Ghosts, vampires & Abba holograms: an uncanny history of London

Summary

History Extra Podcast Summary: "Ghosts, Vampires & ABBA Holograms: An Uncanny History of London"

Release Date: June 24, 2025

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Introduction to London's Hidden Mysteries

In this captivating episode of the History Extra podcast, host John Baucam engages in a fascinating conversation with author and historian Clive Bloom about his latest work, London Uncanny. The episode delves deep into the lesser-known, eerie narratives that lie beneath London's bustling surface, exploring tales of ghosts, vampires, and modern-day holograms.

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Exploring the Uncanny in London

Clive Bloom begins by describing London Uncanny as a meditation on the city's urban landscape, blending reality with imaginative realms. He explains, “London is a town of strangers... there's a real London, an objective London, a material London, but also this imaginative space.” (02:04) Bloom emphasizes that London serves as a thin place where the veil between the ordinary and the extraordinary can be pierced, allowing uncanny encounters to unfold in the most mundane settings.

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The Tradition of Wandering and Flaneurs

The discussion moves to the historical tradition of wandering around London, drawing parallels with 19th-century flaneurs like Charles Dickens. Bloom explains, “Wandering led by the imagination... is a way of joining the past and the present.” (06:38) He highlights how wandering without a map, guided instead by curiosity and imagination, can lead to uncovering London’s hidden secrets and fostering uncanny experiences.

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The East End: A Gothic Epicenter

John Baucam steers the conversation towards the East End of London, a region synonymous with gothic lore. Bloom identifies the East End as the antithesis of the West End, noting its historical role as a melting pot for immigrants and its association with infamous tales like Jack the Ripper and Fu Manchu. He remarks, “The East End has always been cut off from civilization, and it still is...” (08:04) This isolation has fueled its reputation as a fertile ground for gothic stories and supernatural myths.

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Haunting Locations: Highgate Cemetery

The conversation shifts to Highgate Cemetery, a quintessentially spooky London landmark. Bloom describes its dual history as a serene garden cemetery and a site of dereliction in the 1970s, which made it a popular filming location for Hammer Films. He recounts the infamous vampire myths associated with the cemetery, stating, “There was a vampire, but it's good publicity.” (09:34) Highgate's atmospheric allure continues to inspire ghost stories and paranormal investigations.

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Victorian Egyptology and the Mystique of the Past

Bloom delves into the Victorian obsession with Egyptology, explaining how ancient Egyptian culture became intertwined with London's gothic imagination. He cites examples like Cleopatra's Needle and the fascination of occultists such as Aleister Crowley, who held mystical gatherings around these ancient artifacts. Bloom notes, “Egyptians were really central to the imagination of the 19th century...” (12:40) This blend of ancient lore and modern mysticism has perpetuated the allure of mummies and supernatural phenomena in London.

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Urban Growth and Suburban Uncanniness

As London expanded beyond the Square Mile, the clash between urban and rural landscapes birthed new avenues for uncanny encounters. Bloom discusses the growth of suburbs from the 1880s to the 1930s, highlighting the contrast between their outward respectability and the hidden mysteries beneath. He observes, “The boringness of the suburbs makes them so weird.” (16:33) This juxtaposition creates an environment where ordinary settings can harbor extraordinary and unsettling events.

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Poltergeists and the Enfield Haunting

The episode explores the phenomenon of poltergeists, particularly focusing on the famous Enfield Haunting of the 1970s. Bloom explains, “Poltergeist had existed from the 19th century onwards...” (17:40) He attributes the 1970s surge in poltergeist stories to societal changes and the enigmatic nature of children, who are often central to these uncanny tales. The Enfield case, which has inspired films and video games, exemplifies how such stories capture the public imagination despite—and perhaps because of—the lack of concrete evidence.

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Historic Meets Modern: Bloomberg Building and Temple of Mithras

Bloom highlights the intriguing contrast between London's ancient and ultra-modern elements by discussing the Bloomberg building and the hidden Temple of Mithras beneath it. He describes the Temple as a relic of Roman worship, juxtaposed with the towering symbol of contemporary capitalism. Bloom muses, “Underneath you've got the mystery of personality, I guess, and religion, and on top of that you've got the Bloomberg building to capitalism.” (18:40) This blend of old and new underscores London's unique capacity to house diverse and often conflicting narratives.

