Cleopatra's Needle

Not my photo

Cleopatra's Needle is a large, stone obelisk, taken from Egypt and placed on a parapet overlooking the River Thames in London. One of three obelisks taken from their homes to be placed in European cities, this one was sent to England as a gift to celebrate Admiral Nelson's victory at the Battle of the Nile in 1819, though it wasn't erected in England until the 1870s. During the journey, the barge carrying the obelisk capsized in the Bay of Biscay, killing six sailors and nearly sinking the obelisk.

Since then, screams, pained moans, and mocking laughter have all been heard in the vicinity of the monument.

It is claimed that this location is a popular spot for suicides, and the most common two ghost stories feature this: A naked phantom can sometimes be seen jumping into the river, but not making a splash; on one occasion in the 1920s, it is said that a police officer was summoned by a girl in Victorian clothing who alerted him that someone was about to commit suicide. When he reached the river, he saw the same girl tumbling into the river, and then vanishing. Other stories hold that the spirits associated with the obelisk may move the depressed and vulnerable to consider taking their lives when they otherwise wouldn't.

The rest of these are my photos.

Strangely, an apparition of a bear has also been seen in the vicinity. This is possibly because Chelsea was a venue for Bear-baiting during the sixteenth century, and probably has nothing to do with Cleopatra's Needle itself.

Commentary: The Needle is an interesting item for many reasons. Unlike many of the artifacts left from the ancient world to end up in London, the spire was sent as a gift and not simply looted*. Also, contrary to the name, the obelisk pre-dates Cleopatra by a considerable span of time.

There is an urban legend - that is, a story with no actual backing evidence that nonetheless gets spread around - that there are more suicides from this spot than any other on the Thames. The story is common, and one can't find a mention of Cleopatra's Needle that doesn't reference it, but it appears to be bunk. I have to wonder if it comes from the fact that Cleopatra is reputed to have committed suicide, thus leading to people looking for a suicide connection at the obelisk, despite the fact that it is not, in any way, connected to Cleopatra.

The connection with suicides is puzzling. The Needle is on the channel of the Thames at a place where the edges of the channel aren't particularly deep, and you would have, at most, a drop of 30 feet to the water below (I observed this while visiting, and can assure you that it is the case). During low tide, you'd probably quickly hit the mud beneath the water, leaving you dirty, wet, and annoyed, but very much alive. I suppose that the truly determined might lie face down in the mud to finish the job, but as Tower Bridge isn't that far away, and provides a much higher location to jump into much deeper water, it seems like a bit of a waste of time to try jumping off of the parapet for the Needle. That being said, for all I know, the Thames may have been different enough during the late 19th century that such a suicide plan might actually make some sort of sense. But nowadays, the claim that there are more suicides from this location than any other on the Thames seem more than a little suspect.

There are two sphinxes, cast in bronze (and British, rather than Egyptian-made) facing the obelisk, which is a reverse of how they would normally be placed (the job of a sphinx being to guard an object or place, not to stare at it). They were damaged in a German bombing raid during the first World War (or, as the English still refer to it - the Great War), as was the obelisk itself. It does make for a rather odd scene, as the obelisk is visible from a garden across the street: there you are, strolling through an English public garden, looking at the sculptures of famous Brits, and suddenly you come face-to-face with an obelisk and a couple of Sphinxes. It's as if someone was stupid enough to make Patrick Flanagan a city planner.



When I visited, the obelisk was covered in a box, as preservation work was being done. This is unfortunate in that I didn't get to see it, but it is nonetheless good to know that measures were being taken to protect a rather remarkable artifact. So, lacking access to the needle, my girlfriend and I decided to have our picture taken with the sphinxes.



Because, really, if you're an archaeologist, there's great humor in having your photo taken with a fake artifact that has been erected next to a horribly misplaced artifact.

It was raining, those are NOT orbs.

Regardless of the details, the oddity of this item on the River Thames and the fact that people died bringing it to London were likely sufficient to ensure that it would forever more have some sort of story attached to it. And, if you're going to have a story, it might as well be a ghost story.







