The Metropolis

A supernatural history of London's haunted parks

Mike Pollitt | Friday 23 November, 2012 11:13

Elliot O’Donnell, writer, liar, ghosthunter, owner of an Irish terrier called Ghoul, made his name in the early 20th century with books such as Haunted Houses of London (1909), Werewolves (1912), and Haunted Highways and Byways (1914). Some of his books can now be downloaded for free.

In one chapter of his More Haunted Houses of London (1920), he looks for evidence of the supernatural in London’s public parks. Some of these tales are told to him by the poor and homeless who, without money for a bed, spent their nights in the parks with only each other, the stars, and the shadows for company.

Some happenings he claims to have seen with his own eyes.

Below is a selection of the hauntings O’Donnell recorded. Who of us can doubt him now? Who can say if these mysterious happenings might still be going on…

The whistling stone of Clapham Common

Walker in the mist

“An old woman, locally known as blue-necked Sally…told me that when she was sleeping on the Common one night she was awakened by the most beautiful whistling imaginable. She said it was soft and sweet, and yet so sad and melancholy that it made her cry…on applying her ear to the stone, near to which she was lying, she was convinced that the mysterious sounds did in very truth issue from it.”

What would cause the stone to whistle?

“Some said an aged pedlar had been murdered there; others, that an old crossing sweeper, who used to sell whistles made from the branches of the trees on the Common, had been found there, frozen to death.”

The pig-wolf of Green Park

One day, O’Donnell was walking a friend’s dog in Green Park when the animal suddenly bolted in terror. His interest piqued, O’Donnell approached the tree from which the dog had fled.

“…as I got within a few feet of the trunk, something big seemed to drop on to the ground close beside me, with a soft thud. I have had many experiences with the unpleasant side of the Unknown, but I do not think anything has ever affected me in quite the same way as this thing. I instinctively felt that it was nothing in the least degree human…something that was frightfull repellant and malignant. I could feel it was trying to fascinate me, trying to reduce me to a state of utter helplessness, and it was only by dint of an almost superhuman effort that I managed to overcome its influence and tear myself away from the spot.”

He tells his story to a tramp. The tramp knows of what he speaks. He knows only too well. He has seen it himself.

“Staring down at me were two eyes – pale eyes that seemed to have no actual colour, but to be wholly animated with spite and hate. The face they belonged to was a curious cross between that of a pig and that of a wolf. The mouth and snout were wolfish, the ears and general contour – piggish. It was quite hairless.”

The glade on Hampstead Heath where death can be foretold

Two sisters in the glade sat upon a bench. One, the elder, cried out in sudden pain. Her stomach was burning. She shouted out that Dr Smith had poisoned her. She did not know a Dr Smith.

The other sister looked across. Her sister’s face was changing, aging. The hair was curling, whitening. The jaw fell open, the chin collapsed. The face was dying. But it was a new face. Their grandmother’s.

The younger sister fainted. When she awoke, all was returned to normal. Both were themselves, and well. Two days later they received a telegram. Their grandmother was dead. She had mistakenly taken poison instead of the medicine prescribed by her doctor…Dr Smith.

They say the glade still exists, where, on certain nights of the year, the future can be foreseen in just this way. You may search for it, if the future is something you really want to know.

The silver birches of Greenwich Park

Perhaps the most extraordinary story of all. Certainly the best written. One night O’Donnell met an educated man among the vagrant sleepers of the Hyde Park, and asked how he had come to fall so low. The man said that he used to teach in Blackheath, until one fine warm summer night as he walked home through Greenwich Park, a weariness came over him and he decided that rather than trudge back to his bed he would sleep the night outside, on a bench beneath a silver birch. Of that silver birch he began to dream, and it was the dream that ruined him. Read his words. How could you resist?

“I became aware of this strange thing bending over me and fanning my cheeks with its breath. Can I ever forget that breath? It was scented sweeter than anything I have ever smelt. Sweeter – ten thousand times sweeter – than the most subtle and delicate perfume one ever inhaled from any woman…I tried to breathe it in, not only with my mouth and nostrils, but through every pore in my skin. It intoxicated, maddened me. But the climax of my joys had not yet come; soft, deliciously soft arms twined themselves round me and lifted me up, up, up, up, until I felt miles away from the earth and right among the stars; and then, as I lay quite still and calm, drinking in and drinking in that indescribably wonderful scent, I was kissed…to attempt to describe my feelings when that mouth touched mine, so softly and gently that although I knew it was there, I could as yet experience nothing more tangible nor material than the most delicate and hardly perceptible of pressures, would be impossible. And then very, very slowly those satin, perfumed lips sank deeper and deeper into mine, til…weary with too much joy, my mind became a blank and was conscious of nothing but a far-away sense of rocking, eternally soothing, sleep-inspiring rocking.”

The man awoke. The daylight had come. He left the tree, but the next night he found that he could not stay away. Night after night he returned to the bench below the tree to repeat his ecstatic dreams. They exhausted him, but he could not give them up. Soon his work began to suffer, his appearance deteriorated, he lost his job, his fiancee and his home. Only the trees were left to him, and he could not let them go.

O’Donnell gave the man threepence, and wished him a good night. Thanks to the trees, he may have had one.

Image – Clapham Common by Jonas Photo on Flickr, under Creative Commons

See also:
Pepys and urethral play – Dr Richard Barnett’s Sick City Project for the Wellcome Trust.
A story from Victorian London – Mary Rainbow and her nameless murdered child


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