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Modern Ghosts: ABBA Holograms and Technological Avatars

In a fascinating turn, Bloom connects historical ghost stories with modern technological recreations, such as the ABBA holograms displayed in East London. He explains, “We can recreate the past through 3D holograms... which must be a very bizarre event indeed.” (20:05) This modern twist on ghostly apparitions illustrates how technology continues to shape and redefine our understanding of the uncanny, blending nostalgia with futuristic innovation.

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Off the Beaten Track: Recommendations for Uncanny Encounters

For listeners eager to experience London's uncanny side, Bloom recommends visiting 18 Folgate Street in the East End. He describes it as an atmospheric art installation—a pretend Huguenot house where visitors can immerse themselves in a silent, ghostly environment accompanied by a mysterious cat. Bloom enthuses, “If you do so, you will feel like a real ghost.” (23:02) This recommendation highlights the enduring allure of interactive and experiential sites in perpetuating London's spooky heritage.

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Looking Ahead: Sequel Announcement

As the conversation wraps up, Bloom hints at a forthcoming sequel titled Capital Gothic, which will delve into occult groups and macabre events that didn't make it into London Uncanny. He expresses his excitement, saying, “There is a sequel indeed... about occult groups, occult happenings and macabre events.” (24:41) This promises to further enrich the exploration of London's dark and mysterious past.

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Conclusion

John Baucam concludes the episode by inviting listeners to explore more about London's darker history through the podcast's website. He mentions an alternate article by Emma Butcher and Tim Blythe that examines what scary stories reveal about the psyche of the capital. The episode effectively intertwines historical facts with engaging narratives, providing a comprehensive look at the uncanny facets of London.

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For a deeper dive into London's spooky history, visit HistoryExtra.com and discover more intriguing stories behind the city’s ghostly tales.

Transcript

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[Podcast Host]

Welcome to the History Extra podcast. Fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History magazine. Millions of tourists flock to London each year eager to snap a selfie in front of Buckingham palace or Big Ben. But beyond the crowds lies a darker and distinctly stranger side to the city. A gothic metropolis haunted by tales of demons, poltergeists and murder's most foul. In today's episode, John Baucam talks to the author and historian Clive Bloom about some of the Capitol's spookiest stories and why he believes that the eeriest encounters take tend to unfold in the most mundane of places.

[John Baucam]

Now, Clive, your new book is quite a wild ride, isn't it? Because it's not a conventional travel log, it's not a guidebook, and it's also describing fictional London as well as real London. How would you go about introducing listeners to the world of London? Uncanny.

[Clive Bloom]

Well, it's a strange world and it's a meditation on the urban landscape of London. It's a sort of an urban dream in a way. It takes the idea that London is obviously reality. We run around every day commuting. There's bricks and mortar and concrete and glass and cups of coffee and all the rest of it. And yet at the same time, there's an imaginative London. London that's sort of under the surface, if you like. It's almost as if London's what they used to describe as a thin place, a place where the veil might be rent at any time. We might step into some other world. And a number of writers, filmmakers and other people have seen this other world. And so when you walk around London, you're half in this world and half in another world as well, which makes it very exciting when you're walking around, but you have to be attuned to it. It's no good just walking around and pushing people out the way and getting your coffee or your croissant. You've got to really be attuned to the imagination of what's going on in London at the time. And remember, London is a town of strangers. So it's weird in itself because it is a town of strangers. There are different people in there. You don't know most of them. You sit next to people on the tube, you have no idea if they're a murderer or if they're actually there in the first place. So the idea was to generate this idea that there's a real London, if you like, an objective London, a material London, but also this imaginative space. And that's what I was trying to capture.

[John Baucam]

That's an excellent summary. And Clive, going back to the title of the book, London Uncanny. What do you mean by the word uncanny in this context?

[Clive Bloom]

My version of uncanny. There's lots of versions of uncanny, but my version of uncanny is an encounter which disturbs you. Step into something that is unexpected. It's in the wrong place. It's something strange and peculiar. It might be a meeting with someone you don't expect. It might be meeting with a thing you don't expect. It might be meeting in the wrong place, but it disturbs you. It's like a rend in the universe. So the idea of the uncanny here is something that's cosmically disturbing, which is very grand. But you can walk around London and you can have these experiences. And I certainly have.

