Here at The Psychic Tree, we have a healthy interest in the paranormal. With that in mind, we booked to go on an evening tour of Fort Amherst, a Napoleonic fort which was constructed in 1755 after a review of dockyard defences of Chatham during a raid by the Dutch in 1667, where thirteen ships were destroyed and two were taken, including the flagship of the fleet, the "Royal Charles".
In 1820 the Fort defences were declared obsolete due to better artillery equipment with a greater firing range. During WWII the tunnels were utilised by the Anti-Invasion Planning Unit and Civil Defence, who used a section as their headquarters. This is where Civil Defence was co-ordinated for the North Kent area in the event of bombing as well as support and assistance to the general public after such an incident.
As you can imagine, given the several hundred years of history the Fort is known to be haunted with several spirits, so we set out to attempt to make contact.
The evening began with a briefing from the team of guides at the fort, which made up of volunteers also included two mediums who would work with the groups (about 40 people were there (approx 10 staff) but we were divided up into smaller teams).
The first area we went to was the Air Raid Precautions unit where we worked with pendulums to try and contact spirits. All members of the party had some success with the pendulums - Laura took her own one which was Lapis Lazuli and I used a Rose Quartz pendulum. Several had distinct movements giving some clear responses to the questions asked. We then moved into the tunnels where we were given some equipment to use - we selected the temperature laser gun and the electromagnetic field monitor.
As we set to work we had immediate responses from the EMF monitor, which we swiftly realised was due to our mobile phones not being in aeroplane mode (top tip!). Once this rookie error had been resolved, we moved around the various tunnels independently from the group to see if we could get any readings. Unfortunately we didn't get any movement on the EMF monitor at all, however we did read some temperature changes albeit too minor to make any assumptions from.
After a break for tea and biscuits we then moved into the guardhouse where a slighty more aggressive spirit is known to appear. As we stood in the room, with the medium asking the spirit to show themselves, several of the the team reported feelings of being pushed from behind and for a period of time there was the distinct sound of footsteps coming from the corridor - one of the mediums stated that was the clearest they had heard the footsteps so we were pleased to have experienced that.
Finally the we moved back into the ARP where the mediums tried to encourage the spirits to use the voice box of one of the more sensitive members of the team to communicate. This happened to a point of guttural murmurs and coughs, and the person in question seemed unwell and drained shortly after.
All in all a good evening and at £20 a head and running from 7:30 until 11:30, good value and a decent introduction for people who have not experienced a paranormal hunt before.
Fort Amherst's website can be found here.