Welcome to another episode of Believing the Bizarre. It’s listener submission time, brought to us by Katie, and this week we head to London, specifically the London Dungeon.
The London Dungeon was opened in the 1970s on Tooley Street as a museum of various medieval torture instruments and has grown over the years into a massive actor-led tourist attraction with rides.
The rides aren’t the only thing entertaining guests, however. Countless employees and guests have claimed to see spirits, shadows, children, and more. But, is it believable? Listen now to find out.
Do haunted houses attract spirits and ghosts?
Could a tourist attraction depicting the macabre really be home to something truly terrifying? Are the shadowy extras in the attraction really ghosts, and not actors in a thrilling haunted house?
What’s up Bizarros? This week we dive into Katie’s story about her time in the London’s Dungeon
The Haunted London Dungeon on Tooley Street
The History Of London Dungeon
The London Dungeon was opened in the 1970s as a museum of various medieval torture instruments and has grown over the years into a massive actor-led tourist attraction with rides.
A few years ago, it moved from its original home in Tooley Street to County Hall on the embankment of the Thames River, where it now sits with various other Merlin attractions, like Sea Life and The London Eye.
My stories are all from the Tooley Street Dungeon, where I worked from February 2009 until August 2011.
The Tooley Street Dungeon was housed in the vaults of London Bridge Station. The train station itself was a terminus, so trains didn’t pass through but they started and finished at London Bridge.
This was upstairs on Level 1, and the underground/tube was below ground. The London Dungeon was all on ground level, in the unused vaults. So inside, there were tunnels and tunnels of creepy, damp brick arches which lent themselves perfectly to the content of the Dungeon.
The history itself is pretty tame – it was, of course, never a real dungeon – all that history is at the Tower of London, up the road by Tower Bridge (the one that opens in the middle – London Bridge is literally a boring concrete bridge and people always confuse the two!). At one point the vaults of the Dungeon were used as a wine cellar, so there’s not a lot in the way of cool, spooky history before the Dungeon moved in.
Except…
In 1941, the tunnel right next to the Dungeon, which is now a busy road that cars drive on (Pic 2), was used as a bomb shelter for all the local primary school children during WWII. A bomb hit and everyone was OBLITERATED – seriously obliterated, to the point where they couldn’t even scrape any remains off the walls and they CONCRETED OVER IT INSTEAD.
So, all these parts of children and other people are literally within the walls of the tunnel, which was adjacent to the Jack the Ripper (JTR) section of the Dungeon. The JTR fire exit actually takes you out into the tunnel. This becomes important later on!
This is from the Southwark News in 2019.
“In 2011 nearly 70 years to the day a bomb destroyed Stainer’s Street Arch at London Bridge Jim Smith then aged 90 re-told us his story; ‘I’ll never forget that awful sight,” he said. “Two little girls had been killed in the blast, and their little bodies were just lying there charred. I still get tearful thinking about it now.’
Working at The Dungeon/ Other Peoples’ Experiences
The most fascinating part of working at the Dungeon is that every manager, photographer, cleaner, actor, ride operator, ticket agent – everyone, admits that the Dungeon is creepy as hell, and something paranormal is going on. No matter how much of a skeptic they are, everyone can admit that there is some freaky-ass shit in there. Everyone except one of the actors’ managers, who we’ll call Tim. We’ll come to him later.
When I first started, I asked around for some creepy things that had happened to other people, or stories they’d heard. These are unverified by me, as I didn’t witness any of these, but I spoke first hand with the people who had witnessed them:
• Someone saw the naked torso of a soldier with a Roman-looking helmet and metal shoulder plates “flying” through the plague section
• A couple of people have seen just the hem of a skirt and a pair of women’s shoes, walking the wrong way around the Jack the Ripper section (i.e. the opposite way to the public) • Many, many people have reported seeing a little girl, shuffling her feet and giggling, in Frying Pan Alley by the JTR section
• Many actors have had their shirts and dresses tugged on as if by a small child • One scenic artist was working late and didn’t want to terrify her coworker by telling her there was a man standing just behind her
• A ride operator on Extremis, which was a drop ride, raised a group of riders to the top, then pressed the emergency stop because he saw a little boy running around inside the restricted ride area, but when he went to check there was no one there
• The same ride operator at a different time only had 1 seat free on Extremis so he stopped a man and his little boy from entering the ride, and when he said “I’ll come back for you two”, the man said “It’s just me” – there was no boy.
