Haunted London (26 page)

The ghost is usually described as a very nice, middle-aged lady dressed in grey nurse’s uniform. The figure has been reported in various wards of a particular unit that used to specialize in the treatment of malignant disease, Block 8.

One cold November morning in 1943, Mr Charles Bide, a member of the hospital staff, told me he was at the top of Block 8. The night before a German bomb had damaged the hospital. Windows had been blown in and there was dust and debris everywhere. Mr Bide looked after the 180 clocks at St Thomas’s and he was wondering how many clocks and other articles were lost. He noticed an oil painting, hanging askew, and a large mirror, the glass miraculously undamaged. Having lifted down the picture, he turned towards the mirror and saw, reflected in the glass, a woman of about thirty-five. ‘She had a good head of hair and her dress was old-fashioned and grey in colour. It looked ruffled’; and Charles Bide thought to himself that she had probably been lying down, resting, after a busy night.

As he looked at the figure, he suddenly felt very cold—although he had the distinct impression that she meant no harm—but the coldness grew rapidly, it became intense and penetrating, and Charles Bide felt frightened. The thought came to him that he was alone at the top of the building, at least he should be alone. Everything seemed quiet all of a sudden and he hurriedly left. He has always regretted that moment of panic. He feels that the ghost may have had some message for him. She seemed to be making an effort to communicate and he thinks that if he had stood his ground, she might have been released from her torment.

Mrs Bide has never forgotten how shaken and subdued her husband was that day. She knew him as a sensible and down-to-earth man, not at all the type to have hallucinations or see something that was not really there. It was some time before he would tell her of his experience and she believes that the expression he saw on the face of the ghost troubled him ever after. With the demolition of St Thomas’s imminent, Mr Bide thought the Grey Lady may well appear again.

A former superintendent at St Thomas’s, Edwin Frewer (now retired) encountered a similar figure soon after his arrival at the hospital in 1929. He was walking along the main corridor in the company of his chief, a Mr French, on their way to Block 9 when the new superintendent suddenly experienced a feeling of extreme coldness and he came to a sudden stop in the open section between Blocks 7 and 8 as he saw a nurse approaching from the direction of Block 8. He saw, with some surprise, that she was dressed in an old-fashioned uniform with a long skirt. She looked very worried and after hurrying towards the two men she suddenly disappeared. The only places of exit from that particular part of the corridor were a door to a sleeping block (which was tried and found locked) and the ward devoted to male venereal disease, where female nurses were not allowed. Mr French was more than a little puzzled when Mr Frewer stopped dead in his tracks since he did not see the figure. Long afterwards Mr Frewer commented, ‘The memory of her face, with its look of anguish, remains with me after all these years.’

Some years after his sighting of the Grey Lady, Edwin Frewer was approached by one of the hospital physicians, Dr Anwyl-Davis, who had had an almost identical experience one day in April, 1937. It was in the same corridor of the hospital and the figure seems to have disappeared at almost exactly the same spot. Dr Anwyl-Davis never forgot the encounter and often described the experience. As the lifelike apparition approached him, he raised his hat and bid her good morning. The figure made no reply but continued on her course, seemingly oblivious to the presence of Dr Anwyl-Davis. A moment later the figure had vanished.

Although the appearance of the ghost nurse frightened them, it did not foretell the death of either Charles Bide, Edwin Frewer or Dr Anwyl-Davis, but there is evidence that the form was seen by five patients shortly before they died, and it was probably seen by many others.

One evening in September, 1956, a nurse was filling the water jugs in the ward at about 8.30 pm, and when she came to the bedside of an elderly man suffering from cancer of the lung he told her there was no need to fill his water jug as he had already been given a glass of water. Since no other nurse was on the ward at the time, the night nurse was somewhat puzzled and asked the patient who had given him the water. He replied that the very nice lady dressed in grey who was standing at the foot of the bed had done so. The nurse looked in the direction of the old man’s smiling gaze but she could see nothing and certainly there was no ‘lady in grey’ anywhere in the ward. Two days later the old man died.

