Folklorists do know that the underbelly of the city

 is teeming with all manner of spectres, and a majority of these seem trapped in the London Underground.

The most impressive ghost, or recording in this case, is that of a train which was last observed around the 1920s in the vicinity of South Kensington; whilst on the East Finchley to Wellington underground, legend has it that an old steam train silently travels on through the Northern Line.

Surely a majority of apparitions that are said to stalk the tracks and tunnels are either in limbo as spirits, possibly people who either died down below or simply feel tied there after once being employed.

Workmen, or at least ghostly figures

 perceived as workmen, have been seen at West Brompton Tube Station, South Kensington, and Vauxhall, with the Vauxhall spectre appearing as a seven-feet tall man in a cap, making for an eerie and imposing sight. Tulse Hill and Stockwell also have their own phantom workmen, whilst stations such as Covent Garden, Lewisham and Farringdon all seem to be haunted by people who were tragically murdered, whilst nuns and monks have been sighted drifting silently through the Bakerloo and Jubilee Line. The monks have been seen as recently as 2000, on a path from Westminster to Stratford. It is believed that ground work had disturbed several graves, or indeed unblocked some dormant portal to the ethereal void.

The spectral girl of Elephant & Castle appears to be a rail relation to the phantom hitchhiker legend, in that several witnesses have described, often whilst sitting in an empty carriage, encountering a young woman who takes a seat but often vanishes between stops. Just like many phantom hitchhiker myths, this particular spook story is vague, but many have heard of her exploits.

Even spookier is the Egyptian phantom

 said to have once prowled the British Museum station, which closed in 1933. The figure, adorned in head garments and loin cloth, was said to walk a tunnel that allegedly once wound from the station to the Egyptian Room in the museum, although such a passage was allegedly denied by London Underground, especially after two women mysteriously vanished from the Holborn platform that was situated just one stop along from the museum. Bizarrely, during the time of the disappearances, odd yet unspecified marks were found on the walls of the museum station, and eerie moans had often been reported echoing through the cold walls.

London Underground remains one of the capital’s eeriest places, with many a chilled researcher turning down the opportunity to spend a night down there. Are there really lines that go nowhere in particular? And what about the stations built right next to Plague Pits, could such graves be the answer to some of the more sinister ghost sightings? One such pit was allegedly discovered in the late 60s at Green Park with the construction of the Victoria Line, whilst the collapse of a road at Blackheath was also blamed on the disturbance of such a pit.

For the last fifty or more years there has been a sinister legend

 pertaining to the London Underground that a mysterious, possibly caped figure, lurks in the cold tunnels, and is known for the ghastly act of pushing people in front of oncoming trains, usually at night. Whether this terror is mere rumour we’ll never know, because we do occasionally hear of people splattered on the rails, but whether a phantom killer is roaming the more remote platforms remains unknown.

Another classic urban legend

 to exist in the passageways beneath the capital emerged during the mid-1800s and remains one of London’s most obscure mysteries, yet echoes a more potent urban myth that has plagued New York’s sewer system since the early 1900s, being the possibility that alligators inhabited the murky waterways and pipe systems, feeding on rats and garbage. In the case of London’s inhabitants, there is a rumour that in 1851 beneath Hampstead, feral pigs, or hogs were prowling the depths of the sewers! Legend has it that a pregnant sow somehow ended up trapped in the gloomy tunnels, giving birth to a happy litter of excrement swilling, offal consuming offspring, even more ferocious than their known relatives that may have inhabited some nearby yard.

Sceptics argued that such animals had never been seen or heard to grunt through the drain grates, but believers in such quirky tales claimed that the reason for this elusive behaviour was simply down to the Fleet ditch, which, once encountered from the mouth of the sewer at the riverside, would have flushed the piggies back to their lair after failed attempts to swim against the rapids. – Londonist

This was taken from Phantoms and Monster and is copyright by the articles owner