The Haunted Isles

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Story 1.

Ghosts of the London Underground.

The Underground has been at the centre of London's transport infrastructure for almost a century and a half.

During that time, it has played host to many historical events, from sheltering civilians in the Second World War to being a target of the 2005 London terrorist attacks.

Many people have lost their lives in these tunnels.

Could their souls remain as ghosts of the London Underground?

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Work had been fairly relaxed for Steve Coates.

His shift had started at 10pm, and besides the inevitable rush of commuters in the last stretch before the tube station closed, the early hours of this midweek morning had been quiet.

As the supervisor of Liverpool Street Station in central London, he now busied himself in the ticket office, cashing up the tills and carrying out any number of other, mundane administrative tasks.

Steve much preferred the relative peace and quiet of the night shifts compared to the hustle and bustle of the daytime, even if they did seem to pass by more slowly.

There was a strange sense of priverness in having such a large public space all to himself.

a tranquility he otherwise rarely got to experience.

On the desk in front of him, the phone began to ring, shattering the silence.

Picking up the receiver, the familiar voice of the line controller, who was stationed off-site, told Steve that he was looking at the CCTV feed from the eastbound platform of Liverpool Street, and that he could see a man down there, standing near to the tunnel entrance.

The station's supervisor checked his watch.

It was just after 2am.

The gates to the station had been closed and padlocked almost three hours beforehand, so there shouldn't have been anyone besides him inside the station itself.

He told the line controller that he would go down and check, and then hung up.

Taking the escalator down to the platform in question, Steve did a thorough sweep of the area.

As he reached the eastbound tunnel entrance, He took out his torch and shone it along the tracks receding into the pitch dark of the subway.

He also checked the line immediately below the platform as he made his way back, but there was no one there.

The platform itself was completely empty.

At the bottom of the escalators, there was a public phone, which Steve used to call the line controller back and tell him that he had carried out a thorough search and that the platform was secure.

But the line controller's response didn't make any sense.

I can see you on the monitor right now.

I can see the tunnel entrance.

He's standing right there.

He's wearing white overalls.

Confused, Steve agreed to take another look, leaving the phone hanging with the controller on the other end of the line.

He went off and performed another search, but still the platform was completely empty.

There's no one else here, he said to his colleague when he got back to the phone, but the line controller was having none of it.

How did you not see him?

He was standing right next to you.

He's wearing white overalls.

You shone your torch right at him for several seconds.

There's no way you couldn't have seen him.

Either you're winding me up or there is a glitch on your screen, Steve replied.

I've done two sweeps now and I'm telling you, there is no one else here.

With that, he put the phone down and turned to go back up the escalators when something made him stop in his tracks.

On the bench opposite, he saw a set of white overalls draped over the seat and armrest, which were definitely not there before.

A sudden chill went up his spine as he quickened his pace and made his way back up to the ticket office.

He wasn't to know it at the time, but he had just had a run-in with the famous Liverpool Street Ghost.

Opened in 1890, The London Underground is the oldest subway system in the world.

Each year, 1.3 billion people pass through its 270 stations, which are collectively manned by nearly 6,000 members of staff.

Most of the passengers who take the subway do so without a second thought, completely oblivious to the history which surrounds them.

The ground in which this system is built has been settled upon for millennia.

From the underground's initial inception right up to the present day, there have been thousands of accidental deaths, suicides and tragic events.

Not to mention the amount of graveyards, cemeteries, plague pits and church crypts which have been disrupted or relocated during its construction.

Add all of these things together and the number of potentially disturbed souls begins to soar.

For the average commuter, the day-to-day experience of riding the tube is one of overcrowded chaos.

especially in the headache-inducing rush hour.

But if they were able to visit any one of the many stations during the midnight hours, long after closing, they would discover an entirely different world.

One which is mostly peaceful, but can also be unnerving, haunting and downright eerie.

What follows is just some of the stories told by those who work on the London Underground.

In the summer of 1992, the supervisor of Beacon Tree Station, Tarek Rana, was working a late shift after closing down for the night.

He was just finishing off some final paperwork and then planned to head home.

On the right side of the office in which he was sitting, there was a door which led up to the overground district line platform.

In the relative silence, this door began to rattle, but Tarek thought nothing of it.

Rattling doors were a frequent occurrence, due to the updrafts and downdrafts created by passing trains.

He simply assumed that a train was approaching on the district line.

A few minutes later, when the door rattled a second time, he was sure he would soon hear the rumble of carriages passing above and to the right of him, but that sound never materialised.

Confused, he made his way through the door and up onto the district line platform.

to see what was going on, but looking up and down the tracks, he could see that no trains were approaching from either the left or right.

