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."
