The Adelphi Theatre
Amen Court
The Carlton Mitre Hotel
Cleopatra’s Needle
The George Inn, Southwark
Heathrow Airport
The Lyceum Theatre
The Old Vic Theatre
Osterley Park House
Red Lion Square
My good friend the historian and author Richard Jones would, I think, definitely confirm that London stands head and shoulders above all other cities in the haunted stakes. There are more ghosts per square mile in London than in any other place on Earth. This of course is due to its vastness compared to other UK cities and to its long history as the capital of England. It has long been more densely populated and that in itself produces more than the average number of ghostly happenings.
I have been a frequent visitor to London and during my career as a spirit medium investigating ghostly sightings one particular spirit person stands out in my mind. Curiously, it was not during the course of my work that I met this gentleman but whilst staying at the Carlton Mitre Hotel, which is close to Hampton Court Palace (see page 62).
The Adelphi Theatre
The Adelphi Theatre was first built in 1806 and has been rebuilt three times since. It was the first theatre to use a sinking stage and was also a pioneer of gas lighting. It seats 1,560 people and has a long tradition of staging popular musicals.
The theatre is said to be haunted by the ghost of the actor William Terris, who was stabbed outside the stage door by a minor actor named Richard Arbor Prince on 16 December 1897. Prince is said to have been jealous of Terris’s success and to have bought the dagger some time earlier in order to kill him as soon as he had the chance.
As Terris lay dying in the street his mistress rushed out and held him in her arms. He whispered to her, ‘I’ll be back.’ Since then he has been seen several times in the theatre, in the nearby Covent Garden tube station, which was built on the site of his favourite baker’s shop, in Maiden Lane and possibly in the Lyceum Theatre as well (see page 71). He wears a grey suit and white gloves and has been seen walking through a whole row of seats and disappearing through a wall. One evening several men were working in the theatre when they saw a glowing green light which turned into the misty figure of the former actor. He floated across the stage and into the stalls. Rapping noises have also been heard in the dressing room Terris used. Apparently he used to tap on the door of an adjoining room to let his leading lady know that he was going out for a few minutes.
Richard Arbor Prince was certified insane and confined to a mental institution.
The Adelphi Theatre, The Strand, London WC2E 7NA; Tel:020 7344 0055
Amen Court
Amen Court is a small alleyway close to St Paul’s cathedral. It backs onto the site of the former Newgate prison. It is thought that many prisoners tried to escape from Newgate by climbing over the wall into the court. It was also the site of the prison’s scaffold, where 12 men could be executed at the same time, and the lime pits where their remains were buried.
Now the alley is known as ‘Dead Man’s Walk’ because so many people have seen a dark shapeless figure sliding along the wall and heard the sound of clanking chains. It is thought that this may be the ghost of Jack Sheppard, an infamous cat burglar who escaped from Newgate three times before finally being hanged in November 1724.
The ivy-covered wall at the end of Amen Court is haunted by ‘the Black Dog of Newgate’. Just before a prisoner was hanged this ghostly dog was said to glide up and down the alley, accompanied by a sickening smell, and crawl along the top of the wall. It is said that it first appeared in the thirteenth century, when a famine hit London and a scholar charged with sorcery was killed and eaten by his fellow prisoners. However, he had his revenge one night soon afterwards, when the mysterious dog appeared, dripping blood from its jaws, and tore them limb from limb. Though the prison was demolished in 1902, people still claim to have seen the dog crawling across the wall, dropping into the courtyard and disappearing into thin air.
Amen Court, London EC4
DEREK’S TIP
Give each investigator the opportunity to call out to the spirit world. Whilst one person’s voice vibration may fail to attract the attention of spirit entities, another person’s voice may just be appealing enough to generate activity. Personalities are carried on voice vibrations and like attracts like – it is spiritual law. A spirit person may respond to a certain personality type because they have similar traits, whereas they will ignore another.
