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.

This was my fourth visit to Coalhouse Fort, which has recently been featured on Most Haunted, where it had apparently been hailed as on of the scariest locations the team had ever visited. Personally over the four years I had investigated the fort I had witnessed very little activity and for that reason had no specific expectations for the night ahead. We were joined by Stewart Keeys once more who had previously investigated the location with me in 2006, as well as newcomer Marc who was being lined up as one of our new Mediums within the team.

After a typically interesting walk around with Stewart and Mark we embarked upon our first vigils of the night which took my team to Rooms 24 and 26. I began by splitting the group into 2 teams, leaving John to investigate Room 24 while I took a team to Room 26. Here I began by asking the two ladies to join me in a circle where we asked out for signs of activity. After a short while we were having little success so I decided that we would turn facing outwards this time while holding hands. Shortly after this change we did start to hear odd shuffling sounds, possibly resembling light footsteps coming from outside of the door. It must be said however that Coalhouse staff member Simon was stood in the corridor and from my experience the acoustics can be quite deceiving in the tunnels, so we cannot discount that we were picking up his movements here. Of greater interest however was a more distinct knock on the floor which we all heard, while there was also a moment when some grit fell onto one of the chairs from the ceiling above at the time when we asked out for a sign. In truth however there was a reasonable amount of this white flaky material on the floor under the chair so it is most likely a coincidental occurrence. One of the ladies did suggest seeing a small blue light near the chair at one point although we were not all able to witness this at the same time.

Our second vigil of the night took place in the outdoor Quadrangle. It began with the Spiritchaser EMF that Sharon had brought along recording slight readings when placed on the floor in the middle of the group. We then held hands in a circle and asked for any presence to use the light indicators on the EMF for signs of yes and no in an attempt to make more direct communication. Although initially it appeared as if the responses from the device coincided with our questions, it became apparent that the readings were more and more random and eventually the lights would flicker consistently showing no obvious signs of pattern or intelligence. We then attempted a visualisation experiment where I asked each member of the group stood in the circle to pick a spot from the surrounding building and imagine exploring that area and asking out in their minds for signs of activity. Although this was an interesting diversion for the group, all remained perfectly quiet. Some members believed they could smell burning towards the end of the vigil, although as we were outside it was not possible to be sure where the smell had originated from.

For the penultimate vigil we found ourselves in the Theatre, where a glass divination experiment had been set up for us. After roughly ten minutes of asking out the glass eventually began to move very slowly, and we decided to placed a red and white light at each end of the table to indicate yes and no responses to our questions. The glass began to move quite freely after a short while, and upon questioning appeared to identify that a presence wished to connect with a particular member of the group - this was also validated by Stewart who had joined me for this vigil. As the glass continued to move towards one of the ladies in the team we directed our questions specifically relating to her to help identify whether this could be a family member. The responses suggested a grandfather figure who had a particular message to pass on. It was apparent that the lady in question had wanted to hear a response to a specific personal question, so I instructed her to ask this question in her head so that she did not have to share the sensitive nature of this information with the group. Apparently the response from the glass was favourable, and in general she felt that the experience had brought some answers and peace to her situation. Also during this session another member of the group felt that they needed to leave the room, accompanied by Stewart, after being overwhelmed with emotion. We concluded the glass divination and spent a short while asking out for signs of activity but without success.

The final vigil of the night took place in the derelict latrines area, where we were again joined by Stewart. Initially Stewart sensed a rather dark energy behind him and we decided to join in a circle stood towards the far end of the room in an attempt to make contact. Besides the occasional sense of cramp in the legs and the odd swaying sensation there was nothing of real significance to report. By this time it was getting light outside so we decided to call an end to our vigil and head back to base camp.