Frowning and gazing intently into the slowly darkening recesses of Spitalfields Market, our psychic surveyor pauses. “There’s definitely spiritual activity here,” he whispers as the smoke from his roll-up cigarette mingles with his ghostly breath.
“I’m sensing a figure, male, about 5ft 6in, with short brown hair. He’s wearing a big woollen jacket, not a donkey jacket but a thick woollen jacket. Someone here will have seen him out of the corner of their eye. But when they look around, he vanishes.”
It’s a bitterly cold October evening at Ballymore and Spitalfields Development Group’s redevelopment and refurbishment of Spitalfields Market, E1. It would be spooky even if we weren’t accompanied by a black-leather-clad, self-proclaimed Wiccan who protects himself with a bag of crystals around his neck while actively looking for ghosts.
Our ghost hunter introduces himself as “Troll” because he is a “gatekeeper to the fairy world”. However, by day, Troll goes by the more prosaic name of Geoff Stanley, and this is all part of a day’s work for his organisation Phoenix Paranormal Investigations.
As a psychic investigator, Geoff is called in to buildings known for their supernatural disturbances. He finds out whether buildings are haunted and, if the ghostly inhabitants are causing a nuisance, persuades them to leave.
“The fabric of all buildings is made of silica, the same stuff that recording tape is made of,” explains Geoff. “In the same way, it retains information, or the images of things that have happened, and plays it back.”
But Geoff explains that it is not only old buildings that can have spectral tenants. “Redevelopments can disturb the energies contained within these buildings, which means, of course, that places that didn’t seem to be haunted before can experience spiritual activity,” he says.
Spirits in a material world
Moreover, it appears that spirits can be of two different types. Genii loci, or spirits of the place, are manifestations of a repeated action, recorded by the walls, and then played back like a film. Sentient beings are aware of their environment and of living beings.
“Sentient beings tend to be much more of a problem,” says Geoff, studying the layout of the market redevelopment and taking repeated photographs with a large digital camera.
“They often lie dormant for years and then, when buildings are disturbed or changed, they can get angry or confused. I’ve had things thrown at me by spirits that either cannot understand why their surroundings have become so different or don’t like what has happened to them.”
One of the Phoenix team’s most famous cases was the haunting of Brannigans nightclub in Manchester, which was formerly a Methodist chapel. “Having been a meeting place for staunch teetotallers, it was now being used as a bar. So it’s understandable that they got angry. I had a pint pot thrown at me that just missed my head by a whisker. The weird thing was that when we tried to put it back together, most of the glass had disappeared. We couldn’t even have made a half pint out of it,” says Geoff.
Despite an absence of angry undead and glass-destroying non-conformists, Troll is strangely drawn to the Lamb Street end of the market, where Hammerson and the Corporation of London’s new Bishops Square redevelopment meets Ballymore’s Victorian market.
“I can sense bomb damage, I’m getting probably 1942 and there was loss of life,” he says, sniffing the air and looking towards the public toilets. “The roof caved in but the bomb didn’t go off – yes, definitely, an unexploded bomb.”
Although Geoff explains that most of his work is done by simply using careful observation and intuition, he carries a digital camera with which he meticulously records the surroundings and checks for “orbs”.
Orbs are blobs of light that appear on photographs and, according to Geoff, denote “active spiritual energy”. He doesn’t find many inside the market or around Allen & Overy’s 750,000 sq ft new office building but, at the point where the two meet, the digital photographs he takes are sprayed with orbs.
“There’s more energy here because of the disruption. That’s why we’re seeing sprays of orbs across the picture,” explains Geoff.
It’s perhaps no wonder that Spitalfields contains such spiritual energies. The market takes its name from the 12th- and 13th-century Augustinian Priory and hospital of St Mary Spital that stood on the site until its dissolution by Henry VIII in 1538. Archaeologists have discovered the remains of more than 10,500 corpses buried in various plague pits beneath the 1.5m sq ft redevelopment.
Moreover, studies of the building material used in the market during Victorian times show that up to 10% of the walls were made from human bone.
