The Egyptian Ghost on the London Underground

Speaker A: 00:00:01

g down the metal stairs. It's: 11:58

The last train is due in two minutes, and if you miss that, it's a really expensive cab ride home. You look around and notice that you're the only person heading down. Hopefully that doesn't mean the train's gone already.

Sweat prickles as you reach the bottom of the steps. The tunnel seems longer at night, the gentle downward slope more pronounced. You emerge onto the platform. It's deserted here, too.

Just you, the flickering fluorescent lights and that peculiar silence that seems to belong only to empty stations late at night. The digital display board is dark too. No more trains scheduled. No digits counting down the minutes.

You spin side to side and look into the dark eyes of the tunnels. At each end of the platform, the rails disappear into perfect circles of darkness, like looking down the barrel of a gun.

A clang echoes from somewhere deep within the tunnel. A train changing tracks or something. A warm front of air billows out, carrying with it the scent of iron and earth.

And something older, something that doesn't belong in this century. Then all goes silent. Not the normal silence of an empty station, but something deeper. The kind of silence that feels like it's actually listening.

A whisper of movement breaks the silence from the left hand tunnel. You turn towards it. Something stirs in the darkness and shuffle. A scrape. The sound fabric might make dragging across stone.

You take an involuntary step towards the tunnel, drawn by a curiosity that seems to bypass all rational thought. You step close to the edge and peer into the blackness. It's as though the darkness here is something physical, pushing back against the light.

Another sound echoes through the tunnel. Maybe the soft pat of bare feet on stone. Hello? Is anyone there? Your voice sounds small, out of place.

The temperature drops suddenly and your breath becomes visible. The air grows thick with the scent of incense and age. It's like stepping into a tomb that hasn't been opened for thousands of years.

Then you see her emerging from the darkness, like a photograph developing in reverse. At first she's just a pale outline. Then details slowly bleed into view. The elaborate headdress, the fine linen wrapped close to her body.

Golden bands at her wrists and ankles. Her feet seem to hover inches above the tracks. Her face is the last thing to become clear.

Dark eyes lined with coal fixed on yours with an intensity that spans millennia. A mouth opens, but what emerges isn't just a sound.

It's the voice of every soul who's ever died in darkness, every curse ever uttered in ancient temples and every secret locked away in forgotten tombs. Foreign hey, I'm Luke. I'm an author of archaeological adventure novels.

I travel the world looking for stories to put into my books and share with you right here on the Adventure Story podcast. Today's story is close to home for me, sort of. Anyway, let's find out the truth behind the Egyptian ghost on the London Underground.

First, let's get one thing straight. In London, we call the Metro the Underground. It's Metro for every other city in the world.

And the Underground for London, we're just a little bit stubborn like that. With over 1.3 billion passengers annually, the London Underground is Europe's largest metro system. It has 272 stations and 250 miles of track.

And it's a maze that stretches beneath the city.

But beyond the daily commuters and tourists, beyond the 540something trains that run simultaneously at peak times, there's another layer to the underground. A network of ghost stations, sealed platforms and abandoned tunnels that hide in the darkness between stops.

e to go back to London in the: 1920

Suddenly, everything Egyptian was in vogue. Art Deco designs borrowed from Egyptian motifs. Fashion embraced the exotic look of the pharaohs.

And the British Museum's Egyptian collection became one of the city's biggest attractions.

But along with this fascination came fear when Lord Carnarvon, the financial backer of Tutankhamun's excavation, died mysteriously just months after the tomb was opened. Newspapers worldwide buzzed with with talk of the mummy's curse.

The story gained even more traction when Sir Arthur Conan Doyle of Sherlock Holmes fame suggested that ancient Egyptian priests might have placed supernatural guardians to protect their tombs. By the time several other members of the excavation team died under various circumstances, the public was convinced.

The Daily Express ran headlines warning about the dangers of disturbing ancient Egyptian artifacts. Some even claimed that hieroglyphic inscriptions specifically warned, death shall come on swift wings to him who disturbs the peace of the king.

Then, in: 1933

It was the workmen closing down this station who saw the first sighting. They described a Woman in an ancient Egyptian dress wearing an ornate headdress, who would appear in the tunnels and let out blood curdling screams.

The sound, they said, wasn't like anything they'd ever heard before. A high pitched wail in a language they didn't understand.

Of course, the British Museum itself tried to dismiss these fears as nonsense, but they couldn't explain why this had been heard by several people on different days. Twenty years later, night workers on the nearby Holborn station reported the same details.

se terrifying screams. In the: 1960

Track maintenance workers this time refused to go into certain sections of the tunnel after multiple encounters with what they described as, as an ancient Egyptian woman floating above the tracks. And even in recent years, the sightings have continued.

Late night passengers at Holborn Station regularly report seeing this figure disappearing down the tunnel towards the old museum station. It's believed that this haunting presence is the ghost of Amun Ra, whose story begins with a seemingly innocuous artifact, a mummy board.

Brought to the British Museum in the late 19th century. Made of wood and plaster, this intricately decorated board was placed directly over a wrapped mummy inside the sarcophagus.

When this particular board was sold to the museum, though, it had already caused a stir. The four men who brought it from Egypt had already died mysteriously and one of their wives just wanted to get get rid of the thing.

The story goes that in April: 1912

ome such traction that by the: 1920

Books and articles claimed that the mummy board carried a curse that doomed any vessel carrying it away from British shores. Some versions of the story even suggested that the iceberg itself was conjured by Egyptian magic.

left their collection. Not in: 1912

The most common theory, though, is that that is Al Munra wandering the tunnels searching for her way back to Egypt.

Others suggest she's protecting the ancient artifacts stored above her in the British Museum, her spirit standing guard over the treasures of her civilization. So if you're ever at Holborn Station, rushing for that last train, listen for the sound of ancient footsteps and watch for movement in the shadows.

If you hear screaming in a language that hasn't been spoken for thousands of years, well, maybe it's just the wind in the tunnels. Maybe it's the echo of trains in the distance.

Or maybe, just maybe, Amen Ra is still there, walking the dark passages beneath London, searching for her way home. This is the Adventure Story Podcast. Thank you for hanging out with me today. I really appreciate it. It is great to spend some time with you.

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