Haunted London Underground

by David Brandon

  The plaque to William Terriss near the stage door of the Adelphi Theatre.

  At the Old Bailey on 13 January 1898 Prince was advised to plead not guilty. His defence as well as various witnesses, including his mother, attempted to prove insanity. The jury declared him to be guilty but not responsible for his actions and he was sent to Broadmoor where he managed to become involved in entertaining the inmates as well as conducting the prison orchestra.

  The ghost of Terriss began to haunt both the Adelphi Theatre and Covent Garden Station. Strange noises, lights going on and off, the sound of footsteps as well as sightings of Terriss have been experienced at the theatre. Many staff at the station have reported incidents after it has been closed to passengers at night with the ghost manifesting itself in a number of ways. The sound of disembodied gasps and sighs, knocking in the lift and sightings of a ghost-like image of a man were some of the manifestations.

  Peter Underwood, probably Britain’s leading authority and writer on the paranormal, records in his book, Haunted London (1975), an account told to him by an Underground ticket collector, Jack Hayden. On a cold November night in 1955 after the last train had gone, Jack was locking the gates when he suddenly saw a tall, distinguished man with a very sad face and sunken cheeks ascending the emergency stairs towards him. When Jack realised the man might be locked in, he shouted to him and told the man to wait and he would let him out. However, by the time Jack undid the gate the man was nowhere to be seen. Four days later Jack saw the man again wearing an old-fashioned grey suit and some light-coloured gloves. Jack asked the figure if he needed the cloakroom but he did not answer and just moved away and disappeared within seconds. Understandably Jack was reluctant to tell anyone of his experience for fear of ridicule. It was only another few days after the second sighting that Jack and one of the guards heard a screaming noise. It came from a nineteen-year-old Underground worker, Victor Locker. Victor came into the mess room looking as though he had seen a ghost – which he had. He described it as a tall, strange-looking man. At this point Jack made a report and the management sent a foreman, Eric Davey, to check what had happened. Eric, by coincidence, was an amateur spiritualist who saw the ghost himself some days later. Eric and Jack described the ghost to an artist who drew an image of the man which was then passed on to Psychic News. They in turn looked through photographs which they showed to Eric and Jack. Both recognised the man they saw in the Underground. It was William Terriss.

  The Adelphi Theatre stage door near to where Terriss was murdered by Richard Prince.

  The Adelphi Theatre which is also reputed to be haunted by the ghost of William Terriss.

  It was reported in the Sunday Dispatch in January 1956 that the ghost of a tall man wearing white gloves was seen in Covent Garden London Underground Station. It added that member of staff ‘Victor Locker, a West African, who believes he saw a ghost, cannot bear to work at the station. His application for a transfer to another station was granted immediately.’ Victor described the experience like that of heavy weight pressing down on him leaving him helpless. In the Channel Five documentary, Ghosts of the Underground (2006), another ex-Underground worker, a lift operator, described a very similar experience to the others. He too saw a tall man in old-fashioned clothes in 1972 and, like Jack Hayden, when he was shown a photograph of William Terriss he instantly recognised it as the man he saw.

  There have been no reported sightings of the ghost of William Terriss since. We can only speculate as to why this might be but it does coincide with a time when Covent Garden went through a period of crisis. From the 1960s traffic congestion had become a huge problem, particularly for lorries delivering and distributing goods at the large fruit and vegetable market. The area was threatened with major redevelopment but a public outcry pressured the Home Secretary, Robert Carr, in 1973 to give Listed Building status to many places around the square thus preventing the proposed redevelopment. Maybe William’s ghost came to rest but we should not get too complacent, as changes to develop the station are due to take place and may provoke the ghost of Terriss into a new burst of activity.

  ELEPHANT AND CASTLE

  The Elephant and Castle Underground Station is located in the Borough of Southwark. It is on the Bank branch of the Northern Line and is also the southern terminus for the Bakerloo Line. The station was built in two stages. The Northern Line (then the City & South London Railway) was opened in December 1890 and the Bakerloo Line (Baker Street and Waterloo Railway) opened in August 1906. The Elephant and Castle Station is a typical Leslie Green structure which remains much as when it was originally constructed.

