Whitechapel’s Dead Body Train

Rumour has it that there was once a train tunnel that went from the Royal London Hospital and had a connection at Whitechapel Tube Station. The train was used by the dead primarily, it ran through a tunnel that is not used now and it has been bricked up.

Charles Dickens’ poverty and disease riddled depictions of the city made a colourful picture of the overflowing morgues. G A Walker (1839) also goes into the reports about over-crowding and indeed does mention the Whitechapel burial grounds, he describes the terrible smell from the vaults below that had been left in a dilapidated state. The cemetery is described as being in a densely populated area of London, the general neighbourhood being seen as disgusting (and lets not forget these were the haunting grounds for Jack the Ripper later on) and that the area is in itself is seen by Walker as some infested place with the living just as foul as the dead.

Like something from a horror film he presents a cemetery so badly kept and overflowing that the bones are amassed as one, fluids and foul liquids are all around. He goes on to say how the remains are treated with ‘ruthless indifference’ and the corpses and their remnants are exhumed by the shovel, when a new burial is due the cemetery is so badly over-crowded and unkempt it’s impossible not to come across other burials, some recent, in the needs to find a space for yet another corpse.

In digging a foundation for a new wall, on the eastern side of the church, the workmen penetrated through a mass of human bones eight or ten feet in thickness ; these bones were thrown out, and for some time lay exposed to public view, scattered over the ground in a loathsome humid state – G A Walker on Whitechapel Church.

Under Whitechapel station it is said that the empty rooms beneath were used as a temporary morgue, this is often seen to help continue the story about the train. Clearly Whitechapel sounds like it needed a church to ferry the dead but was there one?

Well some say that the blocked up tunnel was a pedestrian tunnel but that makes little sense, you wanted people on trains not wasting their silly time doing all that healthy walking, no sir! The hospital is said to have had the tunnel to connect it, whilst nearby it seems that making a connecting tunnel for workers would be a little nonsensical as it was very close by not to mention the cost and logistics as the hospital would need steps to access it, and patients would not use it if ill.

A great link!

Another quick read link

National Geographic’s article on Necropolis Line

The Old Western Burial Ground

The cemetery is also known as the Presbyterian Churchyard in Baltimore, Maryland and probably most famously the burial place for Edgar Allan Poe (19th January 1809 to 7th October 1849) amongst others. There have been some reportedly strange occurrences so it seems like it’s worth a little look around and to enjoy a little of the local rumors and anecdotes. 

He was reburied there 1st October 1875, and the dedication  ceremony was 17th November 1875. He had originally been buried with no headstone and  market on a sandstone block with “No 80” and these days is a household name for horror and poetry enthusiasts.  Poe’s spirit is said to be there, he travelled through a lot during his lifetime and had an unexplained death. He was on the way to visit his mother and true love when he died and it’s said that he wanders the spot he is buried in and around the nearby church. Perhaps he is seeking for his lover to come and wed him at the altar?

Another lovely anecdote surrounding the grave of Poe is that a local Baltimore man would visit the authors grave, he did this annually and would bring cognac for a toast, he would leave three roses and the remnants of the bottle for Poe himself. He would dress all in black, and would go on the 19th January for the deceased poet’s grave, he did this for 75 years. 

Just below the Westminster Hall area, is one of the areas believed to be haunted because there are stories about how many there were buried whilst still alive. The spirit then wanders to find the person that did it, as they want to seek out revenge. There are supposedly a few of them and people have witnessed their wandering spirits.

As well as this is the “Skull of Cambridge”, it is said to be the head of a minister that was murdered. The skill was placed in a segment of concrete in the hopes of drowning out the sounds of his screams but they have still been heard and has frightened a lot who have witnessed it. There is a rumour that several were committed to psychiatric wards because they had gone insane from a prolonged exposure to the event.

