Haunted London (21 page)

Her sister, Mrs June Rose, who lived nearby and happened to be visiting her parents, hurried to the room and also saw the figure, which seemed to have turned in the meantime, since the apparition was now viewed from the side. June Rose described the figure as wearing a plain white ‘Victorian’ dress. She did not notice the buttons down the front as the figure was not facing her, and she did not notice the position of the arms. She did notice some dark hair straying down under the head covering. She thought the bonnet was tied underneath the chin and she too remarked on the big, black, menacing eyes. June took one look at the figure and ran out of the room in hysterics.

Mr Richard McGhee, the sixty-year-old father of Sally and June, told me that when he reached the bedroom he saw ‘smoke’ drifting towards the ceiling, as though the ‘white lady’ had dematerialized. The following night, Sally saw the figure again. This time it was in the act of kneeling and bending over the sleeping child, Elaine. The back of the figure was towards the bedroom door and this time both Sally and her husband, and also Mr McGhee, saw ‘drifting smoke’ as the figure disappeared.

The Strachan bedroom originally contained three wardrobes, one double-size and two single-size. Whenever a wardrobe was placed in one particular corner of the bedroom it was noticed that knocking sounds were heard and sometimes also the sound of groaning.

A few days before Sally saw the ‘white lady’, she was talking to her sister Valerie in the bedroom when to their amazement what looked like smoke began to issue from one of the wardrobes standing in the room. The smoke twisted and turned, forming spiral patterns and then disappeared. Before they could recover from the shock the heavy wardrobe in the room rose about a foot into the air and seemed to do a little jig before coming to rest facing the door of the bedroom! Alerted by the screams of the girls, Mr McGhee hurried upstairs and was in time to see the wardrobe in mid-air, quite clear of the floor. The wardrobe seemed to be coming towards him and he tried to push it down, but found that he was no match for the force that was propelling it along. As the wardrobe came to rest, the door opened and Mr McGhee, in trying to push the door shut, put his hand inside the wardrobe. He told me that it was as cold as if he had put his hand inside a refrigerator.

A month later, the same wardrobe caught fire and was reduced to ashes and a mattress was destroyed at the same time. The disturbances so dismayed the family that on at least one occasion all the occupants of the house spent the night in the garden, being too afraid to re-enter the house.

During the course of my visits, when I was accompanied by my wife, and W. G. T. Perrott, the chairman of The Ghost Club, we heard the stories of the happenings first-hand from the people concerned and during a tour of the house I was shown a fixed cupboard where, I was told, raps had apparently emanated on several occasions. As we left the room I suggested that we might try to tempt the entity and I tapped twice on the cupboard shelf, closed the door and we all left the room and began to descend the stairs. As we did so two clear and distinct knocks sounded from the direction of the room we had just left, raps that were heard by all four of us, the Rev. John Robbins also being present.

The whole affair came before Lord Parker, the Lord Chief Justice, during the course of a High Court action over the rent of the alleged haunted house and the rent was reduced from £4 a week to 25p a week. The disturbances, which included four inexplicable fires, caused Mr McGhee and his family to leave the house — because of the ghosts. A rent assessment committee suggested that Mr McGhee was negligent and that ghosts had nothing to do with the fires. The Queen’s Bench division decided that the committee was wrong. There was no evidence whatever that Mr McGhee was in any way to blame and Lord Parker observed that ‘Some manifestations took the form of what was thought to be poltergeists causing havoc with the furniture and noises in the night.’ The mystery of who or what caused the movement of furniture, the noises and the fires was never solved — but the sober statement in my records that two clear taps were heard in the quiet house, from a room devoid of human beings, reminds me that personal experience always outweighs other people’s testimony.

TOLLINGTON PARK, ISLINGTON

When I called at 63 Tollington Park, Islington, I was told about phantom footsteps that have been heard at this house where Frederick Seddon poisoned his lodger, a prostitute, for £200, in 1911. The house was badly bombed during the Second World War, but rebuilding the property seems to have retained the strange and hurrying footsteps that Mrs Munton told me she and her family had heard many times. The sounds seemed to fade almost as soon as one became aware of them, so that the hearer was inclined to dismiss the sounds as imagination. However, they have been heard so many times over the years and by so many people that it seems likely that something of Seddon’s horrible, quick and anxious movements at the time of the murder remained at the house forty or more years afterwards.