  The ghost associated with the station probably lacks the eeriness of some of the other haunted stations. It is not a known individual who died at or near the station as, for example, the Covent Garden or Aldgate ghosts. Staff who work at the station have experienced the sounds of someone running towards them mainly when the station is closed but no one can be seen. In addition there are other unexplained noises including doors suddenly opening.

  Elephant and Castle Station where the ghostly sounds of someone running have been heard, as well as the appearance of a young woman boarding a train but then disappearing.

  An empty corridor at the Elephant and Castle Station.

  A lone young female has been seen by commuters and staff late at night entering the carriage of a train but is never seen leaving – as if she disappears. One tube worker recorded his experience. He joined the train at the Elephant and Castle to travel with the driver. As the driver had not arrived the man then went to the rear door to wait for him. It was then that he saw a girl getting into the carriage and walking by him. Soon after the driver turned up and the two men walked to the front of the train. The man then noted that the girl was not in the carriage, ‘she could not have left the train without passing me – I had full view of the carriage and platform at the time.’ The only place she could have gone, he said, was down the tunnel. Growing more agitated he told the driver about the girl who responded with, ‘Oh, her. We hear about her all the time.’

  One worker who had previously worked at Blackfriars was so scared by his experiences at the station he refused to do night duty there. Another night-duty worker reported hearing the sound of footsteps getting louder and then becoming fainter as they ran off into the distance of the platform. He added that this occurred especially on winter evenings.

  A chilling site for anyone travelling alone is to look at a carriage window and be confronted with the sudden reflection of a ghost-life face staring back even though no one is sitting nearby. People travelling northbound on the Bakerloo Line from the Elephant and Castle have reported this particular apparition on many occasions.

  FARRINGDON

  The ghost of Anne Naylor haunts Farringdon Station. This station is on the Metropolitan, Hammersmith & City and Circle Lines between King’s Cross and Barbican. It was opened in January 1863 as the terminus for the original Metropolitan Railway – the world’s first underground railway. Initially called Farringdon Street it was relocated in December 1865 when the Metropolitan Railway opened an extension to Moorgate. Renamed Farringdon and High Holborn in January 1922 (this name is still on the façade) it changed to its present name in April 1936.

  It is located near Smithfield Market, which itself has a rich and interesting history. Smithfield from the fourteenth century had been home to tournaments and duels as well as the debauchery and rowdiness associated with the famous Bartholomew Fair (1133-1855) held in mid- to late August. Smithfield was, for over 400 years, one of the main sites of executions, including that of William Wallace (‘Braveheart’) in 1305. It is also the site of a plague pit.

  The story of thirteen-year-old Anne Naylor (spelt Ann Nailor at the trial at the Old Bailey) is one of dreadful cruelty. Anne was apprenticed as milliner to Sarah Metyard and her daughter, Sarah Morgan Metyard. In 1758 there were five young girls in her employment all of whom had come from parish workhouses including Anne and her sister. Anne was desc
ribed as being of a sickly disposition and therefore found the work difficult and could not keep up with the other girls. This singled her out and made her become the object of the fury of the evil Sarah Metyard and daughter. They punished Anne with such barbarity and repeated acts of cruelty that she decided to leave. Unfortunately she did not get far and was brought back where she was confined in an upstairs room and fed with little more than bread and water. For such a sickly child this could only weaken her further. Again Anne seized a chance to escape. Once in the street she ran to a milk carrier and begged him to protect her, telling him of her cruel employers who would starve and beat her if she was returned.

  Farringdon Station where the screams of poor Anne Naylor have been heard.

  Anne had chosen the wrong person to plead to for help and he handed her back. Poor Anne could only imagine the horrors that awaited her. Thrown back into her room she awaited the fury of the Metyards. As the old women held her down the daughter began to beat Anne savagely with a broom handle. They then tied her hands behind her and fastened her to door and left her there for three days without food or water. Threatened with punishment the other apprentices were not allowed to go anywhere near the room. Alone, bruised, exhausted and starved, by the fourth day she died.

