Least Haunted – Kelvedon Hatch Bunker

Nope. We don’t “got” ghosts.

Ever since I covered the interpretation of the Kelvedon Hatch nuclear bunker I’ve been meaning to go back and watch the predictably terrible ‘Most Haunted’ episode filmed there (Series 13 Episode 6 from 2009). If you’re as much of a masochist as me, you can find a copy on YouTube. Here goes!

The introduction as usual has presenter Yvette Fielding outlining the existing ghost stories about the site that they’re ostensibly there to investigate (and usually end up ‘finding’). She mentions “a great figure…seen moving from room to room witnesses indicate that it appears to be the figure of an unusually tall elderly lady…” Odd – neither the RAF nor Home Office were known to recruit elderly women. Fielding tells us of “dark figures” in the sick bay and “the figure of an RAF officer” both claimed to be “re-running” their “daily duties” and “…a scientist who is very unwelcoming to any guests that enter his domain is thought to haunt the site after his untimely death.” There’s no evidence that anyone died in the bunker at any point. When the site was an RAF ROTOR radar bunker staff didn’t live in the bunker, they were bussed there and back each working day. So for an RAF ghost to even make sense he’d have had to have died ‘on the job’. Of course I can’t prove that he didn’t, but we don’t even have a superficial real-world identification here. They haven’t bothered to research whether such a thing ever happened. The scientist and medical staff and/or patient ghosts are also implausible. No-one lived in the bunker during the 1960s UK Warning and Monitoring Organisation use of the site or during government headquarters phase of occupation either. In fact the place was entirely unoccupied (other than the surface guardoom) outside of occasional exercises, so this is even less likely. Presumably this scientist is supposed to have died during an exercise? Again there’s no evidence of that. The sick bay was never used for its intended purpose, unless of course someone got a ‘booboo’ on an exercise but that’s hardly likely to result in a haunting. Of course you can argue that these supposed deaths would be subject to the Official Secrets Act but by the same token this means there’s no way to verify that a corresponding death even happened, much less that people are really seeing/experiencing the resulting ghosts. None of these entities puts in an appearance during the show proper, surprisingly. Finally Fielding mentions “…a negative entity here some believe to be of a demonic source that engulfs unsuspecting people in a cloak of darkness, so frightening is this phantom and its actions some people refuse to enter this area.”

We move to “resident historian” Leslie Smith who blethers briefly about “spies and double-agents” being a “dreadful reality”. Not here they weren’t – these bunkers had nothing to do with the likes of the Secret Intelligence Service. Anyway, she doesn’t seem to be saying that they were – just that the people that worked here were likewise subject to the Official Secrets Act and the associated “weight of knowledge”. This goes nowhere – I assume the implication is that this has resulted in some sort of negative ‘psychic energy’ or something but a) she doesn’t explain this and b) she’s supposed to be the historian, not an accomplice for the psychic medium du jour. She goes on…

“…the deeper you go into the bunker right deep down there is a dark presence there, an evil presence that rises up and makes the area black so even if the lights are on people can’t see and stumble about, it’s said…”

This is presumably the same thing Yvette was on about earlier. Clearly this phenomenon didn’t manifest while they were filming (although they love to turn the lights off themselves of course) and it certainly didn’t when I visited. I’m sure lights have gone out or been turned out while people have visited on ghost hunting trips, but if this was happening regularly I think the bunker’s Tripadvisor reviews would be suffering. 

We are then treated to “world renown [sic] medium, lecturer, teacher and bestselling author” Patrick Mathews who gives us some truly vague drivel in the bunker’s sick bay, not about the obvious (but problematic) ghosts of patients or doctors etc but ramblings about the “owner of the land” who he imagines was fighting the purchase or the construction of the bunker. More on that in a moment.

Then comes the most pathetic moment of the whole episode. Fielding asks fake psychic medium Patrick Mathews “what sort of time period” and he pauses, at which point someone off-camera (who apparently can’t remember when the bunker was built either but doesn’t want the editor to have to jump-cut to the answer) whispers “when it was built”! You can hear it here at 03:03:35. To Mathews’ credit he’s remembered the rough answer and is trying to come up with a plausible answer (one from ‘spirit’ rather than the script or guidebook) – not to when the bunker was built – but to when this imaginary protester might have been protesting. He eventually arrives at “19…give or take 50? Okay maybe a little before that because there was talk about…” and trails off there. In reality the ROTOR system was conceived and locations chosen in 1950, not before. The bunker wasn’t built until 1952 so it’s highly unlikely that there was “talk” prior to 1951.