*Not that I have an opinion about such things. No, not at all.


Sources: Blog, Covent Garden Website, Internet, Internet, Internet, Internet, Internet

The Holborn and British Museums Underground Stations

The London Underground station for the British Museum is abandoned, what is referred to as a "ghost station" and, appropriately, it is said to be haunted by a ghost of a long-dead Egyptian Princess. The station operated during the first three decades of the 20th century, opening in 1900 and closing in 1933, when other nearby stations made it redundant. As early as the 1930s, possibly even as early as 1900, stories began to spread about the station being haunted by a wailing spirit that appeared in a loin cloth and an Egyptian head dress. This spirit is said to be the ghost of an Egyptian Princess named Amen-Ra whose mummy is stored at the museum.

The spirit is said to appear late at night within the station, wailing and screaming in the now-dead language of ancient Egypt, possibly in anguish over the desecration of her grave. It has been stated that, prior to the station being closed, a newspaper offered a cash reward to anyone willing to spend the night in it, potentially facing a vengeful spirit. Nobody ever took the paper up on the offer.

The haunting didn't remain confined to the British Museum station. After the station closed, aspects of the haunting moved up the track to Holborn Station.

In 1935, two years after the station closed, a movie named Bulldog Jack, loosely based on the Bulldog Drummond stories, made use of the story, and had as a plot device a secret tunnel leading from the British Museum to "Bloomsbury Station" (a fictional station clearly intended to be the British Museum station). It is often said that, on the night that this movie opened, two women went missing from Holborn Station, and never-described marks were found in the British Museum Station during the investigation.

It has also been said that, late at night, one can still hear the Egyptian spirit screaming if one is standing down the tunnel in Holborn Station. In fact, this is used in Keith Lowe's novel Tunnel Vision as the main character uses the story to try to scare his girlfriend.

Holborn station is currently decorated with images of Egyptian artifacts, as a way of advertising its proximity to the Museum, but to someone who knows the ghost story, these decorations seem amusingly macabre.

Holborn Station also has another ghost story, though one with scant details. During World War II, disused parts of the station were converted into offices, a dormitory, and cantine for government workers who needed to be protected from the Germans' night-time bombing. In the 1950s these facilities were used to house migrants, and in the 1960s may have been used as part of a military emergency facility near Holborn Station (I have been able to find very little on this latter use). Over the years, these facilities fell into disrepair and decay, and became rather eerie (look here for photos). The abandoned offices began to earn a reputation for being haunted, though the descriptions of the alleged haunting seem to be unavailable.


The Platform at Holborn Station

Commentary: Okay, so first things first, let's deal with the mummy. There isn't one. Mind you, there are plenty of mummies at the British Museum, but none of them belong to a princess named Amen-Ra. In fact, Amen-Ra is an Egyptian god, not a princess. The assignation of the Amen-Ra name to the ghost in the station comes from an artifact called "the Unlucky Mummy" which is, in fact, not a mummy but a lid for a burial that indicates that the grave's occupant was a woman, but gives no other indication of her identity. It was suggested by museum workers in the late 19th century that the grave might have belonged to a priestess of Amen-Ra, and in the popular imagination the alleged priestess (who may not actually have been a priestess anyway) has been given the name Amen-Ra, even though her name in life was probably something more like the Egyptian equivalent of Theresa or Betty (maybe Akana or Ebio).



The object was purchased by the British Museum in 1889, and Akana or Ebio or Theresa or Betty has since been blamed for all manner of problems (including the sinking of the Titanic). This item is probably worthy of an entry by itself, and I suppose I should give it one, but back to the matter at hand...

The story of the tunnel between the museum and the British Museum Station is completely fictional, it comes directly from the movie as far as I can tell. However, as happens, many people have chosen to believe that the museum's denial of the story is an attempt to hush up the truth rather than a statement of the truth. This is, on the whole, odd given that, if such a tunnel did exist, then the British Museum Station would have been an ideal place to store artifacts during the Blitz, rather than routing them down to Aldwych Station, as was actually done.