[John Baucam]

And there's a rich history of people wandering around London, isn't there? Charles Dickens, for instance, spent a lot of time walking around the capital at night, didn't he?

[Clive Bloom]

He did indeed. The idea of being in the city and wandering around really comes from the 19th century when they had street lighting. So we got street lighting partially in London in 1807 and Paris got street lighting in 1829, gaslighting, so people would walk around to be seen. And it was also the time when there were real shots, like modern shops and you could parade around the parks or the shopping areas and be looked at. So Baudelaire, of course, is one of the most famous flaneurs. He's walking around, he's making sure everybody's looking at him. He's a dandy. They dressed up and they made sure everybody was watching. On the other hand, in London, they're as observers. So Dickens is almost a secret observer of the world. He goes around at night. He was an insomniac, he couldn't sleep, so he used to walk around at night and he used to visit strange and unusual places and very often finish the day or finish the evening with going to the pub in Covent Garden with the workers there. But he would discover these strange things that only existed at night. So the coffee stand which existed in the 19th century, he'd go and visit that, he'd go and visit poverty stricken people or orphans or even places which had had a murder, he'd go and visit and investigate them. So wandering in is really important. Now what is wandering? Well, wandering essentially is wandering led by the imagination. Instead of having a map or gps, you wander around led by your imagination. So you see a little alley or you see a building that's strange, you've never noticed that before, you go and investigate. And that's what wandering really is about. And it's called, nowadays we call it psychogeography, which is a posh name for wandering, being led by your imagination. And this sort of started in the 1970s. It comes from the idea, a French idea, actually. It was invented by a group of artists called the Situationists in France. It was a politicized idea about the urban space. But nowadays people just wander, look and throw away the guidebook. Just allow your brain to take you, allow your imagination to take you along. So it's certainly a way of joining the past and the present in.

[John Baucam]

Clive, is there anything specific about London that makes it particularly prone to these uncanny encounters and really fires up the imagination?

[Clive Bloom]

I think there is. I mean, lots of Londoners who have been artists or writers wander around London, have wandered around London imagining other spaces. So one of the most famous is a journalist and a writer called Arthur Machen who imagined that Stoke Newington wasn't Stoke Newington. It was actually a strange other ethereal place somewhere else, quite different from Stoke Newington. And of course, the most famous person who lived in Stoke Newington for a little while anyway was Edgar Allan Poe and he wrote a very famous story called William Wilson, which is about a doppelganger which he imagined to be at his school in Stoke Newington. So areas of London which look completely mundane and ordinary are very often hide secrets and you have to dig those secrets out. Next time anybody walks around Stoke Newington, just imagine it's essentially another world entirely and see if you can do that. And it's quite hard, I have to say, but it's fun.

[John Baucam]

Now, Clive, let's stay within the East End of London for a moment. You yourself are a Cockney born within the sound of bow bells, I think.

[Clive Bloom]

Yes, I am. Yes, yes.

[John Baucam]

And to me, the East End brings to mind things like Jack the Ripper, people lurking in shadowy doorways, that kind of thing. But why else has the East End inspired so many Gothic stories, do you think?

[Clive Bloom]

Well, the East End is the absolute geographical opposite of the West End. So what we have is the west, which is like Western Europe, and then we have the east, which is Eastern Europe and the rest of the world. So it's almost a little model of the empire. And in that sense, obviously in the 1880s, 1890s, et cetera, it filled up with Jewish and other immigrants. And so it became very foreign. In fact, One journalist called H.V. morton used to go to the East End and he says in one of his books, I got a bus back to England. So immigration is not a new thing at all. In fact, it's quite interesting to look at. But if you look at the East End, Dracula has his boxes of earth in Chicksand street, which is just down the road from Brick Lane. There's Jack the Ripper, of course, who never got caught. There's Fu Manchu, the famous Chinese opium lord who lives in Limehouse. So the East End has always been cut off from civilization, if you like, and it still is. There are still lots of programs and films which have a sort of a fake East End full of fog, full of sex workers, full of immigrants, full of strange looking things, which of course did exist to a certain extent, but really don't exist except in the imagination of people who wanted a frisson of excitement.

