Tourist’s spooky encounter at German Underground Hospital
A Guernsey tourist has said she will not visit the German Undergournd Hospital alone, even for £1m., after suffering a hair-tugging ghost and a mysterious orb.
On a trip to the island to celebrate her mum’s 70th birthday, Jennifer Harris – from Broadstairs in Kent – visited the German Underground Hospital with her mum, sister, daughter and nephew.
‘The young ones didn’t stay long and set off to the nearby pub,’ Mrs Harris said.
‘So it was just me, my mum and my sister who carried on into the hospital section. I was happy to go halfway through one of the tunnels but I suddenly didn’t want to carry on. I decided to take a selfie and when I looked at the screen, I shouted “Oh my god, it’s an orb!” – there was a little white dot over my head in the picture.’
Her companions did not entirely share her credulity, with her sister shouting “Is there anybody there?” and her mum remaining sceptical.
Along another of the tunnels, Mrs Harris felt a tug on her hair, which prompted her to direct an expletive towards the other two.
‘But it wasn’t them,’ she said.
‘This happened to me once before, when I was working in the stock room at Woolworths.’
Mrs Harris said she was not always susceptible to being spooked in tunnels and had visited the ones at Dover Castle without feeling like anything eerie was afoot.
However, after 40 minutes in the tunnels – which were constructed by workers enslaved by occupying German forces during the Second World War – she was further alarmed by what she saw on her phone screen as she approached the far southern end, by the well and escape shafts.
‘I had my phone on camera mode and saw a light go across the screen. The other two didn’t believe me and when I tried to take a picture, it didn’t work at first but then I saw a tendril of smoke that looked like a face.’
She said her husband, who had skipped the excursion in favour of some relaxation, agreed that the resulting image ‘looked a bit weird’.
German Underground Hospital director Steve Powell said visitors to the site often reported feeling a little unusual in the tunnels.
‘Some people feel some kind of spiritual connection and some don’t want to go past a certain point,’ he said.
‘But that could also be a sense of claustrophobia, as it is cold, dark and damp in there.’
‘A number of people have spoken about ghostlike figures or the feeling of someone else being there and we’ve accommodated paranormal events at the site. Personally, I walk around in there in the dark all the time and I’ve never seen anything unusual.’
Despite her experiences, Mrs Harris is keen to return to Guernsey. She is very familiar with the island after working at the Longfrie Inn in the 1990s – a location more associated with witches than with ghosts.
She is even quite keen to return to the St Andrew’s tunnel complex.
‘My sister said it was the highlight of the trip,’ she said.
‘It was the most surreal experience and it got the heckles up and the adrenalin pumping. I definitely believe something was going on. I mean, energy only ever changes, doesn’t it? I wish I had done some recordings. I would like to go back, but not on my own – not if you paid me a million pounds.’
