Haunted London Underground

by David Brandon

  Not only has the London Underground featured in many short stories and novels it has also been used in many films and television productions. Not all have been about hauntings or the supernatural. Although this genre has been represented in a number of productions it is surprising that there has not been more made of this location given its creepy atmosphere. Transport for London are accommodating and have welcomed many film companies to use their facilities although some companies have found it more economical to shoot from a mock-up studio. Nonetheless the theme set out in Betjeman’s short story of a lone commuter has provided plenty of material for variations on this theme, although some of these have been much less subtle than South Kentish Town. Whilst the terrors of Betjeman’s unfortunate clerk were mainly in his own mind, other characterisations set on the Underground have produced more sinister phantoms and creatures who threaten those who dare to be alone.

  Sir John Betjeman (1906–1984), poet and author of the atmospheric South Kentish Town. His statue was fittingly unveiled at the reopening of St Pancras International Station in November 2007.

  The disused South Kentish Town Station (1907-1924) which stands adorned with advertising boards and signs and is now (June 2008) used as a cash converters and a sauna and massage business.

  QUATERMASS AND THE PIT

  One of the great BBC Television series was Nigel Kneale’s Quatermass and the Pit, broadcast in the winter of 1958-1959. It managed successfully to scare audiences up and down the country with a younger generation (and some older ones) cowering behind the armchair to watch it. It was a retelling of a ghost story in which a scientific event leads to the explanation of supernatural phenomena. The main setting for the television series was a studio-constructed building site whereas the film version (1967) was set mainly around a fictional Underground station, ‘Hobbs End’. During the extension of what was supposed to be the Victoria Line, workers discover what they believe to be an unexploded Second World War bomb near the station platform. As they gradually begin to uncover the mysterious object it turns out to be a spaceship, millions of years old, bearing the fossilised bodies of dead aliens. Professor Bernard Quatermass, an unconventional scientist, is brought in to shed light on this disturbing discovery which turns out to have unforeseen effects on the local populace. Quatermass discovers that people living in the area have experienced ghostly manifestations and poltergeist outbreaks since the building of ‘Hobbs End’ Underground station in 1927. The fictional station is located at the end of a road called Hobbs Lane. A scene from the film shows Quatermass looking at two street signs. The older sign is spelt Hob’s End about which Quatermass is informed, ‘that’s an old name for the Devil’.

  Quatermass and the Pit weaves all the ingredients of a supernatural story: aliens, superstition, archaeological excavation, possession, haunted houses, science, ghosts and horror. Despite the importance of the Underground to the story, the film (known as 5 Million Miles from Earth in the US) was shot mainly at Ealing Studios. The changing of the set from a building site on the television series to an Underground station for the film was an inspired one. Construction of the actual Victoria Line started in the early 1960s, some five years before the film. When the line was extended south of the Thames to Brixton the engineers encountered various problems, including the finding of fossils and a number of human remains from an old plague pit. The disruption to the pit soon prompted reports of a ghostly presence haunting the area.

  NEVERWHERE

  Neverwhere was a six-part television serial first shown in 1996. Based on the book by Neil Gaiman, it tells the macabre tale of a sinister world known as ‘London Below’. Set in modern-day London (London Above) the series uses the Underground to reflect an uncongenial city that has been left behind. The central character, Richard Mayhew, an average sort of man, stumbles into the murky world of London Below which consists of a city of monsters, murderers, monks and angels. Familiar names take on a new significance in London Below. The Angel, Islington is a real angel, the Black Friars are dark priests, and Old Bailey is a character who wears clothing made of feathers.

  The closed Down Street Station, which was converted for use as a secret command centre during the Second World War, was used for the banquet scene in the serial.

  Façade of former Down Street Station on the Piccadilly Line, closed in 1932. Tucked away as it was in a side street off Piccadilly and close to the adjacent stations of Green Park (originally Dover Street) and Hyde Park Corner, it is a mystery as to why this station was ever built. What lurks behind these carefully secured doors?

  TROGLODYTES!

  The idea of people or creatures living in the Underground over many years has not only been the stuff of urban legend but has also provided the inspiration for some films. These myths have varied from large rodents and hybrid creatures to a forgotten troglodytic race whose ranks have been added to by vagabonds, escaped prisoners and people hiding during the Blitz who never returned to the surface. Such accounts suggest that these subterranean survivors have been reduced to near-bestial form according to Fortean Times reporter Michael Goss:

  They [allegedly] prowl the sewers and railway tunnels showing themselves as little as possible … They probably eat the sandwiches and burgers we discard and it is ‘widely’ believed that they also eat tramps, drunks and other isolated late-night commuters.

