Episode 129: Digging Deep

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The construction was called to a stop the moment they found the bones.

The work crew was preparing a building site along one of London's many ancient streets when they uncovered what appeared to be a body.

or at least the remains of one.

It was clearly old, given that nothing but bones could be seen beneath the dirt.

So a team of archaeologists was brought in to preserve and study the remains.

In the end, they determined that the bones belonged to a teenage girl who had lived in London over 1600 years ago.

A Roman girl.

It's not the last time something like that has happened in the city.

During some development work near Spitalfields Market in the 1990s, a work crew uncovered what turned out to be an entire Roman cemetery.

Among the finds was a perfectly preserved lead coffin, its lid covered in beautiful artwork that had been hammered right into the surface, still visible all these centuries later.

And that's the way history tends to work.

Time will bury it beneath new and current events, but if we dig deep enough and brush away the soil, we can come face to face with it all over again.

The past never truly goes away, after all.

It's there, waiting to be discovered, so that we can study it and relearn the stories it contains.

Oftentimes though, the things that leave the deepest marks tend to be the most tragic and painful.

Events that rattled people to their core and left a shadow on the history of a place that no amount of sunlight could ever chase away.

And the older the city, the more common those shadows tend to be.

Which is why I want to take you on a tour of one of the oldest.

Because while the past is always nearby in our modern world, few places allow it to dwell so close to the present as the city of London.

Its past is both the treasury of historical significance and a crypt full of the darkest tragedies we could ever imagine.

Because in a city filled with so much light, there's bound to be some shadows.

I'm Aaron Mankey, and this

is lore.

London is ancient.

There's really no other way to say it.

Most Americans live in a community that's less than 200 years old.

If you're in New England or one of the other places with roots in pre-colonial America, perhaps those locations go back a bit further.

But London's history makes all of those seem brand new by comparison.

Archaeological work in London can place humans in the area as far back as 4500 BC.

But if we're looking for a major settlement where it stands today, that didn't happen until 47 AD, when the Romans arrived and set up a community there that they called Londinium.

Although from what we can tell, it didn't last long, all thanks to a woman named Boudicca.

As far as historians know, Boudicca was the wife of King Prosatagas, who ruled over an eastern British tribe known as the Iceni.

When the Romans arrived in their territory in 43 AD, they came to an arrangement with Prosatagus, allowing him to maintain control of his kingdom.

When he died 17 years later, though, the Romans refused to acknowledge his widow as the new ruler and instead invaded them to take the land for themselves.

But they misjudged Boudicca, assuming she was a quiet woman incapable of ruling anything.

Instead, she rallied a massive army of close to 100,000 warriors and then led them on a campaign against the Romans all over Britain.

In 61 AD, her army rolled over Lundinium like a Sherman tank, burning the entire settlement to the ground.

In fact, her campaign against them was so fierce and unstoppable that the Romans nearly left Britain altogether.

But those who survived managed to rebuild, and within a handful of decades, it had grown large enough to become the capital of the entire province.

Over the years, the city continued to expand and mature, and even though the Romans left toward the beginning of the 5th century, the community there refused to die.

By the 7th century, London had earned a reputation as a major trade center, which brought in a steady flow of wealth and goods.

and also turned the city into a political powerhouse.

Of course, power and wealth wealth has a way of making a community a target for others, and London was no exception.

In 1066, William the Conqueror sailed across the English Channel and earned his nickname by taking control of the entire kingdom and making it his own.

And of course, special attention was paid to London.

Within two decades, the population of the city had reached nearly 15,000, and by the 1300s that had multiplied to over 80,000.

But something unexpected was heading their way that would ravage that growing community.

Something mysterious and dangerous and seemingly unstoppable.

The Black Death

What started as a plague in Western Asia quickly spread to Europe, bringing death and destruction to every community it touched.

By the time the Black Death had burned itself out, some historians estimate that upwards of 200 million people were dead.

The people of London lost at least 10,000 lives, most of whom were buried outside the city walls.

It wouldn't be the last time the city would face tragedy.

In 1664, a fresh outbreak of the plague killed another 100,000 people, and then two years later, in September of 1666, a fire broke out in the house of a baker on Pudding Lane.

It eventually spread west, destroying much of the city as it went.

And while there were only six verified casualties, historians now think the fire burned hot enough to completely cremate those who were caught in it, making the true death toll anyone's guess.

So much of London's history was tragic and outside human control, but there have also been moments along the way that could only be blamed on the people who lived there.

