There is a popular legend according to which London Underground trains rush rapidly through the darkness filled with the resting skeletons of plague victims. Maybe that's why the London Underground is downright haunted?
Indeed, in London there are many mass graves in which those who died from plague epidemics in 1348 and 1665 are buried. Since the development of public transport in the nineteenth century, roads have carefully skirted these ominous burials. Even on a map of the London Underground at the turn of the century, you can see that the lines don't run in a straight line from A to B. Instead, they wander, bend, as if they are avoiding something. Folklore insists that mountains of bones are the cause.
When Amanda Ruggeri, who is leading the study of this widespread legend, asked experts in the history of London transport about the connection of the underground with mass graves, she saw eyes widening in surprise. One by one, historians have argued that they have never come across any mention of plague pits in the construction of the subway.
Usually Londoners buried those who died of the plague in existing cemeteries. Yes, there are a small number of graves that were dug in a hurry by the terrified survivors. However, these bodies were very carefully buried.
"The plague is a terrible experience for the people of London, so they did everything to maintain their stability and comfort," - said historian Vanessa Harding of the University of London. "For example, funerals were performed in the most appropriate manner, even under the most extreme circumstances."
The first metro lines were more likely to be uneven due to drainage than from plague pits. So the times of the Victorian era, when the eminent British had fun digging up graves, are long gone. But during excavations in 2013 during the construction of the high-speed railway "Crossrail", a grave with plague victims was indeed discovered.
In 2002, as the railroad network expanded, Eurostar was forced to crash into the cemetery at the old St. Pancras Church, causing public outrage. Such cases are not uncommon in land construction, usually with reburials. But as soon as the construction goes below ground level, the situation with the skeletons becomes more complicated.
“Nearly every green space in the city was once a burial place,” said Jay Carver, lead archaeologist at Crossrail, who faced the problem while building a deep railway tunnel. “We found a large number of human remains. And these graves are not marked anywhere."
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Some of the former burial sites are unknown, as many churches burned down in a fire in 1666. And also after the adoption of the law in 1852, which closed the cemeteries in the city.
Whether the subway line snakes around plague pits or long-forgotten cemeteries, that doesn't change the fact that subway passengers are always surrounded by the dead. This is the reason why ghosts appear on the subway.
Voronina Svetlana