  On a more realistic note, Stephen Halliday in his book, Underground to Everywhere (2001), noted that Mass Observation (the social research organisation founded in 1937) reported in April 1943 on a study of tube life. They commented that some families had ‘established themselves permanently in the shelters, having abandoned their homes altogether. Children almost three years old had never spent a night at home …’. Halliday adds that ‘this was the troglodytic mentality that the government had feared but it was confined to about 6,000 people’.

  CREEP

  The British horror film Creep (released 2005) focuses on a young woman, Kate, who, having failed to catch a taxi, heads for the Underground where she waits for a train. Seemingly trapped in the depths of the Underground she falls asleep (supposedly at Charing Cross). When she awakes she is alone and begins to panic until a train pulls in. As Kate realizes she is the only passenger the train stops in the tunnel and the lights goes out. Her nightmares are just about to start. She eventually meets up with a couple who have made their home in a small room at the station. The man jokingly tells Kate about a creature creeping around killing homeless people. Unfortunately this myth becomes an awful reality for Kate when she eventually encounters the ‘creep’, a mentally deranged cannibalistic hermit who feeds on strays and workers alone in the Underground. A poster for the film, which shows the bloody hand of a murdered passenger on an Underground train, was banned from all subway stations because it was deemed ‘too gory’.

  DEATH LINE

  Creep owes a debt to an earlier film, Death Line (1972 aka Raw Meat), starring Donald Pleasance. The film takes up the theme of a lost tribe of people, this time the descendants of workers (men and women) who were buried by a railway tunnel cave-in in 1895 during the excavation of a line between Holborn and Russell Square. Although abandoned they have survived and bred for many years by eating lone people who have ventured into the rabbit warren of tunnels. However, only one of the tribe is now alive and he is in search of new victims. When the body of a prominent Ministry of Defence official is found in Russell Square Station, a Scotland Yard inspector is called in to investigate. Before long his search uncovers a secret enclave of survivors beneath the tunnels.

  AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON

  Once again following the theme of a lone passenger, a scene in American Werewolf in London (1981) shows an unfortunate commuter getting off a train onto an empty ‘Tottenham Court Road’ platform. As he makes his way to the exit and then the escalator – still alone – he is stalked by the lurking presence of a werewolf. The man desperately runs to get away from the creature but soon falls prey to the beast.

  REIG
N OF FIRE

  Another mythical creature, a dragon, is depicted in Reign of Fire (2002). During the extension of the ‘Docklands Extension Line’ (effectively a mock studio set) a huge hibernating dragon, asleep for hundreds of years, is discovered. The discovery unleashes the dragon, which then proceeds to incinerate the construction workers with its fiery breath. Once released it then breeds at a phenomenal rate, eventually wiping out most of the world by 2024.

  Escalator at Canary Wharf Tube Station. The location was used for the film 28 Days Later (2002).

  Apocalyptic and dystopian style films have also made use of the Underground such as 28 Days Later (2002 – ‘Canary Wharf’); 28 Weeks Later (2007 – the actual exterior of the Jubilee line platform); Survivors – The Lights of London parts 1 & 2 (1977); and Code 46 (2004 – Canary Wharf). In a very different mould the British comedy Bulldog Jack (1935) made use of a fictitious ‘secret’ tunnel from a station called Bloomsbury to the Egyptian Room at the British Museum. Whilst this was a stage set the story was based on the ghost story of British Museum (see Underground Stations section).

  TUBE TALES

  A more subtle approach is taken in the film Tube Tales (1999) which follows a series of mysterious and funny encounters, based on the true-life experiences of London Underground passengers. The nine stories unfold against a background of trains, corridors and escalators. One of the stories, Steal Away, follows two young people escaping from a robbery that they have committed. Using Holborn and Aldwych Stations as locations they try to escape and find themselves on what appears to be a disused station until a mysterious train pulls up and they board. Although the young man was shot during the robbery he appears to have escaped un-scathed – or has he?

