Haunted Highgate E-Book

Della Farrant

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 212

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

Compiled by paranormal investigator Della Farrant, this new book contains a chilling range of spooky tales from around Highgate. From haunted public houses and private homes taken over by malevolent poltergeists to a top-hatted fiend who hisses at passers-by and the 'vampire' sightings of the 1970s at Highgate's world-famous cemetery, this collection of ghostly goings-on is sure to appeal to everyone interested in North London's supernatural residents. Richly illustrated, Haunted Highgate is the ideal guide for anyone who wishes to delve deeper into the area's mysterious history.

Leseprobe

Dedicated to the memory of A.L.B. Farrant, laid to rest on Mothering Sunday 2014 aged 15 years old. Always in our hearts.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am indebted to the following for making this book possible, whether for their encouragement, time and enthusiasm, or their assistance with research material. In no particular order: Alan Murdie, Philip Hutchinson and John Fraser of The Ghost Club; Dave Milner; Redmond McWilliams; The Hornsey Historical Society; Gareth J. Medway; Deborah Meredith; Neil Arnold; Paul Screeton; Paul Adams; David Saunderson; Lorcan Maguire; Dr Chris Laoutaris; the editorial team at the Ham & High; Fr Pat Fitzgerald; Dr Sarah Wise; Dr Ian Dungavell; Michael Hammerson; Charles Walker; Brian Sutcliffe; Dee Monique; Jon Randall and Maria Malo; Kenny Frewin; Becky Beach; Gareth Davies; Reeves Cooke; the team at NLPI; Drew Hartley; Patsy Langley and Ricky Sorenti; Paul Quinn; Glyn Morgan; John Plews; Max Sycamore; Melusine Draco; Ken Rees; Alys Tomlinson; the late Mhairi Kent; Joao Ferreira; Steve Genier; Vinnie De Moraes Luz; John Goodchild; Brian Bourne; Mum, Dad, Neil and Pete; Andy Antoniou; S.P.; and last but not least my ever-patient husband David, access to whose invaluable archives enabled me to revisit many of his early investigations.

I would also like to extend thanks to all the witnesses cited in the following pages, of whom there are far too many names to mention here, for their generosity in sharing their personal experiences.

CONTENTS

Title

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Foreword by Alan Murdie

Introduction

one

Swains Lane: Highgate’s Most Haunted Thoroughfare

A Top-Hatted Victorian Ghost? • The Ghost that Tried to Hitch a Ride • A Nocturnal Encounter in Waterlow Park • Locked Gates Present No Barrier in Cholmeley Park • A Hiss in One’s Ear on a Warm Summer Night • A Nineteenth-Century Encounter with the Man in Black • A Top Hat Helps Identify an 1865 Suicide Victim • A Cowled Figure Abroad in Swains Lane • A Young Nurse is Assaulted by the ‘Ghost’ • The Entity Frightens a Motorist • Ghosts in the Machine? • The Ghost of a Body Snatcher

two

Highgate Cemetery West

A Hooded Figure Peering over the Wall • Spirit Voices Recorded on Tape • A 1969 Sighting near the Circle of Lebanon • The Ghost Confronts Some More of its Neighbours • A Fiend with Red Glowing Eyes? • An Early Investigation into the Phenomena • A Modern Intrusion • Black Magic among the Monuments • Enter the Vampire • A Ghostly Figure on Film? • The Ghost Interrupts a Guided Tour • A Spectral Incursion at a Youth Hostel • ‘Elemental Forces’ from Highgate Cemetery • Romano-Celtic Hooded Spirits in North London • A Seventeenth-Century Suspect

three

Highgate Cemetery East

A ‘Mad Old Woman’ Searching among the Graves

four

Haunted Public Houses

The Gatehouse • Old Mother Marnes Frightens the Police • Mother Marnes’s Missing Cat • A Seventeenth-Century Burglar on the Prowl • ‘Landlord George Sees a Ghost’ • The Ghost of a Smuggler • More Disturbances in the Ballroom • A Haunted Theatre and a Ghost with a Shoe Fetish • A Nocturnal Menace in the Restaurant • Friendly Ghosts in the Cellar • The Flask • A Fleeing Cavalier • Secret Tunnels and Chambers • A Jacobean Ghost on The Old Monk’s Bench • Old May’s Lost Cottage • A Tragic Spanish Barmaid