• And my personal favorite: at least once a month there would be a customer survey inputted on the survey machine in the gift shop that said they particularly enjoyed “the hologram of the children playing in the Jack the Ripper section” – of course, there are no children in the JTR section – at least, there shouldn’t be.
So these are some of Katie’s co-worker encounters that she heard while working there. But employees swing ghosts underneath Tooley street and the other London Dungeons that Zoey Forsey from The Mirror wrote up an article about many others that worked there and experienced phenomenon.
This experience from the article from Kevin Handy who was an operations manager at the same location where Katie was is eerily close to another encounter we hear from Katie later in the ep
“At the Tooley Street Dungeon, I was walking through the show spaces at the end of the day and poked my head into the ‘bedroom’ set to check for persons potentially left in the show space.
“At the end of the set, I could see, what I initially thought was one of the performance team sitting at the end of the bed in costume.
“It looked like a figure of a woman in Victorian dress, sitting with her hands on her lap- staring at me.
“I called out to tell the “actor” to move on but, even as I was speaking, I felt a strong sense of dread and unease and knew that, whatever it was, it wasn’t an actor that had stayed on the position at end of the day.
“Nothing happened when I called out, but the figure I could see remained in place.
“I stood in the doorway and stared at it for a few seconds, attempting to focus and for it to become clear as to what I was staring at.
“The more I focused, the clearer the figure was becoming.
“I closed the door to the room and stood a while, trying to gather my thoughts with the intention of opening the door again in a few seconds to see that the figure had gone or see the ‘jacket/bedding’ or whatever it was clearly.
“A few seconds passed and I re-opened the door to look in. I could see the figure, once again, sitting at the foot of the bed.
“I then closed the door again and retreated back to the green room to find another team member.
“I opened the door and, once again, looked into the space but this time with my colleague. It was gone.
“She entered the room and I reluctantly followed, both of us trying to find a coat or rag or anything that I could have visually misconstrued as a figure at the end of the bed.
“I brought up the house lights too but we could find nothing.”
My Personal Experiences At The London Dungeons
One thing to bear in mind is that the workers weren’t all terrified to be in there despite the manmade creepy atmosphere and all the fake blood and guts around: after all, our sole purpose was to terrify the public, so the only scary thing in there, was us.
Between performing little shows to groups of tourists, the actors would sit alone at our stations under whatever dim spotlight we could find to read our books or play Fruit Ninja on our phones.
I’ve had 3 experiences which I’ll list in order from ‘pretty terrifying’ to ‘scared me so bad I literally had to go homesick.
1. The Growling Man
I was performing a show in the “Torture Chamber” and as I was about to take a run-up with my massive hook to demonstrate where it used to end up on a volunteer from the audience, I was stopped dead in my tracks by a way-too-fake, Disney-style, perfect growl coming from over my head.
I literally stopped what I was doing and looked at the audience to see if they’d heard it too but they were just watching me. I’d been at the Dungeon for over a year and knew every torture noise and scream and sound effect, and a growl wasn’t one of them.
A few months later, I was on Torture again and at the end of my show, I was leading the group into the courtroom, standing with my back against the curtain which led into the next area, a strobe maze.
From behind the curtain, someone a lot taller than me (I’m 6ft tall) leaned over my shoulder and did that same Disney-perfect growl in my ear, and this time I felt their hot breath on my neck and ear. I laughed it off, sure it was just that tall guy who… wasn’t at work today. I quickly whipped back the curtain to check and there was not a single person there – bearing in mind the next room was a literal maze of fences that you had to zigzag through, with concrete walls on either side and nowhere to go.