Jack the Ripper and the murders that took place in 1888 in the Whitechapel district of the city are always front and center in most people's minds.

But there has been a lot more bloodshed than just those five innocent women.

In fact, a lot of the city's murder and violence could be found higher up the ladder in the very chambers and homes of the people who held the power and wealth.

It seemed seemed that rather than being immune to the shadows that lingered in the city, even the powerful could fall under their spell.

Because if there's one thing the nobility of England's past seemed to attract more than anything else, it was pain and suffering and death.

We don't need to look far to find bloody nobles.

It sometimes feels as though all we have to do is open a history book and flip it to a random page.

Life at the top was often a cutthroat game, both figuratively and literally, and anyone who found themselves in the orbit of a king or queen certainly understood that risk.

A great example of how bloodthirsty the English kings could be was Henry VIII.

Henry is known for a lot of things, not all of which are so great in retrospect.

He expanded the power of the crown during his lifetime and based a lot of that on his belief in the divine right of kings, something that threatened the freedom of his people.

He was greedy and vindictive and had an ego that was only surpassed in size by the codpiece on his armor.

But if there is one thing that most people remember today about Henry VIII, it's his many wives.

Henry had six of them, half of whom were named Catherine, which must have made it a lot easier for him, I'm sure.

Five of those six wives came and went within a single 10-year period in his life, but not all of those breakups were friendly.

After having his first marriage annulled in 1533 and sparking the English Reformation and the country's separation from the Catholic Church, Henry married the sister of a former lover, a woman named Anne Boleyn.

Three years later, he had her executed for treason and adultery.

but also possibly for failing to deliver a male heir.

The day after Anne's beheading, Henry proposed to one of her ladies-in-waiting, Jane Seymour.

They had apparently fallen in love months before, but Jane had managed to hold off Henry's advances in the name of honor.

Once the queen was dead, though, she was much more agreeable.

They were married 10 days later.

From everything I can tell, Henry believed that Jane Seymour was the one.

He viewed her as his perfect queen, and when she gave birth to his first male heir a year later, he probably sighed with relief.

But complications from the birth put her life at risk, and over the two weeks that followed, she slowly declined.

In October of 1537, Jane Seymour passed away.

That had taken place at Hampton Court Palace, Henry's favorite London residence.

It was a mixture of a pleasure palace, a theater, and a royal home.

So when Henry brought his next two wives through those doors over the next few years, they were probably bittersweet moments.

A lot of joy would be possible there, but it would always sit in the shadows of a painful past.

His fifth wife, Catherine Howard, made a fool of the king by conducting at least one less-than-secret affair.

After learning about what she had done, Henry had Catherine arrested and thrown in a prison cell there at the house.

She was only 18 at the time, and I can't imagine the fear and desperation she must have felt, being a prisoner of the most powerful man in the kingdom.

According to the stories, though, Catherine managed to slip away from her guards one day while being walked through the palace.

She bolted away and ran down one of the long galleries that led to the king's chapel where she knew Henry could be found.

Her goal was probably to beg for forgiveness, to ask for mercy, and to plead for her life.

But the guards caught up to her before that could happen and her screams of terror were the only thing to reach him.

Catherine Howard was beheaded a short while later.

and Henry moved on to a new wife, also named Catherine.

But just because those former wives were gone, doesn't mean they were forgotten.

In fact, if the stories are true, they might have stuck around to serve as a cruel reminder.

It's said that even today, visitors to that long gallery in the palace have heard echoes of a woman screaming, a desperate panicked cry that chills them to the bones.

Others have heard the quick rhythm of footsteps as if someone were running down the hallway.

And in 1999, According to one source, two different tourists fainted in the gallery at different times on the very same day.

Elsewhere in Hampton Court Palace, other shadows have stuck around as well.

In a room at the top of the staircase known as the Silver Stick Stairs, multiple visitors have claimed to have seen the figure of a pale woman.

She stands silently, hovering slightly above the floor, with a mournful expression and vacant eyes.

For those who have witnessed it, the specter has been both calming and terrifying.

Whether or not the visions are real though, it's fascinating to look at the true history of that room.

Because while it has been used for countless purposes over the last few centuries, one specific resident stands out above all the others.

It was in this room, you see, that Henry VIII's only male heir was born to his true love, Jane Seymour.

And it was there, just two weeks later, that she passed away.

The old home, located on Berkeley Square, is a townhouse, just one of many in a long row of similar facades.

But as far back as the mid-19th century, it was different enough to stand out from all the others.

But before I continue with the legends, let me be clear that not a lot is known about the house's origins and a lot of stories have yet to be completely verified.