At the Egyptian Room in the British Museum

The stories of the women vanishing and the newspaper offering a reward for anyone willing to stay in the tunnels appear everywhere that the ghost stories appear. However, few verifiable details are ever given (Which newspaper? What were the women's names?), and as such they can't be completely disproven - but the urban legend experts over at Snopes have noted on many occasions that unverifiable details in a story are often red flags that the story is more legend than truth. So, they are great for the creepy story (I intend to use them when telling the story), but may not be true. That being said, missing persons cases are not uncommon in large cities such as London, but that doesn't mean that they are connected to a ghost, and early-20th century newspaper publicity stunts were also not uncommon. So, perhaps these events occurred, but perhaps they did not.

The haunting of the dormitory areas of Holborn station are disappointingly mundane - there's just a general reputation, no details given, pretty much as you'd expect for a disused place that is run-down and creepy. This is really too bad, as it would be great to have more detailed stories about the place. Regardless, the area has now been renovated and no longer has its creepy atmosphere, mores the pity.



Sources: Internet, Underground History, Londonrailways.net, H2G2, Internet, Mysterious Britain, Wikipedia

Kuchisake-onna, the Slit-Mouthed Woman of Japan

Should you find yourself on the streets of Tokyo at night, be wary of any young woman wearing a surgical mask who wishes to speak with you - and this might be tougher than you think as surgical masks are commonly worn by the sick and those wishing to avoid sickness in Japan. There is a ghoulish spectre who takes advantage of the common use of masks for her own vicious ends, and she is known as Kuchisake-onna, the slit-mouthed woman.

Appearing as a beautiful young woman, dressed stylishly and wearing the surgical mask, she will approach and ask "do you think I'm pretty?" If you answer yes, she will remove the mask, revealing that her mouth has been slashed from ear-to-ear, and ask "do you think I'm pretty, now?" Those who answer "no" will be killed with the knife or shears that she carries, those who answer "yes" will be followed home, where they will be killed and their mouths cut to resemble Kuchisake-onna's.

There are many stories describing the origins of this malicious spirit, but the most common one is that she was the wife of a Samurai. She was a beautiful woman, and she may have been cheating, or the samurai may simply have been pathologically jealous and convinced that she would stray. Regardless, one day, he took a blade to her mouth, slicing through both cheeks, while screaming "who will think you're beautiful now?" Whether he killed his wife then and there, she died of her injuries, or she lived but harbored malice for the wrong done to her is unknown.

What is known is that she has been said to appear throughout Japan, and in specific places in nearly every neighborhood of Tokyo.

Commentary: This is a classic urban legend from Japan. Kuchisake-onna has been known since at least the 1970s, and may date to even earlier (at least one source claims that it is derived from a legend that may be as much as 1,200 years old, though it is also possible that the legend and the urban legend were linked together post-hoc). Rumor holds that there are coroner's records from the late 70s that describe a woman who had been chasing small children was either killed or injured when hit by a car, and that her injury involved the ripping of the cheeks, possibly spawning a Kuchisake-onna scare in 1979.

In true urban legend style, there are many variations on the story. Although usually told as a ghost story - the woman is the wife of a medeival Samurai - there are variations in which she is a recent victim of domestic violence, or the victim of an incompetent plastic surgeon, and therefore may be a ghost or may simply by a person who has suffered a psychotic break due to trauma. In some variations of her story, the victims are not killed, but simply have their mouths slit. Also, in some versions of the story, answering "yes" a second time will result not in death or injury, but in Kuchisake-onna giving the potential victim a valuable but blood-covered ruby.

It's worth noting that the Japanese versions of the phrases "Am I pretty?" and "Am I to cut?" sound very similar. This particular spirit isn't just evil, she's evil enough to crack bad puns.

Kuchisake-onna also moves with the times. Some variations on the story hold that she can move up to 100 meters in 3 seconds, faster than an automobile (potentially preventing escape by vehicle). Others hold that she now drives a red sports car, thus eliminating the need for her to run quickly.

