The Circle of the Veil
Urgent call
Battersea Arts Centre
Battersea, London
All members of the Circle required to attend
In the aftermath of the fire on Friday 13th 2015, during the renovation of the Centre, contractors discovered a hidden doorway, missing from every blueprint. Room 13. When they entered, they discovered something so terrifying that they refused to speak of it. Battersea Arts Centre had the door bricked up and no one has crossed the threshold since.
Now, eleven years later, paranormal activity in that wing has been spiking, and it has begun to seep out into every corner of the building. Rumours have reached such a fever pitch that staff are refusing to come in, no one wants to lock up at night, and some have quit altogether.
Now Battersea Arts Centre have requested our intervention to conduct an investigation. We believe that the 2015 fire left a scar in the veil between our world and another, and that something from beyond is trying to claw its way through.
The Circle of the Veil has closed scars of this kind before. But this is the strongest case we have encountered in many years.
Together, we will confront it. Book your place now.
Current notices
Corporeal Visits
With immediate effect, and until the First Councillor advises otherwise, no member is to attend a site of interest alone, at any hour or for any purpose, including preliminary assessments made in daylight.
Attendance is to be strictly in pairs or more, and chapter secretaries will not authorise a visit on any other basis.
This is a restatement of the first founding article rather than a new instruction, and it follows the review into the events at the Bristol chapter in August.
Auditory Reports
Any member who becomes aware of a persistent high tone, audible to themselves and not to those standing beside them, is asked to notify their chapter secretary on the day it is first noticed and to stand down from fieldwork until they have been assessed, and the Circle will meet the cost of that assessment in full. We ask this plainly because, in every similar case investigated by the Circle, the symptoms were concealed before they were eventually reported.
In each case, what followed might have been prevented had we known sooner.
Battersea Call
The examination at Battersea Arts Centre for October’s convergence of members will require the fullest attendance the Circle has mustered since Chicago 1903. Members with a demonstrable sensitivity are asked to make themselves available for the whole of that convening. Those who have never undertaken fieldwork before should not be put off, as numbers are the greater part of what we shall require.
Recent investigations
Case 26–101 · Battersea, LondonRoom 13
Open. Under examination. See URGENT CALL above.
Case 26–091 · North Yorkshire, EnglandHaunting in the Walls
Reports from an abode in North Yorkshire, England, detail a series of paranormal phenomena in the eastern wall of an unoccupied bedroom. Residents report violent knocking and heat emitting from the brickwork.
During the Circle’s third visit, we recorded three instances of knocking at 2:13am, 2:26am and 2:39am, at thirteen-minute intervals. Members removed the plywood wall, which revealed a hidden entranceway.
Plans dated 1910 have since been located and no such door appears to exist. Parish records show that the house was burnt to timber in the winter of 1911.
Case 26–074 · Powys, WalesThe Woman Beneath the Reservoir
Residents near a Welsh reservoir have reported repeated sightings of a shadowy, ghost-like woman at the water’s edge shortly before dusk. The woman appears in different states, most frequently dressed in the working garb of the 1800s, but every Friday 13th her visage becomes pained and her clothing scorched.
The Circle of the Veil discovered that the reservoir sits atop a flooded valley which, in 1862, experienced a devastating fire from a local mine. We believe this incident constitutes strong evidentiary support for our developing Fire Theory.
Case 26–063 · Kraków, PolandSilent Acres
Forestry workers in Poland have reported circular areas of woodland in which birdsong and insect activity appear to cease altogether. The Circle of the Veil has identified an approximately circular boundary, within which ambient sound fell to near zero, despite no measurable change in the surrounding conditions. In the same vein as our other investigations, we found evidence of ancient forest fires that could be the source of these strange occurrences.
From the archive
Fire Theory
The Circle of the Veil, through generations of detection, investigation and study, has identified a core source of paranormal activity.
Where a fire burns fiercest, in some instances, it forges a ‘scar’ or a tear in our reality.
That scar can leak malevolence into our world. It has been our honour to conduct the imperative work of sealing those scars and healing what they leave behind.
In three hundred and sixty years we have closed every last one.
Report a
phenomenon.
Have you experienced something you cannot explain?
The Circle accepts first-hand accounts from members of the public. Describe what you observed, where and when it occurred, and who else was present.
All accounts are considered.
Submit an account via the form below.
Correspondence is reviewed by the Secretary and referred to the appropriate chapter.
The Circle of the Veil
A society for
inquiring minds.
The Circle of the Veil is an independent society devoted to the documentation and study of unexplained and paranormal phenomena. The society was founded in London in 1666, in the weeks after the Great Fire, when the 13 founding members began their work ‘healing’ a scar left by the blaze.
Through investigation, teamwork and the careful preservation of records, our members work together to explore the unknown with curiosity, rigour and discretion.
The Circle is organised into chapters, each one run by its own secretary and answerable to the Chapter House in London. Our work is carried out by members in their own time and largely at their own expense, supported by the Circle where need arises, and governed throughout by the founding articles. We hold no view we have not evidenced; we publish nothing we cannot stand behind; and we do not sell what we know. Chapters currently in correspondence: London, Oxford, York, Bristol, Edinburgh, Dublin, Paris, Chicago and New York.
Joining us
Membership by
application.
Membership is open by application and recommendation to those with a demonstrable interest in the study of unexplained phenomena.
Among our members are mediums, clairvoyants, sensitives, dowsers, psychometrists, automatic writers and spirit photographers. Alongside them our members include archivists, surveyors, chemists and historians who may not have a sensitivity to the paranormal but whose work is no less valued for it.
We welcome individuals from a range of disciplines, backgrounds and experiences.
The founding articles
Set down in London, spring 1667 following the Great Fire
The articles were written in the year after the founding and have been amended four times in three hundred and sixty years. They are reproduced here in part, as they stand.
- No member shall attend a site alone.
- No member shall carry an open flame onto a site, nor into any gathering of the Circle.
- Every account shall be penned by a direct witness, on the day that it occurred.
- That no member shall withhold a symptom from the Circle, whether it appears in themselves or in another.
- What has been closed shall not be opened again.