average.

Sebastian – gets about 7 correct, which is well above average.

Ganz Field Test

The subjects are placed in floatation tanks with blind fold and headphones playing white noise to create sensory deprivation. Damien has to overcome his fear of white noise but is able to do it. Sebastian has a similar experience with his fear of enclosed spaces, but it’s not that enclosed and he is able to manage. Gerald offers Sebastian some drugs to help his anxiety but he declines.

A couple of people called “Projectors” send certain thoughts to towards the subjects, who are then asked what they were thinking about in the tank. Unknown to the subjects, the thoughts being projected are about elephants.

Amy – Has no thoughts related to elephants.

Damien – Didn’t mention elephants, but after he is told he remembers a brief thought about one.

Gerald – His report includes elephants, which is exactly what the projectors were sending.

John – Has no thoughts related to elephants.

Sebastian – Didn’t mention elephants, but after he is told he remembers a brief thought about one.

Psychometry Test

Each subject is given an object and told to touch and examine it, then try to determine who owned the object and what happened to it.

Amy – is aware that the person who owned the item is now dead.

Damien – gets one thing right about the object.

Gerald – gets some impressions from the object that he did not know and were true.

John – gets nothing.

Sebastian – is able to discern one thing about the item that is true.

Amy Anxiety

During the test, Amy begins to get the feeling of being watched or followed come back strongly. She begins to sense Ellen stir as well. She begins to feel unsafe and some of the others pick up on her anxiety. Gerald asks if she is ok and Amy says she would like to finish soon. She does not want any more tests.

“Someone Touched Me”

The last test is to determine if they can move a coin with their minds. Amy agrees to take part as this is the last test but nothing happens with anyone. During the test, though, Amy suddenly fells someone run their fingers across her neck. She screams in surprise and fear and jumps out of her chair – but there is no one behind her.

Andrew checks that Amy is ok and she is clearly spooked and unset. They mutually decide to end the session there, though Andrew looks confused and concerned. He makes arrangements to pay them their £200 and give them their computer generated results.

Heading Home

They leave fairly quickly and things are quiet in the car on the way back. Amy eventually tells them about feeling being watched and then someone touched her on the back of the neck. It made her realise that it wasn’t just that the testers were watching her, there was something else. Damien says touching someone’s neck is very intimate. Amy wonders if it is ghost looking for people with psychic talent.

Gerald says feeling like being watched is not an unusual feeling at Hillingdale, but is not aware of anyone else sensing being touched.

The Shop

They decide to head straight to the shop and have some coffee. By the time they get there, it is about 6pm. The shop has been closed up by the assistant, Chris, but Sebastian has the keys and he reopens the place. They sit around and talk for a while.

Around half an hour later, the feeling of being watched slowly creeps back into Amy’s mind. John takes his phone out and asks if there is someone here with us. He gets some sort of garbled series of characters, like something that is growling gutturally. He also sees a mention of Amy amongst the characters.

Gerald takes out an electromagnetic detector, something that sometimes reveals psychic fields.

Invisible Stalker

Damien takes out a mirror and quickly glances behind him, looking for auras. He spots some sort of weird looking, invisible being at the window of the shop, something like the creature from the Id from the film Forbidden Planet. Its aura gave it away.

He tells the others about this and at that point, the door to the shop rattles. Sebastian goes to lock the door, but suddenly the door bursts open with a gust of wind and knocks Sebastian out of the way. John asks Amanda what is going on. She senses there is something there with them and it is after someone.

Sebastian closes and locks the door. Then he returns to where the others are and has Gerald to create a circle of salt around them. He then starts a protection spell, which goes well this time. The others, hearing him invoking angels, are rather surprised. One effect of this is that John’s communications dry up.

Sitting in the Circle

There is a creaking noise in the shop and the box in which Sebastian locked the shard of crystal that Sarah left behind is knocked off a shelf, apparently by itself. There is clearing some sort of invisible being in the room. Damien uses his aura vision, seeing this large being, which looks both angry and slightly sexual but there is a human intellect behind this. It is a strange combination.

Sebastian finishes his circle spell and some of the others notice their psychic abilities dampened. The presence seems to move around the shop for the next 10-20 minutes, while they observe and stay in the circle. After that, they realise that the noises have stopped and it has gone.

Sebastian thinks someone is projecting this spirit. It is called a Fetch but he does not know much about it. He will have to read up on them.

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