"Are there any stories about ghost trains roaming the Tube system? Were there any accidents that Underground personnel still refuse to talk about to this day? Or any haunted stations? I've also heard that when digging some tunnels on the system, they had use old maps to try to avoid "plague pits" where bodies of victims of the Black Plague back in the Middle Ages or sometime around then were dumped, and the tunnel-diggers didn't want to risk rereleasing the virus."

Which got me thinking...well are there? Are there any strange ghosts and ghouls wandering around the tube stations or any other wierd happenings. Of course there are .....there are certainly some weird stories anyway. So now putting on my Roald Dahl smoking jacket (whn he used to host Tales of the Unexpected) and letting some wierd Twilight Zone music take over.....Welcome to Tales of the Unexpected.

I have never believed anything I have read in the Fortean Times , or watched on the stupid TV version that we get in the UK, with some vicar who seems totally off his trolley. However, the following is a nice story anyway and who knows, maybe some drunks on the tube have seen such creatures.

It is from the Fortean Times reporter Michael Goss, but even he doubts whether the legend is true.

"I have been trying to catch up with the London subterraneans for the past ten years, on and off - it might be closer to 12; they are a race of people - human, but barely human, by all accounts - who inhabit the vast and fabulous kingdom that lies beneath the streets of London. You must understand that they are not representatives of the desperate, homeless poor, nor are they thrill-seeking interlopers indulging in the frisson that comes from being where they aren't supposed to be and where most of us sanitarily-minded folk wouldn't want to go. They are distinct from those well publicised Parisian punks who hold parties and paint murals in the catacombs all night and are back with mama et papa by day, for instance.

"The London subterraneans are real troglodytes, born and bred down below and seldom if ever coming to the surface. They are an evolved or perhaps devolved species: foul, secretive, stunted, ruinous. They've probably forgotten how to speak English; it's even likely that they've developed their own gutteral and ghastly language by now - if they have been under London for as long as popular lore avers.

"I have never seen one of these subterraneans, nor so much as met a person who has seen one. These troglodytes exist in that nebulous quasi-material form that is part-rumour, part-legend (or, as some folklorists say, "rumour legend").......

"The Subterraneans seems a deceptively playful kind of London legend: the sort which narrators repeat with disparaging amusement, but which cries out to be believed. It is fairly consistent, as such legends go. The underground race evolved from a small group of humans who fled below out of desperation - outcasts from society, perhaps, who had nowhere else to go. Feeding on unspeakable pabulum, they adapted and survived down there, the adaptations including a reversion to near-bestial form and a gradual loss of English speech. They prowl the sewers and railway tunnels showing themselves as little as possible. They might be pitied, except that (tacitly or explicitly) the legends make them ferociously antagonistic towards us. 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. Now you have another good reason for avoiding the Northern Line after rush hour."

Who needs any good reason to avoid the Northern Line?

Excellent addition to this story from John from Wellington in New Zealand

"I'll just say something about that legend of the troglodytes said to inhabit disused tunnels and prey on unwary travellers. This is almost exactly the scenario of a film I saw many years ago called Death Line which has scarcely been heard of since. Donald Pleasence starred as a bungling police inspector, and Christopher Lee took an unusual (for him) cameo role as a victim. The only trog (very nasty) actually seen on screen spoke mainly in grunts, but he'd also mastered one phrase in English: he roared "Mind the doors!" over and over again at a terrified young woman who'd fallen into his clutches."

Brilliant. I had to continue to do some research on this. Sounds bizarre but true. Donald Pleasance made some fairly corny flick in the early seventies about a bunch of people who lived under Russell Square tube station and ate people. It was called the Death Line and was also known as "Raw Meat".

Here's a plot summary from the "Home Made Videos" website: "At the turn of the century, a group of diggers were lost during a cave - in of part of the London Underground tube - train network. They managed to live for a lifetime trapped in a crevice, but now there is only one family left. The half - human father heads to the Underground station to pick off lone passengers for food, while a London police detective investigates the mysterious disappearances. There's something pretty grisly going on under London in the Tube tunnels between Holborn and Russell Square. When a top civil servant becomes the latest to disappear down there Scotland Yard start to take the matter seriously. Helping them are a young couple who get nearer to the horrors underground than they would wish."

"There are other strange sights, too: walled-up trains with cargoes of skeletons still wearing what remains of their by-now antique clothing; deserted stations with chocolate machines vending Fry's Five Boys bars; secret bunkers; lines that divert to avoid plague pits; lost trains and lines that go nowhere due to blasphemously terrible events the truth of which will never be found in official records."

Postings on the subject from the uk.transport.london newsgroup

"St Pancras station is certainly on the site of a very large old cemetery, and lots of bodies had to be re-buried when it was built. Apparently the Midland Railway got into quite a row with the church."
Grebbsy

"This is not quite the case. The cemetery, still part visible, was on the approach to the station where Churchyard Sidings are now. The plan was to bridge over it , and also for the Metropolitan link to tunnel under it, Unfortunately the graves were found to extent a lot further down than had been assumed, so much digging out and re-burying was required - this was done incompetently and disrespectfully at first, hence the row with the church. (Jack Simmons book on St Pancras goes into detail)."
Peter Lawrence

"When the Victoria Line was being built in the late 1960's, the tunnel boring machine went right through an unexpected plague pit at Green Park, that caused a few surprises and shocks I shouldn't be surprised!!"
stphilltech

BRITISH MUSEUM GHOST??

A signatory to my guestbook Mark McCord from Hong Kong, asked the following question

"Do you have any information on a ghost that is purported to haunt the now-defunct British Museum station. The story I hear is that it is the ghost of an Egyptian whose mummy is kept in the museum. Is it true that people are offered a reward if they can spend the night in the station? "

Newsgroups are great, no sooner had I asked them this question when a guy called Steve kindly came back with the following reply:

"This rumour surfaced just before the closure of the station, and one newspaper did offer a reward - however, there were no takers. The story came from a film, which included a secret (fictitious) tunnel from the station to the Egyptian room at the Museum. The film was the 1935 comedy thriller 'Bulldog Jack', starring Jack Hulbert, Ralph Richardson and Fay Wray. The station in the film was 'Bloomsbury', and was probably a stage set. The national newspaper is unnamed in 'London's Disused Underground Stations', from whence this information comes. British Museum station closed on 25th September 1933. I hope you can all rest easy now."

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