Popular Scary Locales To Go To In The City

Tourists to Britain out for a grand time might consider getting themselves a cheap hotels London style, then exploring the numerous haunted placed to visit in Central London. This is an ancient city with some very old buildings. Further, it is a city that was from time to time ruled by tyrannical, bloodthirsty kings who executed a great many fine people. Put all that together, and the result is an exceptional city for ghost hauntings.

There's no better place to begin than London Tower, which is by legend more haunted than any other place in England. The Tower isn't actually a single structure but three. By name, they are the Wakefield, the Salt, and above all, the Bloody Tower.

At Wakefield Tower in 1471, King Henry VI was murdered at midnight one night while he knelt to pray. The alleged murderer was King Richard III. To this day Henry is said to appear on the anniversary of his murder, at midnight.

Salt Tower is where Henry VIII imprisoned a group of Jesuit priests and had them tortured repeatedly so they would would inform on other Catholics during those days of the Reformation. The most famous of their number, Walpole, made inscriptions in the walls that can still be read today. Visitors have reported many strange phenomenas here, including disembodied whispers, orbs of light, and sudden coldness. Lady Jane Grey, one of Henry VIII's many executed wives, is also seen there, as a white, semi-transparent image.

To other wives and victims of Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn, and Catherine Howard, stalk the Bloody Tower. Henry has a further victim, the seventy-two year old Countess Margaret Pole, who got loose momentarily from the chopping block and was hacked down from behind by the ax-man. She still cries out at the Bloody Tower. As though keeping pace with Henry, Richard III provided his own young nephews as victims. Their skeletons were found two hundred years later. Their ghosts still appear today.

Meanwhile, away from the towers, the noble Bank of England is resident to a ghost of its own. A "lady in black", Sarah Whitehead waits forever for her brother Philip, a bank clerk who in the early 19th Century was executed for, of all things, accepting a forged bill. It probably doesn't help matters that the Bank was built on top of an old churchyard. This is a case where a haunting might be fading over time, for while poor Sarah is still observed, there was a time when she seemed to visit the Bank daily.

Seventeenth Century King Charles II's favorite lover, Nell Gwynne, appears in spectral form at the city's Gargoyle Club. At Red Lion Square, the King's executioners, Ireton, Bradshaw and Cromwell, still walk about, discussing private matters. They died naturally in their day, but were dug out of the ground, posthumously tried and convicted of regicide, and desecrated by hauling their decomposed bodies about the land in open display.

On a minimal budget, you can explore the line between this world and another, more mysterious place. Even if you are not one who believes in things that go bump in the night, the history alone is grimly fascinating. The haunted placed to visit in Central London await you, each surpassing the other, and are available for the price of a london kings cross hotel style.