  Despite the warnings, some of the other girls saw her body tied with cord and hanging from the door. They cried out to the sadistic women to help Anne. The daughter ran upstairs and proceeded to hit the dead Anne with a shoe. It was apparent that there was no sign of life and pathetic attempts were made at reviving her. One of the young apprentices, Philadelphia Dowley, acted as a witness four years later (July 1762) at the trial of Anne’s murder at the Old Bailey. When asked why Anne tried to run away she replied, ‘because she was … so ill. She used to be beat with a walking stick and hearth brooms by the mother, and go without her victuals.’ Another witness, Richard Rooker, had been a lodger at Metyard’s house. He told of the grisly attempt to conceal the crime, the revelation of other murders and how Metyard’s daughter had told him with great reluctance what happened:

  She told me that these children were starved to death; that Ann Nailor died first, whom the mother would not bury; and the reason the mother gave for it, she said, was, because it would be clear evidence that she was starved to death, by the appearance of the body … a few hours after the body was carried up stairs into the garret, and locked up in a box, where it was kept for upwards of two months, till it putrefied, and maggots came from her.

  Smithfield Market near Farringdon Station has been the site of a meat market for over 800 years. The area also held public executions, had a plague pit and was the site of the famous Bartholomew Fair.

  He went on to describe how he was told that the mother removed the body and tried to cut it to pieces and then burned one of the hands in the fire. Then ‘she tied the body and head in a brown cloth, and the other parts in another, being part of the bed furniture [and] carried them to Chick Lane gully-hole’.(Chick Lane was removed in the mid-nineteenth century and absorbed into what is now Charterhouse Street – close to Farringdon Station). Unable to get rid of the body parts she left them in the mud collected in the grate of a sewer. It was the remains of this evidence that were discovered by a nightwatchman who reported it to the ‘constable of the night’ – Thomas Lovegrove, overseer of the parish of St Andrew, Holborn. The coroner assumed the body parts to be those of a corpse stolen from a churchyard.

  Four years elapsed after Anne’s murder and it seemed that she would be denied justice for her brutal murder. It may well have stayed that way had it not being for the continual disagreements between the mother and daughter. The arguments resulted in frequent beatings for the young Sarah Metyard, who was so provoked that she wrote a letter to the overseers of Tottenham Parish informing them about the whole affair and that her mother was a murderer. Both mother and daughter were subsequently arrested. In the trial the Metyards were also indicted for the wilful murder of Mary Nailor, Anne’s sister, aged eight years old.

  In her defence the mother admitted that Anne was ill and that she and her daughter took Anne ‘and laid her on the bed … She had victuals carried her up every day … She never died in my house.’ Her daughter claimed differently. ‘I begged of my mother to let her have some supper … She said she should have none … I believed the girl would die, for she went up stairs upon all fours, she was so weak.’ The year in which the Metyard’s were arrested (1762) also witnessed the so-called sensation of the Cock Lane Ghost in Smithfield. This story, later revealed as a fraud, captured the imagination of many. In court a witness told of how he had heard the young Metyard say some odd things about the Cock Lane story, ‘Mother, you are the Chick Lane ghost; remember the gully-hole’ – a reference to the place nearby where Anne’s body had been dumped.

  Mother and daughter were sentenced to be executed at Tyburn (near to where Marble Arch now stands) and then taken to the Surgeon’s Hall for dissection. The daughter ‘pleaded her belly’ [pregnancy] but after an inspection by matrons they confirmed she was not with child. On Monday 19 July they were led from Newgate Prison in a cart on the two-mile journey to Tyburn. The mother was described as being in a fit during the journey and ‘left this life in a state of insensibility.’ As for her daughter she wept incessantly from leaving Newgate until the moment of her death on the scaffold. After the execution both were ‘conveyed in a hearse to Surgeons’ Hall, where they were exposed to the curiosity of the public, and then dissected.’