Even though he could feel no breeze on the night air, he reasoned that the rattling must have been caused by the wind and headed back down to the office to finish up.

But no sooner had he closed the door behind him when it rattled a third time.

Now, however, it was much more sustained.

Unnerved by this bizarre occurrence, he decided to head up to the station foyer, where another member of staff was working.

As he stepped out onto the disused subway platform and began to make his way up the steps, he suddenly experienced an intense feeling that someone was standing behind him.

Turning his head, he saw the terrifying image of a woman a few steps further down from where he was.

She had long blonde hair, but no face.

It was completely blank where her features should have been.

Utterly shaken, Tarik turned and ran up to the station foyer, taking three steps at a time.

When they met, his colleague remarked how he looked as if he had seen a ghost, and when Tarik replied saying, I think I just have, his co-worker's response was, did you see the blonde woman with no face?

Apparently in 1958, there was a train collision at this station on the district line which killed 10 people and Tarik was not the only person to have seen the blonde lady of Beacon Tree.

12 miles west of Beacon Tree you will find the station at Hyde Park Corner, one of the most central stops on the network.

Back in November of 1978 Barry Oakley was working the night shift long after the last train had left.

He and a colleague had shut the escalators down by removing the corresponding circuit breakers in the control room.

They had then returned to the supervisor's office to continue their administrative tasks.

At around 2.30 in the morning, they heard an almighty commotion outside, which sounded like grinding gears mixed with a rhythmic knocking.

Running out to the foyer, they were surprised to see that one of the escalators they had previously shut down was now running again.

but making a hell of a racket in the process.

This came as a complete shock to the two men, because as far as they were aware, once the circuit breakers had been removed, it was impossible for the escalators to run, as there was no power going to them.

Not only that, but it would require a special key to start back up again.

After a brief investigation, in which they found that the circuit breaker was still removed, they managed to shut the escalator down once more and then return to the office.

Barry would later say that during this whole time, he had a strong sense that someone else was there in the station with them, besides himself and his colleague.

After settling back into his paperwork, he happened to glance across to his co-worker and saw that he was now standing with his back flat against the office wall, pale-faced and clearly in some sort of trance.

Barry's initial thought was that the man was having a seizure, as he was completely unresponsive.

After several minutes he came back to to his senses and with a haunted look he said, Did you see the face?

Apparently, as the two of them had been sitting there working away, a hideous face had appeared at the office window and stared at both of them.

His colleague went home shortly afterwards and never returned to that particular station.

Perhaps one of the most unenviable jobs on the London Underground is known as track walking.

Trackwalkers are required to patrol the tunnels at night, long after the trains have stopped, usually moving from one station to another.

They do this alone and completely in the dark, with only a battery-powered torch to light their way.

During the early 2000s, Bill McCown was a veteran track walker, having been in the job for more than 20 years.

On one particular occasion, he was walking the Jubilee line between the stations of Finchley and Charing Cross, a distance of about eight miles.

He decided to take a quick break on a stretch of track which ran between Baker Street and St.

John's Wood.

He had been sitting down for about two minutes when he heard a strange sound off to his right.

Shining his torch in that direction, he couldn't see anything.

But then he suddenly noticed that the ballast between the tracks was moving.

As the commotion moved closer to him, he could hear footsteps walking past, and in the torchlight, he could see the ballast sinking down with each step.

Dumbfounded by what he was witnessing, Bill later reported that he felt a tingling sensation, like static, all through his body as it drew level with him.

It carried on past him for about 10 meters.

and then stopped.

Sitting in complete silence once more, Bill now contemplated that he had to carry on walking in that same direction in order to finish his patrol, which he did with no small amount of trepidation.

Upon reaching Charing Cross Station, his supervisor remarked on how pale he looked, and when Bill responded saying, you're not going to believe what's just happened, his supervisor quickly cut him off and said, don't tell me, you've seen footprints in the ballast.

Bill was not the first person to have witnessed the phenomenon, and he wouldn't be the last.

Records show that a track walker suffered a fatal heart attack whilst patrolling that same stretch of the Jubilee line, many years before.

Kennington is allegedly one of the most haunted stations on the network, with more unexplained phenomena being reported there than anywhere else, thanks to a section of track.

known as Kennington Loop.

The loop exists to allow southbound trains to turn around and head north again.

Passengers are cleared out at Kennington Station before the empty trains are sent into the loop, where they will often have to wait for up to 20 minutes in the 150-year-old tunnels.

And whilst they are waiting, there is no way anyone can get on or off the train.

