Haunted London (23 page)

WESTMINSTER CATHEDRAL, VICTORIA

In July 1966, the cathedral official in charge of sacred vessels and vestments of this English Roman Catholic Metropolitan church, reported seeing a ‘black-robed figure’, which disappeared near the high altar as the sacristan approached. It actually disappeared before his eyes, seeming to melt into nothingness. A spokesman at Cardinal Heenan’s London residence said afterwards that ‘an extensive search of the cathedral, both inside and outside, failed to yield any clue and police dogs failed to pick up any scent.’ ‘Officially’ the statement continued, ‘we do not support the theory that it was a ghost but that possibility has been mentioned.’ After including this report in my
Gazetteer of British Ghosts,
published in 197I, I received a letter from a reader who stated that she personally knew four people who had seen unexplained figures in Westminster Cathedral, but the subject was frowned upon by the cathedral officials.

THE ANCHOR TAP, BERMONDSEY

An elusive ghost haunts The Anchor Tap, Bermondsey, where successive licensees have reported objects disappearing and reappearing in the oddest places. The ghost is called ‘Charlie’, a name that has no more reason than the ghost’s actions.

BATTERSEA

In 1956, fifteen-year-old Shirley Hitchins of Battersea was plagued by poltergeist phenomena for about a month. The disturbances began when a key (which did not fit any of the locks in the house in Wycliffe Road) suddenly appeared on Shirley’s bed.

Soon afterwards she was reporting that her bedclothes were being tugged from her as she lay in bed; knockings were heard; rappings and tappings sounded about the house and furniture moved of its own accord.

One night, in an effort to obtain a good night’s rest, Shirley slept with a neighbour, Mrs Lily Love, who said afterwards, ‘She spent a night with us but none of us got any sleep because of the noise. We were all very scared.’

Alarm clocks and china ornaments moved without being touched by human hand; a poker flew across a room; Shirley’s wrist watch was pulled off her arm and fell to the floor. One night, her father, Walter Hitchins, a London Transport motorman, decided to sit up with his brother and watch for developments. After Shirley had gone to bed in her mother’s room all was quiet for a while and then came the tapping that seemed to originate from the bed that Shirley was occupying. The rappings went on for a long time. Then Shirley, who was still awake, said that the bedclothes were being pulled from her, and her father and his brother took hold of the clothes and felt them being tugged with considerable force. Shirley’s hands were outside the bedclothes.

While this was going on both men and Shirley’s mother saw that the girl was being lifted bodily out of the bed. She was rigid and about six inches above the bed. They lifted her out and stood her on the floor. Shirley explained that she felt a powerful force pushing into the centre of her back and lifting her up. She did not know that her body was rigid. This levitation occurred only once.

The mysterious rapping even followed Shirley on buses when she went to her work at a West End store and, distressed by lack of sleep, she was sent to the firm’s doctor who was sceptical — until he too heard the raps. As with most poltergeist cases, the disturbances abated and then ceased, without anyone being able to explain what had caused them.

BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL, LAMBETH (DEMOLISHED)

The old Bethlehem Hospital was haunted when it stood at the comer of St George’s Road and Lambeth Road, having been moved there from Moorfields in 1815 where it had stood since 1675. Before then it had stood on the present site of Liverpool Street Station — the hated ‘Bedlam’, a home for the mentally afflicted and one of the ‘sights of London’, open to anyone who cared to promenade and poke fun at the unfortunate inmates. Edward Oxford was confined to Bedlam for trying to shoot Queen Victoria in 1840; Jonathan Martin, who set fire to York Minster in 1829; Margaret Nicholson, who tried to stab George III (she died at the institution after forty-two years’ confinement); James Hadfield died there after being confined for thirty-nine years for shooting at George III at Drury Lane Theatre; all were restricted behind gates decorated with figures of Raving and Melancholy Madness. Today, the Imperial War Museum occupies the site, and parts of the building date back to ‘Bedlam’ as the shape of some of the rooms reveal, and it is not difficult to imagine the shackled and chained patients groaning and screaming in their agony of despair. During the Second World War, a detachment of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force was stationed in Harmsworth Park with barrage balloons. An officer has recounted that the crews — girls from different parts of the country who knew nothing of the history of the building where they had sleeping quarters — were so frightened and complained so bitterly and repeatedly about groaning noises, shrieks and the sound of rattling chains, that in the end they were taken out of the building and the few men then working there were put inside. However, the same thing happened, and eventually, as no one would sleep near the building because of the noises, Nissen huts were put up in the grounds.