The Carlton Mitre Hotel
The Carlton Mitre Hotel stands on the banks of the River Thames, directly opposite Hampton Court Palace. Parts of the hotel date back to 1665 and it was originally a lodging-house for courtiers who could not be accommodated at Hampton Court Palace. It was renovated in 1993.
The hotel has a restaurant, Hamptons, with excellent river views, also a riverside bar/brasserie, which has a secluded terrace and private moorings. It can also offer excellent facilities for business travellers, with a business centre and a range of rooms available for meetings, seminars and conferences.
During a stay here I regularly ‘bumped into’ a gent dressed in Elizabethan attire who Sam informed me was called Edward. This small snippet of information was all that I received, but I was taken by the frequency of Edward’s appearances and by the manner in which he conducted himself – he noticed none of the changes that must have taken place over the long years since he had walked the Earth plane, just carried on as he had over 400 years ago. He was happy.
I suppose that Edward still wanders around the hotel, oblivious to the fact that we are now in the twenty-first century.
Even though he has no idea that time has moved forward and that the Elizabethan era ended long ago, Edward remains very much ‘alive’ today.
The Carlton Mitre Hotel, Hampton Court Road, Hampton Court, London KT8 9BN; Tel:020 8979 9988
DEREK’S TIP
I would advise that unless you have a trained medium with you, you should not attempt to invoke spirits by using ouija boards or any similar device,especially if the location is reputed to harbour
a particularly nasty spirit.
Cleopatra’s Needle
Cleopatra’s Needle is a 60 ft tall Egyptian obelisk which stands on the Thames Embankment between Waterloo Bridge and Hungerford Bridge. It was made for Pharaoh Thotmes III in 1475 bc and given to the British by the Turkish Viceroy of Egypt in 1819. It is known as Cleopatra’s Needle as it came from Alexandria, Cleopatra’s royal city. It was brought to London in 1878 to commemorate the British victory over Napoleon 63 years earlier.
Some say Cleopatra herself cursed the Needle, and its-journey to Britain was certainly fraught with danger. An initial attempt to move the Needle failed when it toppled over into the sand. It remained there for many years until a cigar-shaped container ship, called the Cleopatra, was specially designed, at great expense, to carry it to London. The Cleopatra was towed by a steamship, the Olga, but in a storm off the Bay of Biscay she nearly sank. The Olga sent six volunteers to rescue the crew, but their boat sank and they all drowned. They are commemorated today on one of the plaques at the base of the Needle. The Cleopatra’s crew was eventually taken off by the Olga, and the Cleopatra herself, with the Needle, was cut adrift on the stormy sea. Five days later she was spotted floating off the north coast of Spain and was towed into the port of Ferrol. Another steamship, the Anglia, finally towed her home.
Today four plaques at the base of the Needle give a brief history of the Needle and it is flanked by two large bronze Victorian sphinxes. Underneath it lies a Victorian time capsule containing a set of coins, a newspaper, a razor, a box of pins, four Bibles, a railway guide and 12 photos of Victorian beauties. During World War I the plinth and one of the sphinxes sustained damage during a Zeppelin air raid. This can still be seen today. The Needle has a twin, which now stands in Central Park, New York.
It is not the Needle itself that is haunted, but the area surrounding it. Mocking laughter and anguished cries have been heard there and most of the suicides that take place along this stretch of the river occur at this particular spot, which some say is due to the encouragement of the spirit voices.
The ghost of one of the suicides has been seen on many occasions. He is a tall naked man who runs from behind the Needle, jumps onto its base and throws himself into the river without making a splash.
Cleopatra’s Needle, Victoria Embankment, London SW1
The George Inn
The George Inn in Southwark is the only galleried coaching inn left in London. There were once many such inns, but with the coming of the railways most were demolished. The George itself had a narrow escape. The Great Northern Railway used it as a depot and pulled down two of its fronts to build warehousing before a public outcry resulted in the preservation of the south face. Now the George serves as a pub and restaurant and even a stage set for Shakespeare’s plays. The ground floor is divided into a series of connecting bars. The Old Bar was the former waiting room and the Middle Bar was the coffee room. This was a haunt of Charles Dickens and the George is mentioned in his novel Little Dorrit.
