The Effect
It is the long hot summer of 2013, when a very eerie video is uploaded to YouTube. The video, taken from the in store CCTV of a health food shop in south east England, does not, at first, look particularly remarkable. It merely shows a man busy shopping, reading the label of an item he has taken off the shelf. But then the recording takes a far more sinister turn when, directly behind the man, a box of tea slides from its shelf, hovering in the air for several seconds, before a second box throws itself across the aisle, and the first box of tea plummets to the ground.
The video is the first concrete evidence of the poltergeist said to be haunting the sleepy coastal town of Whitstable in Kent. And as the video view count builds, more and more curious and inexplicable happenings start to be reported across the town.
The strange goings-on in the area attract the attention of two ghost hunters, who descend on Whitstable to try to get to the bottom of the supposedly paranormal events plaguing this usually quiet corner of the country. The first task they give themselves is to locate the epicentre of the activity.
In an attempt to do this, one of the ghost hunters takes a map marked with clusters of black crosses, signifying the locations of all the paranormal goings-on. He rolls the paper up and asks a Whitstable resident to place her hand inside. But no sooner has the woman dipped her hand into the paper than she whips it out again, convinced she is being touched by cold, grasping fingers coming from somewhere inside the map. She tries once, twice, three times, only for the same clammy touch to assault her. And when she withdraws her hand from the paper a final time, every single cross that had been on the map has totally disappeared. Every single cross that had been on the map is now marked onto the skin of the woman’s hands.
As views on the original YouTube video climb into the tens of thousands, a film crew, together with the television presenter Amanda Byram, arrive in the town to report on the supernatural incidents for themselves. This prompts the story to spread even further, and more residents are invited to share their accounts of the terrifying Whitstable poltergeist.
A local hairdresser is one of these residents, and she gives a truly spine-tingling account of something that happened to her in her salon, located just a few doors down from the health food shop where the poltergeist video was recorded. First, she said, the salon’s hairdryers had been behaving strangely, with a hairdryer exploding at least once every week. But that was nothing compared to what happened next. When the staff had attempted to work out whether the salon was indeed a hotspot for poltergeist activity, the entire front window of the premises had suddenly and violently shattered, petrifying everyone inside.
One of these frightening, paranormal occurrences happens even as Amanda Byram is interviewing a local couple about the poltergeist plaguing their town. The woman asks for a photograph with Amanda, but once the shot is taken, she is shocked to see a sinister black entity has appeared in the picture right next to her. Like the video recorded in the health food shop, this photo is also shared online, and is soon buzzing with comments. From here, a newspaper gets hold of the story and interest in the case escalates even further.
As it does, more and more happenings are reported. A local sports group tells of a football gliding across the ground by itself; jars and cereal boxes begin flying from the shelves of a Whitstable convenience store. And as this activity intensifies, so does the work of those two ghost hunters, who are now more intent than ever on discovering the name of the spirit entity behind the Whitstable Poltergeist.
One of these men carries out a test with local residents at one of the town’s most ancient pubs, the Old Neptune. It is a psychometry test; a test using objects thought to be associated with a ghost, or a presence long-dead, to find out more about them. In this instance, the object in question is a vintage suitcase dating back to the late 1800s, and allegedly found beneath the pub during recent refurbishments. The ghost hunter suspects that the suitcase could well have belonged to the man whose restless spirit is now behind the Whitstable poltergeist.
A coat is removed from the suitcase and one of the locals puts it on. Clad in this unsettling garment, the ordinary resident of the town is certain he can see physical characteristics of the coat’s original owner. He states the man possessed a luxurious moustache, wore a bow tie and bowler hat, and had the initials: ‘L.N.’ Little does this man know that a sepia tint photograph from the coat’s breast pocket shows the very person he’s just described: a Victorian gentleman wearing a large moustache, a bow tie and a bowler hat. Perhaps most eerily of all, when the lining of the coat is examined further, it bears the embroidered name ‘L. Nearing’. Could this really be the name of the spirit behind the Whitstable poltergeist?