Two months later another nurse in the same unit, but a different ward, was washing the back of a man of seventy who had widespread malignant disease, but who was, however, expected to recover sufficiently for him to go home. Suddenly the patient asked the nurse whether she always worked with ‘that other nurse’. No other nurse being present at the time, the patient was asked which other nurse he meant and he pointed in a certain direction where the nurse could see no real person. The patient said the ‘other nurse’ was dressed differently and she often came to see him. He died shortly afterwards.

Thirteen months later in December, 1957, the figure was seen again in the ward where the patient had been given a glass of water in September, 1956. During the night a man of thirty-seven, suffering from widespread cancer, asked the nurse about a lady warming her hands by the fire. No one was in fact by the fire and when he was asked to describe the figure, he said, ‘The person in the grey uniform.’ He died a couple of days later.

Two months later in February, 1958, a similar figure was seen yet again in another ward in the same unit. This time the patient was a woman suffering from a malignant disease. One morning she told the night nurse that during the night she had been visited by a lady dressed in grey who had been very kind to her and had given her a cup of tea. She died next day.

A year later in February, 1959, another female patient, a young pregnant woman of twenty-eight with multiple myelomatosis, had a very similar experience in the same ward. During the night, she said, a nice woman, sympathetic and kind, stood at the foot of the bed. She did not find the figure at all frightening, but she too died a few days later.

These five first-hand examples of a ‘grey lady’ in one unit were collected by a doctor at the hospital who became interested in the long-standing legend that in the wards of that particular unit a lady in grey has sometimes been seen by patients who died shortly afterwards. His findings were subsequently published in the
Journal
of the Society for Psychical Research.

The fact that the figure has invariably been described as wearing grey is extremely interesting in view of the fact that the present sisters’ uniform of Oxford blue dress with white apron and collar, only came into use in the early 1920’s. Previously a grey dress had been worn. In addition to these experiences, which were all written and signed by the nurses voluntarily, a number of other reliable accounts of the Grey Lady appearing to patients who died soon afterwards were obtained by word of mouth but dates, names and other details are no longer available.

There is written evidence however for one other appearance that took place in a different ward of the same unit some years ago, and vouched for by a state registered nurse. While she was on night duty she was called, as night sister, to supervise the giving of a dangerous drug to a patient known to be dying from malignant disease. She asked the patient whether she could make her more comfortable in bed, whereupon the patient replied that the other sister had just done so. There was no other sister on duty at the time and neither the night nurse nor any other nurse had recently attended to the patient, who died the following day.

The sceptical will point to the fact that patients in hospital wards specializing in the treatment of malignant disease are likely to be under the influence of pain-killing drugs and therefore in a state of delirium and likely to experience hallucinations, and this is true to the extent that all the patients in the six accounts described would have had analgesic drugs at the ward sister’s discretion; these drugs have opium derivatives or synthetic analogues of morphia, and the hallucinogenic properties of these drugs have not been fully explored, yet the fact that six quite separate reports are so similar would seem to outweigh objections on this score. It is extremely interesting to notice that more than a dozen dying patients in one unit of a massive hospital had almost identical ‘hallucinations’. These ‘hallucinations’ had all the impressions of reality to the person concerned who was able to reconcile the apparition with specific articles and particular parts of the ward, and was able to describe, soberly and sensibly, the experience to the nurse concerned.

The Chaplain of St Thomas’s, the Rev. Kingsley R. Fleming, respects the integrity of those who have seen the ghost. ‘I’m convinced that it is possible to be aware of such manifestations,’ he told me when I was at St Thomas’s in April, 1973; ‘Obviously there must always be in these cases a spiritual awareness in the person and a willingness to accept what is happening to them ... Hospitals are places of constant crisis ... There is a terrific super-charge of emotion and feeling and people who die are not always able to come to terms with their anguish or remorse.’

