South London Ghost Trains

South London is not so well served by the London Underground as the other side of the river, so unsurprisingly it doesn't figure so strongly in the new book Haunted London Underground by David Brandon and Alan Brooke (History Press, 2008). Still there are a few spooky stories from the transpontine zone.

- The Crystal Palace tunnel runs between Gipsy Hill and Crystal Palace stations: 'This tunnel is reputed to be haunted. Many years ago a track-maintenance worker was run down and killed by a train in the tunnel. He was decapitated in the process. His ghost has been seen on many occasions wandering disconsolately around the tunnel'.

- Another tunnel on the short lived Victorian 'pneumatic railway' between Sydenham and Penge became the subject of an urban myth when the railway closed and the tunnel was bricked up - the legend was that an abandoned carriage had been bricked up inside with 'a grisly cargo of skeletal passengers'. The tunnel is thought to have been subsequently destroyed.

- Elephant and Castle Underground Station: staff 'have experienced the sounds of someone running towards them mainly when the station is closed but no one can be seen'. People travelling northbound on the Bakerloo Line from the Elephant have seen 'the sudden reflection of a ghost-like face staring back even though no one is sitting nearby'.

- The London Road depot of the Bakerloo Line, beneath street level by St Georges Circus/Lambeth North: staff have reported strange 'metallic-sounding tapping noises as if an old-fashioned wheeltapper was a work' and seen 'shadowy figures' with blurred edges 'passing hither and thither in the sidings'. 'Another apparition in the area is that of a nun, She is thought to have been connected with a nearby convent school'.