Turning the passion of the paranormal into an award-winning project

After launching Crime & Paranormal in 2021, Dalrymple’s project initially began as a podcast, involving “one of my mates”, in the 20-year-old’s words. However, after discovering they’d started “getting a little bit of activity at home”, the decision was made to gather as much equipment as possible in order to begin recording live streams.

Soon after, the project began to receive external interest, subsequently attracting the interest of future members of the 20-year-old’s investigative team, Michael and Joanne, who both accompanied Dalrymple to a local investigation at Gawthorpe Hall.

“We just connected really well within the field, and we worked really well together. So, things just kind of took off from there, really,” Dalrymple stated as he reflected on the project’s early days.

The 17th-century Jacobean hall, situated near Burnley and managed by the National Trust, has previously been reported to be a significant site of paranormal activity. Reports have suggested that the ghost of Lady Kay-Shuttleworth lingers around the building.

Shuttleworth, who died in 1650, grief-stricken after her children and husband died from the plague, and now roams around the building. In the years since, Gawthorpe Hall has appeared on the TV show ‘Most Haunted’, such is the strength of that legend. Both Dalrymple and Joanne themselves have encountered unexpected activity at the Hall.

“We were under the bridge area, and I got a sudden instinct and said, 'Look, can somebody please take a photo?' I feel like there's somebody watching us. "So we took a photo, and in this photo, there were about eight figures of people that weren't standing there, and this was taken just with a mobile phone camera,” the 20-year-old stated. “We've never done an investigation inside, but the grounds have got so much history and so much activity in it,” Joanne echoed.

When it comes to the matter of being sceptical of paranormal activity or believing it, for that matter, it differs from person to person in the UK, according to the latest data. New research found by the National Folklore Survey has discovered that across England, more than a third of people believe in the paranormal, but belief varies based on age, with people between the ages of 25 and 34 the most likely group to believe in paranormal activity.

“I'm getting a bit more open-minded because of this stuff that I've seen and what I've felt. It's starting to make me into a believer. "It's opened my eyes a lot,” Joanne said when asked about what they would say to paranormal scepticism.

“I'm always open-minded, but I'm also very sceptical of certain things, but within our investigations, we do a lot of debunking. If we hear knocks and stuff like that, then we'll try and find a reasonable explanation for that. So anybody that is a sceptic out there that doesn't really believe that, I get it. I get it because that's where the whole thing started from, being a sceptic.

“But don’t knock it until you try it, because things could definitely change. Ghost hunting has definitely opened my eyes in a lot of ways. Not just ghost hunting, but the whole paranormal community, and bringing a team together, being able to go out every week and do these investigations. It’s great,” Dalrymple added.

In 2024, Dalrymple made the decision to turn Crime & Paranormal into a professional project, channelling their efforts to grow their community on social media platforms such as Instagram and TikTok. It’s been an approach that has paid dividends for Dalrymple and his team, who have since claimed an award for being the fastest-growing paranormal team.

“We're quite privileged, actually, to be even thought of regarding these awards, because there are a lot of paranormal teams out there that have done a lot more than we have," Joanne said.

The 20-year-old himself has earned an award in the Paranormal Media category by a “judging panel from a project that values complete anonymity” and has engaged in opportunities connected to Amazon, including two appearances on ‘The Spooky Shed Podcast’ to discuss the team’s investigations. But when it comes to their investigations, what has been the group’s most difficult-to-explain moment to date?

“The lampshade light smashing in the chapel at Rivington was huge,” Dalrymple said. “Like, we were sitting there, cramped in the bunker. We had one guy say to us, 'It's probably a kid that shot a BB gun through it.' Obviously, which wasn't the case at all. The owners were there, and they were there as witnesses to it too, which was great to have their eyewitness accounts also. So there was that, and then there was also, again, in the Rivington area.

“We were at Pigeon Tower, and we were setting up for an investigation. And because we were going to split off into two groups, we actually had the standard same-channel walkie-talkies. None of them were turned on at the time. And basically, through one of the walkie-talkies, there was a little girl, who started screaming down the walkie-talkie. Saying all sorts of horrendous things.

“We were in the middle of nowhere. So, we automatically thought there was somehow another radio connected to our line. So we, you know, we tried to radio in saying, like, 'Hello, hello, how can we help you? Like, what's going on? Because we thought it was real. We thought it was real. And we got nothing back. We were very shaken up, and we thought, wow, that's just, like, next-level stuff,” the 20-year-old finished.

However, the 20-year-old believes that the “biggest blessing” that he has doing what he does is the sense of community the project has created.

"When it comes to doing things, it's not just about going out to find ghosts. It's about having a community. It's about bringing people together, and that's what it's done for us as a team. It's brought us together. It's brought our community together. "It's just having some sort of connection between others and normalising the stuff, like, paranormal investigation, because it's not, especially within the Padiham and Burnley area; it's just unheard of,” Dalrymple stated.