WINCHMORE HILL POSTAL SORTING OFFICE

In 1971, inexplicable footsteps in deserted corridors of the new Postal Sorting Office at Station Road, Winchmore Hill, prompted an official investigation. A correspondent told me that workmen in the building at night paused in their work, time and again, listening to the approaching footsteps and waited for someone to enter the room they were occupying. As the sounds became louder they sometimes threw open the door, but the sounds ceased as they did so and there was never anyone in the building other than themselves.

The modern, matter-of-fact office was built on the site of a former church hall, but the vicar of St Paul’s church knows of no tragic happening that might have triggered off a haunting. The church hall was opened in 1903 and remained in use until 1965. Before 1903, the site had been an open field.

Other disturbances reported in the modern building included inexplicable opening of doors and windows. One night, all doors in the place were carefully closed and locked, yet in the morning every one was found open. Windows, carefully closed and latched, were found unlatched. Nothing had been disturbed or removed and there was no evidence of a break-in. The disturbances ceased when the building came into use and as far as I am aware no mysterious footsteps or doors and windows opening by themselves now disturb the postal workers as they sort the mail.

YE OLDE GATE HOUSE, HIGHGATE

Ye Olde Gate House, Highgate, dates back to the fourteenth century and obtained its name by being conveniently situated for graziers and drovers to rest for the night before the cattlemen continued down the hill to Smithfield (formerly Smoothfield). The fine old hostelry was built beside the former toll-gate on Highgate Hill, on the fringe of the estate of the Bishop of London who granted the original licence to the inn. There is a dummy cupboard here from which Dick Turpin is said to have made an escape. It was here that Henning drew the very first cartoon for
Punch
, and regular visitors have included Lord Byron, Charles Dickens and George du Maurier.

Such an inn deserves a ghost and Mother Marnes, a widow who was murdered here for her money, haunts the gallery, the oldest part of the premises. However, the ghost is rarely seen since the black-robed figure only puts in an appearance when there are no children or animals in the building. Yet one landlord claimed to see the ghost and the old woman’s cat that was killed with her, and he never really recovered from the shock, giving up the pub on the advice of his doctors.

Others say the ghost is that of a white-haired smuggler who was murdered for his money. A more recent mystery surrounds the story of some members of the staff who cannot see their reflections in a certain mirror, but only a blurred and cloudy image that might be anything.

BEAVOR LANE, HAMMERSMITH

Beavor Lodge, Beavor Lane, Hammersmith, was demolished in the 1920s, but in 1883 Mrs W. B. Richmond wrote of the haunting associated with the house and in 1961 her son, Sir Arthur Richmond, CBE, described the experiences in his book
Twenty-six Years, 1879-1905
. The figure of a tall lady dressed in grey was seen not only during the hours of darkness but also during daylight. The sound of someone weeping sorrowfully was heard night after night and the sounds of some thick material being sewn. There was a story that at one time a gang of coiners occupied the house after being caught and serving their sentence on ‘information received’. They were convinced that the informant was a woman and they sought her out, lured her to Beavor Lodge and forced her to sew a sack in which she was drowned in the Thames.

Among the incidents recorded by Sir Arthur in his memoirs there is the testimony of a parlour maid who fainted and dropped a tray in the hall because, she said, she had met a strange lady dressed in grey who disappeared. There was the appearance of a figure similar to Sir Arthur’s mother, and another figure that resembled his sister when she was a young girl. Mr George Richmond saw a grey lady sitting under a tree in the garden in an attitude of extreme grief, but when he looked again the figure had gone. Miss Perceval Clark, the daughter of a QC, saw a female figure in light grey standing in profile against some armour in a small room near the studio, and a few nights later she saw the same figure in the drawing room. Miss Clark’s sister saw the outline of a woman’s figure, dressed in pale grey, in her bedroom, and it is related that when old Sir William Richmond lay dying in Beavor Lodge his last action and words were to point to one corner of the room and say, ‘There stands the Grey Lady.’ Today, a factory occupies the site of haunted Beavor Lodge.