[John Baucam]

And if we move our attentions elsewhere in London, we've got some more obviously spooky locations. Like Highgate Cemetery, for instance, that's opened in 1839. That, of course has no shortage of strange tales, does it?

[Clive Bloom]

Well, it's a funny place, Highgate, because it has two histories, really. One is the original history when it was a garden cemetery. So people would go there and sit and have a picnic with their loved ones who had died. They'd also go and visit the loculi, which were where the cremated people were placed, which was very strange place indeed. But they didn't seem to worry about it. The Victorians, of course, as you know, were sort of obsessed with death. But in the 1970s, the cemetery became derelict, and as it became derelict, it could be used by anyone. And it was also where Hammer Films decided to film a lot of their films, because they could do so. The Gothic and cemeteries and graveyards, if you go to Highgate, you'll see if you like Hammer films from the 1960s and 70s, you'll see Hammer films because lots of the locations are there, especially for Dracula. Later on, it was used by people who thought they had discovered a vampire and they stuck a stake through the heart of a dead body. And they certainly became quite famous for a little while. And the controversy still carries on even today. And it was on television and in the newspapers and all sorts of things. I don't think there was a vampire, but it's good publicity.

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[Clive Bloom]

It'd be a bit concerning, yes.

[John Baucam]

Now, from vampires to mummies. I mean, some listeners might have been to the British Museum. They might have wandered around the Egyptian galleries. The Victorians were particularly interested in Egyptology, weren't they, Clive?

[Clive Bloom]

They were. Egypt was the centre of many of their concerns. It was certainly important through the 19th century because this is where the collection was. So by the late 19th century, by about 1890s, 1900, people would go to the British Museum purposely to have a conversation, astrally or psychologically with the mummies in the museum. So certainly there was one occultist who used to go to the British Museum and go and sit with a mummy, believing this mummy was a reincarnation and will come back to life. And this happened quite a lot. So Egyptiania was very important, and you can see it all over. An obvious example of this is if we move away from the British Museum for a little while, is Cleopatra's Needle. And at Cleopatra's Needle, Aleister Crowley, the great beast, 666, who was the great magician of the 20th century, he would have parties around Cleopatra's Needle to publicize his ideas. And another lady who lived opposite the needle actually believed that the Egyptians had floated out from the needle and helped her write her next book. So Egyptiania was pretty central to all of their thoughts at that time. And Bram Stoker, who wrote Dracula, wrote about Egyptians, Richard Marsh wrote about Egyptians. So Egyptians were really central to the imagination of the 19th century. They were always scary, they were always returning from the dead. And it was because by the end of the 19th century, a lot of these people who were occultists and magicians and writers, believed that Isis and Osiris were the origins of everything that we were doing in religion at the time. And they had come back and so they wrote about these strange returns of these mummies.

[John Baucam]

Yeah, absolutely bizarre. And it's inspired so many different bits of popular culture. And, Clive, we mainly focused on the centre of the city, the old city of London as well. Crucial to this book as well is London's growth, because by the 19th century, it's no longer just the square mile, is it? It's swallowing up the countryside. How did the clash between urban and rural affect the imagination in this way?

[Clive Bloom]

Well, there's two things, I think. The first is that the suburbs, as you say, grew, and then they especially grew from the 1880s to the 1930s. That was their big growth period, when the railways, the Metropolitan and other railways went out to join them. I mean, if you think about the suburbs, and I live in a suburb, they're meant to be boring, respectable, quiet, unproblematic, uniform. And yet at the same time, behind the curtains, which are always twitching, of course, there was murder, seances, poltergeists, the most famous being the Enfield poltergeist, et cetera. So there was all these ideas rustling around in the suburbs which had come from the town. And of course, the other thing that came from the suburbs was the invasion not of the town and town ideas, but of the countryside ideas. So you have Spring Heeled Jack, and he was a sort of a Batman figure, and he would knock on people's doors. When they opened the door, he would spit fire at them. Now, there is the possibility that he was a sort of a mad lord, actually, but he carries on in popular culture until the 20th century. And he appears in different towns too. He also appears in Liverpool, but the most famous occurrence is in a place called Bromley by Bow, where he knocked on the door and tried to strangle one of the women who opened the door and spat fire at her. So if you can imagine someone who looks exactly like Batman, but he's evil, and then later on he becomes the protector of the poor and the innocent. So he turns around. John Ruskin, the famous art philosopher, called the suburbs hell. So that would just about sum it up. I think it's the boringness of the suburbs which makes them so weird.