Bob Cairn and Larry DeLaribiti both worked on the Northern Line.

Bob was a driver and Larry was a guard.

Larry describes how how many years ago he was working on a train that had been sent into the loop.

There had been an incident further up the line, which meant that he and his driver were stuck there for about 10 minutes.

Sitting in the rearmost carriage, he heard the unmistakable sound further up the train of the interconnecting doors between each car opening.

It was getting closer and closer.

until finally the doors to his carriage opened and he turned expecting to see his driver but there was nobody there.

Similarly, Bob also heard the sound of the doors opening at the front end of the train, and he turned expecting to see his colleague, but was greeted by dead air.

The twist in this tale is that Bob and Larry were on different trains.

Their experiences took place four years apart from each other, and the two men have never met.

The story goes that a passenger had been killed at Kennington 50 years beforehand whilst trying to board the train between carriages.

His body was dragged into the loop.

It seems the London Underground is utterly steeped in stories of the unexplained.

Almost every station appears to exhibit some form of strange phenomena or has its own resident ghost, sometimes several.

There is so much more to tell, from the accounts regarding the nun of Bank Monument Station, to the phantom phantom maintenance man of South Island Place, from the crying children of Bethnal Green, to the demonic presence which stalks a disused tunnel at Embankment,

not to mention the strange activity often witnessed at the 15 abandoned stations still attached to the network.

This is most definitely a subject we would like to revisit in the near future, but in the meantime, Is there any explanation for what people are experiencing?

Unfortunately, very little exists in the way of proof.

Over the years, some interesting images have been captured, but like so many pictures of so-called ghosts, they are inconclusive.

What we are left with is mostly anecdotal accounts.

A study carried out by Coventry University within the last decade has uncovered high levels of infrasound in many of the alleged hotspots.

But whilst this might account for feelings of unease or auditory anomalies, it would rarely, if ever, result in hallucinations of full-bodied apparitions.

Whatever the case may be, whether people really are seeing the spirits of those who have tragically lost their lives in these tunnels, or are simply repeating well-established ghost stories for their 15 minutes of fame, it is probably best to approach the London Underground with an open mind.

More often than not, it is the people who expect to see something, who witness nothing at all, and those who expect to see nothing, who end up having a life-changing experience.

Story 2

Phantoms of Leap Castle

In previous episodes, we have visited a number of locations where the manifestation of restless spirits seems to be inevitably tied to tragic events in the distant past.

A medieval castle which lies in the heart of rural Ireland is apparently the scene of just such a phenomenon.

Join us as we uncover the Phantoms of Leap Castle.

Outside the chapel, the rain continued to hammer relentlessly against the exterior of the ornate windows, further adding to the palpable sense of unease which had already spread throughout the throng of people assembled inside.

As he purposefully made his way through the congregation towards the altar, Thaddeus O'Carroll tried to ignore the hushed conversations and nervous glances, determined to get the service underway.

As the head of the O'Carroll family, it was Thaddeus' right and duty to lead his kin in prayer, but his assumption of the role after the death of his father had initiated a huge feud with his younger brother, Tyg, who believed that a priest had no business assuming the title of the Lord of Eli.

Given the bloody history of the O'Carroll dynasty, this had come as no surprise.

When Thaddeus' grandfather had died, leadership of the clan had not been passed directly to his father, who had been born out of wedlock.

Instead, Fergenanium O'Carroll had been compelled to challenge his half-brother for leadership, taking the title by force.

He in turn had then been murdered by a group of relatives led by his cousin, Donner.

His mother had begged him not to commence mass that morning until Tyg had made his way to Leap Castle, fearful that such a slight would only further fuel the conflict between her feuding sons.

But Thaddeus had ignored her protests, aware that to give way to his sibling at such an early point in his leadership would fatally damage his reputation.

Now,

struggling to be heard above the sounds of the driving rain outside, he welcomed his relatives.

and began to lead them in worship.

As the minutes passed, a suffocating feeling of trepidation continued to hang over the worshippers before the chapel doors were suddenly and angrily smashed wide open.

Flanked by his men, Tyg stalked into the room, his left hand resting on the hilt of his sword, whilst his one good eye blazed with fury.

He savagely kicked and shoved family members to one side, advancing angrily towards the priest, accusing him of subterfuge and disrespect.

Taking into account the heavily armed soldiers who stood alongside his enraged brother, Thaddeus calmly accepted his fate.

Had this argument not taken place this morning, it likely would not have been long in coming.

Tyg would not be denied his throne.

Clutching his Bible in one hand and his rosary in the other, Thaddeus opened his arms and walked calmly into the centre of the chapel.

