Haunted Chatham E-Book

Neil Arnold

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 179

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

Chatham is a town steeped in history and strange folklore, but much of its ghostly past, and present, remains unwritten. For the first time ever the spectral secrets of this place are uncovered as we delve into ghost stories obscure and well known. The book features an array of haunted houses and shops, and sheds new light on classic local legends at locations like Chatham Dockyard and Fort Amherst. Many stories appear for the first time in print, with information gained first-hand from witnesses who've experienced the phenomena. Richly illustrated, Haunted Chatham is your guide to one of Kent's most supernatural places.

Leseprobe

I would like to dedicate this bookto my sister Vicki – I love you x

The stories grew more and more lurid, wilder and sillier, and soon the gasps and cries merged into fits of choking laughter …

Susan Hill – The Woman in Black

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to the following for helping me write this book: My mum Paulene, and dad, Ron; my sister Vicki; my wife Jemma; my nan, Win, and granddad, Ron; Joe Chester; Sean Tudor; Missy Lindley and Corriene Vickers; The History Press; Chatham World Heritage; the Kent Messenger; Adscene; the Chatham, Rochester & Gillingham News; Kent Today; the Chatham Observer; the Medway Messenger; This Is Kent; True Crime; the Evening Post; the Chatham Standard. Big thanks also to Medway Archives & Local Studies; Paranormal Magazine; Most Haunted; Chris Cooke; Derek Hargrave; Matt Newton; Susie Higgins and Mark Gower; Mark Wright; Maureen; Judy at City Books, Rochester; Lisa Birch; Rachel Thomson-King; Shane Nichols at Fort Amherst; and Terry Cameron. Extra special thanks to Pam Wood at Chatham Dockyard and the people of Chatham who came forward with their ghostly tales. Thanks to Simon Wyatt for the illustrations. All photographs are by the author unless otherwise stated.

Contents

Title

Dedication

Epigraph

Acknowledgements

Author’s Quote

Poem

Foreword

Introduction

one

Phantoms of Fort Amherst

two

Chills at Chatham Dockyard

three

The Theatre Royal – Things that go Hump(hrey) in the Night

four

Haunted Houses and Pubs

five

More Chatham Ghosts

Select Bibliography

About the Author

Copyright

I did not believe in ghosts. Or rather, until this day, I had not done so, and whatever stories I had heard of them I had, like most rational, sensible young men, dismissed as nothing more than stories indeed.

Susan Hill – The Woman in Black

The Ghosts of Chatham Past

A pea-soup fog sits upon the Medway river,

The yellow moon peeks through the cloud.

Tales are spun around the fireside as shivers …

Run down the spines of those gathered round.

‘Listen carefully,’ the storyteller hushes the tone,

‘There is more to this town than meets the eye’

A wooden stair creaks as the eerie wind moans,

And the silence is split by a cry.

Spirits they gather seemingly without a reason,

Except to haunt those who fail to believe.

Throughout the crisp spring and warm summer seasons,

To the dark night of All Hallows Eve.

And not to forget the Christmas festivities,

Where ghost stories seem to fester so well.

Those pesky spooks that tamper with the electricity,

And ghouls who abide by church bells.

So many ghosts litter Chatham’s past,

Flitting from the forts to the river front docks.

Some fade as memories, some have strength to last,

Others have the ability to stop clocks.

Those crooked old buildings may exist only as a shell,

But if only those cold walls could talk,

For when there’s no room left in Heaven and Hell,

Then those departed choose this plateau to walk.

Some are in limbo, others happy to remain,

Forever encased in the fabric of time,

From hooded monks, phantom ladies and animals arcane,

Slipping from the ethereal void to the backstreets of the mind.

Chatham – a ghost town in the literal sense,

In that many a house hides a ghost in its nook.

So, when you’re weak and weary, beware of the eerie,

And in slumber keep one eye open for spooks.

When the witching hour draws in its cloak of blackness,

And the shadows play tricks on the mind,

Heed this warning as you step into darkness,

Always remember to look behind.

A snap of a twig, the rattle of a handle,

May not be quite what it seems.

So, the next time you ascend the stairs with a candle,

Blow out the flame and wish for sweet dreams.