Still, we know enough to make this a journey worth taking.

So let's get started.

The majority of the tales begin with the man who owned the house back in the 1860s.

Thomas Meyer wasn't the first to live there, but he was certainly the most infamous.

It's said that he had once been engaged to be married.

but his fiancée eventually changed her mind and ended their relationship.

Broken and distraught, he retreated into his house and was rarely ever seen again.

Neighbors claim that the house would be dead during the day, only to come alive at night.

It was as if Thomas had traded in the sunlight for the shadows, living the rest of his life during those moments when most of the world was asleep.

And it might very well be whispers of the house all lit up at night that first gave birth to the rumor that it was haunted.

But it could also have been what happened next.

Sometime around 1872, the house sold to a new family, and they moved in to clean up the home and make it their own.

The couple had two daughters, both in their late teens, and there were precious few years left for the parents to enjoy life as a family in this new setting before they became empty nesters.

In the weeks that followed, though, the future crept in.

The oldest of the two daughters became engaged to a young officer named Captain Kentfield, and conversation became filled with talk of wedding plans and guest lists.

And at some point in their engagement, Captain Kentfield planned a visit, so the family set about preparing the attic bedroom for his arrival.

According to the story, what happened next is still shrouded in mystery.

The family maid was sent up to put the final touches on the fiancé's room, and while she was up there, the family heard her scream.

At once, everyone in the house rushed upstairs to see what had happened, only to find her lying on the floor.

an expression of complete horror painted across her face.

More mysterious mysterious yet was that she couldn't seem to put a complete sentence together and was unable to answer any of the questions the family asked her.

All the maid was able to do was mutter a low, cryptic refrain, Don't let it touch me.

Don't let it touch me.

The maid was immediately taken to the hospital to recover, where I imagined someone observed her and did their best to treat her rattled nerves.

But other than that, there was little they could do.

Sleep, they assumed, would be the best medicine.

The following morning, though, she was found dead in her room.

The fiancée arrived the next day, and after hearing the stories of the maid's unexpected death, he decided to check the room out for himself.

Maybe he was playing the brave soldier in front of his future in-laws in an effort to impress them, or perhaps his fiancée needed some reassurance and he wanted to calm her nerves.

Whatever the reason, He climbed the stairs to the attic bedroom and declared that he would keep watch throughout the night.

In the darkest hours of the morning though, a gunshot pulled everyone from sleep, their hearts racing at the sound of it.

Everyone climbed out of bed, threw on their nightcoats, and then rushed up to see what had happened.

What they found, according to the legend, was the young captain dead on the floor of his room, a victim of his own pistol.

In 1907, author Charles Harper wrote about the house in a book, and it was there that he declared it to be the very picture of misery.

After the events that were said to have taken place there, it's easy to wonder if the misery was in the structure or the lives who lived there.

Either way, the stories we've heard so far shed a bright light on one more tale that Harper added to the legend.

According to him, the next family to own the house moved in fully aware of the tragedies of the past.

The owner was an older gentleman who was said to be practical and not prone to stories of the supernatural.

Still, he understood the power of suggestion a creepy old house with a dark past might have over him, so he set some rules for everyone to follow.

After settling in with his family, he told them all that he would ring his bell to tell them if he ever truly needed help.

If it was a moment of fright, he would only ring it once, which they were all instructed to ignore.

But if matters were more pressing and he truly needed help, he would ring it twice, a signal that they were to immediately come to his room.

Everyone went to bed at the end of the evening, and while the night began peacefully, the quiet was broken around midnight by the loud chime of the old man's bell.

Not once, but twice, which sent everyone rushing to see what might be the matter.

What they found, though, weren't answers.

The old man was writhing in his bed, his face twisted by panic and fear.

Just like the housemaid all those years before, he too couldn't answer the questions that the others around him him asked.

He could only mutter and shake with horror at something no one else could see.

After doing their best to help him, they calmed him enough to let him sleep, and everyone wandered back to their own rooms.

They left his bell on the table beside his bed, hoping that he would remember how to use it if he needed them, but the remainder of the night was one long stretch of unbroken silence.

In the morning, they discovered why.

After visiting the old man's bedroom to check on him, one of his family members gently pushed the door open and peered inside.

The shape in the bed was unmoving, and so they approached to wake him and see how he felt.

But like those in the house before him, he too had passed away.

A random coincidence of natural causes, or a demonstration of the power of fear.

There is a lot about London that seems to echo the atmosphere of the house at 50 Berkeley Square.

