by Will Storr
‘The only pitfalls,’ he says, standing up to let me out, ‘are the people that you could be meeting. Be very careful of people who say, “Don’t touch that, it’s evil.” And be careful of these bloody local groups who say they’re experts in this sort of thing. They’re not. Most of all, though, you must keep a level head. I’m an old hand at this – trust me.’
As his front door opens out onto a soberingly standard north London evening that’s turning quickly to drizzle, it strikes me that not once has Maurice mentioned being scared.
‘Scared?’ he says. ‘What’s to be scared of? I’m not into bloody demonology.’
‘Hello, is that Janet?’
‘No.’
‘Is Janet there, please?’
‘OK.’
…
‘Hello?’
‘Hello, Janet, my name’s Will. I hope you don’t mind me calling. I’m doing some research about ghosts and Maurice Grosse gave me your number. I was wondering if it would be at all possible to speak to me about your experiences.’
‘Oh.’
‘I really would appreciate it, Janet. It would be fantastic to meet you.’
‘Well, my mother passed away not long ago.’
‘Oh, I am sorry.’
‘And I never wanted to talk about it while she was still alive … ’
‘Could we say next week sometime?’
‘Um … ’
‘Wednesday? Evening?’
‘Er … ’
‘Sevenish?’
‘Er, well, OK.’
‘Oh, thanks, Janet. That’s great. I’ll see you then.’
10
‘Open your eyes’
IT’S DIFFICULT TO believe that spring is just a foot above my head. Walking through this abandoned brick warren of tunnels and halls has made me feel as though it might never come again. Light and warmth are alien to this place. The sun has never shone down here and you can tell. Its absolute absence creeps, like a slug’s trail, across your skin as you walk. It’s as if the permanent and unnatural subterranean night has caused a different evolution to take place in this dank and labyrinthine void. Occasionally, when the flickering light of the oil lamp strokes brightly enough against a wall, you can pick out a few words of some puzzling and desperate graffiti. It appears as if it’s been scrawled in a frenzy. Who’d write it? Who’d come down here? Who’d wander the catacombs of Coalhouse Fort, legendary around this part of the Thames Estuary for its ghosts and violent history? These twisting, witchy corridors regularly frighten their custodians, who have long given up using torches because of the constant, instant battery drain and are forced into using a fleet of rusty hurricane lights instead. I wonder, because I really can’t imagine, who’d come down here for fun?
And then I realise that the answer to that question is right behind me, chattering excitedly, its breath rising and merging in cold, quick clouds. The Ghost Club would. Obviously.
I point my camera randomly and shoot. It’s the third photo I’ve taken. I look at the LCD on the back and see an orb. I squint at it for a moment and press delete. Then I notice that the red low-power alert is flashing. My battery was charged, fully, just before I left. It usually lasts for hours. Then, my camera goes dead.
It’s a fortnight after my meeting with Maurice Grosse, and I’ve travelled to the far east of Essex for another Ghost Club vigil. The last time they came, members claimed they witnessed a poker game take place above the entrance of the fort, in a room that no longer has a floor. Other club regulars have spoken to me quietly, over heaving pints of esoteric bitter, of mysterious footsteps that have been heard scurrying through the wet tunnels and a definite and overwhelming presence that lurks in one of the arch-roofed rooms that leads off them. Could it be true? Could the invisible world have sprung a leak down in Coalhouse Fort?
There have been military defences here since 1402, and the building that we’re standing in now was built by the Victorians in 1874. It last saw active service in the Second World War, when guns that still sit on the roof tried to pick off German aircraft that were on their way to drop their bombs all over London. These days, the oil tankers that slide out to the North Sea on this slow, wide stretch of Thames move silently and unwittingly over plane-wrecks and corpses that still litter the riverbed.
By now, our group has reached Room 24, an old weapons storage space and the epicentre of much of the phantasmic trouble.
‘For those that don’t know,’ says a man in a big black leather coat, loud enough to silence the chatter, ‘a word of warning.’
He pauses, enjoying the moment that he’s commanded.
‘I,’ he says, ‘am a Trance Medium.’
There are at least twenty of us standing in a wide, wall-hugging circle. Steve has carefully gelled big-brushed hair, a beer-podgy face and the loudly confident tone of a privately educated P.R. executive trying to make himself heard in a singles bar.
