Haunted London (15 page)

One primitive church, said to have been built by Sebert, King of the East Saxons, was consecrated by Mellitus (created Bishop of London by St Augustine in 604) who called it West Minster to distinguish it from the old St Paul’s or the East Minster, built about the same time. This church was destroyed by the Danes and rebuilt by King Edgar in 985. The present abbey was founded by Edward the Confessor in 1049-65, and some of the original foundations have been discovered beneath the present structure in the Chapel of the Pyx (originally used as a treasure-house for the jewels and moneys of the Crown) and in the crypt beneath the Chapter House, known as the Confessor’s Chapel, where the walls are 17 feet thick, Henry III rebuilt the entire structure, and in 1269 the portion then completed was consecrated.

In 1303, thieves gained entrance to the treasure-house and carried away some millions of pounds in jewels and gold, but most of the treasure was recaptured from temporary burial in a plot of flax in the middle of the Great Cloister. The thieves were executed and then skinned, their skins being tanned and used to cover both sides of a door opening into the passage from the cloisters, a doorway which the monks used to gain entrance to their dormitory, and so they were continually reminded of the theft and of what happened to those who committed sacrilege. This door still exists and attendants show a small piece of the skin of one of the thieves, Richard le Podlicote, which was framed for preservation after having been on the door for centuries.

Some years ago, a policeman on duty one autumn night saw a man in ecclesiastical robes hurry towards the abbey entrance and disappear through the closed doors! As he approached the abbey to investigate, he felt a tap on his shoulder and saw, approaching through the evening gloom, a procession of black-clad figures, walking in twos. They were men with bowed heads, their hands clasped before them, but their feet made no sound on the stone paved sanctuary. They passed close to the astonished policeman and, like the figure that had preceded them, they disappeared through the closed western doors of the great abbey. After a moment, the officer approached the doorway and heard ‘sweet and plaintive’ music from within the closed and unlit abbey. As he listened he was distracted by the sound of someone passing nearby and, when he turned to listen again, all was quiet within the historic building.

In the seventeenth century, James I appointed David Ramsay, a keen student of magic, alchemy and astrology, to be Page of the King’s Bedchamber, Groom of the Privy Chamber and Keeper of the King’s Clocks (in fact, he was the first president of the Clockmakers’ Company). Ramsay thought that the unrecovered treasure might be hidden somewhere within the abbey precincts once he maintained that he had located the whereabouts of the treasure by means of a divining rod, but he had not safeguarded his efforts adequately and was interrupted by ‘demons’ who so frightened him that he fled and never recovered the treasure! Ramsay knew all about the reputation of ‘Tom’, the great clock at Westminster, which was popularly believed to be haunted and to strike out of order whenever an important member of the royal family was about to die. The belief persisted after the clock was removed to St Paul’s in the nineteenth century.

The best-known ghost of Westminster Abbey is ‘Father Benedictus’, a monk said to have been murdered when the thieves robbed the abbey in 1303, although there is no record of any monk being killed inside the abbey. Those who have seen the apparition describe the figure as tall and thin, with a prominent forehead, sallow skin, a hooked nose and deep-set eyes. Among the witnesses were two young women who saw the form one Saturday evening in 1900. They were in the abbey for evensong and turning towards the south transept they saw a Benedictine monk standing silently watching them. His hands were hidden in the sleeves of his habit and his cowl was thrown back to reveal a domed head. His leisured gaze swept over the assembled congregation and then he slowly walked backwards, pausing occasionally to look contemptuously at some member of the public. At length he disappeared through a solid wall and one witness estimated that she had watched the mysterious and somewhat frightening figure for over twenty minutes.

Father Benedictus is said to often walk through the cloisters between five and six o’clock in the evening and occasionally he is reported to talk to people, before vanishing into solid stone wall.

Some years ago, the figure was seen by three visitors who stated that the cowled figure approached to within five feet of where they stood, and they noticed that his feet were an inch or so above the ground — the stones of the floor of the cloisters having been worn down since the monk walked there in the flesh. On the occasions when the figure is reported to have spoken, he is said to talk in what sounds like Elizabethan English and he once said that he was killed in the reign of Henry VIII. After giving a talk at the Wigmore Hall in 1967, a member of my audience, Mrs Cicely M. Botley, told me that she and two friends saw a brown-robed apparition inside the abbey on the night before the marriage of the Duke and Duchess of York (later King George VI and Queen Elizabeth) in 1923.

The unexplained figure of a khaki-clad soldier of the First World War, mud-stained and bareheaded with his eyes full of strange pleading, has been seen near the tomb of the unknown warrior. Sometimes he has been seen with outstretched arms as though imploring help or deliverance. One witness of this apparition told me that the figure seemed to be trying to say something but no sound of any kind accompanied the appearance, which lasted only a few seconds in the dying sunlight of a winter’s day. The form has become known as the ghost of the Unknown Warrior.

A historical ghost haunts the Inslip Rooms in the deanery at Westminster Abbey where heavy footsteps have been repeatedly heard in the passage and on the stairs at dead of night. They are believed to be those of John Bradshaw, president of the High Court of Justice, who, during the Commonwealth, occupied these rooms. It was here that Bradshaw, having put aside all legal objections to the court, refused to allow Charles I to speak in his own defence and, having pronounced the death sentence on the king, finally signed the warrant authorizing the execution. Bradshaw’s ghost has also been reported to have been seen here.

In June 1972, Dr Edward J. Moody of the Department of Anthropology at Lawrence University told me about the experiences of a film unit during filming in the crypt of Westminster Abbey, beneath Poets’ Corner. Among other happenings, I was told about the curious behaviour of a certain door which would not remain closed but opened by itself time after time; there was an odd and peculiar noise which almost defied description but which was noticed by everyone present although nothing could be discovered that might have accounted for it; and there was the curious action of some of the lighting apparatus when lights switched themselves off three times in succession.

