Derek Acorah - Derek Acorah’s Ghost Towns

It was the smell of tar. It began wafting around the room and soon everyone started to smell it.

‘When I first smelled the smells I just thought, “Oh, it’s probably all in the mind,” but it was really, really strong. I could really smell the tar. It was just like roads being laid.’

Trisha

‘That happens all the time,’ Neil said, ‘and it’s always around this area.’

Then I got a name: Frederick Symes. ‘That’s his name,’ I stated.

‘My favourite part of this investigation was actually putting a name to the sailor.’

Neil

Hardly had I said the words than Angus looked puzzled and asked,‘What’s started swinging?’

Everyone looked up, startled. A lamp that was hanging above the bookshelf behind us was rocking back and forth. Its moving shadow was what had caught Angus’s attention.

‘That’s got to be phenomena,‘I explained.’ No one’s touched it. ‘I felt really pleased that we were getting such a good response.‘Come on,’I said encouragingly,‘give it a really good swing!’

Suddenly Danniella exclaimed,‘That’s moving, that one, that’s moving as well!‘She and Angus both pointed at once. A miner’s lamp which was hanging near the other lamp was also swinging gently. The spirit man was responding to us.

‘When we saw the lamps moving, we all stopped in our tracks.’

Angus

There was no window, no draught, no breeze, no physical reason why the lamps should be moving, and the wonderful thing about it was the way that the momentum kept up. There was no one near the lamps anyway, but if they had been physically pushed, sooner or later they would have slowed down and come to a stop, but the pace remained the same for six or seven minutes.

While we were still gazing at the swinging lamps, there was a sudden thud near the bookcase. Angus jumped and turned towards the noise. ‘Did you hear that?’ he said. ‘Like a thud on the floor.’ Everyone had heard it.

Danniella was still looking at the miner’s lamp, screwing her eyes up. ‘That really is moving, isn’t it? It’s not just me, is it?’

We could all see the base of the miner’s lamp moving slowly from side to side.

Then Trisha noticed something else. ‘That book, that’s just moved out as well.’

‘It has!’ I cried. ‘It has ! You are right!’

A book on the top shelf had moved forward, just as if a hand had pulled it towards the edge of the shelf.

‘That was totally unexpected. You don’t expect books to move out of line when they’ve all been in a perfect line… Yeah, that was strange, very strange.’

Trisha

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘Thank you for doing that.’ The old sailor was really showing us that he was still around!

All this time the lamps were still moving. The first lamp was now moving randomly round and back again rather than swinging from side to side.

‘I just had to smile. I knew that the old captain, as I call him, was going to show that he was still around.’

Honda

Danniella was curious. ‘Neil, how does that make you feel? You live here.’

Neil wasn’t bothered by it. ‘It’s fine,’ he said. He smiled and shrugged. ‘He’s never done anything to me.’

I knew he never would.

Having succeeded in communicating with the spirit, we decided to finish the séance. I thanked everyone for their participation and closed the circle down.

When we looked up again, the lamps had stopped moving.

I was thrilled. In all my years I had never been in an investigation where I had got three responses like that in a matter of minutes. And, as Danniella said, the fact that the phenomena stopped once the séance was over was also interesting, as it showed that the energy had just backed right away.

Neil was amazed at what had happened in his pub. ‘It was totally unexpected, because I’ve lived here for so long now and nothing’s ever happened like that, ever, and it was amazing. I couldn’t believe it.’

I found out afterwards that according to local legend, one Christmas Eve the captain of an old Dutch barge had been taken ill and had come banging on the door of the Shipwright’s Arms. The bar manager at the time had thought it was a punter trying to get back into the pub and hadn’t opened the door. When he did open it the following morning, he found the captain’s body lying there. He had frozen to death during the night.

‘We can tell them the real story now,’ Trisha said, laughing.

Dr Simon Sherwood from the University of Northampton has been examining our results from a scientific perspective.

‘There was no question that the lantern was definitely moving from side to side. One possible explanation is that the wooden beam that the lantern was suspended on was contracting due to the temperature cooling down and this may have caused it to move from side to side. So that’s something that we would need to rule out. I actually measured the temperature along the beam that it was suspended on and found that there was indeed a temperature difference along it.’

‘As for the book, I spoke to the landlord earlier and he said that very often when he goes to bed at night and locks the place up everything’s in order and he comes down in the morning and finds that some of the books have been taken off the shelves and arranged in particular formations on the table. So it’s interesting that that happened on the same shelf. I don’t have a definite explanation.’

‘When we are doing our initial research into a town we will always come across the name of a noted local historian, and usually they are glad to help. We try to get the main local authority if we can, or if not, someone they have recommended. They come from a variety of backgrounds – they can be people who run museums, retired academics, and so on – but their local knowledge is always invaluable to us.’

Natalie

In the case of Faversham, the local historian was a gentleman called Dr Arthur Percival. He told us:

‘The building was opened by a shipwright who had a yard there building sailing barges and, partly for his workforce and partly for people living in the area, he decided to open a beer house. Undoubtedly he did a very good trade with seafarers of various kinds and therefore it’s possible that somebody, some seafarer, turned up and was turned away. You know, it’s a feasible thing, certainly.’

‘My name’s Jo and I live in Faversham. And I believe our house is haunted.’

Jo Crouch

Mother and daughter Janet and Jo Crouch are part of a local Spiritualist circle, so are familiar with spirits – they even have several at home! They told us their house was haunted by a little girl and three boys. ‘Tommy’s a bit mischievous,’ Janet explained, ‘and he runs up and down stairs and shakes stepladders.’

‘And their father’s there as well,’ Jo went on, ‘and there’s a lady in the bathroom. She’s rather strict sometimes.’ This definitely seemed a place worth investigating!

We met Janet and Jo in their dolls’ house shop and as they led Danniella and me through to their home, I was hit by the atmosphere. A whole congregation of energies was coming in! We went up the stairs to the first floor and as we paused outside the bathroom I was aware that a lot of psychic activity had been going on there.

As the ladies themselves were so sensitive to spirit, Danniella suggested that we went straight into a circle to see what we could pick up. I thought that was an excellent idea. There were so many spiritual energies there that someone was bound to communicate in one way or another.