‘Things tend to talk directly through me,’ he says. ‘I may appear to be in pain or suffering. I am fine. Whatever’s with me might be in pain, but don’t worry. I’ve been doing this for quite a few years and I’ve never had any trouble with it yet. Right, if everyone can hold hands and breathe deeply and relax.’
We grasp each other’s hands and begin to breathe as one. The light from the hurricane lamp in the middle of the floor is spread thinly in the powerful darkness of the room and the faces of this unwieldy investigating team appear boggle-eyed in the shadows. Above the rest of us, Steve’s breathing can be heard, pulling in and pushing out, getting gradually louder and higher. And then, he roars.
‘Aaaaaaarrrrrrrggggggghhhhhhhhhhhh,’ he says.
A self-conscious fear swells up in the room and bullies its silent occupants into watching him with undivided attention.
Steve breathes in again.
‘Eeerrrrrgggghhhuuuuuuuuhhhhhhh,’ he says, on the outbreath.
Eyes get wider and grips get stronger. Steve’s snarls become even more ferocious. Penny, our group leader, decides to take charge.
‘Will you come forward and tell us your name?’ she says.
‘Rarrrrrrrgggggggghhhhhhharrrrrrr!’ says Steve, even louder than before.
‘Please be gentle on the medium,’ says Penny.
‘Hoooooooaaaaaarrrrrrgghhhhh,’ says Steve, louder still, his neck jutting out and his head moving from side to side, like a riled T-Rex in an old Hollywood film.
‘Will you come forward and tell us your name?’
‘Weee arrrre heeerrreeee,’ says Steve, his words long, gruff and gravelly.
‘Who is here?’ says Penny.
‘Weeeee aaaarrrrreeeeee.’
‘Who is here?’
‘Aaaaaaaalllll ooofff uuuusssss.’
‘Who are you?’
‘Heeee iiiiis stoppppinggg ussss.’
‘Can he speak to us?’
‘ R o o o o o o o o a a a a a a a a a a a a a r r r r r r r r r r r ! Reaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiirrrrrrrr!’ says Steve.
‘Is he afraid of Malcolm?’
Malcolm is one of the workers at Coalhouse Fort. He’s six foot seven, wears tight, dirty trousers and a tatty leather waistcoat. He makes baffling jokes and laughs at them while looking at you, and he carries his smoking paraphernalia in a small Tupperware box. In truth, Malcolm is scary on about six different levels. But I can’t imagine why any ghost would be frightened of him.
‘I’ll tell you what,’ says Malcolm.
He’s had an idea. We watch him walk out of the room whilst the possessed trance medium grizzles and spits. Almost immediately, Malcolm’s scheme works. As soon as he’s hidden himself round the corner, the leader of the nastiness, the one who is ‘holding the others here’, steps forward in Steve’s trance. Its arrival is heralded by an almighty fifteen-second roar that builds to a dramatic, boiling, animal climax, with Steve’s neck arched upwards and his mouth stretched open, aiming his vociferous rage at the dripping ceiling. Then, he collapses. If it wasn’t for the people either side of h
im, holding him up by the armpits, Steve would have landed on his face. But they’re struggling. The force of his tormented, seized body is dragging them around and they keep having to re-step to stop themselves from being pulled over.
‘Tell us why you hold these people,’ says Penny.
‘Ttthhheeeeeeyyyy aaaarrrrrrreeeeeeeee miiiinnnneee! Rrrrrraaaarrrrgggghhhhh!! Tttthhheeeeyyy aaarrreeee miiiiiiiine!’
‘Why are you afraid of Malcolm?’
‘Rrrraaarrrrggghheeeeiiiiiiiiiaaaaaaaarrrrrgggghheeeeeeeee,’ says Steve.
‘OK, it’s time to step back,’ says Penny, nervously. ‘Come back to us, Steve. Come back to the light.’
‘Hoooooooaaaaaaarrrgghhhh!’
‘Can somebody get Malcolm back, please?’ says Penny.
‘Rraaaaarrgghhhh!’
Malcolm walks back in from round the corner and approaches the banjaxed medium.