Leona Wellesley is another of the rumours for hauntings so I have included her name here, she was a lunatic (reference of the time) who was brought directly from the asylum, still in her straightjacket, and buried as swiftly as they could. Rumour has it that you she follows visitors and her mad laughter can be heard echoing behind as they walk but these days finding her grave does not seem to be located and might be one of those wethered ones in the area.

Black Aggie is another local rumour, was about an innocent nurse who was put to her death in the early 1900’s and they erected a statue in the Druid Ridge Cemetery as an attempt to appease the mistake. It grew in fame locally because rumours of strange things happening around it began to surface. One of them being that if you stand around the “Aggie” statue at midnight her eyes will glow red and if they do you will be struck blind. It is worth noting you may not want to go to close if you are pregnant as it is also said she can cause miscarriages.

Sadly with these things the local rumours and attention have also meant that the 1926 installation has been removed from the original site. People had been caught breaking in at night and the pedestal suffered frequent vandalism. The Agnus family were upset by the negative attention donated it to the Smithsonian in 1967, and sat there in storage in the National Museum of American Art (later the Smithsonian American Art Museum). There is a blank pedestal at Druid Ridge Cemetery and the original rests protected behind closed doors.

Have you ever been and what did you experience?

By AndrewHorne (talk) – I (AndrewHorne (talk)) created this work entirely by myself.Transferred from en.wikipedia, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10862323

Painted Skulls

Hellstatt, Austria is a beautiful town area and sits on a forested mountain, with a blue lake and 19^th Century Houses. There is one room some might not see that way, located behind the Catholic Church is the Hallstatt Beinhaus (a well tended cemetery), and there is a charnel house. A small building which has over 1200 skulls.

In the 1700’s the church began to dig up old graves, they needed the space for new burials. The bodies were around 10-15 years old and stacked in the charnel house, their skeletons were then bleached in the sun and family members would stack the bones next to their nearest kin.

In the 1720’s a tradition of painting the skulls with symbolic decorations started. The dates of birth and death, names and decorations helped keep their memory, if they could no longer keep their grave. The older skulls seem to have darker paint schemes and slowly the tradition died out.

Next to the cross, with a gold tooth, is the skull of a woman who died in 1983 with her last wish being to join the painted skulls. Placed in the Beinhaus in 1995 hers was the last to be added.

Hallstatt Beinhaus, an Austrian house of bones filled with hundreds of painted skulls.

https://www.hallstatt.net

 

Tent Girl

Barbara Ann (Hackman) Taylor, ‘Bobbie’ was initially an unknown American woman who was referred to as Tent Girl.

Wilbur Riddle was out in Georgetown, Kentucky, on 17th May 1968 searching for glass insulators at the side of U.S Route 25. He was there to work as a water well-driller and was handed a note to pass some time until his boss arrived, he spotted some telephone workers and they were discarding the glass insulators as part of an upgrade program. He knew they would be useful for a friend so went to collect them.

He was on his way back from his collecting when something caught his eye as he headed back up the dirt track. The smell alone gave away there was nothing good to be found, he nudged a wrapped up green canvas and the body rolled down the slope. It exposed the body of a decomposing woman wrapped up in a heavy green tarpaulin. The material was the type of thing used in the manufacturing of tents, hence the identification.

Riddle immediately drove two miles down the road to alert the Scott County Sheriff, Bob Vance. Vance and his team then came to see and looked into the matter further, her eyes had already rotted away and her flesh was mottled, the poor woman was too decomposed to get a full fingerprint and they had to take one and rehydrate it with chemicals to attempt to gain anything at all.

They were unable to fully establish a cause of death, the best theory to date is that Bobbie was somehow knocked unconscious and rolled up and confined, eventually dying of asphyxiation. There was a section of white towelling and the green canvas sent over to the FBI laboratories in Washington for further analysis but at that point there was not very much more they felt they could do.

A lead came up about her in June, 1968 when her description matched enough features to show up missing Pasadena girl, Debbie Krane, who was last seen getting into the car of her 17 year-old boyfriend, Carl Colby. The 15 year old had gone missing March 3^rd, 1968 and with the period of her death being loose enough they decided to ask her parents to come to see if they were able to identify her.