five

Haunted Houses

The House that Dripped Blood • A Golf Course with a Sinister Secret • A Haunted Council Estate • A Wailing Ghost in Holly Village • The Police are Perplexed by a Poltergeist • Ritual Remains Discovered in Lauderdale House • A Haunted Scout Hut • A Racketing Ghost in Elthorne Road • A Playful Ghost at Cloisters Court • An Unsuccessful Exorcism in Cromwell Avenue • Saved from Death by a Ghost? • A Brooding Spectre on Suicide Bridge • The Hornsey Lane Poltergeist • The Ghost who Jumped out the Window • The ‘House of Dracula’ on Avenue Road • The Hornsey Coal Ghost of Ferrestone Road

six

Some Animal Ghosts

An Invisible Horse and Rider in Swains Lane • A Phantom Coach and Six • The Frozen Chicken of Pond Square

seven

Haunted Woods

A Moonlit Pursuit in Cherry Tree Wood • A Tall, Dark Figure Gliding Between the Trees • Woodland Sprites Coming in from the Cold? • A Plague Victim’s Ghost in Queens Wood • The ‘Mothman’ of Queens Wood

Copyright

FOREWORD

For many years members of the Ghost Club have taken an interest in the ghost stories that have circulated concerning Highgate Cemetery, the vast Victorian necropolis that opened in 1839. Indeed, one of my predecessors as chairman of the club, Tom Perrott (1921–2013), lived nearby for many years at Muswell Hill and thus was conveniently placed to monitor how rumours of sinister apparitions appearing in the Victorian cemetery expanded to the point that even a vampire was claimed to be prowling the area.

Tom Perrott was not alone in being surprised and sceptical concerning such stories, the general view amongst most British ghost hunters being that cemeteries and graveyards are largely unhaunted. Despite popular associations in folklore and fiction, very few people have been known to die in graveyards, and as veteran investigator Andrew Green (1927–2004) observed in Ghost Hunting: A Practical Guide (1973), ‘because the association does exist in people’s minds, quite normal occurrences on the site, or in the new buildings constructed on it, are often assumed to be paranormal phenomena’.

What happened at Highgate, however, could hardly be described as normal. Wild rumours of menacing phantoms and vampires flourished, fuelled by excited media coverage and claims of occult rituals practised after dark. Following one TV broadcast in March 1970, hundreds of people spontaneously descended upon Highgate Cemetery in a mass ghost/vampire hunt worthy of the ending of a horror film, until the police restored order. For some it was a great irony that the arch-prophet of materialist philosophy Karl Marx, who had once written of the ‘vampire of capitalism’, should have his tomb at a place where so many supernatural stories accumulated.

With many conflicting versions and accounts of these events in circulation, what has long been needed is a serious book sifting out, so far as possible, facts from fantasy concerning ghost experiences in Highgate. In this fascinating book, Della Farrant succeeds admirably in this delicate and complex task.

Writing from the unique perspective of being the wife of a key participant in some of the events described, she has also embarked upon extensive and independent research, tracing original sources and seeking out witnesses and corroborative evidence. Whilst part of the job of a serious writer on ghosts is to quash exaggerated rumours, at the same time the opportunity to record contemporary beliefs and experiences should never be missed. Indeed, it must be recognised that folklore and popular stories can sometimes provide clues to the presence of genuine phenomena. As readers will soon realise, not all in this book can be ascribed to imagination or urban myth.

In Haunted Highgate, Della Farrant firmly establishes that people do indeed have strange experiences, in no way limited to just the cemetery and its environs. In recording these accounts here, she restores much-needed balance to the study of ghosts in the Highgate district, as well as providing a wealth of fascinating new stories and material for readers to analyse, ponder and enjoy.

Alan Murdie, 2014

Chairman of The Ghost Club

INTRODUCTION

The very name Highgate suggests a place in between two worlds, deriving from the Saxon haeg and the Old English gat. This ‘gap in the hawthorn hedge’ has been a place of flux and movement between north and south for over seven centuries, and in the process has evolved from a fledgling hamlet into an affluent suburb. Millions of people have passed through Highgate since 1318, perhaps leaving behind some of their energy – for this ancient and unspoiled area of North London is believed by many to be one of the most haunted locations in the UK.

Advocates of ‘ostention theory’, including notable researchers such as American folklorist Professor Bill Ellis, have attempted critical overviews of the more overtly sociological aspects of Highgate’s haunted history. This school of thought upholds the concept that people who have been primed to expect a specific paranormal experience will often ‘have’ one, and that through the power of auto-suggestion they can erroneously come to believe that they have had a genuine encounter with a supernatural agency. Adherents to such approaches, when analysing some of the more famous reports of psychical activity in Highgate, often surmise that it was the press which helped create the concept of such alleged phenomena in the first place. Whilst researching this book, I have conducted conversations and interviews in person, often in Highgate itself, with countless residents of many decades’ incumbency who state the opposite, and it is these villagers past and present to whom I am primarily indebted.