‘Stand up!’ he shouts.
Nothing happens. The Ghost Club stares at Malcolm. He considers the situation carefully for a moment. Then he decides on a change of tactics.
‘Stand up,’ he whispers.
The members peer down at Steve to see if it’s worked. He’s still grumbling and murmuring in a diabolical fashion, hanging by the armpits off the people either side of him. Malcolm reflects on the problem for a little longer.
Then, he has another idea. This time, he thinks, he’ll growl his instruction in the manner of the beast.
‘Sssstttttaaaannnndddd uuuuuupppppp,’ he growls.
The rapt and anxious faces blink out from the shadows at Malcolm, who, on realising that saying ‘stand up’ is not going to work no matter how he says it, has crouched down and gripped Steve’s jaw in his hand. As I watch all of this, a small panic begins to well up inside of me.
‘Heeeaaarrrrrrrr me,’ Malcolm growls. ‘Hear ME! Come back now. Open your eyes. Open your eyes. See me. See ME!’
Lately, I’ve been losing my faith.
‘Opeeeennn yooouuurrrr eyesssssss,’ Malcolm growls.
What if everything I’ve found over the last few months has just been dust, insects and undiagnosed mental illness?
‘I’m trying,’ Steve whimpers.
‘OPEN YOUR EYES!’ Malcolm demands.
I’ve been thinking … what if there is no such thing as ghosts?
‘God,’ says Steve, his human voice restored. ‘I’ve suddenly realised you’re all stood around me.’
He smiles with faux embarrassment at all the eyes that are beaming onto him.
‘What was I saying?’ he says.
Someone in the group steps forward, nervously.
‘Gain control,’ he says. ‘Getting control. Getting stronger.’
‘The people he’s holding are still here,’ says someone else.
‘What he actually said is, they’re his,’ says yet another member. ‘They’re his and he keeps them here because he uses their power.’
‘But he didn’t actually say that, did he?’ I say.
‘One of the words actually sounded like “revenge”,’ says a woman.
‘That’s what I heard as well,’ says another.
‘I heard “eyes”,’ says another member.
‘Yeah,’ says a man in a woolly Russian hat, ‘I caught that bit. He doesn’t like Malcolm’s eyes. Yes,’ he considers, ‘there’s definitely something about your eyes that he doesn’t like.’
As the Ghost Club members crowd around Steve and pat him on the back, I find myself drifting back. I can’t join in. Up until the other day, my faith in ghosts came in floods. But now, something has switched. It wasn’t a rational thing, based on a careful weighing of the facts. It was an instinctual shift. It happened after my visit to Maurice Grosse’s house. What he told me was so incredible that it forced me into a corner. If I was to believe the Enfield story, it would mean that I’d have to sign up, completely, to being a ghost believer of the most fervent kind. Because what Maurice told me overrules all the other arguments: ghosts exist and they know exactly what they’re doing. What happened there must have been the work of an outside entity. For a start, it spoke. It threw Lego at press photographers and pulled Rose’s leg and broke fundamental laws of physics on request. This wasn’t a stored-up tape recording or an obscure psychological effect. It was active. It was behaving. It was on purpose. It bullied the Hodgson family and it smashed up their house.
And yet, something in my brain has shut down. I was willing to go along with all this ghost stuff when it was just flashes and touches and sounds. But when I was forced to go the whole distance, to believe in this crowded, invisible, everywhere world, my mind had a sit-down strike. It’s like R.E. A-level all over again.
As I drift further away from the Ghost Club’s excitable throng, I catch the eye of someone else, a thirty-something man with dramatically atypical hair who looks similarly lost in thought. We look at each other for a moment. The beginning of a smile tingles at the sides of his mouth. We can tell what we’re thinking. I follow him out of the room and back into the tunnel.
‘I wasn’t really 100 per cent sure about all that,’ I begin, cautiously.
‘Yes,’ he says, walking briskly in front of me. ‘The more of these things I go to, the more I feel … ’ He’s struggling to say the words. ‘It’s all … ’
‘What did you think of the trance medium?’ I ask.
‘Do you want the truth?’ he says, turning as he walks and making full face contact for the first time.
‘Yes,’ I reply, as we round the corner out of the tunnel system into the warm, copper-scented spring night.