The supposed reason for his protest isn’t the loss of farmland or anything, it’s this pish;

“…this wasn’t worth the sacrifice to save others and disrespect those who have already passed [pointless interjection from Yvette here] because he’s saying, ‘cos I’m going with this and he’s saying about the, the, the, digging, the, the discovery and all of a sudden there were bodies discovered here okay, and it was almost like a hush-hush type thing or like a secret thing or not talked about he says because he’s going like this like “shh” it wasn’t said so when they were building or putting this all together there were burial grounds or something to that or…the burial of what?…either mass graves, a war site of some type of battle that the people were here they must have discovered bones…”

Of course no-one bothers to do any basic research to see if anything archaeological was found on-site and his nonsense is interrupted by a claim from the crew to have heard something spooky.

We then move downstairs to the Government Departments (not ‘Department’ as the CGI map says) and a different ‘spirit’ appears who is apparently “screaming” because his face melted and “burnt badly”. Mathews never reveals where he was going with this in terms of where these bodies might have come from, when or how they died – possibly he’s aware of Matthew Hopkins and witch-trials, although you wouldn’t expect him to have specified a male ghost. Anyway, he continues his storytelling with;

“…right now they’re showing me digging and digging so I’m taking when they built this building or whatever it, you know, the area while they were digging there must have been bodies found because I see digging, I see them holding up a bone right and the bones that they found, the people the spirits were not pleased with the way they were handled okay…”

At this point Ciaran calls Mathews out regarding the first spirit being unhappy that the government was taking his land because of these burials. He suggests that if burials were found the government would have just moved the construction somewhere else. I actually don’t believe that in a 1950s context – the site was carefully chosen and this was well before any requirement to stop work to carry out a full archaeological survey let alone change location. They’d have recovered the remains, they might even have called in an archaeologist but there would have been no requirement to relocate. Still, it makes Mathews think on his feet and come up with a new justification that the owner didn’t want to give up his land but was forced to. This is true on one level, that this was a compulsory purchase. But did the original owner resist? No evidence of that. The current owner is the grandson of the original and nowhere has he ever said that his father resisted, for reasons of ancient burials or otherwise – I’m sure he had his misgivings but it wouldn’t have been the ‘done thing’ to voice them. Again if we’re to believe this we have to assume conspiracy and cover-up, one that the owner of the site could easily corroborate, but they don’t even try (or they did and he refused). This man is also claiming to be in touch not with some distant occupant of the site but with the current owner’s dead grandfather, seems rather near the knuckle. It’s perhaps telling that he did not take any active part in the filming and just took the money. I don’t blame him. 

The rest of the episode is the usual faffing around in the dark claiming to have heard footsteps, voices or other noises to no result, despite what “sceptic” O’Keefe claims at the end about one incident possibly being “paranormal” because no-one heard a door shut. In other words this episode is practically identical to every other that I’ve subjected myself to, but worse in a way because it lacks even the usual superficial attempts to connect the claims being made with any oral or (god forbid) written history of the site in question. Unfortunately Most Haunted kept going on along the same lines on TV until 2019 in one form or another and has been (sort of) revived as a stage show. As this is getting…mixed reviews (amusingly, posted to the wrong page), this might be the final “dead cat bounce” for the franchise, which really should never have survived the infamous “Mary loves Dick” incident.

On Silver Bullets, Werewolves, and Gévaudan

This reminds me, I must re-watch ‘Brotherhood of the Wolf’…

One of my YouTube subscriptions is Trey the Explainer, who does good stuff on history, natural history, evolution, and cryptid creatures, among other things. His latest Cryptid Profile is especially relevant to my interests, because it covers the ‘Beast of Gévaudan’, and I have by coincidence just finished helping with a forthcoming documentary about La Bête. I fully support his conclusion that this was a classic cryptid/social panic case, with anything and everything being identified/misidentified as the beast in question. It was very likely several wolves and/or wolf-dogs, possibly a hyena, possibly a lion or other escaped big cat, and possibly even all of the above. I won’t even rule out the suggestion of a human murderer or two in the mix somewhere. What it wasn’t was a single creature with a supernaturally hard or charmed hide. However, Trey gets a few facts wrong about werewolf and silver bullet mythology. Firstly, there’s no evidence that any of the creatures killed and recovered were actually dispatched with a silver bullet, and some good evidence that they weren’t (such as not being mentioned at all in period sources, notably an autopsy report). Suspected ‘Beasts’ WERE shot at with silver bullets but importantly, they apparently did not work. A Madame de Franquieres wrote to her daughter-in-law on the Beast:

 

‘The express sent to Aurillac relates that M. de Fontanges has had many encounters with the ferocious beast, of which you have no doubt heard, that traverses the Gevaudan. He has passed places where she often goes; he was forced to stay three days in the snow for fear of meeting her. She crosses, without wetting her feet, a river thirty-six feet wide. He claims that she can cover seven leagues in an hour. The peasants do not dare to go out into the country unless in groups of seven or eight. We can not find anyone to herd the sheep. She does not eat animals, only human flesh; men she eats the head and stomach, and women over the breasts. When she is hungry, she eats it all. We tried to shoot him with bullets of iron, lead, silver. Nothing can penetrate. We must hope that in the end we will overcome it.’

-M.”° de Franquières à M.”° de Bressac, Grenoble, 14 March 1765 – see the French original here (p.138).

 

This is supported by another source from 1862 (see here): that reports the use of ‘almost point blank’ folded silver coins, also to no apparent avail. Of course it’s possible that some poor wolf did slink away and die, but either wasn’t the Beast or wasn’t the only ‘Beast’ abroad at that time.

Trey is also under the impression that this incident is the source of the belief that silver bullets can kill werewolves. This is true insofar as there are no written accounts of silver bullet use against canids until Gévaudan, despite modern claims that the silver bullet aspect was only introduced in more modern times or even in fictionalised accounts. The source above proves otherwise. The story certainly helped to spread the idea and perpetuate it into the era of mass literacy and supernatural fiction. However, the idea that this is ground zero for silver bullets versus werewolves is untrue in the sense that the belief applied by no means just to werewolves, but rather to a range of supernatural or charmed targets (although as I’ve previously noted, not vampires until 1928). As such, it predates Gévaudan, meaning that there is in fact no source for the slaying of werewolves with silver bullets. For as long as silver bullets were ‘a thing’, they would have been seen as effective against werewolves or wolf-like supernatural beasts. I should note here that nowhere in the historical literature is the Beast of Gévaudan claimed to have been a loup-garou or werewolf. There are no accounts of it shifting shape, no accusations made of any people suspected to be the Beast. However, historians have noted in period reports werewolf traits such as a foul stench, unusually long claws and teeth, ‘haunting’, ‘sparkling’ or glowing eyes, and an erect posture (see Jay Smith’s ‘Monsters of the Gévaudan: The Making of a Beast’, p.21).

So where does the silver bullet myth come from? The oldest references that I’ve found are in Scots and American poems (1801 and 1806 respectively), and relate to yet another class of supernatural being, albeit one with close ties to the werewolf; that of the witch. The very earliest is the 1801 Scots poem ‘A Hunt’ by James Thomson:

 

‘Quoth he, “I doubt there’s something in’t, Ye’re no’ a hare.

Then in he pat a silver crucky [sixpence],

And says, “Have at ye now, auld lucky ;

Although ye were the de’il’s ain chucky,

Or yet himsell, If it but touch of you a nucky,

It will you fell.”’

 

The sacred cross on the face of the penny was significant. Other accounts mention that the projectile has actively been blessed. A Swedish story from the Gösta Berlings Saga mentions bullets cast from a church bell. But the silver itself seems to have had a divine and magical significance, one that stretches back to ancient times (notably the Delphic Oracle, see this fantastic collection of references). In the German folk tale ‘The Two Brothers’ for example, the witch is shot at with three ordinary silver buttons.

My next source, ‘The Country Lovers‘ (published by Thomas Green Fessenden in 1804) comes from the United States:

 

‘And how a witch, in shape of owl,

Did steal her neighbour’s geese, sir,

And turkies too, and other fowl,

When people did not please her.

Yankee doodle, &c.

And how a man, one dismal night,

Shot her, with silver bullet,*

And then she flew straight out of sight,

As fast as she could pull it.

Yankee doodle, &c.

How Widow Wunks was sick next day,

The parson went to view her, And saw the very place, they say,

Where foresaid ball went through her !

Yankee doodle, Sec.

*There is a tale among the ghost-hunters, in New England, that silver bullets will be fatal to witches, when those of lead would not avail.

 

More Germanic folklore, recorded in 1852 (Benjamin Thorpe’s Northern Folklore, Vol.III, p.27), related that a witch, if shot with silver, would receive a wound that would not heal, and would have to resume its human form. Witches were commonly thought to shapeshift into animal form, hence the overlap with the werewolf. The ‘Witch of Schleswig’ was also known as ‘The Werewolf of Husby’,

Beyond witches, silver bullets might help against other entities. One story includes a shot used against the magic itself rather than the offending creature’s body; in this case a group of fairies;

 

‘In a Norse tale, a man whose bride is about to be carried off by Huldre-folk, rescues her by shooting over her head a pistol loaded with a silver bullet. This has the effect of dissolving the witchery; and he is forthwith enabled to seize her and gallop off, not unpursued.’