Foreword

You must know at least one ghost story, stepfather, everyone knows one …

Susan Hill – The Woman in Black

It was in the late 1960s, when my family and I moved to an old large, army building to live, that I saw a ghost. I was just eleven years old at the time. Based on my description, it was decided that what I had seen could have been a nurse from about the time of the Crimean War. It added to the obsession that I had then, which still remains with me to this day. The curious need to research ghost stories and track down any real facts still holds its fascination. I knew of a drummer boy ghost yarn as a child and now, as an adult, I have researched the real murder. Putting meat on the bones of a story, if you pardon the expression, gives me a great deal of satisfaction. The real journey is making the past come to life and giving it a voice; the ghost walks do just that for me, whilst giving those long dead a chance to ‘air their views’ once more.

There are ghosts in the Dockyard – but why do we have so many? This has caused much debate; the earliest reference to a ghost in the yard was from Samuel Pepys. It is easy to imagine that on dimly lit, misty, eerie evenings, ghost stories and tales of mysterious noises and footsteps are recounted to help wile away a night shift. Today we are left with an 80-acre site; the majority of the buildings were constructed between 1704 and 1855, and were used for shipbuilding during the magnificent age of sail. It is no wonder that the legacy of the military and the colourful past of the shipwrights has left their footprints behind, echoing down the cobblestone roads of the present.

Some stories have been handed down, and the ghosts not only want their stories to be retold, they also let us know that they are there. Using all their senses on a ghost investigation, people have detected sudden drops in room temperature and odours, such as the smell of horses, fresh hay, and urine – but also more pleasant aromas like roses, lavender and even freshly ironed linen. Footsteps have been heard when no one was there. Tour groups have even heard heavy objects being dropped, when they were the only people in the building at the time. Raw emotions, like a sense of overwhelming sadness, have been experienced by visitors; I have seen grown men cry in Commissioner’s House and people run from the building weeping. However, sometimes these feelings are on the other end of the spectrum; I have been told many times that the atmosphere evokes a feeling of anger in some people during the course of a tour. The attic space is well-known for having a spooky atmosphere and the joiner’s shop was where, twenty-two years ago, I first heard a ghost in the yard. Recently, when I gave a talk to the present tenants, they confirmed that these incidents were continuing to happen.

I grew up in Chatham and remember the area which was known as the Brook; I am even lucky enough to own pictures of the people who lived and worked in old Chatham. My grandmother would tell me of the town of her youth and the stories in our family date back to the 1850s.

Every year new stories and ghostly goings-on come to light. Neil has looked at all aspects of the Dockyard stories and of Chatham, unearthing an excellent selection of ghost stories. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I have.

Pam Wood, 2012

Pam Wood is Visitor Services Manager at Chatham Dockyard and organises regular ghost tours around the site. For more information visit www.theDockyard.co.uk

Introduction

In AD 880, the town that we now know as Chatham appeared as Cetham – the name deriving from the British root ceto and the Old English ‘ham’, meaning a forest settlement. However, author Edwin Harris states that the name Chatham supposedly derives from the Saxon word cyte – meaning a cottage, and again ‘ham’. The Domesday Book of 1086 records the town as Ceteham, while Harris also records that it was known as Cettham. Many centuries later, Chatham harbours no forest whatsoever.

Chatham is most famous for its Historic Dockyard, situated on the River Medway, which was established as a Royal Dockyard in 1568 to help support the navy. The Dockyard was closed in 1984 as a naval resource, but it still exists to support local businesses and hosts events; it also attracts thousands of tourists each year.

The town also harbours the famously haunted Fort Amherst, as well as several other forts. It boasts a busy high street, a railway station, and its own football team. Today, more than 50,000 people reside in Chatham. One of the town’s most famous residents was author Charles Dickens, who lived there as a boy, first at Ordnance Terrace from 1817 to 1821, and then in the Brook from 1821 to 1823.

I was born in the town in October 1974 to my amazing parents, and spent more than thirty years there. I grew up on a housing estate, and whilst much of my childhood was spent playing football, watching horror films or getting up to no good, I’ve also always written stories. I’ve always been intrigued by local mysteries – I was heavily influenced by the fishing trips my dad and I took to the local, murky lakes in pursuit of mythical monster fish – and whilst Chatham may not have the rural atmosphere of say, Ashford, or the cobbled quirks of neighbouring Rochester, it is still steeped in history. The town has clearly moved on from the time when it was a small village that sat on the banks of the river. For me, history has always walked hand in hand with ghost stories, so it’s no surprise that many phantoms are said to haunt the town when one considers the amount of human remains that have been disturbed from their ancient resting places over the years. For instance, in March 1897, during the construction of a new store at Slicketts Hill, eleven ancient graves were exposed. Meanwhile, on 8 November 1950, the Chatham Standard reported that Anglo-Saxon remains had been discovered at Kitchener Barracks. The find, dating back to the ‘fourth or fifth century’, consisted of six skeletons which had also been dug up two centuries before. Five years later, the remains of Napoleonic soldiers were found by workmen digging behind a shop in Chatham High Street. These macabre finds instilled within me a need for atmospheric tales.

