Coalhouse Fort, rather the area that it was built on, has had over 600 years of military history. The current fort was completed in 1874 defending the Thames and ultimately London. It is one of the Palmerston forts, built from a recommendation of the Royal Commission in 1860 for protection, mainly from the French. Continuing it's defensive role through the World Wars it was eventually sold by the MOD to Thurrock Council in 1962. The council have leased out the fort since 1983 to the Coalhouse Fort Project, a charity with the ultimate aim of restoring it to it's former glory as a military garrison. Many of the volunteers that work at the fort have been witness to paranormal and unexplained occurrences, including replay's of a wartime poker game, footsteps. heavy dragging noises, strange smells and voices. A variety of apparitions have been supposedly witnessed throughout the fort, while there are reports of cold spots and batteries draining for no apparent reason.

Coalhouse Fort certainly does convey a sinister atmosphere as you drive through the gated entrance into the main courtyard. Dilapidated buildings, deserted walkways and uninviting windows concealing dark, abandoned rooms. This doesn’t even account for the fact that the majority of the investigation was to be spent in the foreboding labyrinth of tunnels beneath the fort. The event carried an additional edge on this occasion as we were joined by Capital FM’s Tim Lichfield in aid of the charity Help A London Child. Our opening vigil was based in the main kitchen area where we undertook an automatic writing experiment using a Planchette, with varying degrees of success. Throughout the experiment we captured some random movement of the pen, resulting in unintelligible marks and scribbling, however it was the phenomena external to the experiment that was of interest. Team members experienced cold breezes, touching sensations and feelings of pressure on their bodies. All of the participants felt a presence of some description, although little recordable phenomena occurred to enable me to verify that all of this was not simply the over-enthusiastic imaginations of the team. Our 2nd vigil took us into tunnel system beneath the fort, where we concentrated on the left-hand section. Here we had earlier set up a white noise experiment with a radio in a locked off room as well as a 2nd experiment involving a strobe light and a locked off camera. We began the vigil with a group session attempting to make contact with any spirit energies that may have been present, with little success. Splitting the team off into groups of 2 it became clear that this raised levels of apprehension, with one couple in particular experiencing oppressive sensations before having to vacate a particular room. At that point we were informed by our safety guide Kevin that he had heard what sounded like clear footsteps along the corridor towards the exit, while one other team member also felt they heard shuffling feet behind them. We also noticed upon leaving that the doorway to the radio experiment room was open even though the team had earlier seen me close it and secure it. The final vigil took us to the alternate end of the tunnel system where unfortunately we captured little activity even though this section is reputedly the most active. One of the safety team did however recall an incident to us from earlier in the night, when he and another of his team witnessed what they could only describe as a dark figure standing on one of the walkways around the edge of the courtyard area. Even though on a personal level I experienced very little I would consider to be supernatural, Coalhouse Fort certainly possesses the appropriate atmosphere to accompany its paranormal reputation.