 

Frank C. Brown recorded (from North Carolina) a variety of uses of silver (bullet and otherwise) against black magic of all sorts. Ghosts are also associated with silver bullets, as in Washington Irving’s ‘Tales of a Traveller’, Vol.2 (1825), which references a (fictional) pirate ghost. Collections/indices of American folklore also reference ghosts as well as witches (e.g. ‘Kentucky Superstitions’ (1920).

However, the very oldest written accounts were made in reference to ordinary human beings that have been protected (or have protected themselves) by magical charms. These were known as ‘hardmen’, and were typically powerful or noteworthy men with a literal aura about them. One such was John Graham of Claverhouse, Viscount Dundee, who led the Jacobites at the Battle of Killiecrankie in 1689. As Sir Walter Scott wrote in ‘Tales of My Landlord’ (1816, p.69):

 

‘Many a whig that day loaded his musket with a dollar cut into slugs, in order that a silver bullet (such was their belief) might bring down the persecutor of the holy kirk, on whom lead had no power.’

 

The same went for 17th/18th century Bulgarian rebel leader ‘Delyo’, and ‘…an Austrian governor of Greifswald, on whom the Swedes had fired more than twenty balls, could only be shot by the inherited silver button that a soldier carried in his pocket’ (see here). The oldest of all pertains to an alleged 1678 attempt upon the life of English King Charles II.

My point is really that the whole silver bullet myth is misunderstood today. It’s not like the wooden stake that’s specific to vampires or, for that matter, wolfsbane for wolves, conkers for spiders (yes, that’s a genuine belief too). The silver bullet is not specific to werewolves, vampires, or any other target. It is really an apotropaic – it works against magic itself, whether negating the charm of protection around a corporeal enemy, dispelling a ghostly apparition, or breaking fairy magic to free a captive. It’s the ultimate in supernatural self-defence, but it’s only a footnote in the story of the Beast of Gévaudan. It neither originated with the Beast, nor killed it. 

Figment of Imagination enquiries

What an actual Welsh zombie looks like – see this superb BBC documentary series…

The always excellent Zed Word blog has reported some interesting supernatural-related enquiries made under the UK Freedom of Information Act to Dyfed-Powys police in Wales. You can read the various disclosure reports here (page over to the 2010 content for most reports – alternatively I’ve linked most of them below).

Before we have too big a laugh at the expense of others, I should point out that tragically, if inevitably, many calls/reports (and possibly even FOI enquiries) have been made by those with mental health problems. Others are obvious nuisance/time-wasting calls. The zombie incidents make for particularly disappointing reading even for a hardened sceptic;

Unknown 04.11.2006 A phone call made with strange noises and sounded like someone saying zombie.

Haverfordwest 31.10.2008 Report of a person acting suspiciously wearing a zombie mask and dressed all in black.

Pembrey 14.12.2009 Reporting that they are filming a horror in the park about zombies.

Not really in the spirit of the enquiry, I would suggest. More of a keyword search data-dump. Can’t really blame the Fuzz for that though; I’m pretty sure they have other jobs to be getting on with.

Other, slightly more interesting reports just from this constabulary include phantom cats (lots), witches (some) and werewolves (none). Relatively few suggest even a legitimate claim of a supernatural sighting, let alone any subsequent earth-shattering investigation that provided any evidence of one. A handful of ‘actual’ sightings of ghosts is, amusingly, outweighed in the same report by complaints of ghosthunters causing annoyance or alarm. And of course, there are the UFOs, none of which were followed up using police resources, clearly indicating a massive cover-up…or some common sense, depending upon your point of view. Equally encouragingly, it’s clear that in common with virtually all police departments worldwide, the services of psychics are NOT called upon (another denial here).

Some disclosures contain no information as the enquirer has phrased things such that to provide a proper answer would take too much time and money – one of the exemption criteria. Frustratingly, one of these relates again to the activities of amateur (is there any other kind?) ghosthunters. Had they been more specific we might have discovered more about the ‘supernatural’ denizens of Wales, or at least the loons who go looking for them…

I’ll have to see which other UK police services and perhaps even local authorities might have published similar data online – without submitting my own frivolous FOI enquiry, of course!