Most of the stories that you are about to read are previously unpublished. Indeed, many are first-hand accounts of the witnesses. Others have come from old newspaper clippings and different archived sources. Some are in-depth reports, others vague. Over the years I’ve collected literally hundreds of ghost stories pertaining to Chatham, but space does not allow me to feature every one, so I hope you enjoy those that I have chosen. Some relate to my own family and friends – people I trust. Other stories shed new light on those classic Chatham cases, i.e. Fort Amherst, the Theatre Royal and Chatham’s historic Dockyard – for the first time ever the legends of these three locations can now be looked at in-depth. The book also touches on a few cases that could be deemed as downright weird.

At the time of writing I live in neighbouring Rochester, but it has been a delight revisiting my childhood haunts. Seeing some of those once ghost-infested places brought to mind The Beatles’ song, ‘In My Life’. Traipsing through the streets of Chatham brought back childhood memories as once again – with camera in hand – I slipped through holes in snagging fences, climbed over crumbling walls, slinked between pallid gravestones, and entered locations I knew I was not permitted to be in. The rush of excitement was added to by the fact that these were the places I once knew to be haunted. Of course, some of these once eerie locations only exist as memory – they’ve since given way to modern construction – but other places have maintained their atmospheric charm. For those of you visiting such places, I do not advise following the child within you and trespassing, instead please ask permission from landowners etc., before embarking on any ghost hunts!

I do not expect you to believe all the tales contained within this book, because, let’s face it, ghosts have always been an unproven mystery – they seemingly exist, if they exist at all, as half-hinted forms and yet so many people claim to have observed them. It is important to enjoy such yarns, made all the more atmospheric when told around a flickering log fire on a crisp autumnal night. For those who do believe in such stories, Haunted Chatham will provide a glimpse into one of Kent’s most historic locations; and for those of you who remain unconvinced of such spook tales, I can only hope that as you doze off to sleep after this adventure, that some hideous spectre doesn’t infiltrate your nightmares and force you to question your disbelief. And remember, a ghost story is for life … not just for Christmas. So, as presenter Nick Ross used to say on BBC’s Crimewatch, ‘don’t have nightmares!’

Neil Arnold, 2012

one

Phantoms of Fort Amherst

I had always thought that ghostly apparitions and similar strange occurrences always seemed to be experienced at several removes, by someone who had known someone who had heard it from someone they knew!

Susan Hill – The Woman in Black

Fort Amherst – situated on Dock Road and within a few hundred yards of Chatham’s Dockyard – is Britain’s largest Napoleonic fortress. When the Dutch ran riot along the River Medway in 1667, Chatham Dockyard was raided due to a lack of defence. Work began on a fort in 1755: some forty-seven years after the original plans were laid out. The site on which the fortress was constructed harboured several caves and over time these were lengthened and strengthened to form the impressive labyrinth of tunnels one can see today. According to the Fort Amherst website:

To ensure the protection of the Dockyard, three defendable gateways were constructed to control and defend access into the area protected by the Chatham Lines. One of these gateways, the Upper Barrier Guardhouse, can be found within the lower portion of Fort Amherst. The guardhouse housed a small garrison to defend the route from Chatham town by the use of a drawbridge, loop-holed walls and a set of three heavy gates. The barrack rooms within this building have been restored for your enjoyment.

The fort, despite existing as a formidable defence system, was never put into use during battle. The website adds that: ‘In 1820 the defences were declared obsolete due to better artillery equipment with a greater firing range.’ Even so, during the Victorian period thousands flocked to the fort to watch training exercises, and during the Second World War the winding tunnels were used by the Anti-Invasion Planning Unit and Civil Defence. It wasn’t until the 1970s that the fort was restored. Volunteers, with the permission of the Ministry of Defence, clearly felt that the fort had a lot to offer as a tourist attraction, and in 1980 Fort Amherst was purchased from the MOD by the Fort Amherst & Lines Trust. Parts of the fort are now open to the public and the regular ghost tours are among the most popular attractions.