Also, over time, ways to escape Kuchisake-onna have entered the legend. In some versions, answering "yes" a second time allows escape, in others, telling her that she is "so-so" or "of average appearance" confuses her and escape can be made while she tries to figure out what to do next. A particularly funny escape plan holds that saying the word "brillcream" three times will help you escape. In one of my favorite versions of the story, throwing a piece of Pocky, candy, or some fruit at her or on the ground will force her to try to dodge it or pick it up, allowing escape.

What's interesting to me about the escape methods is that they all seem to follow a pattern seen for vicious monsters in folklore around the world - provide them with a task they must complete (picking up the Pocky) or confuse them (always in some formulaic way - you'd think that these creatures would eventually work out a standard course of action) and you can escape. It just goes to show, whether urban legends or ancient myths, folklore seems to follow some basic rules.

It's worth noting that there are two films based on the Kuchisake-onna legend. Fans of Japanese horror films may want to look into them.

Video:

Oh, Youtube searches, is there anything that you can't do?



Sources: Japan Times, Hometown Tales Podcast, Scary for kids, Blog, Wikipedia, Internet

The Daschund of Baker Street (AKA, possibly the dumbest ghost story ever told)

Two women shared lodging on Baker Street in London. One owned a pet daschund, who, one day, went missing. The women searched but could not find the dog, and it appears that the animal was presumed dead.

However, for several weeks after the disappearance, the dog was seen wandering Baker Street, apparently the dogs spirit was no resting easy.

Commentary: Okay, this has got to be my candidate for the most pitiful excuse for a ghost story ever. I wouldn't have bothered to include it, except for the fact that I personally find it hilarious that anyone would bother to consider this a ghost story at all. I could only find one reference for it, the, ahem, august Paranormal Database, and I am surprised that it even showed up there.

This is a ghost story? Really? Really?

Okay, so many ghost stories can be explained by anyone with a knowledge of sleep physiology, or how our brains visual centers work, or carefully examination of the physical environment. But this particular story requires absolutely no special knowledge or investigation.

If a dog disappears, and then is seen for a few weeks thereafter in the general vicinity of where it vanished, then why immediately assume that it's a ghost dog and not, oh, I don't know, maybe the real dog wandering around the neighborhood wondering where the fuck precisely it's owner is? I mean, as far as alternate explanations go, this is a pretty easy one.

Sources: Paranormal Database

The Ghost of Mary Nichols

On the night of August 31st, 1888, a woman named Mary Ann Nichols was on her way to a boarding house after having spent the evening at a local pub. She discovered upon arrival that she lacked the money for a bed that night, and so went to work to make the money - Nichols was a prostitute and was aware that she would be able to walk the streets and produce the money in short order.

At 3:40 am, she was found by a local carter, laying on her back on Bucks Row (now Durward Street) with her legs stretched out and her skirt up. The carter didn't look too closely and didn't know if she was alive or dead. When the police finally arrived, it was found that she had been savagely attacked, and her head nearly cut off. Her murderer was never found, but in short order Mary Ann Nichols became known as the first confirmed victim of Jack the Ripper.

Since that time, people walking on the road at night have reported seeing a strange, green glowing figure of a woman huddled in the gutter of the street at the spot where the body was discovered.

Commentary: As I prepare for my trip to London, I decided to look up London ghost stories, and figured that there would be some related to Jack the Ripper - and I was not disappointed. In addition to the story of Mary Ann Nichol's ghost, there are also hauntings attributed to Annie Chapman, the second victim, and Catherine Eddowes, the fourth victim. This isn't surprising, as Jack the Ripper has held the public imagination consistently since 1888. Given that the locations of the murders are well known, anything that seemed odd in these locations would be likely to be attributed to the ghosts of his victims, and it would be a shock if ghost stories weren't told about the murder locations.

