A paranormal team have launched an investigation into the century old Pearce Institute amid reports of some unusual encounters.
The apparition of a ghostly woman has allegedly been witnessed walking across a foyer, a decommissioned organ has been overheard playing tunes without a player and there is supposedly a tap that mysteriously switches on by itself.
"Who is allegedly haunting it, I don’t know," said paranormal researcher Ryan O’Neill.
"It’s not just the one spirit too, it seems to be a mix.
"We’ve had knocks and bangs while we’re there. I’ve been doing this a while but I still get a shock."
Originally built in Glasgow in 1906, The Pearce Institute, affectionately known as the PI, has been at the heart of the Govan community for more than a century.
Intended as a local social centre for the surrounding community, it offered ‘Govanites’ reading rooms, a library, a gymnasium, cooking and laundry departments.
The organ, stage and gallery in its McLeod Hall also made it a popular venue for dance and social gatherings.
Now O’Neill and his team, which also include an Edinburgh medium, are hoping that local residents will help them discover if any of the institute's former residents have decided to stick around...
"We'll be holding an investigation at the end of May and will be providing people with tools to help monitor the environment," he said.
"You get cold spots and hot spots which people report quite often as being a sign of a haunting."
Curious locals will be armed with devices such as electro-magnetic field readers and recording devices to see if they can pick up signs of any paranormal activity.
"We've also got an 'echo box' that I managed to order from America," adds O'Neill.
"It runs on your smart phone and picks up any unusual audio in the room - I heard a Glaswegian female accent once coming across on the device which was a complete surprise, as you always think these tools might be some sort of gimmick.
"I often hear regional accents and dialects through it which is bizarre, especially on an American device, so maybe it is working".
It's all just a normal state of affairs for O'Neill, who first became interested in the paranormal as a teenager.
"It was before I was married, when I was about 18 and a few things kept happening in my house that I couldn’t explain," he recalls.
"My furniture would be re-arranged when I woke up and it freaked me out.
"No-one could ever explain it, but it drew me to try find an answer."
O’Neill founded the Haunted Scotland project, and has since appeared on popular television shows such as Most Haunted.
Despite being on the Scottish paranormal investigations scene for ten years, however, Glasgow's Pearce Institute has only recently popped up on his radar.
"It was only about six months ago that we first started hearing reports of unusual happenings," he said.
"We've held a few investigation sessions in the building already where we have heard tapping noises from the kitchen area, which seems to happen very much on demand at times."
The presence of a man has been reported in the main hall on a number of occasions too, though staff at the institute confirm they have yet to see any firm ghostly evidence.
"I’ve not seen anything myself, but people ask us about it all the time - I usually think it’s a door slamming in the wind or something," said the building's caretaker Michael Rice.
"I think I'd rather not know though if you know what I mean," he adds with a chuckle.
"It’s alright for the ghost hunters because they leave when they're done, but I'm the one who has to stay behind and lock up every night - I'd much rather not know if something was lurking about!"
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