Did you know North Shields has its very own Ghostbuster? More into hunting than busting, Big T Paranormal has been causing a stir across the region with his gripping ghost hunts streamed live on TikTok, attracting thousands of curious followers. “I was consuming a lot of content before I created my own stream”, admits Tony Moat, aka ‘Big T’. “I noticed that people were just watching, there was no ability to interact, it was just like television.”
Tony noticed a gap in the market for truly interactive live paranormal investigations: “The way I do my livestreams is highly community driven. They are all user-led. It’s all down to the hard work of my moderators, who manage a chat structure where questions and statements can be pinned so I can respond to them in real time.” Sometimes the community notice things that Tony doesn’t, like on his recent exploration of ‘Seven Sisters’ in Houghton-le-Spring – a landmark group of beech trees situated on an ancient burial mound where, legend has it, seven witches were executed: “I was pointing my torch in front of me and people saw a shadow figure coming towards me. I didn’t notice it until I watched it back. Somebody hyperexposed the video and you can see something coming towards the light, it gets to it and then backs off. It wasn’t just a shadow from the torch. If so it would have been cast the other way.”
Tony has been having brushes with paranormal entities from a young age: “I thought I had an imaginary friend in our home on Lindisfarne Terrace – my mam ran it as ‘The Cutting Corner’ hairdresser’s. In the past it had been a butcher’s and a corner shop and its cellars had been used as bomb shelters. There’s a plaque there now. A scruffy lad would come and play with my toys and a young girl in a blue dress used to point at the ceiling, saying there was going to be a fire.” Tony told his mum and his uncle went to check it out. It turned out the whole house and shop were on separate electricity loops, but connecting in the loft, sparking away and causing a small smoulder. “After the fire risk was discovered, the children never came back.”
Kieren, from the small team in charge of tech behind the scenes, becomes animated when talking about a new piece of kit recently acquired by their colleague, Aaron: “An arial sticks up! It detects heat and infrared.” Tony goes on to qualify: “I always open up the gadgets so everyone can see what they are, what they’re made of.” Transparency sets Big T Paranormal apart from other ghost hunters. “A lot of stuff out there is heavily edited. With me, there’s no editing, it’s all live. Nine times out of ten, I find nothing.” When he does find something, though, it’s gripping. There was plenty of ghostly action when he camped out at Stockport Masonic Guildhall recently: “I was the first person they’ve ever let film in there, it was thanks to my collaborator, Heather, who got me in there. She came and investigated with me. It’s a very secret society. I still had to cover up some of their pictures that they didn’t want to be shown.”
A former tour guide, Big T is fascinated by local history, which provides a rich source of ghostly tales and spooky locations, such as Willington Quay, where he went looking for ‘Kitty the Mill Ghost’, apparently a worker who died after getting her hair caught in a millstone. He claims the most haunted place he has been in this area is Tynemouth Metro station, which connects directly to Northumberland Park, the former site of a medieval hospital: “I stamped four times and after a long pause there were four clear stamps back. It wasn’t an echo!”, exclaims Kieran. “Then we heard a voice coming through the spirit boxes, repeating ‘I am Vincent!’” elaborates Tony. “After that my Auntie Pauline got a book from her hairdresser which described a serial killer around that area in the mid-1800s… called Vincent. I think he was a prominent member of the community – a surgeon or a barrister.”
Tony continues to talk enthusiastically about other areas of historic interest: “Below the Tynemouth piers were old tracks for unloading the ships, wagonways for the horses as the hill was too steep for them. During the plague, the old transport tunnels below ground were filled full of bodies and houses were subsequently built on top. The entirety of Tynemouth and some of North Shields has been built on mass graves. One resident opened up their old basement to find it was full of old bones. The police said they were thousands of years old and that it was quite common to find them all over Tynemouth.” We go on to talk about the smugglers’ tunnels, the Spanish Armada at the Black Middens and Spanish gold that can still supposedly be found there. We start to reel off possible haunted locations in the area for Big T Paranormal to investigate: Tynemouth Priory and the Watch House, Tynemouth Lodge Hotel, the Lowlights pub, Cliff’s Bakery (now Arbor Seven), Haswell Gardens and the former military base where Preston Hospital was, and the sites of various past and current schools.
I suggest that Tony’s charismatic presence and penchant for local history could really capture the imagination of local residents on organised ghost walks around the area. He hinted that this could be coming soon. Until then, people can watch his livestreams from the comfort and safety of their own home on multiple platforms including TikTok, YouTube, Facebook: “That’s the beauty of it. People don’t have to go there but they can join in with us in real time. They have a morbid curiosity about what might happen.” Tony appreciates that his followers aren’t all necessarily believers: “I like sceptics. I can be a sceptic myself – I explore all the logical explanations first. I’m not a tinfoil-hat-wearer, I’m just curious about everything. I will go anywhere and see what’s there.”
Do you have any suggestions of where Big T Paranormal could investigate next?
Contact: bigtparanormalinfo@gmail.com
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