On 30 October 1990 the Chatham Standard reported, ‘Ghostie tour a sell-out’, stating:

Spine-chilling scenes with hideous apparitions and ghouls confronted people brave enough to book places on the Halloween tours of Fort Amherst, which got off to an early start this weekend. Around 2,700 people will have been daring enough to set foot in the creepy caves below the Napoleonic fort after the last tour tomorrow (Wednesday) night … The fort custodian, Mr John Loudwell, said the interest in the Halloween tunnel tours was increasing year by year and this year’s were a sell out before the weekend. Volunteers guide the reckless visitors around the fort’s subterranean chambers for the half-hour tour – if their nerves can stand it long enough. And even the bravest no doubt cast a wary eye over one shoulder for the little drummer boy who is said to haunt the fort.

Fort Amherst, along with Pluckley in Ashford (see my Haunted Ashford book), is recognised as one of the most haunted places in Kent. Each year thousands of people flock to the area. In 2008 staff of local radio station KMFM decided to test their nerves with a vigil at the fort; their story was covered by the Medway Messenger on 7 November under the headline: ‘Spooky night in tunnels tests our fear of ghosts.’

Fort Amherst has a haunted reputation.

Amherst tunnels, visible from the main road.

Thousands of people were left spooked after tuning in to KMFM for Medway’s Halloween broadcast on Friday night. But spare a thought for presenters Oli Kemp, Vanessa Elms and Rob Wills – the chosen trio – who spent the night looking for other restless souls deep within the haunted tunnels of Fort Amherst …

Presenter Oli Kemp recorded his nightly investigation for the newspaper, writing:

When I first mentioned to my colleagues Vanessa and Rob that we should do a live ghost hunt for Halloween, you should have seen the look of terror on their faces. But when I promised them they wouldn’t be alone they slowly came around to the idea. Alongside two mediums, a historian and a group of ghost experts, the three of us made our way to haunted Fort Amherst in Chatham. Were we sceptical about the event we lovingly called Frightday Night? I think it’s fair to say we all were, but the thought of seeing paranormal activity certainly got the adrenaline pumping. The dark spooky tunnels, built to defend the Royal Dockyard from attack by Napoleon’s forces, were enough to send chills down your spine on their own, so imagine what it was like when medium Richard Ware made contact with a dark and evil spirit called Vincent in the Guard House.

Nice, quiet Richard was suddenly shouting and egging Vincent on, which was slightly unnerving. While I wanted Vincent to ‘show his face’, as it were, at the same time I was kind of hoping he wouldn’t. He didn’t sound like a man to be messed with. Vincent did eventually reveal his presence by dropping something on the floor and making everyone jump. Richard also mentioned the presence of a woman called Margaret and a man called Frank. The names didn’t mean anything to Vanessa and I, but it suddenly dawned on Rob that they were the names of his dead aunt and uncle. Was it a coincidence, or were Rob’s dead relatives really trying to get through to him? I guess we’ll never know.

The newspaper article concluded with the mention of motion sensors and other gadgets that were being employed to monitor the atmosphere. Although different temperatures were recorded, and EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomena) equipment was used, it seems that like many a ghost hunt, it was minds, rather than ghosts, that were running wild.

In many ghost hunts, especially those involving a medium, it seems as though whilst some alleged spirits are contacted, or known to make their presence felt, these are often completely unconnected with the actual location. These reputed ghosts could well be connected to any member of the audience, or indeed the medium in question, and whilst strange noises, fleeting shadows and fluctuating temperatures seem unusual, they are clearly not concrete evidence of paranormal activity.

Entrance tunnel into the belly of the fort.

A number of ghostly investigations have been conducted at Fort Amherst. The Ghost Connections team visited the fort a few years ago; this resulted in, according to their website, one investigator, named Dave, seeing a dark figure. The sound of footfalls and the feeling of something pressing were also recorded, as well as whispering voices, the sight of a dark mass and a sudden drop in temperature. In today’s climate, this type of activity seems relatively common, and with such places harbouring so much energy, one would almost expect such occurrences. On another occasion the fort was visited by Ghost Search UK, who reported sightings of what are known as orbs. These are dubious round forms of possible energy that are often picked up on digital cameras, but they are rarely seen by the naked eye. Sceptics argue that such forms have only existed since the dawn of the digital camera, suggesting that the recording equipment is sensitive to particles of dust, moisture and the like. Many ghost hunters and spiritualists believe that orbs are in fact early spirit form, but this is never likely to be proven.

Fort Amherst, like Chatham Dockyard and the rural village of Pluckley, harbours so many ghost stories that people keep coming back to find them. Although the ghost tours are provided for pure entertainment – I paid a visit there in my teenage years and enjoyed the zombies (which leapt out from crevices) and atmosphere – people do claim to experience strange things at the fort.