‘Utter crap,’ he says, finally. He smiles broadly with the relief of it all. ‘Total bullshit.’ He looks like a man exorcised.
We walk up the stairs, sit down on the roof next to a massive gun and introduce ourselves. Philip Hutchinson is, it turns out, a very senior Ghost Club member. He’s on the board. He also makes a living out of spooks, taking highly popular ghost walks around Guildford and London. Behind us, the turrets, platforms and chimneys of some vast industrial plant towers over the estuary. Red and green lights flash, streams of white smoke barrel purposefully upwards and a silver chimney aims a brilliant, computer-controlled flame at the heavens. It’s every bit as breath-taking as a mythical castle, supreme and intimidating and awesome against the night.
‘In all the investigations I’ve been on – and there’s been a lot … ’ he says.
And then he stops and goes into a deep nod. When his chin reaches its lowest point he just keeps it there and looks, for a moment, at his shoes, as he considers what he’s about to say very carefully.
Then, he looks me right in the eye and says, ‘I don’t think anything truly paranormal has ever happened.’
There’s a silence. Suddenly, a conspiratorial, confessional fever overcomes me. It’s mischievous and warm and infectious, and I feel a surge of relief at suddenly being able to give my worries a voice. I move closer and start to tell him about my first Ghost Club outing to Michelham and the dowsing rods that sprung to life in my hands. I tell him that I’ve been thinking a lot about that night. And I’ve been having doubts.
Firstly, there was Lance’s worry that they’d made contact with a Benedictine monk when Michelham was actually an Augustinian priory. Secondly, there was the Founder’s wonky hand in Wales. And thirdly, and most of all, there was the lack of actual researchable facts that were gleaned from Sir Thomas Sackville. We failed to discover what year he was born or how he died. All we knew for sure was that he was dead and angry. So, we had no evidence whatsoever that we were actually in contact with a ghost.
‘I’ve done plenty of dowsing in my time,’ Philip begins.
‘And have you ever had any results that actually check out factually?’ I ask.
‘No,’ replies Philip, scratching his knee. ‘No, not at all.’ He looks at me for a moment to gauge my reaction, before continuing. ‘And nor has anyone else.’
‘It is strange, though,’ I say. ‘I’m sure
that, when I did it, I could really feel a definite pull.’
‘Yes, I’ve been thinking about that,’ he says, ‘and I think that it’s really all due to physics. When you’re holding a copper rod in front of you that extends for about a foot, and your hand moves downwards, even just a fraction, the rods will move and the pull of them, the momentum, will actually be quite great. The way you hold those rods, they’re effectively quite heavy. And as soon as they start shifting around, the momentum is going to feel like a really strong drag. If I’m totally honest, I think all dowsing rods should come with a spirit level on them.’
I sigh and look down and kick a weed to death with my foot. From deep underneath us, we can just hear the sound of Steve roaring again.
‘Do you think all these mediums are just faking it, then?’ I ask.
‘No, not all of them,’ says Philip. ‘What’s happening down there, it’s hugely entertaining, but it’s just a show. He’s just an attention-seeker.’
‘What about someone like Paolo?’ I say. Paolo didn’t strike me as an attention-seeker at all. He was genuinely terrified in that priory room.
‘No, Paolo doesn’t fake anything,’ says Philip. ‘Not at all. Anything that happens he will believe it to be genuine. He’s just highly strung, that’s all. And he will often go for the paranormal explanation rather than the rational.’
‘So you think it’s all rubbish, then?’ I say.
‘No,’ says Phil, ‘but only because I have actually seen a ghost. I had a 100 per cent certifiable sighting of a woman in a place called Woodchester Mansion in Gloucester on 27 January 2002.’
PHILIP GOES ON to tell me that he has two theories on ghosts. The first is the Stone Tape theory, which Stephen the Druid told me about. And the second involves time-slips. Apparently, Einstein’s theory of relativity says that time isn’t linear, but all twisted up like a ball of wool. So, if we’re all barrelling up and down and around and around in these tangled woolly time-strands, it’s possible to rub up against a strand from a completely different era, like the sixteenth century, or the twenty-seventh, and when this happens, information can leak through. Thus ghosts.