[John Baucam]

Yeah, I think you sum it up quite nicely in the book. You say uncanny encounters rarely occur where you might expect. Perhaps they are reserved for the most banal of places, but they are the most terrifying of encounters precisely because they occur in the most ordinary places.

[Clive Bloom]

Indeed they are. In the 1920s, there's a whole slew of stories about the suburbs where people go into houses or go into rooms and there's a dead body or there's something very strange going on, or there's a ghost and the feeling of peculiarity, of weirdness, of the uncanniness of the encounter with something they don't expect, especially with children. Cause children are very often associated with the poltergeist phenomenon. Children. And this, of course, is very disturbing. To meet a child who is floating halfway above the bed, not quite touching the ceiling is certainly a very weird experience, and I don't think one that I want to enjoy.

[John Baucam]

And you mentioned in your previous answer, Clive, you mentioned the Enfield poltergeist case. That's a series of alleged paranormal events in a council house in North London in the 70s. What was it specifically about poltergeist activity that caught fire in the 20th century?

[Clive Bloom]

Oh, that's a good question. Poltergeist had existed from the 19th century onwards. They're not just a modern phenomenon. But in the 70s, there seemed to be a sensational slew of poltergeist children doing strange things. And in fact the 1970s seemed to be quite obsessed with children doing the unusual or the peculiar or the rather disturbing. Now why that's the case I'm not entirely sure, I have to admit, but certainly it is the case. And the Enfield Haunting is probably the most famous in its become films, it's turned into video games, it's become all sorts of things. And the center of all this is the fact that children are uncanny. Children are weird because we can't get inside their heads. Maybe they're getting weirder as we're getting older, but Certainly in the 1970s there was a sense that things had changed, that youth culture and the young were no longer the same as older people. And I think that might be something to do with it. Of course, it was never proved and it just vanished. And the house now is a completely normal, quiet house in a quiet suburb doing nothing very much.

[John Baucam]

Yeah, and it's inspired so many different books and films. As you said, uncanny encounters also occur when there is a clash between the really, really old and the ultra modern. And I was intrigued by the story of the Bloomberg building in the book, Clive, and that's right in the middle of the city of London, but it's hiding a strange secret underneath it.

[Clive Bloom]

It is indeed. Well, it's hiding the Temple of Mithras, which comes from the Roman history, of course. This was the worship of a Persian God, originally in the centre of London, who. It was partly to do with bull worship and we don't really know what it was about, but it was a rival for Christianity for a certain amount of time and it was found after the Second World War in the debris of the Blitz and it was moved and. And finally they decided to move it back to its original site. And of course on top of that they built the giant building which is the great mystique of capitalism, the Bloomberg building. So underneath you've got the mystery of personality, I guess, and religion, and on top of that you've got the Bloomberg building to capitalism. So it's a lovely contrast and it's a very strange and exotic place to visit. It's very atmospheric.

[John Baucam]

Yeah. And even weirder, Clive, is that in the book you also mention Aber Voyage. And for listeners that aren't aware, this is the live audio visual spectacular in East London where you can watch holograms of the band ABBA performing on stage. Why did you choose to include that in the book?

[Clive Bloom]

Well, it seems to me that one of the things we don't believe in, particularly nowadays, is obvious ghosts. And what we do have now of course, is avatars. We have people who the strange ghost like appearances of the actual AVA group, but of course they're not there. So we can recreate the past through 3D holograms and through avatars and through other things which appear almost the same as doing the old fashioned ghost tour. So nowadays we can go and entertain ourselves with ghosts singing rock music quite easily.

[John Baucam]

So are there any precedents to aber voyage in the 19th century and any popular attractions?