It's a city painted in shadows, but it's unclear if that darkness was always there or if we imported it over the centuries.

What's clear is that almost from the start, tragedy and suffering has been a resident of this ancient city.

Right back to the invasion of Boudicca nearly 2,000 years ago and up to its most modern challenges, the city of London has had to suffer through quite a bit, and that has a way of leaving a mark.

Over the centuries though, the city has always found ways to move on.

New layers are added all the time, building the present on top of the past and slowly burying one dark moment beneath another.

Which is probably why London is one of those places where new construction always seems to bump into ancient things.

If you dig deep enough, you're guaranteed to find something.

And look, London is a massive city, and while I did my best to cover some of its larger and more powerful stories, there are hundreds more that I had to leave untouched.

Honestly, if you want to visit a haunted location in the city, just visit a local pub, like the Ten Bells or the Flask or the Spaniard Inn.

If the stories are true, you'll find a lot more than a pint of ale waiting for you inside.

But if there's one mark on the pages of London's history that is bigger than most, it's hard to deny the power of the plague.

If you remember when the wave of disease washed over the city in 1665, it took two years to run its course, and in the process it claimed the lives of nearly 100,000 people.

And that was a lot of tragedy to deal with on the personal and the public level.

The biggest problem seemed to be what to do with all those corpses.

We've all seen films like Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and can all remember lines like, Bring out your dead, and from what we can tell, that's pretty close to how it actually would have been.

A steady, daily flow of bodies out of the city, away from the places where people lived in the hope that it would stop the spread of the disease.

And most of the bodies were carried outside the city limits.

One such burial location was started by the Earl of Craven, who purchased a parcel of land west of the city for disposal of plague victims.

And every night, for months on end, carts filled with rotting corpses were wheeled out onto his land and then dumped into the pits there.

Over time, the place became known as the Pesthouse Field, and later it was named Gelding Close.

But to be honest, few people actually went there.

They were too afraid of what might happen if they got too close to the body of a plague victim or, heaven forbid, accidentally touch one.

So the burial plot, like so many others around the city, became a sort of no man's land.

After years of waiting, the owners of the land eventually made the decision to use the property for development.

London was growing and there would always be a need for a new neighborhood to settle in, so it was sold in pieces and developed into homes for the wealthy and elite to move away from the center of the city.

Gelding Close eventually became known as Golden Square, and today it's a prominent feature in the Soho area of London.

But even though the name has changed and the landscape around it has been transformed, the past is still there, lingering in the shadows of modern life.

In fact, more than a few visitors to the park and buildings that surround it have bumped into the past in a very real way.

A few have seen the figures of people dressed in old-fashioned clothing slipping through the square at night, while most have caught the sound of wailing as if someone were enduring horrible pain and suffering.

But it's not the specific things people have heard over the years that are the most terrifying aspect of these stories.

No, it's where they all claim the voices have come from.

The sounds, they say, seem to emanate from right beneath their feet.

A city as old and historic as London is guaranteed to have a library of mysterious shadows and otherworldly experiences.

And I hope today's tour has been a satisfying dip into that enormous pond.

But I'm not done just yet.

There's one more legend from the city that I absolutely love.

And if you stick around through the sponsor break, I plan to tell you all about it.

When you think of London, it's easy to think of money.

As far back as the Roman period of the city, there has been an overt focus on the financial industry.

In about 240 AD, for example, the Romans constructed a Mithraeum, a temple devoted to the god Mithras.

Some of the most common members of the cult of Mithras were merchants, traders, customs officials, and politicians, all professions that revolved around the flow of money.

But it didn't end with the Romans.

As the centuries ticked by, the people of London found new and better ways to manage money and build the economy.

In the year 1100, King Henry I instituted a new system of currency that even the most illiterate and uneducated citizens of his kingdom could understand, the tally stick.

It was essentially a polished wooden rod that had nicks carved into it to denote its value, and it was then split down the middle.

The king kept one half, while the other was put into circulation in places like the city markets.

And that's where the system really shined.

If anyone tried to change the value of the public half by adding another nick, it just needed to be compared to the other half kept safe by the crown.

But at the end of the 17th century, one of the biggest changes to the financial world of London was born.

The Bank of England.

It was created in 1694 to solve a tricky financial problem the government of England faced.

They needed to build a massive navy to defend themselves, but lacked the funds to do it.

So an elaborate system of lending and currency came to their rescue.

A century later, the Bank of England was simply a way of life for the people of London.

It had all the prestige and power you might expect from a government-backed bank, and had established a reputation for itself that has carried into the 21st century.

