London Underground's Strangest Tales: Extraordinary But True Stories by Iain Spragg

Author:Iain Spragg [Spragg, Iain]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781909396166
Google: xE0mEAAAQBAJ
Amazon: 1909396168
Goodreads: 17329100
Publisher: Pavilion Books
Published: 2013-06-15T04:00:00+00:00

THE DARK SIDE OF TUBE TRAVEL

1972

Although the barrage of CCTV cameras ensure the London Underground is statistically one of the safest forms of public transport, there is still something a little eerie and sinister about the Tube should you find yourself all alone on a deserted platform, cut off from the world above.

The sense of menace has led to many macabre urban myths about the network, but perhaps the most well-worn is the terrifying tale of the young woman who gets on a train late at night and only narrowly escapes meeting with a grisly fate.

The women, the story goes, gets onto the carriage to find just one other passenger, a young man, on board. At the next stop, however, two men carry what seems like a sleeping woman onto the train and as it rumbles on, the first man approaches the lady passenger and whispers conspiratorially in her ear, ‘Get off at the next stop.’

She’s obviously suspicious but, glancing at the other three late-night commuters, she senses something is seriously wrong and decides to take his advice. The pair disembark and as she looks nervously at the departing carriage, she sees the back of the trio’s heads and suddenly notices a pair of scissors sticking out of the dead women’s skull.

The Underground has also been both the inspiration and setting for two rather gruesome horror films and those of a nervous disposition who are also regular Tube users would be well advised to stop reading now.

The first – Death Line – was released in 1972 and tells the unsettling story of a family of cannibals descended from Victorian railway workers who live in the network’s dark tunnels and feast on unsuspecting passengers at Russell Square and Holborn. The flesh-eaters, however, make a big mistake when they kidnap and devour an important politician and are subsequently hunted down by the Met’s finest.

In 2004, Creep was premiered and had the stomachs of audiences churning with its graphic portrayal of a young woman who accidentally gets locked in overnight at an Underground station and is subsequently mercilessly stalked by a hideously deformed and deranged serial killer (a.k.a. Creep), who butchers anyone she meets almost as soon as she can cry, ‘Can you help me?’

Needless to say, she eventually escapes his murderous clutches, there are no other survivors (although a cute dog does make it out) and the villain meets a suitably over-the-top and anatomically revealing end.

In literature, the dark side of the Tube was celebrated in 2010 with the publication of an anthology of terrifying tales entitled The End of the Line.

‘This collection of stories from some of horror fiction’s best authors will glue you to the page,’ promised the press release. ‘But watch out, it may leave you too afraid to take the metro to work. In deep tunnels something stirs, borne on a warm breath of wind, reeking of diesel and blood. The spaces between stations hold secrets too terrible for the upper world to comprehend and the steel lines sing with the songs of the dead.

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