A Floating Head at Brockley

Brockley Central has a good local ghost story from 1894, the tale of a man walking down Brockley Road and encountering 'the motionless figure of a man on horseback... Neither man nor beast was in the flesh. They were shadowy forms, but so distinctly did they show the man’s face under a three-cornered hat, his leather pistol pouches and the panting and swearing horse'. The story claims that hundreds of local people had made their way to visit the scene of the appearance on 'the lonely lane leading from Ladywell to Brockley Rise' - said lane is presumably the old Brockley footpath which ran (and still does run in parts) from Ladywell to Nunhead via Brockley, crossing Brockley Road by the Jack.

Here's another spooky local tale, from Real Ghost Stories by WT Stead (1897), this one featuring a floating head with green eyes and matted hair: