A special walking tour of Wimbledon’s most haunted spots took place on Friday to mark Halloween
WIMBLEDON’S GHOSTS were brought to life when 100 people attended a Halloween walk on Friday.
Guide Dalianne’s spooky tour began outside Wimbledon tube station at 7pm.
Followers were led to over ten sites in an eye-opening evening including pubs, churches and Wimbledon’s famous common.
Dalianne told the crowd that Wimbledon Theatre has three ghosts.
In the 1990s a photo taken inside the theatre proved sightings by showing the face of a woman at a window.
A theatre manager reported seeing a woman with a malevolent expression one evening.
The room went cold and the figure cackled and levitated through the ceiling.
Staff refuse to go up the bell tower alone, and customers regularly see ghosts leaving the ladies toilets.
Dalianne said: “Ghosts are alive and well in Wimbledon theatre.”
Wimbledon’s pubs are as popular with the dead as they are the living.
The Alexandra is plagued by the ghost of a little girl with blonde hair.
Sightings began in the 1990s when staff living upstairs heard a child crying.
A girl of three years old would materialise, crying “Mummy”.
Photos of the child appeared everywhere and a trunk of children’s clothes was found in the attic.
Dalianne said: “To this day, we have no idea what these strange events were about.”
St Mary’s Church rectory is haunted by the ghost of Henry VIII, who stayed for two nights in 1547.
Stopping in Wimbledon’s St Mary’s Road when he fell ill, the King died two weeks later in White Hall.
Thumps from the top bedroom and sounds of a very heavy person being moved around suggest a royal ghost’s presence.
Legendary highway man Richard Abershaw, Wimbledon’s very own Dick Whittington, haunts the common.
Particularly in winter, the hooves of the criminal’s horses still sound.
Following hanging on Richmond Common, Abershaw’s body was displayed on Wimbledon’s public gallows.
The corpse was viewed by 100, 000 people, and thieves took toes, knuckle bones and hair.
Dalianne said: “They believed, and many still do, that if you do not have a body in the grave you will continue to walk the earth.”
Another pub in Wimbledon, The Swan, is also said to be haunted.
The manager says ghosts are behind unexplained noises in the night.
Drinkers at the Ridgeway pub say their glasses move across tables, and in the 1990s staff sitting at the tavern’s rear saw the ghost of a brown-haired man in his thirties.
Wearing a grey coat, he appeared at the bottom of the stairs.
The tour’s last stop was the scariest street in Wimbledon, Hillside.
All cars parked on the street were empty of any belongings.
Dalianne said this was because the street is full of ghosts, and any items left in vehicles are disrupted by poltergeists.
Houses on Hillside’s left-hand side report more ghostly happenings.
The ghost of a young girl arrives in gardens in January or June.
The child walks towards the house, then away, before disappearing.
Another family report ink stains showing on walls even when no ink is in the house.
The marks disappear when anyone moves to clean them.
On the top floor of one house, there is a room nobody can leave.
The door only opens from one side, and a trapped wife was so terrified by this that after escaping through a window onto the roof, she insisted on moving house.
Dalianne said: “You can tell which are the haunted houses – they are the ones always up for sale.”
Hillside was home to medium Estelle Roberts from late 1800-1930s
Her spirit Red Cloud impressed clients including Arthur Conan Doyle.
Dalianne concluded the tour by wishing the walkers well
She said: “Happy hunting!”
Mark Sissons, 32, lives in South Wimbledon.
He said: “My friends told me about the walk, and I thought I would come along because it was a different way to celebrate Halloween.
“I thought I should learn about where I live. I was expecting a dozen people or so. This turnout is really impressive.”