In the latter part of the eighteenth century, a handsome young Indian lodged for a time at the house of a merchant near London Bridge, where a pretty young girl named Rebecca fell head over heels in love with him, fondly thinking that he felt the same way about her.

She was sadly shocked one day when her ‘prince’ packed up his things and prepared to leave. Although no word had ever been spoken on either side Rebecca couldn’t believe that he was really going away or that he didn’t really love her as much as she felt she loved him.

She helped with the luggage and then stood on the threshold of the house, hoping and longing for some sign of affection. Instead, she felt a sovereign slipped into her hand and the light of her life disappeared for ever. Reality was such a shock that her brain gave way and she was committed to Bedlam where the harsh treatment of those days soon killed the body that had no will to live.

Ever since she had been given the sovereign, she had never again opened the hand that held it and when she died it was still clutched fast in her dead fingers, a fact that did not escape the keen eye of a keeper who managed to prise open the cold fingers and steal the golden coin. Consequently, Rebecca was buried without the one thing that she prized above everything, the thing that had belonged to the person she really loved.

Soon after her death the form of a wan and miserable ghost began to haunt the old hospital, seemingly looking for the stolen coin. For years afterwards keepers, inmates and visitors would catch an occasional glimpse of the pathetic Rebecca, silently searching and fading into oblivion whenever she was approached.

THE BISHOP’S HOUSE, SOUTHWARK

Dr Mervyn Stockwood, Bishop of Southwark, twice saw the ghost that haunts, or haunted, the Bishop’s House. This is an elderly woman, sad-looking and silent, who is always seen in one particular part of the house. The bishop, who was sensitive in a psychic sense, not infrequently knew the main contents of a letter before he opened the envelope and sometimes found that he knew what a person was going to say to him before the visitor spoke. Dr Stockwood was interested in psychical phenomena for over twenty years and regularly practised silent meditation. He wrote articles about the subject in
The Times
and addressed the Society for Psychical Research. He once told me that he believed the ‘ghost’ at his house to be the tangible expression of a memory that became identified with a particular place. An interesting theory that could account for a number of similar ‘hauntings’.

The bishop discovered that an old Polish woman had died in the Bishop’s House. She had fled from her native land and had always been most unhappy in England. He feels that it might be the ‘memory’ of this sad old lady who walked along a corridor and appeared in one room, which she had occupied during her unhappy sojourn in Southwark. Dr Stockwood was quite happy with his ghost. She did no harm, but his cook became very worried about the apparition and — deciding that it would be easier to get a new ghost than a new cook — he performed a service of exorcism, and did not see the ghost again.

CENTURY CINEMA, CHEAM

There is, or was, a haunted cinema in South London: the Century at Cheam where members of the staff and visitors have heard noises that they could not account for. When the cinema was built in the 1930s a workman disappeared mysteriously without collecting his wages. His lunch-bag and hat and coat were found hanging on a nail near the part of the building that became the stage. He seems to have disappeared without trace and there was speculation as to whether something happened to him that never came to light.

At all accounts shuffling footsteps were heard from the direction of the empty stage late at night by several members of the staff, including the manager, Mr Lilley. The noises were heard so frequently that the cinema personnel would take little notice of them, merely remarking, ‘There goes Charlie again.’

Mr Lilley is reported as saying at the time, ‘There is no earthly explanation for the noises. I have heard them on several occasions while working late. It sounds as though someone is shuffling about, either under or across the stage. The first time I heard them I thought a burglar had entered the building, or someone had remained in the theatre after closing-time, but I always found all the doors and windows securely fastened, so no one could have got in or out without being noticed.’

