I'd recommend Della Farrant's
Haunted Highgate.
The History Press's series of local ghost books can be very hit and miss, but this one is upper end of the spectrum (and has a foreward by Alan Murdie – which is a kind of recommendation).
As I've stated on the
Weirdest Ghost thread, in relation to Highgate's famous ghostly chicken!:
I don't have it to hand just now - but I'm pretty sure that Della Farrant in her book Haunted Highgate casts quite a lot of doubt on the authenticity of this rather attractive story.
Unlike too many authors of such locale specific books, Farrant has clearly done plenty of legwork herself, rather than simply reiterated local tales without recourse to research and interviews. Highgate is a notoriously haunted area, with a significant local interest in it's own culture, history and lore - and although it's often suggested that this is a 'well-known' and ongoing phenomenon, I'm pretty sure that Farrant struggles to find anyone local who has heard of any recent manifestations, and I'm not sure that the story is even particularly well-known in the area, compared to other supposedly paranormal ones. It seems to be one of those stories that has more of an online life than it does in the real world.
Farrant also does a pretty good job of demolishing the Bacon stuffed chicken story - already debunked in several histories of Bacon and his life. So the Pythonesque WW2 era story of an RAF man encountering the partly plucked chicken in a blacked out Pond Square (the specific locality of the alleged manifestations) after hearing an apparent replay of the event - hoofbeats, the sound of carriage wheels coming to a sudden halt, squawking chicken - may all be a replay of an event that never actually happened.
The author does make one interesting suggestion in regard to a particular story regarding the chicken allegedly disappearing into a solid brick wall. There is a very narrow alley leading off Pond Square - on a dark night, or a foggy afternoon, and with the witness situated at a certain angle to the event, a chicken running off the square up this alley might actually appear to be disappearing into solid masonry.
It's worth pointing out that Farrant is not by any means a serial debunker - she clearly does believe that there's a lot of oddness in the area, but is obviously just not convinced about the chicken thing.
And yes, she is related to that guy - although her book is admirably neutral on certain related subjects.
Probably goes without saying that Swains Lane and the Highgate Cemeteries get a fair bit of coverage, but Farrant also covers more modern, and less well-known events and more modern hauntings – including a fairly extensive outing to the Hillcrest Estate. On further reading around the subject, it seems that some of the ‘legwork’ I assumed in that original recommendation might be the product of her husband’s earlier research – however, it appears she’s built on the original, and this is definitely not one of those books that exclusively regurgitates other sources verbatim, or almost verbatim.
I have a couple of other London focused books in the series: I think I found
Haunted West End a little disappointing (it’s a long while since I read them – so I may be being unfair), but
Haunted Lambeth a more satisfying read. As I said – I think that whole series can be a bit variable in quality.
Another satisfying read - not specifically ghost centric, but with many of excursions in that direction - would be Peter Bushell's
London's Secret History. Out of print, but second hand copies are available - and even the hardback is reasonable priced. A good read, and an easy must for a Londonist.
Much more location specific is Noah Angell and Francis Gooding's Ghost Stories of the British Museum. Although a fairly recent publication, I think this is maybe hard to get a hold of now - but worth looking out for.
Again, quoting myself from elsewhere:
...It's more of a pamphlet, at only around 25 pages, containing eleven separate stories from staff of all stripes. The stories are presented as pretty raw, verbatim transcripts with no authorial intervention. They are also somehow very satisfying - you'd expect an arena as spectacular and dramatic as the British Museum to encourage equally spectacular claims, but although the tales clearly do reflect some of the drama of the surroundings and the object contained within, they never fly away into the unnecessarily theatrical, and all the stories have a tone of raw and unadulterated experience.
For the size of it, it wasn't cheap (I reckon it cost me about 40 pence per page), but I'm happy to have put my hand in my pocket as hopefully it's funding what is an ongoing project with - fingers crossed - a much more substantial publication at the end of it...
There was a suggestion that this might have been a bit of a tester for a larger project - I really hope so.
Marc Alexander: Frederick Muller: 1975