  Other television series with a supernatural element featured on the Underground include Doctor Who – The Dalek Invasion of the Earth (1964) which made extensive use of the derelict ‘Wood Lane’ station; The Web of Fear (1968) – several scenes were shot in the Greenwich Foot Tunnel but the film-makers mainly used a studio set; The Chase (1965); Mysterious Planet (1986 –an underground civilisation is discovered under Marble Arch Station); and White City; The Sun Makers (1977) at Camden Town. Other sci-fi series include Blakes 7: Ultraworld (1980) and more recently Primeval (2007). The Primeval episode, as with almost all filming locations beneath the London Underground, was filmed at Aldwych.

  The use of disused stations as locations is limited for health and safety reasons, now making Aldwych the only disused station in which filming is allowed. Aldwych has also been the location for spooky films such as Death Line (1972), Ghost Story (1974), Creep (2004) and the television series Most Haunted, which chose the station in September 2002 to locate any ghosts that might be haunting the station. Lifeforce (1985 at Chancery Lane) also deals with alien forces taking possession of London although this time turning the population into zombies.

  The most interesting documentary to be made about hauntings was Ghosts of the Underground which was shown on Channel 5 in October 2006. Drawing largely on the experiences of people who had spent most of their working lives on the Underground, many of the accounts were authentic as well as chilling. The programme did not sensationalise but allowed a number of men to talk about their experiences of phenomena they could not explain. Some of them admitted to not believing in ghosts but acknowledged how very scared they were by what they had seen or heard. This rather understated approach not only brought a quality of eeriness to the programme but also made the accounts sound very believable.

  LITERATURE

  As with film and television the London Underground has provided the setting for many novels and short stories. There are books that deal with dark themes set under London such as Clare Clark’s murder story, The Great Stink (Viking, 2005). This evokes the smells, filth, rats, and the untold detritus that assemble in the sewerage tunnels of London just prior to the building of the London Underground. However, compared with films, books about hauntings are thinner on the ground which is surprising given the ominous and eerie subterranean setting of parts of the Underground.

  Sir Thomas Graham Jackson (1835-1924) was a leading architect as well as a writer of ghost stories. In the short story, A Romance of the Piccadilly Tube, he created one of the first ghost stories set in the London Underground. The central character, George Markham, catches a crowded train at Piccadilly Station where he later witnesses a very grisly accident involving a man he knows who is swept under a passing train. A commuter nightmare is the theme in the short story by R. Chetwynd-Hayes, Non-Paying Passengers (1974). The main character, Percy Fortesque, sees the ghost of his despised late wife, Doris, reflected in a train window. Later, his in-laws are doomed to haunt the London Underground for all eternity. In one of his last ghost stories, Bad Company (1956), Walter De La Mare opens with the chilling line, ‘It is very seldom that one encounters evil in a human face …’. The story opens with the narrator descending one of London’s ‘many subterranean railway stations.’ He describes the eeriness of the platform with its ‘glare and glitter, the noise, the very air one breathes affect nerves and spirits. One expects vaguely strange meetings in such surroundings. On this occasion, the expectation was justified.’ The story unfolds when the man boards the train and sits next to a cadaverous-looking old man whose appearance made the narrator recoil in disgust. The haunting figure continues to lure the man to a decrepit London residence in order to reveal a last will and testament.

  The old Aldgate East station was demolished and its platform space used for the new tracks – all, that is, except for the extra space set back for the staircase on the eastbound platform. This is the view from a passing train. (© Pendar Sillwood)

  A variation on the theme set out in Death Line is London Revenant (2006) by Conrad Williams which deals with another kind of lost soul. These are the drop-outs who haunt the Underground but among them lurks the ‘Pusher’ whose pleasure is to push people under trains as well as torturing people who live above ground. Another novel which takes the combination of the Underground and a sinister presence is Tobias Hill’s Underground (Faber, 2000), which takes the reader down long-lost tunnels, makeshift passages, locked and forgotten stations in search of grisly murders. Nicholas Royle’s The Director’s Cut (2000) concerns a psychotic film maker who finds shelter in a dead station whilst murdering passengers on the tube.

  The London Underground has provided a great backcloth for eerie stories. For many people, notably those working on the Underground, it has been the source of unusual and unexplained experiences. If you find yourself alone on a platform, in a carriage or a corridor of one of the stations mentioned in this book you might have cause to reflect on what you have read. If you happen to be on the receiving end of a ‘supernatural’ experience then … well, at least let us know. We would be interested to hear.

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