Feel like shit with man flu, so it wont be long and interesting just the facts.
Left pub and walked up to the North of settle, it goes into countryside really quickly and from cobbled streets to small windy roads. Nice views over the town and railway. Lots of walkers already out and me and my mate stand out like two melons, I have a bright orange Giants baseball t-shirt and jeans, not great walking clobber.
GPS tells me to head down a path near a waterworks house/site and we see a pretty large mansion just beyond it, tucked into the tree's hardly visible until you get within 50 yards of the front entrance. There is a large saying private road don't enter, obv we just walk straight past it.
As we get to the house the GPS says we here. Ok house looks old and maybe a 10 bedroom jobby, no sign of life or cars. I tell Sibby to lets look around the outside first before we try to enter. We climb over a fence and go into the back/garden. Its pretty mental garden almost like a secret garden overgrown, paths leading into tree's, a few doors in huge walls (locked) and what remains of a play structure, swings etc. Nowt special.
Looked through the windows into the house and it was really dark, mainly due to the woods around the house, the sun was minimum. Back door locked. There was however stairs leading down to a cellar of some sort. Sibby went down and looked in, a few boxes, door locked.
Time to go to front of house and see if we can get in. As I knew there had been a camera looking at the front entrance we looked up and hey presto we could make out a tiny camera just under the guttering, no lights on or sign it was working.
Odd thou there looked like a new bell on the front entrance where as the rest of the house looked well knackered. Baton on standby I rung the bell. We could hear a faint chime from the house...no shit its the theme of one of my favorite films
Sibby confirmed to me it sounded like that too, see we agreed
No response, another ring and we waiting. Interesting the camera on the door now had a faint red light showing, was it filming us? Previous footage I had seen on the tape showed people ringing the door and entering, wtf was happening and why didn't the door either open or someone in?
Getting a little hacked off now, Sibby never one to hold back had a cunning plan. I was up for going back to Settle and having a few jars of beer, Sibby was having none of it.
We went to the back cellar stairs and door and kicked it in. Took a few goes but it smashed al'reet. Again glad I brought my mate
Cellar was kinda weird, empty fireplace, looked like almost a self contained flat, servants quarters perhaps? Old Dumb waiter looks like never been used for 40+ years. No furniture to speak off, that is until (this spooked me) a hand basket empty. (see GPS reference to devils hand basket in prev post). The basket was also new and I mean new, clean. I just don't get what it meant or why it was empty.
Go or try get in main house upstairs? I was pretty confident that the house was empty, so we went up the stairs to the main floor. The problem was the door at the top of the cellar was locked and about as strong as you can get, no give and little room in a tight spot to kick it. So Sibby has a cunning plan to see if the dumb waiter works...
There was a pulley system to lower and raise the waiter, so we yanked it down to see if it worked, yep fine after 20 or so pulls the thing is on our level, but its beyond tiny, our plan to get in it and one of us pull it up was a non starter. It was full of spider webs anyway no chance it would have been me.
I am now really angry and wanna smash something, I dunno what I expected to find but an empty house with no clues or good stuff was not one of them. Sibby wanted to smash a window and go in..and that's what we did.
Back of house into what looked like a large dining area, boom in. Again nothing special in the house apart from cobwebs and a smell of dampness. I went along up to explore the room where I thought the camera was installed looking down on to the front entrance (please remember the house must have had 30+ rooms easily over 3 levels and numerous ways to get around. Two mins later i am looking at the camera and see its hooked up to a battery and some sensor, no leads elsewhere. How is it recording? erm dunno about that.
Only other thing of mild interest in the whole place was a few videos similar to the one I found at Settle station. Exactly the same title and packaging. My mate pulled down the camera and smashed it with the baton. I think he was under some illusion something exciting was here, but I guess not. Unless I am missing something/ clue or step to the next stage? I have a few photos I took on my iphone I will go over again and check to see if I really did overlook something. I have the cd with sleeping beauty 2011 on, as of now I have not gone through it all so I guess there might be something on it at the end.
It was now an hour in and around this house and we had not heard anything from the area, no cars, wildlife or anything to spook us out.
We went back into Settle and got very drunk on some local brew's. Sorry all no fairytale ending unless I find something to take me back again.
Decided not to post pics or owt just in case someone does us for breaking windows/doors, i will just say I made it all up anyway
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