About a year after that, I was walking through the courtroom after hours with a coworker, when this growl came again – from above us (there were no speakers or SFX in the courtroom). My friend was so terrified she screamed and ran, and when I caught up with her I told her that was the same exact growl I’ve heard twice before – and I wish I could believe it was a sound effect, but the last time it breathed on my neck.
A few of the ride operators had worked overnight were a paranormal group hired the Dungeon for a ghost hunt, and one of the spirits who came forward was a very, very angry man in a huge, wide-brimmed hat who is present around the courtroom and strobe maze area. I didn’t discover this until after I’d encountered him three times.
2. The Concerned Little Girl
Ok, I’ll admit that this experience occurred on a day where I felt pretty rubbish and was off work with the flu the next day. Whether I was hallucinating remains to be seen, but it still freaked me the hell out. I mentioned before there was a place near the JTR section called Frying Pan Alley – this was a corridor that linked the Sweeney Todd show to the JTR section, where mortuary photos of the Ripper victims are displayed in fake windows and backlit with flickering lights.
This corridor housed a façade of the Frying Pan pub, which had a scary-ass mannequin standing outside. No one liked this bloody mannequin because it had no face, was dressed in black and one day we learned, to our horror, that it’s only the top half of a mannequin that’s stuck onto a big barrel with a skirt over the top to hide it.
I never liked being in Frying Pan Alley and rarely went out there, but this day I felt so ill I didn’t care and I wanted to see where the next group was so I could catch a quick sit down.
I was leaning around the pillar you can see in Pic 6 and looking to the left, past the ‘pub’, when, right in my right ear, as clear as day, in a sing-song happy voice, a young child said “What’s the matter?”. Now, working in the Dungeon, my first thought was that they’ve put a new soundtrack in Frying Pan Alley. The two mannequins you can see in these photos were actually looking up at a third mannequin hanging out of a window, so I thought there was a new soundtrack of a conversation between the women. I waited, and there was no response. Just the usual piano music coming from
the pub speaker, and no speaker whatsoever near where I had heard the little girl’s voice in my ear. I ran to the adjoining rooms and found various male actors, engrossed in their books, who looked at me like I was insane when I asked them “was it you?”.
On my break, I went to the scenic artists who are in charge of all audio and visual effects, and they said they’d never changed the soundtrack in Frying Pan Alley. Bear in mind, this is where most people had seen a little girl, and the wall connects with the very tunnel where those children died.
3. The Disappearing Man
This was my third and final unexplained experience at The Dungeon, and it was witnessed by 4 other people. This took place in the Plague section, and the photo below I believe is taken in the Plague section of the new London Dungeon at County Hall. I couldn’t find one of Tooley Street but the ‘street’ and the cart are basically the same.
During the Plague show, the actor places the plague cart in the doorway under a blue spotlight to stop the group from wandering off, then at the end of the show, you wheel it down the corridor and lead them into the next room, which was the Great Fire of London. I was standing in the doorway of the Fire room, ushering everyone into the room while looking back down ‘Plague Street’ to see how many more people I had to fit inside, and whether I needed to tell the group already in Fire to squeeze up a bit more.
The last 4 people of the group walking up Plague Street were giggling nervously and kept looking behind them. I noticed that behind them, in the doorway where I keep the cart during my show, under the blue spotlight, was a man in a long, grey cloak. I wasn’t worried because the previous show was the Crypt and the Crypt Keeper wears a long grey hooded cloak – but I didn’t recognize him. You very quickly get used to who’s who judging by their hair, the way they do their makeup, and their costume which is all slightly different.
This is not anyone I recognized.
The man was looking down, and very, very slowly, he was walking by putting one foot in front, then bringing his other foot to meet it, like an old-fashioned bride walking down the aisle. The group was scared of him and kept an eye on him, slowing down as he inched closer as if they didn’t trust what he would do when he finally snuck upon them.
