Highgate Cemetery

[Recycled1]

I love Highgate Cemetery.
My dad took my mum there to see Karl Marx's tomb , before they were married. (No, she wasn't impressed, it wasn't her idea of a date!)

I went about ten years ago with my son and loved it -I'd like my ashes to be buried there when I die, if there's still room and if it's not prohibitively expensive.

 

[Spookdaddy]

I love Highgate Cemetery.
My dad took my mum there to see Karl Marx's tomb , before they were married. (No, she wasn't impressed, it wasn't her idea of a date!)

I went about ten years ago with my son and loved it -I'd like my ashes to be buried there when I die, if there's still room and if it's not prohibitively expensive.

It's worth mentioning - because looking back through to the start of the thread I think there might be some confusion, and in my recent posts, I didn't make clear what side I was talking about - that the cemetery is effectively split into two sections by Swain's Lane, both of which sections are kind of self-contained.

My trip was to the western section. I'm pretty sure that - back before it was effectively rescued - the east was always more accessible and easier to visit than the west (which was effectively shut down for a long while - with access heavily monitored, at least to start with, once it finally did reopen). They are both very much worth visiting, but the western side is the more dramatic - and the one to which most of the woo seems to be associated.

If you go there, DON'T mention ghosts - the curators and staff take a very dim view of spooks and don't allow ghost hunts in there...

I'm sure that ghost hunts will still be a no-no, but I overheard one official guide telling her party about the vampire thing - so I'm guessing they are less po-faced about the general subject these days.

 

[Spookdaddy]

I’ve always been interested in the way our direct physical environment might affect our psychology, and the possibility that concrete realities may act on us in such a way as to create a sense of the weird and the eerie, possibly thereby making us more susceptible to the suggestion of supernatural agency.

As I said in the last post – Highgate Cemetery seems very atmospheric to me, but maybe no more inherently weird than any other place we dispose of our dead. Oddly, it’s Swain’s Lane - the public road running up the east side of the western section – that pushes my weird buttons.

For London at least, it’s really quite steep. It’s also narrow, and the cemetery wall abuts directly the road edge, there being no path on that side, which, again ‘feels’ kind of odd, and a maybe a little bit oppressive; it’s quite easy – walking up the lane towards Highgate - to find yourself thinking it might have been designed to keep something in, rather than keep the wanderer out.

It strikes me that Swain’s Lane itself – the actual road, rather than the general area - is also the actual locus of several sightings that are attributed to Highgate Cemetery – and it makes me wonder if the lane had a haunted reputation before the cemetery, or even if the lane itself has been the haunted place all along, and the burial ground just stole its thunder.

The cemetery is built on the grounds of the old Ashurst House, and I think - from checking out a couple of old maps - the line of the wall has been around since that time. And possibly even parts of the original wall remain.

Even if you took the site away from the context of its famous neighbour - the steepness, the narrowness, that close set high wall - I wonder if that all might trigger some sort of atavistic response in the night-time traveller that makes them prone to having the wits scared out of them.

 

[Druk]

Pics I took last year in Highgate.

 

[Floyd]

I’ve always been interested in the way our direct physical environment might affect our psychology, and the possibility that concrete realities may act on us in such a way as to create a sense of the weird and the eerie, possibly thereby making us more susceptible to the suggestion of supernatural agency.

As I said in the last post – Highgate Cemetery seems very atmospheric to me, but maybe no more inherently weird than any other place we dispose of our dead. Oddly, it’s Swain’s Lane - the public road running up the east side of the western section – that pushes my weird buttons.

For London at least, it’s really quite steep. It’s also narrow, and the cemetery wall abuts directly the road edge, there being no path on that side, which, again ‘feels’ kind of odd, and a maybe a little bit oppressive; it’s quite easy – walking up the lane towards Highgate - to find yourself thinking it might have been designed to keep something in, rather than keep the wanderer out.

It strikes me that Swain’s Lane itself – the actual road, rather than the general area - is also the actual locus of several sightings that are attributed to Highgate Cemetery – and it makes me wonder if the lane had a haunted reputation before the cemetery, or even if the lane itself has been the haunted place all along, and the burial ground just stole its thunder.

