Fort Borstal ghost hunt 20th October 2012
Fort Borstal, Rochester, Kent
Fort Borstal is one of those sites as a Ghost Hunt company we never thought we would be able to investigate, because it is privately owned. However we were nicely surprised after the owners contacted us wanting to know whether we would be interested in investigating their Fort.
Considering this is one of the five that was built especially to protect Chatham and we already investigate Fort Horsted (which is the largest) we were very keen to see what this Fort had in terms of spiritual activity. We were not disappointed.
The approach to this Fort is strange, not least because of the lack of lighting and it certainly looks a scary place upon arrival and as my team said to me, very atmospheric.
For this ghost hunt we had three distinctly different areas to investigate; The Caponier, which as the worst staircase in the world to navigate, 92 steps down (and back up!), The Officers Mess, which was a secret area even to those soldiers stationed there in The Second World War and a third underground Caponier.
My area for the night was the main Caponier (with the wonderful staircase [sic])
The first group had varying degrees of activity on our electronic equipment; some spikes of KII activity and some communication, but I thought it would be better to hold a séance since this particular place doesn’t get any people visiting and the energy levels would naturally be low.
A male energy by the name of Thomas came forward, he told me that he was a Colour Sergeant (Sergeant Major) in the Army. He was about 6’2” aged in his 20s and of stocky build and he was wearing civilian clothing (a blue shirt). He also gave me the impression that he was a funny character and had a wicked sense of humour. The was also another male energy present; Dave a private. Both were from the Second World War era.
During the séance many voices, mumbling and footsteps were heard, although given where the other two groups were, no person on site could have been responsible for these noises.
Both Thomas and Dave treated most of the guests to some gentle arm movement as they in turn went from one person to another to manipulate them.
At the end of the séance I conducted an EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomena a.k.a. ghost voice) experiment. Due to the natural echo because of the long tunnels cancelling out the background noise was quite difficult, as was listening for ghost voices, however the clearest and most audible from this session can be heard at:-
The Second group I took to the other end of the Caponier (as it is a double Caponier). Almost immediately there was good communication from our electronic equipment but no KII spikes. During the resulting séance a WWII Soldier by the name of Jeremy came forward and was able to move some of the guests arms. There was also a female energy present, aged about 20 years old and called Isabelle. During the séance we heard lots of noises, some in the tunnels and one very loud sound that came from the dry moat, this sounded like wood being banged (an impact sound). Several whistles we also heard, although when we heard them no-one could say in which direction the sound came from.
The Third group I took to the same area as the first group, although very little happened because the group were busy laughing and joking with each other and paying little interest to the reason why we were there i.e. ghost hunting.
The strangest sound that we heard was the sound of footfalls, as if someone was approaching but given the staircase and the fact that it was dark, we would have easily seen someone approach, as they would have needed a torch to navigate the staircase.
After we finished our controlled part of the night, we let the guests (under supervision) return to any area which they enjoyed or wanted to experience again in a smaller group or on their own.
I spent some time with another member of my team in the Officer’s Mess just for about 10 minutes or so but during those 10 minutes the both of us heard; a door slam (there are no doors to slam), lots of footsteps, knocking sounds and female voices. We also did several EVP recordings as there was a male energy present who seemed to be of great importance. This energy didn’t like either of us being there and made us feel uncomfortable. Carl who was listening with sound enhancement equipment heard some responses when I asked whether this spirit energy was from Yorkshire. Carl heard “go” “leave” and some laughing.
I too also heard sounds but couldn’t hear any words although I did have a strange chemical taste in my mouth. We both also saw some strange lights further along the corridor.
On analysing our EVP recordings the following results can be heard at:-
http://youtu.be/CZe02y2bBJw
http://youtu.be/ad4R00PIaHE
After this the remaining guests joined us in this area to experience the same feelings that we had both just felt. Although the uncomfortable feeling had dissipated, probably due to the fact that any area isn’t scary when there are lots of people about, we did hear some noises, taps, knocking, whistles and some loud bangs.
However one of the guests did capture a strange photograph, which seems to have the shape of a person at the end of the corridor. Both the photographs below are copyrighted to Emma Coyle.
All in all a very enjoyable ghost hunt, especially since we were the first ghost hunting company to investigate Fort Borstal, hopefully future visits to this location we will have more activity experienced by us and our guests.
The Ghost Hunt Events team were:-
Jo – Paranormal Investigator
Carl – Paranormal Investigator
Sean – Paranormal Investigator
Kym – Paranormal Investigator
Marc – Paranormal Investigator
Steve – Spiritualist Medium
Steve
Spiritualist Medium
Ghost Hunt Events
http://www.ghosthuntevents.co.uk/
