Exclusive: Nick Groff Talks Paranormal Lockdown Halloween Special!

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

There is no better way to spend Halloween than to disappear into a spooky little place in the UK known as The Black Monk House. Most would probably be too terrified to spend even a couple minutes in this creepy place, so leave it to Paranormal Lockdown's Nick Groff and Katrina Weidman to spend 100 hours locked inside. Whether you are a believer or not, this is the perfect show to enjoy while trick or treaters lurk around every corner. While the series usually premieres on Destination America, tonight this special Halloween epside will be debuting on TLC, with a marathon of season one before.

We here at AITH love talking to Mr. Groff. Aside from being incredibly smart – and very brave – he is one of the nicest guys around. With tonight’s Paranormal Lockdown 2-hour Halloween special, we wanted to talk about the mystery of The Black Monk House, spending 100 hours in a place known for very violent poltergeist activity, and how all this just makes the series great. As a fan of Nick and this fantastic show, I can tell you that I can’t wait to check out the seriously scary two-hour presentation. 

There is a ton of history with The Black Monk House, is there anything that surprised you about the house and its past?

Yeah, actually. So I knew a lot of the history going into the location. There is something different when learning about the haunted house and knowing what the deaths were. There is so much mystery behind it, it’s very ominous. It has some sort of draw like the Hinsdale House did for us. This is a case that happened before Enfield, before the poltergeist case, before these stories became Hollywoodized, you know, Amityville and all those cases. 

This is actually from 1966. When the Pritchard family moved into 30 East Drive, of Pontefract in England – or The Black Monk House as we have labeled it – they didn’t realize it was haunted. All of these things started happening. It started off as stuff that was kind of playing games and they actually named the ghost. They named it Fred. It seemed innocent. Just bumps on the walls, voices, things moving around and stuff materializing out of thin air. It was stuff like that that was just random and weird but it all escalated. When it came back later it came back with full force. Then the daughter, she actually claimed to be choked and dragged up the staircase. They tried exorcisms on the house, they had journalists and skeptics come to the house to experience it. There were all sorts of different things that escalated and it got really bad. 

The crazy thing is, and what surprised me, is that Joe Pritchard – the father – after the exorcism he did more research on the house… he passed away in the house. Not of natural causes. He actually choked on his own vomit and died in the bathroom upstairs, and that is where he was found.

That’s creepy.

Very creepy. That I didn’t know, and I didn’t actually know where he died, but discovered it in talking to the neighbors and other people when we got there; people who grew up right around the house. It’s a typical story you would have heard from the Enfield case, all this low housing that was built, these split homes. And the neighborhood is built on top of this land that had one of the bloodiest battles that took place in UK’s history. They had the civil war right there. They had executions and ancient burial grounds. We are talking about massive amounts of history and bloodshed well before these low income housing projects were built on top of it.

The Gallows are supposedly across the street from where this house sits and there is a well that is there that, legend has it, a monk who was in this black robe raped and murdered a child back in that era. Supposedly they were two twin brothers that were monks. The one that actually murdered and raped the child got away. But his twin brother was caught and they thought that he was the murderer. They killed him and hung him and threw him in the well. So there are all sorts of different stories that are tied to this place, things that we don’t actually have facts on. But we know all the facts on the war and what took place. There was an orchard there, and there were monks in that area and there is a well close to the property at the next house over where the neighbor lived. It is very active. 

So many people have talked about this house. It’s known to be the most violent poltergeists in the history of Europe. This is the craziest location that people have been talking about for centuries. That’s really what surprised me about this location. Just learning new information and not only that, there is something bigger that connects the Hinsdale House and this location that works in a kind of telepathic, paranormal highway. It is like Katrina [Weidman] and myself are in this spiritual war rather than going to another haunted location. There is something there that knows us before we step foot inside. It really gets to us in trying to figure out how to break us down to attack us. That’s exactly how it escalated and how it happened during this one-hundred hour investigation.

When did you decide to take on 100 hours as opposed to your regular 72? That seems just frighteningly long to me.

