The Scientists Who Put Ghosts on Trial
The Society for Psychical Research was founded in London in 1882 by scholars and intellectuals who wanted systematic inquiry into telepathy, mediumship, apparitions and haunted…
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2034 articlesThe London Séances of Daniel Dunglas Home
Daniel Dunglas Home became Victorian Europe's most celebrated medium, conducting séances in comparatively well-lit rooms before aristocrats and scientists. Witnesses reported…
The Golden Dawn Temple on Blythe Road
The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn developed an elaborate late-nineteenth-century initiation system combining Kabbalah, tarot, astrology, alchemy and ceremonial magic. The…
Inside the Secrets of the Magic Circle
The Magic Circle was founded in 1905 as a professional society for illusionists and now occupies premises near Euston. Membership requires demonstrated skill, while an ethical…
The Highgate Vampire
In the late 1960s and early 1970s reports of a tall dark figure in Highgate Cemetery became a newspaper sensation about a vampire. Two rival investigators amplified the story…
Egyptian Avenue and the City of the Dead
Egyptian Avenue in Highgate Cemetery's western side opens between massive obelisks and leads towards the Circle of Lebanon catacombs. Its Egyptianising style reflected Victorian…
The Catacombs of Kensal Green
Kensal Green, opened in 1833, was the first of London's “Magnificent Seven” cemeteries and offered new burial arrangements beyond overcrowded parish churchyards. Catacombs beneath…
The Brompton Cemetery Time Machine
The “time machine” legend at Brompton Cemetery links the Egyptian-style mausoleum of amateur Egyptologist Hannah Courtoy with inventor Samuel Alfred Warner. Unusual symbols, the…
Crossbones, the Outcasts' Graveyard
Crossbones developed as an unconsecrated burial ground in Southwark and by the nineteenth century served the poor; archaeology found women, men and children marked by difficult…
Bunhill Fields, City of Dissenters
Bunhill Fields became a burial place for Nonconformists excluded from ordinary Church of England parish grounds. John Bunyan, Daniel Defoe, William Blake and members of dissenting…
Thomas Hardy's Tree and the Displaced Dead
In the 1860s railway expansion required graves around St Pancras Old Church to be moved. A young Thomas Hardy, then an architect's assistant, worked on the project, while later…
The Plague Pit Beneath Charterhouse Square
Crossrail archaeologists discovered mass burials near Charterhouse Square associated with the Black Death of 1348–49, confirming long tradition of a plague cemetery in this part…