What is both interesting and disturbing about the fascination that we have with these murders is what it says about our history, as well as our present. The murder victims were of the lower ranks of Victorian society, living in the slums, and working as prostitutes at the time of their deaths. Had the murders not been so grisly, it is possible that they wouldn't have gathered the attention from law enforcement that they did. That being said, some of the accusations thrown at the police force - that it would have captured the murderer had it been more concerned about the victims - are probably unfair to at least some degree. While it is likely that more effort would have been made especially early on if the victims hadn't been prostitutes, it is also true that this case grabbed such media and official attention that the police were being pressured to find the murderer, regardless of whether they were inclined to do so or not. So, while class politics likely played a role in the investigations, there is no reason to expect that the murderer would have been caught if middle-class or upper-class women had been the targets.

It is also worth considering that someone who is unknown, Jack the ripper, is the focus of the public fascination with the case. While the victims' names are known, all that most people know about them otherwise is that they were prostitutes. They are sometimes portrayed as victims made vulnerable by a profession that they were forced into, sometimes as outsiders whose "immoral" profession adds additional spice to an already wild story. The reality is rather different. Look here for a brief biography of Mary Nichols, and even in these few paragraphs, she appears neither as a wanton harlot nor as a faceless victim, but as someone with a rather more complex past who ended up where she was through a variety of circumstances, some forced upon her and others of her own making. This is worth remembering, as all of us (including, obviously, myself, based on the fact that I went looking for, and posted, a ghost story related to this) are prone to probing the sensationalism and forgetting that these were real people with real lives who were killed by Jack the Ripper.

One final note: Look through the sources. You'll notice that the cut-and-paste is once again present in them thar inter-tubes.

Sources: Mysterious Britain, Internet, Paranormal Database, Internet

The Screaming Skull of Bettiscombe Manor

Azariah Pinney, a man of truly ill-repute by most stories, travelled from England to the West Indies (AKA the Carribean) in 1685. Some stories hold that he was banished, others that he had business dealings. Regardless, on his return he brought with him a slave, a man of African-descent who was poorly treated by Pinney. Pinney died and passed the estates on to his son and, after a time, the slave began to die - whether from the effects of his mis-treatment or a disease contracted in England is unknown - and he stated that he wished for his body to be returned to the Caribean for burial.

Unsurprisingly, Pinney refused the cost of returning the body, and instead buried him Bettiscombe churchyard. Shortly afterwards the house became the center of stramge moands and screams, and objects moving of their own accord. After a while, the body was disintered and brought into the house while Pinney tried ot figure out what to do with it. As soon as the body entered the house, the frightening activity ceased. The soft tissue eventually deocmposed, and over time the bones became lost until only the skull remained.

Since then, many attempts have been made to be rid of the skull. One owner of house threw the skull in a pond, only to have the haunting start up again - it didn't take long for the unfortunate man to pull the skull out of the pond and return it to the house. On another occasion another owner dug a deep pit and buried the skull at the bottom, only to walk out the next morning and find the skull sitting on the ground on top of the now filled-in hole.

Commentary: The screaming skull phenomenon seems to be a type of gohst story unique to England, which is rather odd when you think about it. There are many screaming skull stories (many of which will no doubt eventually show up on this site), but most of them seem to have a few things in common: the skull is associated with an impressive house or similar building, some form of non-aural haunting occurs (poltergeist activity, horrific storms, apparitions, etc.), the skull must be kept inside of the house or some misfortune will occur, most of the stories date to the 16th or 17th centuries, and there is usually a connection to nobility (the skull belongs to a noble person, their servant, or their victim). Interestingly, despite the name of the story (the screaming skulls) not all skulls scream in these stories.

Every source that I have found states that the Bettiscombe skull was examined by archaeologistsa and determined to be a few thousand years old and female, and therefore not the skull of a 17th-century slave.

The concept of keeping the skull in a house will strike most of us as morbid, grisly, or disgusting. However, it should be noted that this has not always been the view. At least since humans began to settle in permanent villages and towns, interring the dead in our places of residence, whether in an attached cemetery, under the home, or within a receptacle in the home, has been a common, though by no means universal, practice. In more recent times, skulls have been kept as trophies - a peice of Californian folkore holds that the severed head of the bandit Joaquin Murietta was kept in a jar in a saloon for decades after he was killed by lawmen, and the posession by American GIs of skulls taken from Japanese dead during WWII was common enough, acoording to forensic anthropologist Dr. William Maples' memoirs.