It was in the early 1970s that Highgate’s supernatural activity first began to be recorded in earnest in the popular press. The shortage of early written records on the subject, when contrasted with strong oral traditions, suggests that this now gentrified village’s notable class divide placed ghosts and superstition firmly in the realm of the semi-rural ‘peasant classes’. Until the second half of the twentieth century it was not these people, of course, who were writing books, keeping journals, or being interviewed for newspapers.

Fortunately for us, the appearance and habits of some of the ghosts which still roam Highgate also help tell their own unwritten stories, many of which are recorded in print here for the first time. I hope they approve.

Della Farrant, Highgate, 2014

1

SWAINS LANE:

HIGHGATE’S MOST HAUNTED THOROUGHFARE

Over the last few decades, thousands of books, magazines, broadcasts and websites have immortalised Highgate’s haunted reputation, chiefly focusing upon its famous Victorian burial grounds. But while these certainly have their resident ghosts, the sheer scope of the paranormal phenomena associated with Swains Lane itself marks it out as potentially more haunted than both cemeteries combined.

One of Highgate’s oldest trade routes, the lane takes its name from the swine which were herded down it towards Spitalfields Market from at least the fourteenth century. Its steep incline, extending some three-quarters of a mile south from Highgate Village, today divides the West and East sections of Highgate Cemetery, and the West Cemetery from Waterlow Park. Like many old drovers’ roads it presents a lonely and isolated aspect, an impression which is enhanced by the high fences and thick stone walls which border it on both sides. While the lower end of the lane is marked by a thriving community of houses and shops, the northern ascent is segmented only occasionally by Victorian workers’ cottages, the cemeteries’ three gates and chapel, and a handful of architectural experiments devised from the late 1960s. The latter are barely observable, sitting as they do within the walls of the West Cemetery itself. There is little traffic at night, and the heavy silence can swiftly become quite overwhelming for a nocturnal pedestrian.

That Swains Lane’s sinister reputation spans at least several centuries is no surprise, for there are scores of murders, suicides and other tragic deaths associated with this small stretch of road. By the 1960s its many eerie cuttings, once plagued by highwaymen and footpads, had long since been closed off and built over. Swains Lane itself now benefited from tarmac and occasional electric street lights – not that these indications of urbanisation presented much comfort to those who had recourse to traverse it after nightfall. There are still no public telephone boxes or street-facing residences in the vicinity, and the knowledge that one is surrounded by the remains of hundreds of thousands of London’s dead, now as then does little to assuage a strong sense of foreboding. Granting views into the darkened cemetery, within which shadows seem to dart amongst crumbling tombs, and paths lead into impenetrable blackness, the North Gate especially can take some courage to pass, and even more for the foolhardy ghost hunter determined to pause for a glimpse inside. Indeed, many Highgate residents who grew up in the area remember childhood stories of a bogeyman in Swains Lane who would ‘get you’ if you ventured down the hill alone after dark. The lane is still generally avoided at night by the majority of locals, if only for reasons of practical safety.

Present-day villagers are certainly not the first generation to be aware of rumours of something supernatural abroad in Highgate. Edmund Hodgson Yates, an author who spent his 1830s childhood in the village, recalled in his memoirs:

Almost my earliest terror was excited by the narrative of the adventures of ‘Spring-Heeled Jack’ – a ghost which had been playing up its pranks, springing onto the women and nearly frightening them to death, and the scene of whose adventures some of the narrators, knowing the advantage of local colour, had laid in Highgate.

A strange, satirical tract survives which goes somewhat further, leaving us with the tantalising suggestion that by 1808 at least, the residents of Highgate had acquired the social stigma of being easily frightened, and prone to interpreting mundane events as paranormal. With strong suggestions throughout that it was written as a parody of some earlier event or events, the final chapter of Gambado on Horsemanship, a slim volume of equine-related humorous tales, finds the whole village convinced that a ‘man, drest much after the manner of the English, but of a fierce and terrifying aspect’ replete with a forked tail, is gadding about the village with unnatural speed and ambushing them at night. This intruder concerns the local populace to such a degree that they immediately form various unofficial committees in order to decide what to do about it. After several investigations, including deferring to ‘books that treat of Witchcraft; Glanville, and Moore, and Wanley’, these ‘unfortunate Highgates’ are left looking rather silly when ‘the Phenomenon of Highgate Hill’ turns out to be nothing more than a somewhat dishevelled gentleman whose horse had skidded on the ice. One burning question remains – just what had happened at Highgate to inspire this mockery in the first instance? The joke is somewhat lost on the modern reader, who will never have the first-hand experience of hearing tales from eighteenth-century travellers and holidaymakers about the superstitious folk of Highgate who, ‘all the Water at a stop – all the Gin a-going’, were apparently perceived to be prone to bouts of collective hysteria.

