Aldgate's Ghostly Past
Plague Victims Returning?
London’s plague pits from the age of the Black Death fill the imagination but finding their exact location outside the major league ones at Charter House Square, St. Giles and Golden Square has always been something of a mystery.
At various times large numbers of bones have been discovered when new tube lines were dug or when new buildings were erected. The Broadgate construction around Liverpool Street Station uncovered a huge quantity of human remains although these are thought to have originated from Bedlam Hospital which once stood in close proximity. Nearby Aldgate Station (opened in 1876) was built on the site of a plague pit where an estimated thousand victims of the bubonic plague were laid to rest in 1665. As soon as the trains began rolling in and out of the new station numerous stories of ghostly apparitions began to emerge. Tales of nocturnal footsteps in the tunnels that started and stopped abruptly became prevalent.
How much of this was spectral myth is open to argument however a curious incident did occur a few years later when an electrician working at Aldgate slipped between the rails and was electrocuted with a 20, 000 volt shock. The shock should have been fatal but despite being knocked unconscious he escaped with minor injuries and made a full recovery.
There was nothing especially paranormal about this event until the accident investigators interviewed the man’s colleagues and each of them swore on the Bible that just before he fell they had both seen the half-transparent image of an old women kneeling beside their prone fellow worker and was stroking his hair.
Whether she was the man’s guardian angel come to save him from death from electrocution or alternatively an Angel of Death, trying to kill him by squeezing him through the gap in the tracks remains open to discussion to this day. However if you find yourself in Aldgate late at night just stop and listen you might be able to hear her.
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