Spirit Box S2 #90 / Kate Ray on Hauntings, Fairies and the Wollaton Gnomes
In this episode, I sit down with paranormal investigator, researcher, and author Kate Ray for a conversation that wanders through fear, folklore, and the many strange beings that linger just outside our line of sight.
Kate begins by telling me how she stumbled into paranormal investigation almost against her will — starting with a night at St Breville’s Castle that absolutely terrified her, but ultimately broke the lifelong fear of ghosts that had held her back. That moment pushed her into Barry Guy’s events team, and set her on the path to becoming the investigator she is now. As we talked, she traced how her understanding of the supernatural shifted over the years, shaped by experiences in both her childhood home and a deeply haunted house she lived in throughout the late 90s.
We found ourselves comparing notes on haunted properties. Kate spoke about the oppressive atmosphere, strange smells, and constant noises she lived with for years, and I shared some of my own memories and we reflected on how that atmosphere can feel suffocating until, eventually, fear gives way to curiosity.
Then the conversation took a fascinating turn. Kate outlined her theory that many poltergeist cases may actually be fairy activity rather than the spirits of the dead. She talked about the electrical nature of fairies, the mischievous, non-human logic that underpins coin drops and strange object movements, and how these behaviours align with centuries of folklore. She’s noticed more people reporting this kind of activity, and attributes that partly to her efforts to reintroduce fairy lore to the paranormal community.
Kate recounted a chilling case she investigated — a family plagued by rippling walls, frantic footsteps, and coins dropping out of nowhere. She had gone there just to interview them, but ended up witnessing things that are astonishing.
Kate shared more of her personal cases, including working as a psychic artist on Help My House Is Haunted. She described remote impressions of a grumpy spirit and dark masses, the moment something grabbed her coat on location, and the uncanny realisation that her sketch matched a photograph of a former homeowner.
We finished with the story of her book on the Wollaton Gnomes, the 1979 incident where children encountered hovering gnomes in cars in a deer park. The idea arrived while she was writing for Dr. Simon Young, and the book practically wrote itself within seven days, through what she describes as automatic writing.
This episode is a weave of hauntings, folklore, high strangeness, and the strange intelligences that share the world with us — and Kate’s insights remind me again and again just how thin the veil really is.
Show notes:
Kate's instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kateharegirl/?hl=en-gb
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HareGirlparanormal/
Hare in the Hawthorn Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@kateharegirlray
Woolly Snotts: The Curious Case of the Wollaton Gnomes: https://amzn.eu/d/3TUzJ5f
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