But I don't want to give you a tour of the bank's full history.

I just want to tell you about one of their employees, a man named Philip Whitehead.

Whitehead worked in the cashier's office of the Bank of England in 1811.

Everyone around him viewed him as a pillar of the establishment, a hard-working, respectable man who was charming and delightful with staff and customers alike.

Except that's not all he was.

Philip was also a criminal.

It turns out he had been forging bank documents for months, cheating the bank out of a slow trickle of money.

And at some point in 1811, his misdeeds were discovered and he was quickly arrested and sent off to prison.

A few months later, in early 1812, Philip Whitehead hanged for his crimes and the bank moved on.

Several weeks after Philip's hanging though, a woman came into the bank asking for him.

She said her name was Sarah but when she asked to speak with Philip Whitehead she was simply told that he was out of the office on a business errand.

The woman left disappointed but promised to be back at another time.

The next time that she returned, she not only told them that her name was Sarah, but that she was Philip's sister.

She told them of how she had lost touch with her brother many months earlier and that she had been desperate to find a way to reach him.

And at some point, her story must have plucked at the heartstrings of just the right bank employee because one of the men took her aside and told her the truth.

Her brother was dead.

It wouldn't be Sarah's last visit to the bank, though.

The next time she returned, she was dressed all in black with a black veil that covered her face.

She stepped into the lobby of the bank and asked to see her brother.

Taking pity on the poor woman, an official at the bank pulled her aside, apologized for keeping his imprisonment and execution a secret, and offered a small settlement.

It was a payoff, of course, designed to keep her from disturbing the other customers, but I'm sure he sold it to her more as a salve for her aching heart.

Either way, she accepted the money and then left.

But she returned a few days later.

Over and over again, Sarah Whitehead visited the bank, each time dressed in that black gown and veil.

At first, her voice was nothing more than a whisper, but with each new visit, her question became louder and more aggressive.

Where is my brother?

she continued to ask.

Each of those visits ended with another small payment from the bank, but they weren't the charity house and eventually decided that enough was enough.

Pulling her aside one day, they handed her a massive settlement and told her never to return.

And to her credit, Sarah Whitehead listened.

She never again set foot inside the bank.

Although it's said she also never wore anything else but that black gown and dark veil.

We don't know how long Sarah lived after that.

Sometimes grief has a way of speeding up a person's decline, while other times it seems to give them a reason to go on.

But decades later, Sarah passed away, having spent the remainder of her life in a constant state of mourning for her dead brother.

Legend says that the churchyard she chose for her burial was the one right next door to the bank.

Maybe she wanted to keep an eye on them from the other world, or perhaps it just happened to be where she attended church.

I like to think it was the former, and that those who still worked at the bank and knew her story were aware of where she was buried.

It's very poetic, whether or not it was actually true.

But her story doesn't end there, of course.

In the years following Sarah Whitehead's death, employees inside the bank began to report seeing strange things.

Oftentimes, it was nothing more than a movement just out of their field of vision, caught in the corner of their eye, but never there when they turned their head.

Other times, it was the fleeting vision of something black and shadowy.

Many who have worked in the bank claim that certain areas give them a feeling of hopelessness and despair.

And on rare occasions, some claim a mysterious shape has even materialized right before their eyes.

All of them have described it in the same way, too, giving the old stories new life as the decades have passed by.

They say the shape is that of a woman.

Each time she appears, her pale skin is framed by a dress as black as coal, a veil that had once covered her face pulled back to reveal twisted lips, red cheeks, and eyes that seemed to glow like fire.

But it's the words she speaks that frighten people the most.

After locking eyes with them and washing them in a wave of terror, the woman in black repeats the same words she had grown so accustomed to in life.

Where, she asks them, is my brother?

This episode of Lore was written and produced by me, Aaron Mankey, with research by Robin Miniter and music by Chad Lawson.

Lore is much more than just a podcast.

There's a book series available in bookstores and online, and two seasons of the television show on Amazon Prime Video.

Check them both out if you want more lore in your life.

I also make two other podcasts, Aaron Mankey's Cabinet of Curiosities and Unobscured, and I think you'd enjoy both.

Each one explores areas of our dark history, ranging from bite-sized episodes to season-long dives into a single topic.

You can learn more about both of those shows and everything else going on over in one central place: theworldoflore.com/slash now.

And you can also follow the show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

Just search for lore podcast, all one word, and then click that follow button.

And when you do, say hi.

I like it when people say hi.

And as always,

thanks for listening.

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