
“Among many other things that be amiss here in your great cures, ye shall understand that in Blackburn there is a fantastical young man, which says he has spoken with one of his neighbours that died four year since or more. Divers times he says he has seen him, and talked with him, and took with him the curate, the schoolmaster, and other neighbours, which all affirm that they see him too. These things so common here, and none of authority that will gainsay it, but rather believe and confirm it, that everyone believes it. If I had known how to have examined it with authority, I would have done it.”
Otherworld North East (OWNE) was founded in May 2003 with the aim to teach and promote local history through research and investigation of alleged hauntings and other ghost-related activity within the North East of England. The group founder’s book, Otherworld North East: Ghosts and Hauntings Explored was published by Newcastle City Libraries (Tyne Bridge Publishing) in 2004, launched on the 23rd October of that year by the Lady Mayoress of Newcastle at Castle Keep.
After the book was published, the group continued actively investigating alleged paranormal activity until 2016, when the general paranormal environment had turned enough toward commercial entertainment and away from research to make continued regular research fieldwork nigh on impossible. Instead of fieldwork, OWNE then returned to desktop research and maintained a social media presence, while occasionally taking part in other organisations’ events.
In 2020, with the onset of Covid-19 lockdown, we made the decision to try and be a little proactive and relaunched the website, while widening our desk-based research net, and now with restrictions eased we’ve made the next decision. While we will be retaining the acronym OWNE (we’ve kinda got used to it), the group is rebranding to The Otherworld North East Project with the aim, hopefully with your help, to be back up and fully running as a field unit by our 20th anniversary in May 2023 with the direction, once again, to promote the North East’s heritage through our research. We’ll also be aiming to publish our findings via this website and our social media, as well as bringing our archives online.
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