It seems like it might be, since as soon as the name L. Nearing is identified, paranormal occurrences in the town reach new heights. The story of the Whitstable Poltergeist spreads far and wide, now becoming national and then global news, with mention of the haunting even reaching such well-known TV shows as This Morning.
In a woman’s Whitstable house, forks that have been left on her dining table stack themselves in a gravity-defying formation, vertically, one atop the other, handle to tines. At an old lane near the harbour, two women swear they’ve been repeatedly touched from behind by an unseen entity. And indeed, a man has managed to record the entire incident on camera, capturing the women screaming and jumping forward, just when they say they were touched. When the video is examined more closely, a chilling shape can be seen to the back of the women; a white form with an unmistakable human outline.
And in a Whitstable antique shop, when one of the ghost hunters conducts further experiments, a strange word appears daubed in unsteady red letters on the glass of an old mirror, a physically impossible occurrence, as the mirror had been covered by a cloth at the time and under constant observation. When the mirror is itself reflected in a second sheet of glass, the meaning of the jagged red letters become clear: ‘CASTLE’. Might Whitstable’s 18th century castle be the place to summon the spirit of Mr Nearing, once and for all?
The haunting at Whitstable seems to be reaching its crescendo and the ghost hunters, accompanied by a small group of locals, attend the castle to see if the elusive Mr Nearing can finally be summoned. In one of the castle’s oldest rooms, a folded shroud is laid on the floor. The investigators ask Mr Nearing to make his presence felt to them. Then, suddenly, a wine glass shoots across the room, violently smashing against a wall. Taking this to be a sign that the ghost wishes to make contact, the two ghost hunters slowly raise and lower the shroud. ‘Mr Nearing,’ they say, ‘Mr Nearing, are you there?… Mr Nearing?’ When the cloth is lowered for a third time, it assumes the form of a person, standing up by itself as if a full body apparition has materialised beneath it. It terrifies everyone in the room.
But, as heart-stopping as this event was, it was not the end. For the haunting was about to reach its climax, with an event so extraordinary it almost defied all explanation altogether. With the spirit entity now identified as L. Nearing, and encounters with the Whitstable Poltergeist at fever pitch, back at the old harbour a ghost tour of the town begins. The tour visits Whitstable’s most haunted locations, including many of the places to have been beset by supernatural forces over the previous few weeks.
Prior to the tour, the two ghost hunters had uncovered a critical piece of information about Mr Nearing. That, a hundred years earlier, he had, quite without warning, completely disappeared, never to be seen again. And although no one had ever been able to explain the vanishing, there had been witnesses. A small group of men, who had been drinking at the Old Neptune, had come forward claiming they’d watched Mr Nearing’s disappearance as it had happened. They swore that he’d been snatched by a spirit, clean dissolving into the darkness of a Kentish night. And when they approached the spot where it had happened, they found only the man’s bowler hat, lying on the ground.
For the culmination of the tour, the ghost hunters lead the group to the harbour walk from where Mr Nearing was said to have disappeared. Various people on the tour, when standing on the exact same spot, immediately report feeling strange, overcome by a cold chill and waves of nausea. Then the last person to try steps forward. He moves into position. But before he has the chance to speak, an infernal, invisible force powers him upwards, causing him to violently levitate before being flung like a ragdoll into the darkness now enshrouding Whitstable. The only thing left behind is his hat, rolling to stillness upon the ground.
But, surely, a man can’t just disappear like that, into the night, in front of numerous eyewitnesses, never to be seen again? As surely that would be magic. Wouldn’t it?
The Method
In the early 2010s, a powerful supernatural force seems to be plaguing the residents of the town of Whiststable on the south east coast of England. A man has now disappeared into the night, but what–- The transcript for this method has been redacted, please listen to the podcast to find out why.
© 2025, Lora Jones. All rights reserved. Reproduction prohibited without written permission.
