News

Dover Castle, which has a reputation for ghostly activity, has regular reports from visitors of mysterious sightings.

Throughout the sites operated by English Heritage a new survey of "hauntings" and unexplained events, from riderless horses disappearing through castle walls to mischievous spirits apparently barging into visitors, has been compiled.

Some incidents are said to have led staff to resign. At Dover Castle, employees have established protocols on how to deal with suspected sightings of ghosts or unexplained events.

Many of the events involve staff and visitors seeing mysterious figures, while others involve complaints that people were pinched or pushed, when there was nobody standing near them. Some reports involve items being moved around sites.

There have been so many sightings of mysterious figures in the labyrinth of tunnels below Dover Castle, that staff have created an established procedure for dealing with them.

Christine Pascall, the castle’s visitor operations manager, said: “About once a month we will have a report of something untoward, like a figure.

“We have a process that we put into place where we close down the system, evacuate visitors and a team of staff will sweep through the whole network of tunnels. It can be very frustrating for visitors.”

On one occasion, a group of schoolchildren were drawing in the tunnels. When they handed in their pieces of paper, one boy had written “Where is Helen?”

He told staff he had met a man in the tunnels dressed in a green jumper and brown trousers who was looking for a woman called Helen. A search was carried out but no such visitor was found.

On another occasion, visitors on a guided tour said a door had suddenly slammed shut and a stretcher trolley exhibit had moved very quickly along the corridor, as if pushed very violently.