We shall revisit another period of ‘all the Gin a-going’ supernaturally inspired mayhem when we enter the imposing main gates of Highgate Cemetery West and flashback to the extraordinary events of 1970. But for a short time let us tarry in the unnerving and somewhat gothic Swains Lane itself, and relive some encounters with its most famous ‘ghost’.

A Top-Hatted Victorian Ghost?

It is in a letter to the Hampstead & Highgate Express, better known as the Ham & High, penned by a Mr R. Docherty of 69 West Hill, Highgate, in February 1970, that we find what seems to be the first written reference to a hat-sporting entity in Swains Lane. ‘There is without doubt a ghost,’ writes Mr Docherty:

Of when and whom he originated I do not know. Many tales are told, however, about a tall man in a hat who walks across Swains Lane and just disappears through a wall into the cemetery. Local superstition also has it that the bells in the old disused chapel inside the cemetery toll mysteriously whenever he walks.

There seems to be a dearth of recorded sightings of this distinctively attired figure in the lane until two decades later. A clear sighting comes from a Declan Walsh. One cold November morning in 1991 at around 6.30 a.m., Declan was walking to work down Swains Lane. He recalls that it was a dark morning, but that the street lamps afforded some light as dawn began to break. As leaves from the cemetery’s many sycamore trees crunched under his feet, he saw, moving at a right angle to him a short distance ahead, a tall man:

dressed in black, Victorian style clothing including a cape and top hat. He walked directly towards the gates. The gates were locked shut but he walked straight through them without altering his stride, nor did he make any sounds. I walked past on the other side and could see no one else present.

The Ghost that Tried to Hitch a Ride

That the entity seemed unaware of Declan’s presence was perhaps a blessing. One witness to the top-hatted figure whom this author has personally interviewed, and who claims more than one sighting, remains disturbed by what she saw to this day. In 1996 Deborah Meredith was a newcomer to Highgate. Then single and in her mid-twenties, she quickly found work as a taxi driver, often ferrying punters home from the village’s many public houses. Having yet to make friends in the area and working unsociable night shifts, Deborah was unaware of Swains Lane’s haunted reputation. This might explain why one night around Christmas time that year she stopped her cab to pick up Highgate’s least desirable ‘fare’. Deborah’s encounter with what she refers to as ‘the man in black’ occurred as she was returning to Highgate at around four in the morning. As her cab surmounted the upper hump of the lane, she suddenly felt as though its speed had slowed from 30 to less than 5 miles per hour, and attempted to change gear in confusion. Looking back today, Deborah remembers the whole sequence of events as having happened almost in slow motion.

As the summit of the lane eventually came into view some 15 yards on, Deborah distinctly perceived the figure of a tall man, wearing a smart but old-fashioned ‘Abraham Lincoln-style outfit’, standing motionless in front of the North Gate of Highgate Cemetery. In the glare of the headlights the figure slowly but purposefully raised his right hand towards her in a beckoning fashion. Not knowing what to make of this stranger, Deborah drew level with him and pulled into the small parking bay opposite. As she opened the door on the driver’s side, with one foot on the ground and one hand on the steering wheel ready to heave herself out of the cab, she called out to the man, enquiring whether he needed a lift to wherever he was going. In an interview with this author, Deborah recalled:

Because I was a taxi lady, I thought that he may need to get somewhere, but as I went to open the door and speak to him, things did not seem right, and with no one else around, I had second thoughts and drove off. I felt so guilty driving away, with him looking at me in the rear-view mirror. But then in the blink of an eye he had gone. On returning home it bothered me a lot, that I did not know where he went.

In the seconds during which Deborah shifted her gaze from the rear-view mirror, the figure had vanished. It did so in a part of Swains Lane lined with impossibly high stone walls and no means of exit.