CHISWICK POLICE STATION

In Chiswick High Road the ultra-modern police station is built on the site of an old fire station that was haunted by the ghost of a woman who was murdered in the basement, originally the cellar of Linden House where, in 1792, a Mrs Abercrombie is said to have been killed by her son-in-law, Thomas Wainwright, a psychopath, with a meat cleaver.

Suggestions that the ghost of Mrs Abercrombie still haunted the building came to a head some years ago when a fireman who had moved to the new Brentford and Chiswick Fire Station maintained that the sounds of a woman walking around the basement were often heard late at night. ‘Whenever the door was opened’, he said, ‘the sounds stopped, and there was never any sign of anything or anyone around. I never went down there on my own at night — and neither did any of the other firemen.’

A senior police sergeant was reported at the time as saying that after working in the Chiswick area for many years, he was interested in the story and anxious to see whether there were any signs of a ghost in the new building. He had established that the new basement storeroom was on exactly the same site as the old Linden House cellar, ‘so if there is a ghost it could well operate there too’. I have received no reports of supernormal activity at the police station, but the police are notoriously sensitive about such matters.

EATON PLACE, BELGRAVIA

One of London’s best-authenticated ghost stories is associated with fashionable Eaton Place where, on 22 June 1893, Lady Tryon was giving one of her ‘at home’ parties. The cream of Edwardian high society chatted and circulated amid the elegant furniture. The ladies were resplendent in their frills and laces and the gentlemen in tight-waisted frockcoats when there was a sudden hush in the conversation.

A commanding figure in full naval uniform had entered the room without being announced. Glancing neither to the left nor to the right, he strode straight across the room. The guests drew aside to let him pass, for they all recognized Sir George Tryon. Next moment he had vanished.

At that very moment, the body of Admiral Sir George Tryon was lying in the wreckage of his flagship HMS
Victoria
at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea, the result of a collision that remains a mystery.

As Lady Tryon was welcoming her guests at Eaton Place the Mediterranean Fleet was on manoeuvres. Sir George’s squadron was steaming along in two columns, the flagship
Victoria
leading one column and HMS
Camperdown
, commanded by Admiral Markham, leading the other column. For no reason that has ever been discovered Sir George Tryon suddenly signalled to the two columns of battleships to turn towards each other. The ships were now in grave danger of colliding, and in spite of frantic appeals Sir George kept the ships on their course, and only when it was too late for a tragedy to be averted did he give the order to steam astern. The
Camperdown
crashed into the
Victoria
with considerable loss of life.

Perhaps as he realized the awful mistake he had made, Sir George’s thoughts turned to his home in Eaton Square, resulting in the appearance there of his form, which was recognized by everyone present. The form did not speak.

ESMOND ROAD, CHISWICK

A council house in Esmond Road, Chiswick, was the centre of apparent poltergeist activity in July, 1956, culminating in the occupants, Mr and Mrs Joseph Pearcey, and their thirteen-year-old son being driven out of the house. Pennies, razorblades and clothes-pegs were reported to fly about the house and a spanner tore a curtain and smashed a window when it flew the length of a deserted room.

Young David Pearcey was playing in the garden, a week after the family had moved to the house from a prefabricated house at Acton, when he was struck on the face by a penny. Thinking that a friend was having a joke with him, he looked around the deserted garden when another penny flew through the air and landed near him. And then another, and another and yet another.

Later that evening, the Pearceys were busy with some home decoration when they heard the sound of pennies falling in the room beneath them. They took little notice, thinking that their cleaning had dislodged coins that the previous tenant’s children had pushed into gaps in the floorboards. Then a penny hit Mrs May Pearcey hard enough to cause a bruise and neighbours complained about the noise caused by coins falling in the stone-floored hall. As soon as one penny was picked up, another appeared in its place.