Three reporters from the
Epsom Herald
spent a night at the cinema in 1955 and reported afterwards that they had heard the shuffling noises. The complete silence of the night was disturbed by the sound of heavy, shuffling footsteps from the right-hand side of the stage. After the noise had been heard three times one of the reporters switched on a torch to reveal an utterly empty theatre. An immediate and minute search of the whole cinema failed to reveal any explanation for the noises.

COVENTRY HALL, STREATHAM

Coventry Hall, Hopton Road, Streatham, a building that used to be a convent, has, appropriately, the ghost of a nun. Mrs Evelyn Sayers, a young housewife, saw the form floating above a table on the stair landing. ‘It was the head and shoulders of a nun with a young and pleasant face’, she said at the time. And she seemed to hear a voice which said, ‘Don’t be frightened, you must say “God be with you”.’ As the words trailed away, the apparition vanished.

Frank Cunningham, who lived in the same block but on a different floor, found himself awakened one night by a nun in a white habit. He said she stroked his brow and he heard a voice say, ‘God bless you, my son.’ Two nights later, Mr Cunningham saw two figures of white-robed nuns bending over the beds occupied by his children.

Neither Mrs Sayers nor Mr Cunningham believed in ghosts until they saw the nun apparitions, which were probably a remnant of concentrated thought that lingered on in the building after it was altered for secular use.

ELEPHANT AND CASTLE STATION

The Elephant and Castle Railway Station used to be haunted by mysterious running footsteps, knockings, tappings and a self-opening door. Mrs G. C. Watson of Herne Hill was travelling home from the station late one night. In fact, she was the only passenger on the platform and she was struck by the silence and the eeriness of the station. She mentioned the atmosphere to a passing porter who replied that they had several ghosts!

At first, Mrs Watson thought he was not being serious but she continued to talk to him and discovered that he was quite sincere. He told her that when he was on night duty at the station he spent most of the time in the porters’ room and on several occasions the door of this little room, normally kept fastened, had opened wide of its own accord. Whenever he had looked out there had never been anyone in sight.

He had often heard tapping on the door, as if someone was looking for him, but when he opened the door, the platform was deserted. Furthermore, Mr Sargant, the night-duty porter, later stated that sometimes he heard someone running up the platform, but when he looked out the place was deserted. He had heard the running footsteps scores of times and each time he told himself that this time it really was someone, but he never saw a human being who could have been responsible for the footsteps which, he had noticed, were most common on wintry evenings.

Unexplained footsteps were also heard by Mr Sargant and others on the stairway leading from the platform to the booking office, and once he actually stood near the top flight and peered over at the deserted stairs as footsteps seemed to run down them.

A night-duty porter at Blackfriars, Mr Horton, refused night work at the Elephant and Castle after hearing the mysterious footsteps, tapping and knocking noises while he was in the porters’ room. Once he heard footsteps approach the room along the platform. The footsteps stopped outside and two taps sounded on the door. When Mr Horton opened the door the platform was empty.

On Saturday nights the station used to be completely locked, as there was no night service, but even then the phantom footsteps were reported by staff.

GREENWICH

The provenance of photographs purporting to depict genuine spontaneous apparitions is often suspect and difficult to establish satisfactorily. An exception, it would seem, is the remarkable photograph obtained by the Rev. R. W. Hardy and his wife, while on holiday in England from Canada in 1966, during a visit to the Queen’s House at Greenwich. Certainly it is the most interesting photograph of a spontaneous ghost that I have seen in half a century of psychic investigation.

The retired clergyman and his wife visited many famous and historic houses in London and before returning home to White Rock they explored the National Maritime Museum and the beautiful Queen’s House at Greenwich. This is a place best approached by water so that one can inspect on arrival the interesting boat preserved there in dry-dock: the tea-clipper
Cutty Sark
, built in 1869, that plied the China tea trade and afterwards the Australian wool commerce.