With a scream of incomprehensible rage, the younger of the two men drove his blade into the chest of his brother, killing him instantly.

As the congregation fled the scene in horror around him, he strode forward, bending down to wrest the holy book from the dead priest's hand before hurling it contemptuously to one side.

He was not to know it at the time, but his rule would also end in bloodshed, for the lords of Eli walked in company with death and dishonour.

A decade later, Tyg himself lay dying by the hand of his cousin, Corhir, continuing the unending circle of betrayal and murder that had forever dogged his family.

And whilst leadership of the O'Carrolls would pass on in turn to his son and grandson, both of whom would also perish at the hands of their relatives, the inhabitants of Leap Castle began to witness haunting occurrences in and around what would become known as the Bloody Chapel.

In the dark of night, guards reported having seen candlelight shining out through the building's windows, accompanied by the sound of prayers quietly being recited from inside.

When they had burst into the room, weapons raised, they found it dark and empty.

Rumours quickly began to circulate that Thaddeus O'Carroll could not move on from the scene of his death, his spirit seemingly forever committed to watching over his flock.

Some visitors who stayed in the priest's house reported being unable to sleep properly, as they were startled by the unexpected appearance of a faceless, cowled figure, who would then vanish just as quickly as it had materialized.

Others reported having been smothered in their beds by an invisible force.

that crushed the air from their lungs before suddenly and inexplicably ceasing.

Decades progressed into centuries, and it became clear that Thaddeus O'Carroll was not alone in his reluctance or inability to move on beyond the confines of Leap Castle.

The supposed identities of other apparitions that were documented suggested that the bloody and brutal history of his family had doomed a number of wronged victims to forever walk its interior alongside the murdered priest.

Several visitors reported having encountered a mysterious lady, dressed in a crimson red cloak.

Even in complete darkness, this woman's form could still be clearly made out, as if she was emanating a glowing luminescence of some kind.

The witnesses described her once beautiful features as contorted with rage, with a dagger aggressively brandished in one of her hands.

When encountered, she would advance on the person who had seen her, screaming in rage before disappearing.

Legend has it that the woman came from a nearby settlement and was kidnapped and forced upon by several of the O'Carroll menfolk.

When she became pregnant as a result of their actions, she had later pleaded with her attackers for help in raising her child.

Enraged by her temerity, the drunken clan members had stabbed her and the baby to death.

leaving their bodies lying out in the open as a means of intimidating other local residents.

Two young girls have also been seen moving around the grounds of the castle on numerous occasions.

They are believed to be the ghosts of two sisters who died there named Emily and Charlotte.

Emily was only 11 years old when she was tragically killed, having fallen whilst playing up high on the battlements.

People have witnessed her repeatedly plunging to her death, only for no corpse to be found, despite extensive searches of the grounds.

Her younger sister Charlotte has been seen in rooms all around the site.

Identifiable by the withered leg she was born with, sometimes she approaches visitors to the castle, asking if they have seen her missing sister.

On other occasions, she will appear suddenly inside a room, weeping and sobbing, before subsequently fading away to nothing.

But by far the most hideous and disturbing entity to haunt the corridors of Leap Castle is known by those who have encountered it as the Elemental.

Its presence was first recorded at the turn of the century by Leap Castle's occupier at the time, Mildred Darby.

One evening she had been standing in one of the galleries admiring the paintings, when she had been overpowered by the smell of decaying flesh.

As Mildred struggled to suppress a rising wave of nausea, she caught sight of a squat figure standing a few feet away, staring intently at her.

Its body was humanoid, but thin and gaunt, with grey and mottled skin.

Patches of dark fur sprouted sporadically from its naked body, and its face was decayed and rotted, with two gaping holes where the eyes should have been.

Whilst short in stature, Mildred maintained that the figure's body appeared fully grown in proportion, rather than that of a child.

When it realised that she had become aware of its presence, its outline had immediately begun to fade away until it vanished completely.

Millie Darby would go on to document a number of encounters with this manifestation, which seemed benign in nature, yet truly horrifying in appearance.

In November of 1915, She recorded in her diary that whilst her husband was away on business, she had allowed two of the serving staff to entertain some soldiers from the local barracks.

The four had been socialising in the priest's house when they had been overcome by a debilitating odour.

They had suddenly noticed a small figure hanging from the ceiling rafters staring down at them and had fled in terror.

The maids in question both resigned and left Leap Castle the following morning, never to return.

Sightings of this foul entity have stubbornly persisted up to the present day, including the experience of a visitor to the site in June of 2006.

The witness was walking up a spiral staircase within the castle when the overpowering aroma of sulphur had filled his nostrils.