In the middle of Plague Street was “Piss Pot Woman”, which was an animatronic person who threw a small pan of water over the guests as they passed, on a sensor, every 10 seconds or so.
As she was activated and threw her bucket onto the 4 people at the back of the group, they ducked out of the way and as they did, the cloaked man at the back dropped downwards so quickly it was either as if he’d dropped to his knees, or as if he was being hanged and gravity just took him down so fast.
In the split second that the group ducked into my eye line and then moved out of the way again, I could see that the cloaked man was gone. I’d fully expected him to be on the floor on his knees because I’d only lost sight of him for a millisecond when I saw him drop, and when I looked he was gone.
I know it sounds insane but he must have fallen through the floor – the 4 at the back of the group started clapping and saying what a great effect that was. My only regret is not asking what exactly they saw him do – but I was genuinely too terrified and confused.
As soon as the group was in the next room, I ran back down Plague Street which has absolutely no doors or hiding places looking for this man, then I went through the mirror maze into Crypt, where the Crypt Keeper was a female in a bag wig, reading a book. She said she’d been in there for nearly an hour and no one apart from the group had come through.
I couldn’t think of any explanation for what I’d seen and I was so upset by it that my manager sent me home for the rest of the day. I still can’t explain it to this day.
The Creepiest One of All…
Earlier, I mentioned ‘Tim’, who was one of my managers. He’s a very straight-talking guy with a dry sense of humor and doesn’t put up with any nonsense – least of all ghost talk. I stopped working at the Dungeon before it moved to County Hall, so I wasn’t there for this occurrence, so I can’t verify it. However, it’s pretty damn spooky.
On one of the last days of the Tooley Street Dungeon, Tim was “sweeping” – following the last group of the day through the building and making sure no one is left behind. In the JTR section, there was a Mary Jane Kelly’s Bedroom scene – a
complete replica of the crime scene of the Ripper’s last victim as she lay in her bed (Pic 10). On this particular day, Tim entered the room and found a woman sitting on the edge of MJK’s bed, dressed head to toe in black, with her head down as if in mourning. He asked her to leave, but she ignored him. Not in the mood for this shit, he walked up to her and asked her to leave. She ignored him again.
He started clicking his fingers in front of her face but she wouldn’t look up or acknowledge him. He decided he shouldn’t be on his own in a room with a female guest, so he went to the office to fetch a female duty manager, and when the two of them came back – SHE WAS STILL SITTING THERE.
The female DM peeked into the room and was too scared to go in, and I’m not sure what happened next but I do know this: I worked with Tim at another job outside the Dungeon, and when I asked him about it, he went quiet and grey and did not want to talk about it at all, which was not at all like him.
Why do theaters attract spirits?
Have you ever heard that “all theaters are haunted”? Okay but why? High energy. There is so much emotional energy put into theaters, it’s my theory, that it’s almost like a buffet for ghosts to feed on.
There are so many superstitions in theaters about the paranormal it seems this has been a tradition for many years. “Don’t say Macbeth in theatres” why what does that attract? What energy can a word bring? Why should you always leave on a ghost light?
From the broadway beat, Roxey Arecco wrote an article. It works like a mousetrap for ghosts. She quoted “This is a massive discovery,” explained Franklin Santiago, a former actor who became the chief science officer of the NIPR after being released from his first Broadway production for saying “Macbeth”.
The light attracts ghosts and then quickly zaps em’ up. All theaters are haunted, but the light cuts the number down so they’re not completely overrun with spirits. Those ghosts are getting burnt to a crisp. I guess I’m not the only one who’s been fired on a Broadway stage.”
What Haunts The London Dungeon?
What do you think Bizarros?
Is the London Dungeon really haunted? Are ghosts attracted to it because of the gory events of London’s history being recreated? Is highlighting murders bringing back those who committed them?
Would you work at a haunted house, that was really haunted?