Debbie Krane’s dental records loosely matched that of the girl and at that point the police must have felt they were on track to finding her identity, then an anonymous call came in that said she was alive and well in Bradford, Pennsylvania. A long drive out to Bradford found Krane was alive and well, living with her boyfriend and that she had absconded from her home but was not deceased. They were then stumped once more.

There was another lead for the identification, a somewhat similar case that was linked up, this time from Northampton, Pennsylvania. Candace Clothier was found 13^th April, 1968 and had last been seen 9^th March, 1968 until her body was found. Two fishermen discovered the young lady decomposed and floating in the creek, she was found in a black cloth bag. Similarities in the case led to a question about them being linked, there is no more on her case, her case has been closed as it was felt that due to no leads and the chances of her murderer already being dead there was nothing more they could do.

‘Tent Girl’ was then a feature in American magazine, Master Detective, in the hopes that it might bring even more to the case and perhaps lead to her identification. She was eventually buried in an unmarked grave, No 90. She was buried in Georgetown Cemetery with a donated headstone and along with the police sketch of her, based on reconstructions from her body, there was also an inscription.

TENT GIRL

FOUND MAY 17 1968

ON U.S HIGHWAY 25,N.

DIED AB OUT APRIL 26 – MAY 3, 1968

AGE ABOUT 16-19 YEARS

HEIGHT 5 FEET 1 INCH

WEIGHT 110 TO 115LBS.

REDDISH BROWN HAIR

UNIDENTIFIED

She was identified in 1998, it was a result of the efforts of Todd Matthews. He was the son-in-law of Wilbur Riddle and having found out about the story he invested in a PC and got a website up and running. He had combed through lists of missing people online. He has since founded The Doe Network, an online database to identify missing people and unidentified descendants.

He got an e-mail from her sister, Rosemary Westbrook, about a young woman who had gone missing from nearby Lexington. It transpires that the family were told by her husband, George Earl Taylor, that she had run off with another man. It seems that this never rested well with Rosemary and she extended her contact to Todd Matthews, Matthews and the family were convinced enough that it led to the exhumation of her body and DNA testing. Cells from Rosemary’s teeth were compared to that of the unidentified woman and they matched up, she was finally identified. Her body was re-interred at the cemetery with her full headstone placed under the original. There is no mention of her marital name on the headstone.

The prime suspect in her murder is Barbara’s husband, George Earl Taylor, and he died of cancer in 1987. This is mentioned on Wikipedia but I have to admit I found no other source about this, given this I am not going to surmise he was involved, there is no evidence she ran away with another man but then again there is no evidence to say she did not.

What we do know is that she was finally identified and given a proper burial based on who she was, her sister was able to learn her fate and mourn properly and Todd Matthews has founded something wonderful to help as many as he can who might be sadly facing that sort of tragedy.

By Source, Fair use, Link

Saint-Hilaire

Saint Hilaire Ossuary is in Marville, France and home to about 40,000 skulls. It was constructed towards the end of the 15^th Century and many of the skulls in boxes seem to be those of the men and women of Marville who died around 1780-1860.

It seems that during 1890 the cemetery keeper, Constant Motsch, decided that in order to make more space in the cemetery he would dig up older graves with no perpetual concession (Permanent claim to the grave site). He kept the skulls and longer bones and put the commoners in boxes, keeping the lords and gentry aside. The skulls look out of their boxes and some have unfortunately weathered over the long years. Above their heads reads “we were like you – you will become one of us”.

The cemetery is one of the oldest ones in France and is situated on an old Roman temple dedicated to Mars. It served as the parish church until village residents found it to be too long a walk, a new construct was made closer by. The cemetery however stayed in use from the 15^th to 18^th century.

The entrance to the cemetery has a crucifix called Christ of the Lepers and within the grounds is a Pieta decided to their suffering.

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