There is logic in the assumption that creatures of the night are likely to bump into each other. Research spanning many years, by a variety of paranormal groups, indicates that employees of the London Underground who oversee the empty tracks and platforms by night have many more encounters with the Tube’s paranormal inhabitants than the millions of travellers who swarm into its tunnels each day. As we have seen, whilst the top-hatted figure in Swains Lane has been sighted at various times of day and night, it seems to manifest primarily after sundown and before daybreak proper. Unfortunately for Deborah, her regular route up Swains Lane seems to have increased the likelihood of further encounters, as by her own account she saw the figure on several more occasions, even developing the uneasy sense that he was expecting her. Could it be the case that Deborah’s regular journeys up the lane made the entity feel at ease in her presence? On one of these occasions, after glimpsing the figure again standing outside the top gate, Deborah asked her passenger if he had also seen the spectre, but frustratingly he had not. Perhaps he had had one too many at the Archway Tavern and was somewhat desensitised to the lane’s brooding man in black!

Over the coming months Deborah became friendly with locals in Highgate Village, and tentatively made enquiries about any ghost stories they knew of. Over drinks in The Flask public house she learned that for many years a tall, solitary man in a distinctive hat had been seen by villagers in various parts of Swains Lane. A legend popular at that time held that a woman he was very much in love with had been buried in the cemetery, and that he was waiting in perpetuity for her to return to him, presumably through the iron gates.

A Nocturnal Encounter in Waterlow Park

Nicholas Palma, a former Metropolitan Police officer now living in Cyprus, contacted this author in 2012 to share his memories of an incident which occurred in nearby Waterlow Park. Formerly constituting the private grounds of Lauderdale House, a Tudor mansion originally built in 1582, the park was gifted to the public as a ‘a garden for the gardenless’ in 1889 by Sir Sydney Waterlow. Unlike many other well-maintained open spaces in and around the capital, Waterlow Park retains an atmosphere of privacy. Indeed, standing in the shadows of its many statues on a warm summer’s day whilst watching the carp, ducks and other wildlife, one can easily forget that this haven is still, technically, a part of modern-day London.

Prior to joining the force and whilst in their mid-twenties, Nick and a friend whom I have been asked to refer to only as ‘Xever’ were accustomed to spending moonlit evenings in the park. Born and raised in Highgate, both shared a passion for its open spaces and what they considered to be its mystical atmosphere. Since their childhoods the two friends, being of contemplative natures, had regularly climbed over one or other of the park’s locked gates to enjoy its peace and tranquillity after dark. One dry autumn evening in 1994, Nick and Xever were slowly completing their regular circuit of the park, chatting sporadically as they meandered. It was a night like any other, although they did notice that the park was mistier than usual for August. Certainly not for the first time, they found themselves heading north-west, with Swains Lane just across the wall to their left. Nick takes up the story:

It was when we got to the Swains Lane side [that] things got eerie, almost sinister. It seemed to get darker, more shadowy, and I’ll never forget Xever bundling me into a bush in sheer terror. That might sound amusing, but it certainly wasn’t at the time. Once in the bush I demanded an explanation, and he swore that 15 feet away he saw a tall figure in a long black coat charging towards us. I peeped out of the bush but saw nothing. He did not accept my explanation that it might have been a park keeper or even a policeman (we were, after all, in the park after closing time). When I asked how tall this figure was, Xever said he was much taller than me (I am 6 feet 2 inches). I did not see it, and am cynical by nature, but I fully trust my friend. He is no fantasist or liar, and his terror was very real.

As an interesting aside, Xever also attested that their potential assailant was wearing an unusual hat, something like the stove-pipe style kalimavkions worn by Greek Orthodox priests. In recent years Nick has pondered whether Xever’s British Cypriot upbringing could have led him to homogenise an anachronistic top hat into an item of clothing with which he was more familiar. This isolated but clearly impactful incident was to bring to an end Xever’s visits to the park, as according to Nick his friend never returned there again. Indeed, Xever’s encounter with the figure in black unsettled him to such a degree that he descended into a period of uncharacteristic depression and nervous anxiety. As Nick remembers:

After the event in the park Xever became obsessed with finding out what precisely had happened. He became a virtual recluse, only reading about the paranormal. He got involved with all manner of charlatans in his search for an answer. It took many years for him to let it go, so to speak.

Was this tall and aggressive stranger of human or supernatural origin? And how did Nick not notice such a striking figure? Neither young man heard footsteps disturbing the autumn leaves as the figure approached or departed. Nick and Xever outnumbered it two to one and no weapon was being brandished at them, and yet from the moment the stranger made eye contact with Xever it overwhelmed him with sensations of horror and panic.

Locked Gates Present No Barrier in Cholmeley Park