The George’s ghost is believed to be a former landlady, Miss Murray. She kept the pub for 50 years in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and has since been seen floating around its rooms. She seems to be averse to modern technology, for computers crash in the pub, new tills malfunction and digital cameras often fail to take any pictures at all.
Haunted locations often seem more prone to unexplainable technical malfunctions and it does seem that Miss Murray has taken a strong dislike to the ‘magic’ of modern technology at the George Inn. Alternatively, she may simply be having a little fun!
The George Inn,77 Borough High Street, Southwark, London SE1 1NH; Tel: 020 7407 2056
DEREK’S TIP
If possible, take along with you more than one video camera, as this will increase your chances of capturing ghostly activity on film.
Heathrow Airport
Heathrow Airport lies 15 miles west of London. It is Britain’s largest airport and also the scene of several hauntings. Airline employees have often reported feeling hot breath upon their necks and hearing a man howling and barking like a dog. When they have turned round, no one has been there. This ghost is believed to be that of the highwayman Dick Turpin, who was hanged in 1739 and apparently enjoyed playing jokes like this when he was alive.
Inevitably there are also the ghosts of people who have died in plane crashes. One foggy night in March 1948 a Belgian Airlines DC3 Dakota crashed on approach into Heathrow. All 22 people on board were killed, but as the rescue crews were sorting through the wreckage a man in a hat emerged from the fog and asked if they had found his briefcase. As they stared at him, he faded away. They later found his body in the wreckage. Since that night he has been seen many times. He apparently appears out of nowhere and walks along the runway as if still searching for his briefcase.
Another businessman who haunts the airport also seems worried. He wears a grey suit and haunts one of the VIP lounges. Sometimes he simply appears from the waist down.
London Heathrow Airport, 234 Bath Road, Harlington, Middlesex UB3 5AP; Tel: 0870 000 0123; Fax: 020 8745 4290; Website: www.heathrowairport.com
DEREK’S TIP
You do not have to limit your investigation to the interior of a building. There are numerous places outdoors where spirit activity has been noted or ghost sightings have been reported. Ancient battlefields or sites where villages and houses once stood are just as likely to render up paranormal activity.
The Lyceum Theatre
The Lyceum is a Grade II listed theatre in the heart of London with a capacity of over 2,000. The original theatre built on the site opened in 1772, but was razed to the ground by fire in 1830. It reopened in 1834, having been rebuilt with the now familiar porticoed frontage. It was renamed The Royal Lyceum and English Opera House, though generally it remained known simply as The Lyceum.
The theatre gained the reputation of being unlucky after a number of owners went bankrupt, but its fortunes changed after American ‘Colonel’ Bateman took over, assembling a new company headed by the great actor Henry Irving. Irving’s performance as Hamlet in 1874 ran over 200 nights, an unheard of success in its day.
Most of that theatre was eventually demolished due to lack of funding to implement new fire regulations, though the portico and façade were retained as part of the current theatre, which opened in 1904. Once again there was a notable performance of Hamlet on the premises, this time by Sir John Gielgud in 1939. In the same year plans for a road extension and roundabout threatened the future of the theatre, but they were eventually scrapped and after the Second World War the theatre became a dance hall and then a music venue. It now hosts large-scale musicals.
The ghostly figure of a woman has often been seen in the stalls area holding a man’s severed head. This is supposed to be the head of Henry Courtenay, the local landowner who was beheaded on the orders of Oliver Cromwell at the time of the Civil War.
The actor William Terris is also supposed to have been seen in the theatre (see page 58).
The Lyceum Theatre, 21 Wellington Street, London WC2E 7RQ; Tel: 0870 243 9000 (box office)
The Old Vic Theatre
The Old Vic was built in 1818 and was known as the Royal Coburg Theatre until 1833. On its opening night it presented a melodrama, an Asiatic ballet and a harlequinade, and today it continues to present a wide range of work from classic drama to innovative contemporary work.
