Haunted London (12 page)

Green Park was only a meadow with a few trees and ditches in the days of Elizabeth I. In 1554, Royalist forces fought here to resist Sir Thomas Wyatt’s troops attacking London, and in the years that followed the park was the scene of numerous robberies, murders and rapes until well into the eighteenth century. It was also a favourite duelling-ground. The later Earl of Bath was wounded here in a duel; Viscount Ligonier and Count Vittorio Alfieri, the Italian poet, fought here in 177I; Sir Henry Colt fought Beau Fielding, the lover of the Duchess of Cleveland, behind Bridgewater House where the duchess was residing. The ghostly sounds of the latter duel are said to be heard at dawn on the anniversary of the fight. For several minutes the misty air crackles with the sound of battle, the footfalls of the combatants are heard on the damp ground and the signs of breathing billow above the ground mist.

There is one particular tree in Green Park that has a bad reputation. People never slumber beneath its twisted branches, summer lovers never linger in its shade and even birds shun its gnarled and ancient branches. I have talked with two park attendants who swear they have heard sounds emanating from the tree. There is the harsh and loud sound of a man’s voice in conversation that ceases almost as soon as you become aware of it. There is a low and cunning laugh that strikes a chill into the hearer, and also a strange and sad groaning sound like that of someone in mortal agony and utter despair. The tree is a favourite one for suicides in Green Park and in fact few people fail to discern a sense of gloom, and a sudden feeling of sadness and despair overwhelming them in the vicinity of this tree, so that they are glad to move quickly on to less unwelcoming parts of the park. It is not difficult to imagine a person contemplating suicide, reaching the final decision and hanging himself, as so many have done, from the ‘tree of death’ as it is called. Sometimes visitors have had the sensation of being followed when they pass the tree. Children rarely play there, and occasionally an unexplained figure in black has been reported, standing close to the trunk. It is a tall, watchful figure that disappears when the person who sees it looks a second time.

THE GRENADIER, HYDE PARK CORNER

One of the best-known haunted pubs in London is The Grenadier, Wilton Row, behind St George’s Hospital and near Hyde Park Corner. This is a result of the television film I arranged and several subsequent broadcasts. I have been interested in the haunting associated with this fashionable and authentic Georgian inn since I took medium Trixie Allingham there for lunch some years ago and she immediately sensed that a serious quarrel and fight had taken place there, and that there was a ghost in the cellar.

The Grenadier was once the officers’ mess for the Duke of Wellington’s Regiment and the alley that runs beside the pub, Old Barrack Yard, recalls the time when soldiers drilled there, as they did in 1815 before leaving for Waterloo. In those days, the pub was called The Guardsman and one of the bars was situated in what is now the cellar, and the present bar served as a dining room for officers. Not infrequently officers off duty would drink to excess and gamble beyond discretion, and this sometimes led to quarrels and brawls. In one such fight, when an officer was caught cheating, rough justice was handed out by his companions. He was flogged on the spot and afterwards he staggered down the steps to the cellar, more dead than alive. There he expired and, it is said, his ghost haunts The Grenadier to this day, especially during the month of September, the month of his death.

Several successive landlords have told me that an indefinable but definite ‘atmosphere’ builds up over the year and reaches its climax during September when all sorts of things happen and many people notice ‘something’ in the atmosphere. Then, as September passes, things gradually quieten down only to build up again to reach a zenith the following September.

I remember Roy Grigg telling me that he had no doubt about the periodical haunting of the pub, for his Alsatian dog showed all the signs of terror and dismay each September, growling and snarling for no apparent reason and always scratching and trying to dig its way into the cellar. As the month passed the dog became calm again for another year.

It was a September evening too that Roy Grigg’s young son saw a black shape on the landing outside his bedroom. As the boy watched the shadow, or whatever it was, grew larger and then smaller and then suddenly disappeared. No living person was upstairs at the time, apart from the terrified boy, lying in bed with the door open.

About ten days later, and still in September, the boy’s mother, Mrs Grigg, was half-undressed in her bedroom, knowing that she was alone in the pub at the time, when she saw a man mounting the stairs towards her bedroom. She quickly covered herself and then turned to meet the intruder — but now all was silence and there was no sign of anyone upstairs, on the stairs or downstairs. Mrs Grigg said the man was a stranger and she never saw him again.

A year later, almost to the day, a visitor was having a drink in the bar when she saw a man go up the same stairway, but the ‘man’ vanished as completely as the figure seen by Mrs Grigg. A boyhood friend of Roy Grigg later spent a disturbed night in one of the bedrooms. After hearing that the room was supposed to be haunted, he arranged a rosary over the bed to guarantee him a good night’s rest; but he was awakened in the middle of the night by something that touched him, an indistinct figure that hovered at the side of the bed, moved to the foot of the bed and then vanished.

Geoffrey Bernerd, a later landlord, is equally convinced that peculiar happenings have occurred at The Grenadier: knocks, raps, objects moved, lights switched on and off during the night, taps turned on... These and other apparent phenomena he described during the course of a film made there when I took the BBC to The Grenadier for a programme broadcast one All Hallows Eve. That day, too, I met Bernerd’s teenage daughter and she told me that sometimes she was very frightened at night when she slept at The Grenadier, although she never really saw anything except what she described as a shadow which should not have been there: a child’s description of a ghost perhaps?