Yeah, the 100 hours came from the idea that the Pritchard family lived at this location and it started as kind of an innocent haunting. Which eventually turned into a violent haunting. We wanted to put ourselves into the environment where we are not just by ourselves, we are locking ourselves in here. Whenever [they] know we aren’t leaving, and we know we aren’t leaving, we want to get to the part where we can live there as long as we can live there.

We wanted to really go through these experiences and truly see if whatever we are up against is there to try and validate and capture evidence. I felt like that was the longest time we could really endure psychologically, mentally and physically what are bodies go through until the breaking point. It is extremely long. It’s almost like everything sits still when we stepped inside. But when day two came around and we were locked in, it felt like reality on the outside of the house was going and we were in a different world. Everything flipped upside down and here we are in this spiritual realm where you kind of lose track of everything. It’s so strange. 

That’s part of what I think makes this show work so well is the length of time you spend in these places. Even if you are a skeptic you can’t deny just how difficult and creepy staying that long in a place like that can be. What do you tell skeptics who may not believe in what you are doing?

We are out there in the field now trying to discover something in the paranormal world. Just like any other ordinary person that doesn’t necessarily understand some of these things that are happening. There are things in this world that we can’t comprehend yet. Time hasn’t had enough information and technology to get to the point to say what these things are. It’s like going into another universe or discovering a new planet in our solar system. We used to think that Pluto was the last planet. People used to think that the earth was flat and everything fell off at the end. We used to say that we’ll never go to the moon. So how can we be so one-sided and say that there is nothing else? And we are so skeptical and quick to jump to conclusions to say when you die that is it. Then where does the energy go?

Scientifically that energy can’t be destroyed. We produce energy in our bodies. How does that just stop? We know the flesh and bones in our body become dead, but what about that conscious thought and brains that continue to be part of that energy? Where do the neutrinos go in the environment? All these things that kind of induce lingering energy and traces of thought. And I think, at the end of the day, that’s what we have to start looking at instead of being so narrow-minded and saying, nope, that’s not that.

At the same time we are very logical. We are always looking to try and figure out and debunk say a knock on the wall or a creak in the floorboard. Yes the houses and the buildings are super old and you have to look at those things, but at the same time sometimes we just can’t explain them. We need technology to help validate them. We need a lot of research and a lot of enduring time and effort to try and discover something new so we can say, yes, that is what that is. Maybe it’s not a ghost as we label or define it as in our books. Maybe it’s something else. Maybe it’s this energy mass and it is scientifically made up of X, Y and Z. That’s what we are trying to get to the point of doing, and if we think outside the box and theorize a little bit more and work a little harder on our research and what not, try to come together… Yeah, we were getting closer to seeing if there is the possibility of a continuation of life after death as we know it.

And this Halloween, the Paranormal Lockdown two-hour special is premiering. What a perfect night for it!

Yeah, it’s going to be awesome. It’s huge. I wasn’t expecting TLC. I was really excited about Destination America. Everybody is under the same umbrella so it’s all under Discovery Communications and TLC and Destination America. The Discovery Networks are just amazing. Everyone is so supportive. All the executives are extremely excited throughout the whole entire Discovery Network. It’s just so fun when you have everyone so involved and they are thrilled and ready and working so hard to get the word out there. It feels good. It feels good to have such a supportive backbone in helping to bring to life something that we’ve been going through for the last year and a half. It puts this whole documentary, which is more what it is, special together. I feel like our Paranormal Lockdown Halloween special is going to be something people are going to remember because it’s so personal and raw and it has a story that kind of escalates to understanding what Katrina and myself have set out to do in this life. We are excited. And I’m happy now that it is premiering on TLC on 9 PM EST so a lot more people can view it now.

Thanks for chatting with us about the new special. We at Arrow in the Head love talking to you about the show, and really everything else.

Well I love working with Arrow in the Head and JoBlo. Your readers can keep checking for updates as we may bring some other cool news to the forefront soon, something that we will be working on together.