Despite being described as ‘a licensed pit of darkness, a trap of temptation, profligacy and ruin’ by Charles Kingsley in the 1850s, the theatre has considerably influenced dramatic art. It is said to be haunted by the ghost of Lillian Baylis, who managed the theatre in the early twentieth century, and Eric Ross, an actor who died during the Spanish ’flu epidemic of 1917–18. There have also been reports of a distraught actress re-enacting the sleepwalking scene from Macbeth.
The Old Vic Theatre, The Cut, Waterloo Road, London SE1 8NB; Tel:0870 060 6628 (box office),020 7928 2651 (administration); Fax:020 7261 9161; Website: www.oldvictheatre.com
Osterley Park House
Osterley Park House, set in 357 acres of garden, parkland and farmland just off the A4 in Hounslow, west London, was originally built by Sir Thomas Gresham, Queen Elizabeth I’s financial adviser, in 1562. In 1683 it was bought by Nicholas Barbon, who used it as security to raise a large sum of money, but the house fell into disrepair and Barbon himself died in debt. In 1713 the house was acquired by Sir Francis Child, the founder of Child and Co. bank, in payment of the loan, and it became the Child family’s country house. In 1761 Sir Francis’s grandson, also called Francis, commissioned leading architect Robert Adam to transform it into the elegant neo-classical villa that can be seen today.
The ghost at Osterley is known as ‘the lady in white’. She is a beautiful lady in a white flowing dress who appears near the left-hand arch under the main stairway leading to the entrance of the house. She then moves towards the doorway and disappears. She usually makes her appearance at 4.30 in the afternoon and has been seen by both estate workers and visitors to the house.
The lady’s identity is not known for certain, but it is possible that she is the ghost of Sarah Anne Child, the family’s sole heir, who eloped to Gretna Green in 1782, when she was 18, with John Fane, son of the ninth Earl of Westmorland. Her father was so angry at the marriage that he changed his will so that the estate did not pass to the Westmorland family. Eventually it was inherited by Sarah’s daughter Sarah Sophia Fane and passed down her family until it was given to the National Trust in 1949.
Today the house and grounds are open to the public. There is a tea room, shop, farm shop and educational facilities, and the property may be hired for weddings and private functions.
Osterley Park House, Jersey Road, Isleworth, Middlesex TW7 4RB; Tel:020 8232 5050 (visitor services), (01494) 755566 (info line); Fax:020 8232 5080; Website: www.nationaltrust.org.uk
Red Lion Square
Red Lion Square, in the West End, is said to be haunted by three famous parliamentarians: Oliver Cromwell, John Bradshaw and Henry Ireton. They were all involved in sentencing King Charles I to death at the end of the Civil War. Bradshaw was president of the trial and was afterwards appointed Permanent President of the Council of State and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster by Cromwell. Cromwell himself became Lord Protector and his son-in-law Henry Ireton was appointed Lord Deputy.
After the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, a court was appointed to try those regicides who were still alive. Ten were found guilty and were sentenced to be hung, drawn and quartered. Ireton had died in 1651, Cromwell in 1658 and Bradshaw in 1659, but they were all posthumously tried for high treason, found guilty and also sentenced to be hung, drawn and quartered. In January 1661 their corpses were exhumed from Westminster Abbey, dragged to the gallows at Tyburn, hung in chains and decapitated. The decomposing heads were then displayed on poles outside Westminster Hall, while the rest of their remains were thrown into a pit in a field. This has since become Red Lion Square and the ghostly parliamentarians have been seen walking across it, deep in conversation.
See also Oliver Cromwell’s House at Ely, page 41.
Red Lion Square, London WCIR
DEREK’S TIP
Don’t rush things. Patience is required, as spirit people are not performers who just turn on and turn off, appearing on demand. If they are prepared to make themselves known, they will do it in their own good time. Always remember to thank them for their efforts.