But, despite their vast number, or perhaps even because of them, Geoff is having problems connecting with the ghosts of Spitalfields. “There’s definitely lots of recorded energy here, but I’m sensing something sentient and I just can’t link into the energy doing it,” he says, pacing the deserted market in frustration. “Someone has witnessed something being moved here, perhaps scaffolding. I’m getting the sensation of falling, a recent accident. Perhaps there was an accident on site.”
But a spokeswoman for Spitalfields Development Corporation, a jv between Hammerson and the City, said: “So far as we’re aware, there is no evidence of any bomb damage during the war, and no accident on site.”
In the pub after a hard day’s ghost hunting, Geoff starts to unwind and regales us with stories of his time in the army, his failed marriage and his near-death experience made his eyes turn from dark brown to light blue. However, a quick trip to the toilet and he returns pale and shaking. “This place has bad energy,” he stammers. “Someone was murdered here.”
Perhaps it was a bit mean to take such a sensitive soul to the Ten Bells, the regular “haunt” of Jack the Ripper’s last victim.
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Unlike good floor-to-ceiling heights or air-conditioning, the presence of the supernatural in a building is not always a selling point. Although some purchasers may be drawn to the charm and quirkiness of resident spectres in their homes and offices, a great many more will be put off. While this article was being researched, the vendor of the reputedly haunted mansion Cell Park in Hertfordshire pulled out of allowing EG to look round because she said the ghosts might “adversely affect the sale price”. Savills is marketing the former home of 16th-century highway robber Catherine Ferrers, who was known as “The Wicked Lady”. The firm insists that the house has no “sitting tenants”, although the wicked lady’s ghost is said to haunt the A5, where she once robbed travellers. Savills now appears to have dropped all mention of the ghost in its marketing material. Hamptons and Knight Frank were both quick to say they had no reputedly haunted properties on their books. This reticence may not just be a result of scepticism. In July, the Northern Ireland Housing Executive was forced to back out of plans to sell four vacant flats to a private developer for £250,000 because locals feared reprisals from the spectral tenants of the property, 55 Rockview in Moneymore, County Londonderry. However, some agents say they are starting to see a change in people’s attitudes towards the supernatural and property. “A few years ago, just the reputation that a property was haunted would have decreased the value,” says Christopher Dewe, partner in charge of Knight Frank’s Oxford office. “However, these days it can help saleability. You get a few more people excited by a house if it is haunted.” The Estate Agents Act requires agents to give all the information they can to any direct questions from the vendor. Therefore, if asked whether a property is reputedly haunted, they cannot lie. However, if they are not asked the question they don’t have to admit it. “It’s an interesting anomaly,” says Dewe, “as the Estate Agents Act requires solid proof. You certainly couldn’t put spiritual activity on a property’s particulars — you might fall foul of trading standards.” Dewe and his colleagues say that, over the past year, they have noticed a marked increase in prospective purchasers asking whether the properties they view are haunted. “It widens the net a little,” continues Dewe. “A few years ago, if someone asked you whether a house was haunted, you’d be quite guarded in what you said. These days it adds to the cachet.” Dewe, who has been an estate agent for 25 years, says he has never seen a ghost, and has sold only one reputedly haunted property over the past five years. He puts the increased popularity of haunted houses down to a surge in the number of TV programmes that look at the supernatural, such as Haunted Homes on ITV and Living TV’s Most Haunted. “People buying old houses are drawn to the romance and history,” he says. “A haunted house doesn’t necessarily have to have a scary ghost. It could be a nice one.” Drivers Jonas recently marketed a 110-year-old, 100,000 sq ft former convent in Glasgow that is said to be haunted by the ghostly figure of a black-robed French nun called Sister Campion. The agent said the ghost stories actually increased interest in the building, which DJ sold for around £9m. According to cleaners at the convent – which has since been converted into a teacher training college and then offices for Learning and Teaching Scotland – the ghost terrified a guard dog, which attacked a security guard at the building in Victoria Crescent Road, Glasgow. The dog then, apparently, dropped dead of fright. |
