Paranormal Investigators Claim to Have Captured Footage of Music Box Being Moved by Poltergeist

The music box on the right appears to move on its own in the Haunted Scouse video. (Haunted Scouse / YouTube) — The music box on the right appears to move on its own in the Haunted Scouse video. *(Haunted Scouse / YouTube)*

Chris Cummings and Adam Billing of YouTube channel Haunted Scouse filmed what they claimed to be a music box moving on its own during an investigation last month. The video, posted to their channel on March 19th, was shot inside Peter Kavanagh’s Pub on Egerton Street in the Toxteth area of Liverpool, England.

Peter Kavanagh's Pub, originally called the Liver Inn, dates back to the 1870s. However, prior to its current incarnation, it was said to have hosted an infamous séance in 1844. During that séance, a spirit which called itself Marmaduke was allegedly summoned and could not subsequently be dismissed; some say Marmaduke still haunts the pub to this day. According to author Tom Slemen, Marmaduke would in the past “use drinkers and staff as unsuspecting mouthpieces for his shocking language and obscure songs.”

The pub's landlady, Rita Smith, had also reportedly told Cummings about the spirit of a little girl which had been previously seen in the building.

He said she had told him that there was a “spirit of a little girl in the main room and when I showed her our footage, I think she was pleasantly surprised.”

Whether or not Marmaduke or the spirit of a little girl moved the music box is up for debate, but the object does appear to slide across a table with no apparent cause beginning at about 54 minutes into the video. Just prior to that, Cummings had set up the music box, telling any spirits present, “If you like the music, let it play, if you don’t like the music, close the box over.”

“We literally had no idea anything had happened until after," Cummings told the Liverpool Echo in an interview about the incident. "If you look carefully, you can see a light, which is off the illuminator of the camera. You can see it reflecting back off the lid of the music box and that’s the key to seeing how much it actually does turn to the side. Crucially, it also slides across by about an inch or two as well, so it’s a really intriguing double movement."

The investigator was impressed by the phenomenon.

"I think it’s second best to actually capturing a full apparition on camera, which I don’t think anyone has ever done," he said. "That’s the dream for any paranormal team, to capture a spirit or a ghost, just anything on camera that would be classed as an apparition. If you can’t capture that, the next best thing you want is some kind of poltergeist activity and that’s exactly what we would class this as.”

Ultimately, Cummings and Billing were unable to come up with a prosaic explanation for the event.

“There’s no other explanation for it, the table was flat, they’re all bolted to the floor so it’s not like you can move the table," Cummings said. “We have gone through in our minds what could possibly have caused the music box to move by itself. We have used the music box in a number of different locations like St James Cemetery and had nothing. We’ve even had it on a marble sarcophagus which is as smooth as you can get as a surface and it doesn’t even slide to the side. The movement that we actually got in Peter Kavanagh’s, it’s not like a slight little movement which could be a vibration, it moves over the period of about 20 seconds several times.”

Regardless of one’s opinion on what was behind the moving music box, Cummings was insistent that it was not a hoax.

"[As] part of the full episode, Adam does a full walk through so the viewer can see we’re in snug one, he walks through the bar into the second snug. We do that so we can show the viewer the layout of the premises," he said. “Once we have done that, the viewer can see I clearly walk away from the music box and Adam is clearly in the same room as me. There is no way you could manipulate it to move it in that way.”

As for the music box itself, Cummings said it's "something I got from a charity shop, so it’s had a history in somebody’s house. I just bought it because I thought it would make a good trigger object to potentially get interaction with a spirit. I have no idea of its history and I don’t think it has any links to Peter Kavanagh’s, but whatever the history is, I would say it’s at least 60 to 70 years of age going off the style of the music. It plays the older style of music and sometimes that’s the best way to try and appeal to the spirits because you don’t know how old the spirits are that you’re making contact with.”

To report your own encounter with the impossible, reach out to us directly at the Singular Fortean Society through our contact page.

If you enjoyed this article and would like to support the Singular Fortean Society, please consider becoming an official member by signing up through our Patreon page—membership includes a ton of extra content and behind-the-scenes access to the Society’s inner workings.