TikTok sensation Ray Turner visits haunted places in his free time and now has an extensive collection of spooky antiques.
Halloween is the time of year when many of us love to indulge in the spookier things in life. Whether that's watching your favourite scary movie or visiting nearby Halloween attractions. For Ray Turner, the love for all things supernatural isn't just for October.
The 29-year-old from Fazakerley has over 700,000 likes on his TikTok account @jackolanternstories where his fascination with ghosts and ghouls is put to good use as Ray explores haunted places across the UK. Including some sights in Liverpool such as the Bridewell pub which is allegedly the most haunted pub in the city.
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Ray doesn't only like to document haunted places on film; he also enjoys collecting and decorating his home in Orrell, Wigan which he shares with his partner Craig with haunted objects.
He said: "It adds to the aesthetic of our home which looks like a Victorian Gentlemen's parlour and when people come over I can give them some ghost stories about the items.
The TikTok star only started collected items seriously as his social media account went viral. He said: "People started sending me supposedly haunted things I had a lady send me a porcelain doll."
Ray also buys haunted objects to add to his collection. The 29-year-old said: "I go to bygone times in Chorley and they put tags on saying items are haunted. I bought a framed painting of Wigan in the 1940s from there which is said to be haunted by the painter."
Ray has 50 haunted antiques, but he has no qualms about the supernatural nature of the collection. Ray said: "I've never felt nervous about bringing these things into my house."
Nevertheless, there have been some spooky goings on in Ray and Craig's home, that only started after they started their collection. In particular, the couple have noticed a large amount of unexplainable activity centred around their reading corner.
Ray said: "I went to Smithills Hall in Bolton and I was given a broken wooden frame which is hanged on the wall in the reading corner."
Smithills Hall is a hotspot for alleged ghost sightings in Greater Manchester and Ray may have brought one of them home with him. He said: "Since we brought it home there has been a strange atmosphere in the corner; we have three friends who won't go near that corner."
Ray described a night of weird goings on that were unusually linked to the reading corner. He said: "One night we were asleep on the sofa with the lights and the fire on. We woke up in complete darkness and everything was off and the wooden frame had fallen off the wall despite being bolted down."
Another occasion involved a vintage Ouija board.. Ray said: "Myself, Craig and my sister had a go with it one night and it started moving on its own saying it was a man called James who had died at the train station near our house in the 1980s. We asked 'can you make a noise' and we heard a thud from upstairs.
"A couple of days later I was alone in the bath and the lights turned off in the house. When I came out of the bath I heard a man's voice, I thought there was someone in the house. I went around the corner ready to punch them."
As a funeral director, Ray knows not to fear the dead and having grown up in an allegedly haunted house he doesn't fear ghosts either.
He told the ECHO in August 2023: "I remember on one occasion me and my sister were sitting on the bed. There was a vent in the room and we heard this flapping and squawking. I said to my dad 'there's a bird stuck in there' and he took the vent off, and there was a skeleton of a bird behind it and that many cobwebs nothing could have got out."
In terms of the most haunted place to visit in Liverpool, the ghost hunter believes that has to be Newsham Park hospital- a Grade II listed building in Kensington which has become a popular destination for ghosts hunters.
Ray said: "You get a bit of a feeling when you go in there and both me and Craig heard footsteps and no one else was there, a lot of people hear and see stuff in there so a lot of it might be the power of suggestion."
For Halloween, Ray will spending it in Liverpool, doing a TikTok special from St James cemetery behind Liverpool Cathedral where 60,000 bodies are buried with almost as many ghost stories.
The couple plan to continue collecting haunted objects to decorate their home.
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