Paranormal Road Trip: Destination London with Pippa DaCosta

Come on boys and ghouls!  It's time to hop on Route 666 for a spooktacular Paranormal Road Trip.

This week's stop is London and our special guide is Pippa DaCosta the author of CITY OF FAE.

Pippa's Top 3 Spooky Places in London

London is a city of many layers, and what you see on the surface is just a fraction of the city itself. Beneath the bustling streets, lying dormant and forgotten, old tube tunnels echo with phantom trains, disused and silent train stations adopt an apocalyptic air, and underground Victorian-gothic reservoirs hide a hidden beauty. So let’s descend below the streets and see what we find...

The London Underground’s Plague Pits & The Bank Station Ghost

The London Underground network is over 140 years old and used every day by thousands of people. You’d think, with that many people around, it wouldn’t be spooky, but it’s an odd place of tumultuous noise and a restless quiet between the ebb and flow of the trains and passengers.

The Victoria Line, built in 1960, ran into complications when the boring machine hit a ‘Plague Pit’ unearthing thousands of skeletons. When the Bubonic plague ravaged London in the 17th Century, huge pits were dug to bury the dead. Nobody truly knows where exactly they all are, and some are still being discovered. At the Depot on the Bakerloo Line, just behind the walls of a dead-end tunnel (used to stop runaway trains!) there lies another plague pit.

At Bank Station, the ‘Black Nun’ haunts the platform, searching for her brother, who was executed in 1811. Bank is another station, which during its construction, workers are said to have hit a plague pit. Today people report cold spots, odd smells and an overwhelming feeling of sadness at the station.

This is just a few of the many spooky sightings on the London Underground. So, the next time you visit the Underground, perhaps in that moment when an unnatural quiet befalls the platform, be aware, there are things behind the walls, almost close enough to reach out and touch you.

Highgate Cemetery

With more than 170,000 people buried here, Highgate Cemetery opened in 1839 to help ease the problem of where to bury London’s dead. Wealthy Victorian’s built vast gothic monuments and crypts in an effort to outdo one another in death. It is said that ghosts haunt its fringes, assaulting those who wander too close, and even a vampire stalks the leafy avenues.

The Tower of London

Perhaps one of the most spectacular and infamous places in London, and one of the most haunted. The headless ghost of Anne Boleyn has been reported at the site, as well as the two young princes, Edward V and his brother Richard who’s skeletons were discovered under a staircase at the White Tower. In life, the two princes were deemed illegitimate and sent to the tower. They vanished, allegedly murdered by their Uncle, the Duke of Gloucester.

These are just a handful of London’s spooky places. A city as old as London has many tales to tell.

In Pippa DaCosta’s new urban fantasy book, City of Fae, it’s not ghosts who reside beneath the city streets, but the alluring and predatory fae.

Thank you Pippa for giving us such a haunting tour of London!  

To learn more about Pippa DaCosta and her books, please visit her website.  You can add City of Fae here on Goodreads.

What did you think of Pippa's picks for spooky places?

Last week on Paranormal Road Trip we visited Malibu, CA with D.B. Reynolds.  Next week we'll be traveling to London with Brooklyn Ann.

Join us for another spine-tingling Paranormal Road Trip...
if you dare!