Haunted Britain and Ireland: Over 100 of the Scariest Places to Visit in the UK and Ireland. Derek Acorah
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resulted in the preservation of the south face. Now the George serves as a pub and restaurant and even a stage set for Shakespeare’s plays. The ground floor is divided into a series of connecting bars. The Old Bar was the former waiting room and the Middle Bar was the coffee room. This was a haunt of Charles Dickens and the George is mentioned in his novel Little Dorrit.
The George’s ghost is believed to be a former landlady, Miss Murray. She kept the pub for 50 years in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and has since been seen floating around its rooms. She seems to be averse to modern technology, for computers crash in the pub, new tills malfunction and digital cameras often fail to take any pictures at all.
Haunted locations often seem more prone to unexplainable technical malfunctions and it does seem that Miss Murray has taken a strong dislike to the ‘magic’ of modern technology at the George Inn. Alternatively, she may simply be having a little fun!
The George Inn,77 Borough High Street, Southwark, London SE1 1NH; Tel: 020 7407 2056
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If possible, take along with you more than one video camera, as this will increase your chances of capturing ghostly activity on film.
Heathrow Airport
Heathrow Airport lies 15 miles west of London. It is Britain’s largest airport and also the scene of several hauntings. Airline employees have often reported feeling hot breath upon their necks and hearing a man howling and barking like a dog. When they have turned round, no one has been there. This ghost is believed to be that of the highwayman Dick Turpin, who was hanged in 1739 and apparently enjoyed playing jokes like this when he was alive.
Inevitably there are also the ghosts of people who have died in plane crashes. One foggy night in March 1948 a Belgian Airlines DC3 Dakota crashed on approach into Heathrow. All 22 people on board were killed, but as the rescue crews were sorting through the wreckage a man in a hat emerged from the fog and asked if they had found his briefcase. As they stared at him, he faded away. They later found his body in the wreckage. Since that night he has been seen many times. He apparently appears out of nowhere and walks along the runway as if still searching for his briefcase.
Another businessman who haunts the airport also seems worried. He wears a grey suit and haunts one of the VIP lounges. Sometimes he simply appears from the waist down.
London Heathrow Airport, 234 Bath Road, Harlington, Middlesex UB3 5AP; Tel: 0870 000 0123; Fax: 020 8745 4290; Website: www.heathrowairport.com
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You do not have to limit your investigation to the interior of a building. There are numerous places outdoors where spirit activity has been noted or ghost sightings have been reported. Ancient battlefields or sites where villages and houses once stood are just as likely to render up paranormal activity.
The Lyceum Theatre
The Lyceum is a Grade II listed theatre in the heart of London with a capacity of over 2,000. The original theatre built on the site opened in 1772, but was razed to the ground by fire in 1830. It reopened in 1834, having been rebuilt with the now familiar porticoed frontage. It was renamed The Royal Lyceum and English Opera House, though generally it remained known simply as The Lyceum.
The theatre gained the reputation of being unlucky after a number of owners went bankrupt, but its fortunes changed after American ‘Colonel’ Bateman took over, assembling a new company headed by the great actor Henry Irving. Irving’s performance as Hamlet in 1874 ran over 200 nights, an unheard of success in its day.
Most of that theatre was eventually demolished due to lack of funding to implement new fire regulations, though the portico and façade were retained as part of the current theatre, which opened in 1904. Once again there was a notable performance of Hamlet on the premises, this time by Sir John Gielgud in 1939. In the same year plans for a road extension and roundabout threatened the future of the theatre, but they were eventually scrapped and after the Second World War the theatre became a dance hall and then a music venue. It now hosts large-scale musicals.
The ghostly figure of a woman has often been seen in the stalls area holding a man’s severed head. This is supposed to be the head of Henry Courtenay, the local landowner who was beheaded on the orders of Oliver Cromwell at the time of the Civil War.
The actor William Terris is also supposed to have been seen in the theatre (see page 58).
The Lyceum Theatre, 21 Wellington Street, London WC2E 7RQ; Tel: 0870 243 9000 (box office)
The Old Vic Theatre
The Old Vic was built in 1818 and was known as the Royal Coburg Theatre until 1833. On its opening night it presented a melodrama, an Asiatic ballet and a harlequinade, and today it continues to present a wide range of work from classic drama to innovative contemporary work.
Despite being described as ‘a licensed pit of darkness, a trap of temptation, profligacy and ruin’ by Charles Kingsley in the 1850s, the theatre has considerably influenced dramatic art. It is said to be haunted by the ghost of Lillian Baylis, who managed the theatre in the early twentieth century, and Eric Ross, an actor who died during the Spanish ’flu epidemic of 1917–18. There have also been reports of a distraught actress re-enacting the sleepwalking scene from Macbeth.
The Old Vic Theatre, The Cut, Waterloo Road, London SE1 8NB; Tel:0870 060 6628 (box office),020 7928 2651 (administration); Fax:020 7261 9161; Website: www.oldvictheatre.com
Osterley Park House
Osterley Park House, set in 357 acres of garden, parkland and farmland just off the A4 in Hounslow, west London, was originally built by Sir Thomas Gresham, Queen Elizabeth I’s financial adviser, in 1562. In 1683 it was bought by Nicholas Barbon, who used it as security to raise a large sum of money, but the house fell into disrepair and Barbon himself died in debt. In 1713 the house was acquired by Sir Francis Child, the founder of Child and Co. bank, in payment of the loan, and it became the Child family’s country house. In 1761 Sir Francis’s grandson, also called Francis, commissioned leading architect Robert Adam to transform it into the elegant neo-classical villa that can be seen today.
The ghost at Osterley is known as ‘the lady in white’. She is a beautiful lady in a white flowing dress who appears near the left-hand arch under the main stairway leading to the entrance of the house. She then moves towards the doorway and disappears. She usually makes her appearance at 4.30 in the afternoon and has been seen by both estate workers and visitors to the house.
The lady’s identity is not known for certain, but it is possible that she is the ghost of Sarah Anne Child, the family’s sole heir, who eloped to Gretna Green in 1782, when she was 18, with John Fane, son of the ninth Earl of Westmorland. Her father was so angry at the marriage that he changed his will so that the estate did not pass to the Westmorland family. Eventually it was inherited by Sarah’s daughter Sarah Sophia Fane and passed down her family