The Grenadier, Wilton Row, where the ghost of a murdered guardsman returns each September.

THE HAYMARKET THEATRE, HAYMARKET

A London theatre with more than one ghost is the Haymarket, in the very centre of London’s West End and second only to the Theatre Royal in age. Here, in 1736, the
Historical Register
so scathingly portrayed Sir Robert Walpole, the distinguished statesman, that it led to the licensing of all plays by the Lord Chamberlain — an act that was not abolished until two centuries later.

Every few years, the ghost of partner-manager David Edward Morris (a jealous, pompous and quarrelsome individual, not a man of the theatre and only interested in commercial profit) is said to return to the Haymarket. The ghost opens and closes doors in the presence of reputable witnesses — just for devilment, as indeed Morris might have done in his lifetime.

During the First World War, when Frederick Harrison was manager (he was there from 1896 to 1926), he and his business manager Horace Watson were in Harrison’s office at three o’clock one morning when the door, which had long been securely closed, opened by itself and as mysteriously closed again. Both men were convinced that the ghost of Morris had visited them.

Another well-known ghost at the Haymarket is that of John Baldwin Buckstone, actor-manager at the theatre in its golden era from 1853 to 1878, an honest and handsome man whose spirit still lingers about the theatre he loved, especially in the vicinity of the rooms he used so much during his lifetime. His ghost — if ghost it is — has often been heard walking about his old room and rummaging among the contents of a cupboard. Sometimes the door of the room opens, footsteps sound across the floor in the direction of the cupboard and then return, the door closes and the episode is over until the next time. On other occasions, drawers and wardrobe doors open and close by themselves.

The Haymarket Theatre is haunted by three of its former managers: David Morris, Henry Fielding and the genial and much-loved John Buckstone.

Another ghost that has been seen at the Haymarket is that of an elderly man who walks noiselessly about the passages of the theatre and backstage. This apparition especially haunts the oldest part of the theatre known as the Companionway.

A few years ago, Mrs Stuart Watson, when chairman and managing director at the Haymarket, was about to walk down the three steps to her private box from the Companionway, which led to her office, when she was astonished to see not only her own shadow preceding her, but another also. As she turned off towards her box she saw the other shadow continue along the Companionway towards her office. She never discovered any reason or cause for the second shadow. When this figure is seen it appears to be dressed in eighteenth or nineteenth century clothes and it has been suggested that it could be novelist Henry Fielding, manager at the Haymarket in the 1730s but better known as the author of
The History of Tom Jones
and
Joseph Andrews
.

Actor Victor Leslie told ghost-hunter Thurston Hopkins that he often heard a voice in one of the rooms at the theatre and late one evening when he entered his dressing room he was startled to see a strange man sitting in an armchair, gazing placidly about him. Leslie backed out of the room, locked the door, and fetched the theatre caretaker. Unlocking the door, they both entered the dressing room to find no trace of the man Leslie had seen, but an old book lay open beside the chair that the figure had been occupying and Leslie was quite certain that the book had not been there half an hour earlier. The book, an old theatrical account book of some fifty years earlier, was always stored in a cupboard in the dressing room and, as far as could be established, had not been touched by human hands for many years.

Not long afterwards, Hopkins spent a night with a friend inside the deserted Haymarket Theatre, sitting in darkness in the front row of the stalls. After some considerable time both the watchers heard footsteps from the direction of the stage, apparently from behind the closed curtains, footsteps that seemed to be walking in the direction of the haunted dressing room. Both men hurriedly climbed onto the stage and although they could still hear the footsteps ahead of them they could see nothing to account for them. As they entered the dressing room, Thurston Hopkins told me that he heard a rustling and shuddering noise, which he thought might be a rat. Then they noticed a book lying open on the table and the leaves were turning over by themselves. After a moment, the atmosphere in the room seemed to change and everything was quiet. They discovered the book had belonged to John Buckstone, the actor-manager who haunts the theatre he loved and served for over twenty years.

During the production of
Yellow Sands
actress Drusilla Wills was backstage talking to a friend when she saw an elderly man dressed in old-fashioned clothes pass between her and her friend. She mentioned the fact and discovered that her friend had not seen the figure. Later, Miss Wills saw a picture of Buckstone and found that the old man she had seen had been of similar appearance and had been dressed in almost identical clothes. She had not been in the least frightened at the experience, assuming that the figure was a real person. Mrs Watson too has seen the ghost of Buckstone and confirms the solid appearance, ‘He is not a misty figure and you can’t see through him. He looks real flesh and blood.’ Buckstone once lived in a house at the rear of the Haymarket Theatre — a property that was later converted into the theatre’s offices and dressing rooms.

A theatre fireman used to say that he often saw Buckstone’s ghost walking along passages in the theatre and whenever he tried to follow the figure he always lost sight of it after it turned a corner ahead of him, but when he reached the corner there was no sign of the silent harmless ghost. A theatre cleaner said she and the fireman both saw the figure early one morning crossing the dress circle. Once the fireman saw the figure standing against a door that the theatre employee knew was locked and bolted. Thinking for a moment that the normal-looking figure was a real person, he called out that the door was locked and there was no way through. Even as he spoke, the form seemed to melt and disappear into the closed and solid door.