  The deprivations and eventual horrors that poor Anne endured in her brief life are heartbreaking. Brought up in a parish workhouse with her young sister then apprenticed to the horrendous Sarah Metyard only to be beaten, imprisoned, starved and left to die, her brief life was harsh and short of any human compassion. In death she was subjected to the butchery of her sadistic employer. One would like to believe that she found peace but it appears her tormented soul wanders Farringdon Station where she has been nicknamed the ‘Screaming Spectre’. Over the years, there have been regular reports of the ghost of Anne, the sound of her screams echoing down the platform and passengers claiming to hear the screaming of a young girl as the last train leaves the station at night.

  HIGHGATE

  Highgate Underground Station is situated on Archway Road. Since this is the southern end of the AI or Great North Road, the area resounds day and night to the permanent uproar and nightmarish bedlam that this road creates. The station is not particularly convenient for the centre of Highgate Village. The village is famous, among other things, for the ghost of the featherless chicken which, for centuries, has inhabited Pond Square, occasionally pecking anyone who happens to be about at the time.

  The world-famous Highgate Cemetery has ghosts galore. Its sleeping inmates include the scientist Michael Faraday (1791-1867), Mary Ann Evans (1819-1880), the novelist with a controversial lifestyle who operated under the pseudonym ‘George Eliot’, and the eminent actors Sir Ralph Richardson (1902-1983) and Sir Michael Redgrave (1908-1985). Perhaps the best-known occupant of the cemetery is Karl Marx (1818-1883), the great German social, economic and political theorist. It is to be hoped that they all rest in peace.

  Highgate stands in the Northern Heights to the north-east of Hampstead Heath and the top of Highgate Hill is over 400ft above sea level. The village has long been a highly desirable and therefore very expensive residential quarter and a number of fine houses of the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries survive.

  The infamous Tyburn Tree where thousands of people met their end.

  Near the site of the infamous Tyburn Gallows, close to Marble Arch. It was here that Sarah Metyard and her daughter were executed in 1762 for the murder of Anna Naylor.

  Platform, Farringdon Station.

  Entrance to the Egyptian Avenue at Highgate Cemetery. The famous cemetery has many ghosts.

  The railway history of Highgate is a little complicated. The first station bearing ‘Highgate’ as its name opened in June 1907 and it was the terminus
of a branch of the Charing Cross, Euston and Hampstead Railway from Camden Town. This station is the present Archway of the Northern Line. The line was extended beyond Archway to East Finchley in 1939 and to High Barnet in 1940, but not before Archway had enjoyed short spells being officially but confusingly known as Highgate (Archway) and then Archway (Highgate).

  However, Archway Station is some distance from the present Highgate Northern Line Station, being at the bottom of the hill on which the village of Highgate stands. Highgate tube station did not open when the Northern was extended in 1939 but instead began operations on 19 June 1941. The Highgate railway ghosts, however, have not been reported from this particular Northern Line station but another station very close by and actually above it!

  The key to this seemingly confused situation lies in the presence nearby of the Alexandra Palace. After the Great Exhibition which was held in Hyde Park in 1851, the building in which it was housed, universally known as the ‘Crystal Palace’, was taken down and a few years later re-erected in enlarged form on Sydenham Hill in South London. The palace and its grounds quickly became a major attraction especially at weekends and bank holidays.

  Naturally, anything that the South Londoners could do the North Londoners thought they could do better and the decision was taken to build a rival on and around a hill, over 300ft in height, between Hornsey and New Southgate. The building opened in 1873 and within days was largely destroyed by fire. This somehow typified the ‘Ally Pally’s’ luck. It went on to undergo some ups and a lot of downs with which we need not concern ourselves. The relevant point is that it was thought likely to attract a lot of visitors and also new local residents as the area opened up for middle-class housing development. It is therefore not surprising that a number of proposals were made for railway lines that would approach Alexandra Palace from the south. Putting it in simple terms, two nominally independent companies built a line from Finsbury Park via Crouch End, Highgate and Muswell Hill to Alexandra Palace. The line to Highgate opened in 1867 and to Alexandra Palace in 1873. Both were operated from the start by the Great Northern Railway.