The cemetery is built on the grounds of the old Ashurst House, and I think - from checking out a couple of old maps - the line of the wall has been around since that time. And possibly even parts of the original wall remain.

View attachment 75175

Even if you took the site away from the context of its famous neighbour - the steepness, the narrowness, that close set high wall - I wonder if that all might trigger some sort of atavistic response in the night-time traveller that makes them prone to having the wits scared out of them.

Spook- you know the road that goes from Hassop up towards Great Longstone- I always found that hill part quite, not scary, but a sense of something very old - if that makes sense.

 

[Frideswide]

It strikes me that Swain’s Lane itself

it's very canyon like, which would put me on alert I think.

 

[Spookdaddy]

Spook- you know the road that goes from Hassop up towards Great Longstone- I always found that hill part quite, not scary, but a sense of something very old - if that makes sense.

Yes. I know where you mean (Longreave Lane, I think it's called), and what you mean. It has that lovely - but sometimes quite disconcerting - green tunnel thing going on in summer as well.

As you say - not necessarily spooky, as such - but it's got an atmosphere.

There is I think some ghost lore associated with the area - memory tells me that it's associated with the bend in the Hassop Road as you go through Hassop itself (which, as you'll know, is barely even a village). There's a classic tale of a ghostly coach and horses - but I think there's a more recent story too.

 

[Spookdaddy]

By coincidence I took the opportunity - while I was in London over last weekend - for another visit to Highgate. Not had a chance to look through my photos yet.

 

[Floyd]

Yes. I know where you mean (Longreave Lane, I think it's called), and what you mean. It has that lovely - but sometimes quite disconcerting - green tunnel thing going on in summer as well.

As you say - not necessarily spooky, as such - but it's got an atmosphere.

There is I think some ghost lore associated with the area - memory tells me that it's associated with the bend in the Hassop Road as you go through Hassop itself (which, as you'll know, is barely even a village). There's a classic tale of a ghostly coach and horses - but I think there's a more recent story too.

Yes and the high wall on one side (and IIRC no pavement).

The only one I know of there is the coach and horses.

 

[Spookdaddy]

By coincidence I took the opportunity - while I was in London over last weekend - for another visit to Highgate. Not had a chance to look through my photos yet.

Well it was another enjoyable morning, but turns out not a great day for the photographs. Don't think I was really in a camera mood.

Quite like this one though:

(Oh yeah, right...is this the point when I tell everyone that there was definitely no-one there when I took the photograph?)

Also, one of the advantages of a bad day at the camera is that I feel much more free to muck around with Photoshop - which I generally use most sparingly. Very rarely do you rescue a bad image, but quite often I find it's good exercise for learning the skills that can later hone a decent one. I quite like the effect of the mix of black and white and colour in this one - something I've never tried before:

 

[catseye]

I wonder if part of the sense of unease in Swains Lane comes from the fact that you can't see all the way down, and then there are high walls on both sides, meaning that if something terrible was coming towards you, there's nowhere to escape? It might trigger the parts of the brain that say "it's a trap!"

 

[Spookdaddy]

I wonder if part of the sense of unease in Swains Lane comes from the fact that you can't see all the way down, and then there are high walls on both sides, meaning that if something terrible was coming towards you, there's nowhere to escape? It might trigger the parts of the brain that say "it's a trap!"

I definitely think there's something in this.

As I said in a previous post:

...Even if you took the site away from the context of its famous neighbour - the steepness, the narrowness, that close set high wall - I wonder if that all might trigger some sort of atavistic response in the night-time traveller that makes them prone to having the wits scared out of them.

(I actually think that one reason staircases might attract a certain night-time anxiety is that in a natural environment a narrow path squeezed between a sheer incline and a vertical drop is really not a great place to get caught out in.)

All of that said, I actually find that area of North London a bit spooky in general. Not scary spooky, just a little bit odd. I always walk up to Highgate from Archway, which - although somewhat down the scale of posh from the latter - also seems to have the aura of a thin place about it.