Ventnor Ghost Walk- First review
Long term ScareTOUR supporter (and professional photographer) Stephen Candy recently attended a ghost walk on the Isle of Wight. Was he scared? Read his review to find out.
Ghost walks can be a mixed affair – some taken very seriously, perhaps too seriously, by their presenters and some clearly just designed for knockabout fun. In any form, they rarely deliver the “extreme screams” that a scare attraction offers but since that is not really what they are about, it is forgivable. They are definitely in the same area of interest as a scare attraction though, so when we had the opportunity to join in with the well-respected Marc Tuckey’s Ghost Walk in Ventnor on the Isle of Wight we weren’t going to pass up the chance to review the experience.
A historian by trade (as opposed to a scare actor, presenter, medium or “sensitive”), Marc dresses the part – his garb closest resembling a friendly but slightly eccentric Edwardian university professor. He keeps very busy, presenting ghost walks at different sites on the Isle of Wight almost every night of the week in peak season, as well as hosting occasional overnight investigations for fans of the full “Most Haunted” style of ghost-seeking. His narrative skills have clearly been honed by the 17+ years of experience as his introduction quickly showed. He set the scene and held the audience easily with his introduction into the background of our location. Ventnor Botanic Gardens is the former site of a very large hospital, giving plenty of opportunities for hauntings of all kinds. During this introduction, the depth of knowledge and research was immediately clear as he spoke from personal experience of having interviewed people relevant to the site – from the garden’s curator back to builders who had worked on the hospital’s demolition.
The publicity material makes no direct reference to a “scare” experience, although there is reference online to actors, so I was wondering whether the walk was simply a guided tour of locations connected to hauntings. If it had been, then it would have been very satisfying as it was, but the game was raised as we followed Marc to the second location. We heard screams from the front of the line – scare actors had made their presence felt! Two robed and masked figures leapt from the undergrowth to deliver some simple but effective impact and intimidation scares. (It was still daylight at this point – adding to the challenge for the performers.) We were, of necessity, in a very long line and I did immediately wonder if the screams would all be delivered purely to the front of the line. I am pleased to say that the actors were skilled enough to distribute their attacks all along the front, middle and back of our line as we made our way through the gardens during the evening
Ghost walks can be a mixed affair – some taken very seriously, perhaps too seriously, by their presenters and some clearly just designed for knockabout fun. In any form, they rarely deliver the “extreme screams” that a scare attraction offers but since that is not really what they are about, it is forgivable. They are definitely in the same area of interest as a scare attraction though, so when we had the opportunity to join in with the well-respected Marc Tuckey’s Ghost Walk in Ventnor on the Isle of Wight we weren’t going to pass up the chance to review the experience.
A historian by trade (as opposed to a scare actor, presenter, medium or “sensitive”), Marc dresses the part – his garb closest resembling a friendly but slightly eccentric Edwardian university professor. He keeps very busy, presenting ghost walks at different sites on the Isle of Wight almost every night of the week in peak season, as well as hosting occasional overnight investigations for fans of the full “Most Haunted” style of ghost-seeking. His narrative skills have clearly been honed by the 17+ years of experience as his introduction quickly showed. He set the scene and held the audience easily with his introduction into the background of our location. Ventnor Botanic Gardens is the former site of a very large hospital, giving plenty of opportunities for hauntings of all kinds. During this introduction, the depth of knowledge and research was immediately clear as he spoke from personal experience of having interviewed people relevant to the site – from the garden’s curator back to builders who had worked on the hospital’s demolition.
The publicity material makes no direct reference to a “scare” experience, although there is reference online to actors, so I was wondering whether the walk was simply a guided tour of locations connected to hauntings. If it had been, then it would have been very satisfying as it was, but the game was raised as we followed Marc to the second location. We heard screams from the front of the line – scare actors had made their presence felt! Two robed and masked figures leapt from the undergrowth to deliver some simple but effective impact and intimidation scares. (It was still daylight at this point – adding to the challenge for the performers.) We were, of necessity, in a very long line and I did immediately wonder if the screams would all be delivered purely to the front of the line. I am pleased to say that the actors were skilled enough to distribute their attacks all along the front, middle and back of our line as we made our way through the gardens during the evening
Our host looked on with benign bemusement at the reactions to the creatures before waiting for the group to arrive and settle for the next story. A clever touch at this point was the reference to a tall and sinister presence – during the story just such a presence rose up above, but behind, the audience without making a sound and without Marc looking at or referring to it. The audience was left to notice it for themselves. This was a good use of the multi-levelled paths, allowing the actor to be high above us without our being able to see how they got there. Marc allowed time for us to react to the presence before carrying on with the ghostly tales. I really believe that if nobody had spotted it then he would have just carried on without spoiling the effect by pointing it out. At no point during the whole evening did he interact directly with the scare actors’ performances, creating a neat and appropriate sense of distance between him as the narrator and them as “supernatural” presences.
Most walks between story telling spots were accompanied by attacks from the robed creatures – they made the most of the many paths and routes through the gardens to allow them to deliver scares from all sides. A later story featured a ghostly figure sat on a bench. In this case the figure was already sat there and stayed silently immobile throughout, only moving off once the group was elsewhere. This was a nice touch as there was marked audience reaction as they saw the figure sat there through the bushes as we approached. However, it was also a slight distraction from the narrator as half the audience paid more attention to the actor than to him, just in case something was going to happen.
The weakest point came from one tale of a boy chased by smugglers. The actors interrupted the tale with a re-enactment that was clearly meant to be just a bit of fun but felt slightly half hearted. It really did feel like an interruption to the excellent narrative whereas the other appearances of the actors had all supported it. This is only a small gripe though, as the evening soon moved on to a truly excellent distraction scare. As before, a figure was seen sat on a bench up ahead, this time along with another lying on the ground. It was dark by now so many of the audience did not even see the figure on the ground. Having encountered the idea of a ghost sitting still throughout a tale, the audience all looked ahead at the figure knowingly and were then blindsided by one of the cloaked creatures coming at them from behind. As they all turned to see, the figure on the ground leapt up with a shriek and the two of them left everyone not knowing where to turn! Just to complete the effect, the silent figure that had previously sat still for the duration then got up and moved off halfway through the story – unexpectedly, suddenly and, as a bonus, just as someone had got up the nerve to try to sit down next to it! As the evening ended, Marc demonstrated that his knowledge was not just a script (as if, by this point, there was any doubt) by answering a couple of questions for me directly about the site. (I have some local knowledge and wanted to fill the gaps while I had the chance to ask an expert.) After this everyone departed – not before the creatures paid a final, slightly more benevolent visit, during which they were even happy to pose for photos.
The adult ticket price for the walk was £7 which, for over 90 minutes of live entertainment, seemed very good value. The stories alone would have been worth that without the added bonus of scare actors. On that note I must clarify that throughout this review I have used “story” and “storytelling” as words of convenience – the ghostly tales told were all meticulously researched and based on actual local history and sightings. They are mainly sourced from Gay Baldwin’s series of books on the Ghosts of the Isle of Wight and featured a lot of eyewitness detail from interviews and, in some cases, personal experience of our host. The walk had an ideal blend of fact and fun without trivialising the truly supernatural elements for those who take ghost hunting and the supernatural as something more serious than just a good scary night out.
Find out more about the ghost walks and the books telling their stories at www.ghostisland.co.uk
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