Which is the Underground’s most haunted Tube station? James Ford offers the definitive countdown of the top three

When we think about the capital’s best known ghost stories and most haunted locations, we probably all think of the same few suspects: the headless ghost of Anne Boleyn wandering the ramparts at the Tower of London, Jack the Ripper silently stalking the streets of Whitechapel in thick fog and the Highgate Vampire prowling through the cemetery in search of blood. But we rarely think about the haunted locations you can access with an Oyster card. What about all those ghostly goings on across the transport network? Surely the Undead of the Underground should have their stories told too? 

Well, rest assured that has got you covered. We have raided the archives – and sifted the seriously scary from the simply spooky – to determine the definitive list of the top three most haunted Tube stations. So, descend with us on an ethereal escalator to take a Tube ride into terror…

3. Bethnal Green

Whereas most of Tube’s most stations have one or perhaps two ghosts, Bethnal Green earns its spot here because it has 173, all of them the result of a single tragedy. 

Bethnal Green’s Central Line platforms are some of the deepest on the network, which made the station a very popular bomb shelter during the Second World War. In March 1943, when the air raid sirens blared and a nearby battery of air defences cranked into action, there was such a rush to get into the station, with hundreds of people pouring into the narrow staircases and walkways, that those at the bottom of the stairs were crushed and suffocated en masse. The fatalities included 84 women and 62 children. 

The incident is the worst single loss of civilian life in Britain during the war and the deadliest disaster in the history of the London Underground. Worse still, the air raid alert that caused the deaths was just a drill to test fire new rocket-based air defences and no bombs fell. To protect wartime morale, the incident was hushed up for years and an official report was classified. To this day, people claim to hear children sobbing, women crying and panicked screams lasting for over 10 minutes before the sound slowly fades away. 

2. Bank

Bank makes it onto this list because its signature ghost has the best name of any spectral entity on the Tube network: the Black Nun of Bank. Better known in her lifetime as Sarah Whitehead, and not a nun but rather a grieving sister: in 1812 her brother, a clerk at the Bank of England, was convicted and hanged for forgery. In response, Sarah had a nervous breakdown and took to dressing in heavy, black mourning dress, visiting the bank daily and asking employees: “Have you seen my brother?” 

In the end the directors of the bank offered her a financial settlement on the condition that she stop, which she accepted. But, after her death some 20 years later, reports started of sightings of a woman dressed in black and weeping while roaming Threadneedle Street, the halls of the Bank England and the platforms of Bank station, often accompanied by the smell of decay and a sudden cold feeling.

1. Aldgate 

Aldgate was probably always going to top our list. Afterall, it was built on a plague pit. And not a small one. This particular plague pit – located behind St Botolph’s church and dating back to 1665 – contained the remains of more than 1,000 victims of the Great Plague. Furthermore, the station’s construction was troubled by a large number of accidents and deaths, including some workmen who were buried alive digging tunnels. Anyone who has seen the film Poltergeist knows that disturbing burial grounds never ends well.

But it is not just the obvious ghostly foreshadowing that puts Aldgate on this list but its actual haunted history. In 1896 a house located over the road from the station burnt down in a devastating house fire, killing three young girls from the Sullivan family (aged six, three and eighteen months). Ever since passengers at Aldgate have reported hearing disembodied childish laughter, running footsteps and the sounds of children playing on the platforms. Some have even reported feeling their sleeves being tugged, or tiny feet stepping on theirs, all of which has been attributed to the ghosts of the Sullivan girls.

And the Sullivan girls are not Aldgate’s only ghostly presence. In 2000, a track worker at Aldgate survived a 20,000-volt electrocution after slipping on the electrified rail. A colleague claimed to have seen a translucent elderly woman kneeling and stroking the worker’s hair just after he fell, leading to speculation that either the ghostly entity intervened to save the worker from death or was responsible for pushing him in the first place. The lore has suggested that the ghost – known  as the Spectral Old Lady (or, less poetically, as the ‘Hair Stroker’) – was a woman who fell on the tracks and died whilst sheltering during the Blitz.

For years urban legend maintained that spooky events and ghoulish sightings at Aldgate were so frequent that staff maintained a written record. However, Transport for London has always denied the existence of the so-called Ghost Logbook. (But, then again, if I was a public transport authority maintaining a private Necronomicon, I’d deny it too!)

Remember this list next time you are stood on an empty Tube platform late at night. Are the hairs on the back of your neck standing up? If you strain your ears, can you hear children playing? Do you think you can hear distant footsteps? Is someone tugging gently at your sleeve? Or, worse still, is someone stroking your hair? Sweet dreams, dear reader, sweet dreams…

And an honourable mention:

If you thought this list was lacking a Mummy’s Curse, don’t worry. The ghost of a priestess in the service of Amun-Ra, the Egyptian King-God, is said to haunt the tunnels around the old British Museum station wearing a loincloth and headdress and usually seen screaming or wailing. This ghost story is linked to the so-called ‘Unlucky Mummy’, an object (an inner coffin lid, not an actual mummy) in the British Museum’s Egyptology collection. This would have made our top five but, sadly, the British Museum station closed in 1933. 

James Ford is a former adviser to Mayor of London Boris Johnson