Ghost hunter describes her scariest moment - and odd smell of one poltergeist

01 November 2023 , 13:26

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Beckie-Ann first became interested in ghost-hunting around a decade ago (Image: Beckie-Ann Galentine / SWNS)

A professional ghost hunter has described the moment a ghost came into her bedroom while she was asleep - and released a “sour smell”.

Beckie-Ann Galentine, 33, was working as a biology student when she first became interested in ghosts - after she saw a floating blue orb while on a night out with friends ten years back. Beckie-Ann began putting aside her free time for researching stories and hunting ghosts, and now claims to have seen a “handful” of ghosts over her life.

After sharing her stories in TikTok during lockdown, Beckie-Ann now has a following of over 685,000 followers. With regular requests by followers to look into different haunted places, Beckie-Ann has now taken on a full time role as a ghost-hunter.

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After researching a potentially haunted place with newspaper archives, she heads out to verify the client’s concerns regarding ghosts. Camping in abandoned graveyards, forests, hospitals, and hotels, Beckie-Ann tries to get to the bottom of paranormal activity.

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"You don't need expensive equipment" says ghost-hunting purist Beckie-Ann (Beckie-Ann Galentine / SWNS)

She became interested in paranormal activity after seeing a mysterious floating blue orb (Beckie-Ann Galentine / SWNS)

She says the experiences with ghosts come down to “challenging your empathy and compassion”, and that ultimately you rarely understand what is happening while it is ongoing. "It's a process and it's not as simple as other senses like sight or sound,” she said.

"You mull it over and go 'that's what I experienced' and you try to understand it. Some of my early ghost experiences were misunderstood as fear but now I understand they were just trying to say hello.

Beckie-Ann says she doesn’t try to “convince the sceptics” because it is “hard to explain”. She added: "It doesn't happen when you're looking for it, which contributes to the feeling of misunderstanding.”

And one particularly spooky night, Beckie-Ann was fast asleep in her bedroom when she woke up to her “bedroom door slamming full force”. She explained: "I was dead asleep one night and I woke up to my bedroom door slamming, full force and I could smell this sour smell.

"I had sleep paralysis and I was trying to wake up my partner and I couldn't move, I thought I was going to die. As soon as it backed out of the door, I was able to wake up and it opened my roommates door who experienced the same thing. My partner told me no one came in the room last night. It was terrifying."

A huge amount of research goes into each place Beckie-Ann visits (Beckie-Ann Galentine / SWNS)

For Beckie-Ann, it is more about the feeling rather than the seeing (Beckie-Ann Galentine / SWNS)

It all began for Beckie-Ann while she was studying biology, and she went ghost-hunting with a group of pals for fun. "Out of the corner of my eye I saw this bright blue ball of light - free-floating,” she recalls. "It hovered and came in between myself and my friends and we jumped in opposite directions as it went into the ground - it was terrifying at the time.”

But it became something of an addiction - and began getting in the way of her studies: “I started turning up late to class after spending the night ghost hunting - I was obsessed with it. I placed more value on trying to replicate that experience again rather than focus on studies."

Things took a tragic turn when a number of Beckie-Ann’s friends died, and she was drawn to mortuary science. "I was taught that death is an irreversible part of life and I accepted that dead is dead but during that time in mortuary school some professors would share elements of paranormal stories with us.

"So the wheels started to turn and I visited a medium and within moments of sitting down, she said there was something around me with blue hair. One of the friends I lost had blue hair."

Beckie-Ann at Norwich State Hospital with a fellow ghost hunter (Beckie-Ann Galentine / SWNS)

Beckie-Ann has now gone full time with her ghost-hunting after working as an undertaker (Beckie-Ann Galentine / SWNS)

When Beckie-Ann began sharing local ghost stories after moving to Connecticut, things “blew up” and within a few weeks she was doing live interviews on the news. She says her favourite spot among the many she has covered is the Mount Washington Hotel in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.

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"The first time I went I was attending a paranormal retreat and you just feel the place come to life. It's a story of liveliness and parties rather than ominous dark tragedies. It has an incredible story about Princess Caroline who owned it and has all these quirky paintings. A woman was crushed by an elevator there and they actually allow people to sleep on the original owner's bed."

She’s not a big fan of getting masses of hi-tech equipment, instead arguing her senses are the best tools. "I always advocate that you don't need expensive equipment. To fully immerse myself in a haunting - I have to delve into newspapers, books, word of mouth.

"What people don't see is me locking myself in a room for an entire week researching a case - I've told stories of people that I don't think anyone would ever look at and people are relating to these stories.”

"It's fun, but it can be very sketchy in some locations - some are abandoned buildings that haven't been regulated,” Beckie-Ann said.

Jake Meeus-Jones