[Clive Bloom]

Yeah, well, there were. These were the attractions at the Egyptian hall in Piccadilly, where they would have illusionists and they would have automata regularly there. That was run by a man called John Maskelyne, who used to run really exotic events. Things to do with illusion, things to do with magic, things to do with clairvoyance. And he would hold art exhibitions there, but he would also hold exhibitions of automatons. And these would do tricks and do other things without anybody being able to work out how they did them. So you'd have a monkey or you'd have a man play cards or predict your future without you actually realizing. So the feeling would be quite weird to be confronted with this character. And this is the point that had no soul, but was alive. So he was alive without a soul. And of course there were lots of discussions of this. But you couldn't get much more uncanny than meeting someone who you thought, hold on a minute, you're not alive but you haven't got a soul, but you're talking to me, which must be a very bizarre event indeed.

[John Baucam]

And talking about tourist attractions, there are some tourist attractions that you talk about in the book that still exist, one of which is Madame de Swords. And I know we briefly spoke about Dickens at the start of the interview. Dickens himself visits Madame de Swords and has an uncanny encounter there, doesn't he?

[Clive Bloom]

Yes, he does. He has lots of encounters because he walked through the night and he would go lots of places and meet very strange people. But the strangest person he met, he went to the horrors in Madame Tussauds and he's there. And of course, insouciantly standing in the corner is a man eating a pie. And this scares him more than the objects in the horror Chamber, simply because this is a man who doesn't care about the horrors. He's eating a pie. So there's a sort of a peculiar edge to the idea that here is this man who couldn't care less about all these horrors, who just stands there eating and doesn't even notice the terrible things around him. And Dickens actually ran from the place almost screaming because he thought it was so terrible to see this man eating a pie.

[John Baucam]

I'm not sure I'd agree with Dickens there. Doesn't sound that scary. And, Clive, some of the people listening to this podcast may never have been to London before. As well as the usual touristy locations, where is somewhere off the beaten track that they should visit if they wish to have an uncanny encounter?

[Clive Bloom]

Okay, well, if I was going to suggest somewhere quite nice as opposed to very scary, I will go to 18 Folgate street in the east End of London. It was bought as a derelict house. It's an 18th century house, very early 18th century house. It was bought by an American called Dennis severs in the 1970s. And instead of living in it, well, he did live in it, but instead of living in as a normal house, he didn't renovate it and put in radiators and things like that. He turned it into a pretend Huguenot house. The French weavers who came to England after they were thrown out of France. And so when you go in there and you go in there very quietly, you have to be very silent. You go in there. The Huguenot family, of course, is an invention. It's an art installation. You're walking into and there's all the clothes, the makeup, there's everything lying around. And you walk around very quietly, almost as if you're the ghost of the house and the family has just gone out. So you're walking around and it's quite atmospheric. It's very atmospheric indeed. You see pictures, you read little snippets of things. You can look at people's clothing and it's as if you're intruding into someone's private space. And the most uncanny thing about the house is there is a real cat who appears, at least when I went to appear in every room every time you go into every room. And he's the scariest thing in the place. But Folgate street is a real experience. You have to do it quietly, you have to do it silently. You have to play the game, but if you do so, you will feel like a real ghost.

[John Baucam]

Thanks, Clive. And you've introduced listeners to the world of London. Uncanny. What's next? Is there a sequel?

[Clive Bloom]

There is a sequel indeed. And it's called Capital Gothic. And it's about something slightly different. It's about things that were left out of the first book. It's about occult groups, occult happenings and macabre events. So this should be out at the end of the year, I hope. And I hope listeners would like to read that as well.

[John Baucam]

Excellent. I look forward to reading it. Clive Bloom, thanks so much for coming on the pod. It's been a pleasure chatting with you.

[Clive Bloom]

Thank you.

[Podcast Host]

That was Clive Bloom, Emeritus professor of English and American Studies at Middlesex University, speaking to John Baucam. Clive's new book, London A Gothic Guide to the Capital in Weird History and Fiction, is published by Bloomsprene. If you're curious to find out more about the darker side of London's story, then head over to our website historyextra.com where you can read an alternate article by Emma Butcher and Tim Blythe, all about what scary stories can tell us about the psyche of the capital. You can find a link for that in the episode Description thanks for listening. This podcast was produced by Daniel Kramer.

[Clive Bloom]

Arden.

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