Further up along the dimly lit confines of the narrow passageway, a squat shape was staring back at him.

as if waiting to rear up and pounce.

After struggling to overcome a deep sensation of tension and dread, the visitor had backed away, ensuring he had closed and secured the door to the staircase as he did so.

There are a number of competing theories regarding the origins of the Elemental, whose appearance is so inhuman that it is not immediately thought to be the spirit of any deceased member of the O'Carroll clan.

One assertion is that the entity may predate the original construction of the castle during the 13th century, potentially having been summoned by ancient druids as a form of protection for the site.

Another theory is that the being may have been created by the 8th Earl of Kildare, Gerald Fitzgerald, whilst he was laying siege to Leap Castle in an attempt to gain control of it from the O'Carrolls in 1513.

Fitzgerald was rumoured to be an accomplished sorcerer and occultist, who had used dark arts to gain victory in previous battles.

He was unsuccessful in the attempt and died shortly afterwards, but is alleged to continue to stalk the Irish countryside, shapeshifting into the forms of various other creatures.

If the elemental was once a person, then its ghastly appearance may be the result of a hideous disease.

A number of the O'Carrolls died at Leap Castle through the ages having contracted leprosy, which some commentators believe would account for the smell of decaying flesh and the appearance of putrefaction.

There are, however, no examples of the entity attempting to converse with those it appears to, or to explain its presence, suggesting that it may not be human in nature at all.

Whatever powerful force possesses the capability to capture and anchor the souls of the dead to Leap Castle may have been released as a result of several mass killings believed to have taken place there.

It is rumoured that the O'Carroll clan once hosted 40 members of the MacMahon clan from Monaghan, who had helped them win victory during a previous battle.

Wanting to avoid paying their allies, the devious hosts poisoned the food given to the Macmahan warriors, killing them all and then burying their bodies in the castle grounds.

However, as chilling as this particular tale is, Physical evidence exists of a far greater series of slayings that were perpetuated within the castle walls.

In 1922, during the Irish Civil War, a group of men snuck into the castle grounds and set fire to a number of the buildings.

Some commentators believe this was the work of the Irish Republican Army, whilst others allege that the act arose from a long-standing dispute with local tenants over rent arrears.

Regardless of the motive, this act caused extensive structural damage, which took years of work to repair.

Whilst those repairs were underway, builders working on the chapel uncovered a nubliette hidden beneath the floorboards.

This dungeon's shaft dropped down into a pit full of thick wooden spikes, on which the remains of countless victims were still impaled.

In total, it was estimated that the bones removed from this death trap belonged to up to 150 victims, taking three heavily laden carts to remove from the site.

Chillingly, analysis of some of the personal possessions found alongside the bodies dates the use of the murder pit up to as recently as the 1800s.

Sceptics of some of the more colourful tales to emerge from the castle's history point out the fact that the principal witness to these incidents, Mildred Darby, was an accomplished fiction writer.

Publishing her work under the pseudonym of Andrew Merry, she wrote a series of novels and short stories, all of which served only to antagonize her husband.

The relationship between Jonathan Darby and his wife was notoriously strained.

The descendant of a Civil War soldier who had inherited the castle through marriage during the 1650s, Darby was quick to temper, and would antagonise Mildred by deliberately leaving trails of muddy footprints from the stables throughout the main building.

He maintained that there were no ghosts dwelling within his home, and that Millie had made them all up for attention and to aid her literary career.

The current occupiers of Leap Castle are musician Sean Ryan and his wife, Anne Callanan.

They continue to restore what remains of the damage inflicted upon the property nearly a century ago, allowing tours and ghost hunting events to take place at the site.

Sean confirms that supernatural activity continues within the castle to this day, but maintains that the spirits who inhabit his home have just as much right to live there as him.

Perhaps even more so, given the manner in which their lives were so abruptly and horrendously ended.

It is easy to argue that any location with a significant place in the history books, especially those that date back to the horrors and tragedies of medieval times, possess supernatural stories of varying credibility.

But the sheer scale of suffering which has been documented at Leap Castle and the large number of ghosts reported there set it apart from similar buildings.

Whether these apparitions are a result of the murderous actions of the O'Carrolls or the direct cause of the calamities and misfortunes that have befallen the clan is unclear.

But it appears that their presence goes hand in hand with the family's historically poor fortune, waiting silently in the wings down through the ages.

to welcome more of the clan's departed members into their ranks.

So if you do find yourself visiting this tragic part of rural Ireland, remember to keep your wits about you, because in all likelihood, you will be in the company of more than merely your guides and companions.