The legend of the Grey Lady is known widely throughout the staff of the hospital, although it is obviously guarded from the patients and no factual basis has been discovered for the legend. There is a story that a nursing sister fell to her death down a lift shaft at the turn of the century; another story says the ghost is that of an administrative sister who committed suicide in her office on the top floor of the haunted unit; a third rumour tells of a nurse throwing herself off the balcony because she was responsible for the death of a patient, and a fourth says the ghost is that of a sister who died in Block 8 from smallpox. (This block, prior to demolition, was a maternity unit.) It has not been found possible to obtain confirmatory evidence for any of these deaths. Some of the nurses maintain that the Grey Lady is only visible from mid-calf upwards, due to the fact that she appears on the floor level of the wards as they were before the present block was rebuilt.

THE THOMAS À BECKET, BERMONDSEY

The Thomas à Becket in the Old Kent Road is built on the site of an eighteenth-century gallows and strange happenings have been reported at times from the pub that used to be known as the ‘Boxers’ Pub’, for the first floor constituted a gymnasium where at least one contender for a world title fight did his training.

At one time, when Arthur Ward had been landlord for five years, he found the disturbances so bad that he would not sleep alone at the pub. At this time the pub’s cat and dog would not go upstairs to the top floor; bedroom doors were impossible to open and police and firemen had to break them down. Although no coal was then used at the pub, only coke, fires were found on several occasions to be made up, ready for lighting—with coal!

Once a customer, scoffing at the idea of ghosts, found his glass of beer shattered in his hand. Another customer, Albert Williams, a hearty butcher, declared that he had no fear of ghosts and accepted a bet of £5 that he would stay half an hour alone in the top-floor room in broad daylight—within two minutes he came running down and paid over his £5!

TOWER CINEMA, PECKHAM

The old Tower Cinema at Peckham was at one time reported to be haunted, and both the chief projectionist and the assistant manager stated that they saw the figure of a man walking in mid-air in the auditorium at midnight, one Saturday in 1955.

The apparition was seen ten feet above the auditorium and it was later discovered that this was the approximate ground level before the theatre was built on what was once consecrated ground. An 1819 map shows that a chapel once stood on the site or very nearby.

Mr Jerry Adams (the projectionist) and Mr Bernard Mattimore (the assistant manager) were on their way towards the rear exit when half-way down the darkened auditorium they both saw simultaneously the form which seemed to glow with a light of its own.

They stopped in their tracks and watched the figure walk slowly across the stage in front of the closed curtains and vanish into a bricked-up organ recess. They described the figure as dressed in clothes of ‘an early period’, and they agreed that the man appeared to be middle-aged.

A year previously a builder’s labourer had reported seeing the same figure in the same position, and in 1953 two upholsterers stated that they saw a ghost in the cinema when they were working there late one evening. One of them was so frightened that he refused to return to do any more work there.

A number of other incidents were recalled by various people that were never satisfactorily explained. Workmen reported that bags of cement were split open and thousands of cigarettes ruined by water that dropped from a ceiling where there was no hole or waterpipe, and when it was not raining. The same men were startled when scaffolding that had been erected by experts collapsed when they started work.

TRAFALGAR AVENUE, CAMBERWELL

Something very strange seems to have troubled the Stringer family when they lived at Trafalgar Avenue, Camberwell, and their chief fear was fire. The family had so many inexplicable fires that they told me no company would insure them against fire.

I talked for several hours with Graham and Vera Stringer who occupied the double flat with their four-year-old son Steven. They told me that in the four years they had been at Trafalgar Avenue they had been worried by something that had practically destroyed their home with unaccountable fires. Most of the fires took place around Easter time.

A few weeks before Easter, 1958, Mrs Vera Stringer went to bed early as she was not feeling well. She left her husband in the living room doing some typing. He went up to bed at about 10.30, with a cup of tea. As their bedside clock was stopped, Graham Stringer went downstairs to check the time. He hurried back to say that the living room was on fire. Together Vera and Graham threw water over a chair on which all little Steven’s toys had been placed in a plastic bag. They succeeded in quenching the fire but the toys were destroyed.