There is a theory that underground water might account for some of the sounds and movements of objects commonly attributed to poltergeist activity, a theory carefully tested and examined by a former president of the Society for Psychical Research, Guy Lambert, CB. I have discussed the matter with him on several occasions, both at the offices of the SPR and at The Ghost Club, and while I feel this may be the solution in some instances, I am quite sure it is not the answer in a number of cases.

Whether or not the presence of water contributes to psychical phenomena, it is indisputable that a great deal of psychic activity is associated with water and London’s great river is no exception. It may not have such a spectacular apparition as the famous Flying Dutchman, long reputed to haunt the waters around the Cape of Good Hope, a spectre that has found an entry in not a few ships’ logs and the late Commander A. B. Campbell, RD, is among those who have personally assured me that they have seen the phantom ship in full sail in those wind-swept seas; but there are many and varied reports of ghosts and ghostly activity on the Thames itself and along its borders.

ADELPHI

Very few Londoners or visitors to London have been inside the Adelphi Arches, that oblong ‘underground village’ of subterranean streets, vaults and arches that cover an acre of ground between the Strand and the Thames.

The four Adam brothers built the famous area that they called Adelphi on the site of Old Durham Palace over two hundred years ago. This was before the construction of the Victoria Embankment and to overcome the difficulty of building on muddy foundations immense arched vaults were constructed. Some of these vaults remain. A few have been modernized and serve as garages but the arches in their original form were long used by Messrs Sichel as wine and cask cellars. In one of these dark arches, marked on the Drummond Estate map as ‘Jenny’s Hole’, resides the ghost of a murdered girl.

The old Adelphi, pulled down by the Drummonds in 1936 and replaced by the present concrete-and-glass monstrosity, had been known and loved by scores of famous people. Charles Dickens (who had worked as a boy in a rat-ridden boot-blacking warehouse nearby) loved to wander about the ‘dark arches’; David Garrick lived there and entertained Dr Johnson, Boswell, Sir Joshua Reynolds and others in his house over the arches; Benjamin Disraeli knew the old Adelphi, as did Rowlandson; the King and Queen of the Sandwich Islands both died at the Adelphi in 1823; Bernard Shaw lived there, and Thomas Hardy and Sir James Barrie; even Napoleon Bonaparte stayed briefly at the old Adelphi and may have wandered moodily about the arches. Now all they would recognize would be the arches themselves, dark, mysterious and at times terrifying, the haunt of the homeless and drug-addicts — and Jenny’s ghost.

In 1875, at the spot now known as Jenny’s Hole, the body of an unknown young woman was discovered. She was a poor Victorian prostitute and she had been strangled, probably by one of her customers, on the squalid pile of sacking and rags where she plied her trade.

Even today, the dark corner harbours the ghost of poor Jenny. Her pale rag-clad form has been glimpsed from time to time briefly before it disappears into these ancient and solid walls, but more often muffled screams — the last sounds that Jenny ever made — hang for a moment on the air. There is also sometimes a frenzied tattoo as her heels rattle again against the unfriendly stone before silence returns to the arches and they resume their centuries of quiet.

BLACKWALL TUNNEL

Victorian Blackwall Tunnel, London’s one nineteenth-century tunnel which still serves its original purpose (although now more than doubled in size and set off with handsome motorway approaches) had its share of tragic accidents during construction and inevitably there have been fatalities to users of the tunnel in recent years, among them a youngster who periodically haunts the scene of his death. One report circulating in October 1972, told of a motorcyclist who gave a young man a lift at the tunnel entrance on the Greenwich side. Arriving at the other end of the tunnel, he turned to say something to his passenger (who had mentioned his address) and to his dismay found that he had no one on the pillion-seat. Fearful that the young man had fallen off in the tunnel, the motorcyclist returned to the Greenwich side in the hope of preventing an accident. He traversed the whole length of the tunnel four times but could find no trace of the young man he had picked up. More than a little worried, next day he went to the address mentioned by the youngster, only to learn that the boy he described had been dead for some years. Similar stories are reported from time to time from various parts of the country, an interesting phenomenon that represents twentieth-century folklore.

BUCKINGHAM STREET, STRAND

Buckingham Street, which leads to Watergate Walk (containing the old Water Gate, a relic of the Duke of Buckingham’s York House that stood here) near Charing Cross, seems to have several ghosts. There are reports of a ghostly, smiling girl at Number 14, where William Etty, the artist, painted his nude studies. Perhaps one happy and carefree moment as one of the girls ran into the house has somehow become impinged on the atmosphere, for reports of the female phantom suggest a hurried and happy form, soundlessly running into the house.

Next door, at Number 12, Samuel Pepys lived for twelve years, while he was Member of Parliament for Harwich and publishing his
Memoirs of the Navy
. The staircase is probably original, and it is in the hall, facing the stairs, that the ghost of Pepys has reportedly been seen.

In 1953, the ghost was seen by Miss Gwyneth Bickford as she ran down the stairs. The stairs are wide and shallow and she was perhaps four steps from the bottom, alone in the lighted hallway, when she saw a figure standing against the wall between two doors. She stopped dead in her tracks, very frightened. She did not think of a ghost but was alarmed by the fact that someone was there when she had thought the hall was deserted. Afterwards, out in the street, she began to realize everything she had seen.

The house in Buckingham Street where Samuel Pepys lived for nine years, and where his stocky-looking ghost has been seen, smiling and happy, in the hallway at the foot of the stairs.