During the 19th and early 20th century, a variation on this type of practice was seen in death masks - casts of the faces of recently dead friends and family members used as decoration in people's homes.

Whether this practice is the source fo the screaming skull legends or not, I can not say. But it may at least explain why people of the 16th and 17th centuries didn't find it too odd to have a skull hanging around the house.

Sources: Internet, Mysterious Britain, Real British Ghosts, Internet

Aldwych Station, London, UK

Updated with photos May 12, 2010

The Aldwych underground station in London is a ghost station in two senses. It no longer serves as an active subway station, but is maintained and used to throw parties, show art exhibitions, and is frequently used as a movie set. It also is said to be haunted by the mysterious figure of a young woman. Workers who clean the tubes at night have reported seeing her moving along the tracks at Aldwych, allegedly frightening some of the workers enough that they refused to come back.

A television crew, recording for the programme Most Haunted claimed to have seen someone moving in the tunnels. However, they claimed to have seen this movement just at the limits of their lights (where their cameras couldn't film - convenient or inconvenient? I leave that for you to decide). Also, the show Most Haunted...how does one say this? It doesn't exactly have a reputation for honesty. I recommend reading the book Will Storr vs. The Supernatural for a great behind-the-scenes description of the show.


Exterior of Station in May 2010

Commentary: I am preparing to go on vacation soon, and will be taking my girlfriend to London, provided that Iceland will finish exploding and let the rest of us get on with our air travel. As such, I thought it appropriate to look up some London ghost stories. Interestingly, the first one that I came across through Google has something in common with the last story I posted about my home town, but I'll get to that in a bit.

Aldwych station was opened in 1907 as part of the Piccadilly line of the London subway system (aka "The Underground" or "The Tube", not to be confused with the band the Tubes). The Piccadilly line was nick-named the Theatre Line because of its proximity to many of London's theatres. As noted above, Aldwych station itself is built on the location of the Royal Strand theatre.

The name Aldwych is derived from the Old English words meaning "old settlement", and is the location of the 7th-century Anglo-Saxon village of Lundenwic (meaning London Settlement), located about a mile away from Londinium (the originally Roman settlement that would grow into the city of London).

In the online sources that to which I have access, the ghost is always said to be the spirit of an actress, but no reason is ever given for assuming that it is an actress other than that the station is at the location of the old theatre. However, prior to this, it was also the site of an art gallery, and then a non-conformist (Protestant but not Church of England) chapel. So, in the absence of any other identifying information, why claim that the ghost belongs to an actress and not someone associated with the art gallery (the doomed lover of a painter, perhaps?) or the church (a jilted bride left at the church's alter who died of a broken heart?) or the station (someone who failed to mind the gap?)? For that matter, why couldn't the ghost be associated with Lundenwic? The only reason that she seems to be routinely identified as an actress is because of tradition and the theatre location.

As for the similarity with the story of Acacia cemetery, it is simply this. With one exception, every website that I have come across that describes the Aldwych ghost uses the exact same phrase: "The ghost is that of an actress who believes she has not enjoyed her last curtain call." Admittedly, it's not a bad line, but it gets redundant after a very short while. Why does it constantly show up? Perhaps because webmasters and content providers are woefully unimaginative. More likely because we are lazy, and cutting-and-pasting is easier than writing a new sentence. But it makes me wonder: when I arrive in London, will I hear different stories about the ghost, that perhaps she is something other than an actress? Is the actress story spread merely because it's easy to cut-and-paste a semi-decent line than to write something new? And, given the prevalence of the internet amongst ghost story enthusiasts, is it possible that one version of the story, complete with the "curtain call" line, may become the standard.

If you're interested, silly photos of the station can be found here.

Sources: H2G2, Internet, Television Show, Internet, Underground History, Internet