Disappointed ghost hunter upset an abandoned “haunted hospital” will be demolished in Gosport

Tony Ferguson investigated the abandoned ‘Don Styler physical training centre’ in Gosport and said suspicious happenings were taking place there. He told The News: “I personally believe that the whole land is haunted and I don’t believe they’re [the spirits] just going to disappear.”

The 0.73-hectare site, that used to be a gym, youth hostel and smallpox hospital, was sold to the Ministry of Defence in December 2024. Based in an isolated woodland in Monks Walk near Heritage Way, Elson, the land was cleared to prevent anti-social behaviour - though the buildings currently remain.

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Mr Ferguson, alongside fellow ghost hunters GS Exploring with Ghosts and Exploring the Afterlife, ventured through the site over the weekend and couldn’t believe what he experienced. “When we walked in the forest just to get to the location, it felt like someone was watching you,” he added.

After staying on site for almost three hours, he said the team were able to capture movements and noises on their locked-off cameras. The paranormal expert said: “We heard some disembodied voices, a male voice and a female voice. I couldn’t make out what was said but you can just feel they were in the room with us. When we were in the hospital a few times I heard a male voice say ‘get out’ and that came out on camera.”

Mr Ferguson said the group also heard taps, bangs and knocks that sounded unnatural inside the old building. Anti-social behaviour incidents had taken place there in recent years. Officers from Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary previously seized items including a single barrel shotgun, pistols, a rifle, ammunition, firearm component parts, replica firearms, knives, £2,000 cash, suspected cocaine and suspected steroids from the gym in September 2023.

The area going into disrepair and repeated incidents at the site led to its planned demolition, which has upset Mr Ferguson. He said: “It’s quite sad to see the building demolished. I know a lot of people from the paranormal community are quite sad it will be knocked down. On a historic and paranormal level, I was quite disappointed in how people have just gone in there and destroyed the entire place.”

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Mr Ferguson, who has amassed a strong following on TikTok and YouTube, added that it’s hard for paranormal investigators to find hospitals in the UK to explore because they’re usually demolished. He believes flattening the building will only make it harder to gauge such activity, because external noises will interfere with the previously protected area.

Him and his team have visited the hospital multiple times over the past few years and said something unusual has happened each time – hearing “disembodied voices” and seeing his camera move in an unexplained manner.

“For me it’s about trying to rule out what could possibly be natural things, but it’s quite isolated,” he added. “It’s a good location with it being a hospital with sadly a lot of smallpox deaths. I have always wanted to investigate hospitals because it’s a place where a lot of death have taken place.”

The ghost hunter has visited several locations in the Portsmouth area which he believes are haunted, including Fort Purbrook, Fort Widley, Merchistoun Hall in Horndean and a former animal research lab in Military Road, Gosport. He is hoping to continue his work in the future.