The tale of the haunted castle is almost a cliché. But in the case of Dover Castle in Kent, England, the hauntings are very real, according to the large number of witnesses who have testified to having experienced paranormal happenings at the site.
Guarding the shortest crossing point of the English Channel,
Dover Castle is the largest castle in the UK and has been a key military
stronghold from the Middle Ages through to the Second World War. Human activity
on the site goes back even further. Excavations have provided evidence of Iron
Age activity in the locality, and the site may have been fortified with
earthworks at that time. In the Roman period, a lighthouse was erected, the
ruins of which are still visible inside the present castle. Later, a fortified
Saxon burgh is believed to have existed on the site, centred around the church
of St Mary de Castro (which still exists, though heavily reconstructed). The
church re-used the old Roman lighthouse as a bell-tower. A Norman motte and
bailey castle was erected at Dover shortly after the 1066 invasion, but the
castle we see today began to take recognisable shape during the reign of Henry
II. The defences were improved in the later Middle Ages and the Tudor period to
take account of the new importance of gunpowder and cannon. The castle played
only a minor role in the English Civil War, but due to its strategic location,
was of great importance both in the Napoleonic Wars and in the Second World
War. A network of tunnels was dug into the chalk hillside beneath the castle.
The first of these were created during the mediaeval period, but they were
greatly extended during both the Napoleonic Wars and the Second World War, when
they served as a barracks, underground military command centre and hospital.
Today, the castle is managed by English Heritage and open to
the public as a museum. Over the years, visitors and staff have reported a
multitude of ghostly phenomena on the site. The castle keep is one of the main areas
of activity. Apparitions include the ghost of the lower half of a man in the King’s
bedroom, a woman in a flowing red dress around the stairwell, and a spectral cavalier
in the keep’s basement. This last figure is reportedly dressed in early
seventeenth century clothing, wearing a black wide
brimmed hat and a purple cloak, with long dark wavy hair and a moustache.
A figure in blue has also been reported on many occasions in the mural gallery
area, and on one occasion a camera crew walking below the keep reported hearing
a ghastly scream from above.
One of the castle’s most famous ghosts is the spectre of a
headless drummer boy, frequently seen on the battlements outside the keep. This
figure is said to be the ghost of 15-year-old Sean Flynn, who, in the early
1800s, was supposedly sent on an errand to the town carrying a substantial
amount of money. He was ambushed by other soldiers in an attempt to steal the
money, and, so the story goes, he was decapitated by one of their swords as he
attempted to fight them off. Over the centuries numerous witnesses have
reported sighting his ghost, or hearing phantom drumming noises in the vicinity
of his murder.
The most haunted areas of the castle, however, appear to be
the underground tunnels. There have been numerous sightings in the WWII
tunnels, mostly of ghostly servicemen. In 1989 one
visitor reported seeing a man dressed in military uniform walk through a metal
plate door. Other apparitions reported from the wartime tunnels include the
ghost of a man who was killed while setting up radio equipment, a spectral
doctor in the underground hospital, and strange moving shadows in the old
operating theatre.. On one occasion the phantom radio technician apparently
walked straight through a visitor.
The mediaeval tunnels also appear to have their fair share
of ghosts. The spectre of a seventeenth century soldier, wearing a helmet and
carrying a pike, has been reported in the old guardroom at the furthest end of
these tunnels. A man in a blue cloak has also been seen walking along the
tunnels. The area of greatest activity appears to be the area beneath St John’s
Tower, where the distinct sound of heavy wooden doors being slammed shut is
reported on fairly frequent occasion, while phantom screams and moans have also
been been heard in this area. On one occasion two visitors claimed to have seen
the apparition of a human body dangling from above.
In 2002, the TV series Most Haunted Live conducted an
investigation of the castle. The programme invited medium Derek Acorah to
conduct a psychic survey of the castle. Acorah claimed to sense a psychic
impression of wounded men in the tunnels below St John’s tower, and the spirit
of a Napoleonic era doctor tending to them. In the lower level tunnels he
detected the ‘psychic energy’ of prisoners once incarcerated there. Acorah also
claimed to sense the spirit in the King’s bedchamber, which he identified as
that of a one-time servant of an eighteenth-century King, and further claimed
that he could sense the spirits of the drummer boy, Sean Flynn, and the ghostly
pikeman in the underground guardroom. An experiment was also conducted in which
a ‘trigger object’ a large key, was placed in the guardroom. This key was later
found to have moved, apparently of its own accord.
Every year, more ghostly stories are reported from the
castle by staff and visitors alike Sceptics may dismiss these stories as local
folklore, the products of over-active imaginations, or outright fabrication.
But how many of them would care to spend a night alone in the keep, or in the
maze of tunnels beneath the castle? And if they did so, might they just
possibly experience something that would change their minds about the reality
of the supernatural?
