Haunted Highgate

Compiled by paranormal investigator Della Farrant, this new book contains a chilling range of spooky tales from around Highgate. From haunted public houses and private homes taken over by malevolent poltergeists to a top-hatted fiend who hisses at passers-by and the 'vampire' sightings of the 1970s at Highgate's world-famous cemetery, this collection of ghostly goings-on is sure to appeal to everyone interested in North London's supernatural residents. Richly illustrated, Haunted Highgate is the ideal guide for anyone who wishes to delve deeper into the area's mysterious history.

From Shani Struthers, the bestselling author of The Venetian and The Eleventh Floor, comes the third in the This Haunted World series: Highgate. With sometimes harrowing scenes, this is her darkest novel yet and not for the faint-hearted!Highgate, perhaps the most famous cemetery in the world, is renowned for its Victorian Gothic splendour, famous residents, its vampire and, of course, ghosts...Lucy Klein, 42, is not only obsessed with Highgate, she works there too, organising tours for those with an interest in some of the finest Victorian funerary architecture in existence. Single, and on the shy side, she is nonetheless content with her life, or so she thinks. When she meets the enigmatic Zak Harborne, she realises what she's been missing and quickly falls in love. Suddenly, it is the business of living that interests her.1972, and Emma Matthews, a 19-year-old history student, also feels as though she's on the outside. After visiting a derelict Highgate with a group of friends, she starts to feel a connection, a sense of meaning to her life, in amongst the tombstones, the crosses and the angels. Returning to Highgate over and over, she discovers both a paradise and a garden decidedly more savage. Grace Derby is just 11 when she encounters the gentleman, tall and with a tall hat, a long black coat and a cape about his shoulders. It is the 1850s and street urchins such as her are not accustomed to kindness from those belonging to the upper echelons. Proffering money for food, for her and her family, he asks nothing in return. Curious about the man with the kind blue eyes, she follows him one day... all the way to Highgate.For some, it seems, all roads lead to Highgate...

This fascinating selection of photographs traces some of the many ways in which Hampstead and Highgate have changed and developed over the last century.

London's Underground is associated with a multitude of ghostly stories and sightings, particular stations and abandoned lines, many of which are in close proximity to burial sites from centuries ago. This chilling book reveals well-known and hitherto unpublished tales of spirits, spectres and other spooky occurrences on one of the oldest railway networks in the world. The stories of sightings include the ghost of an actress regularly witnessed on Aldywch Station and the 'Black Nun' at Bank Station. Eerie noises, such as the cries of thirteen-year-old Anne Naylor, who was murdered in 1758 near to the site of what is now Farringdon Station, and the screams of children who were in an accident at Bethnal Green Station during Second World War, are still heard echoing. These and many more ghostly accounts are recorded in fascinating detail in this book, which is a must-read for anyone interested in the mysterious and murky history of London's Underground.

In blood-soaked lore handed down the centuries, the vampire is a monster of endless fascination: from Bram Stoker’s Dracula to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, this seductive lover of blood haunts popular culture and inhabits our darkest imaginings. The cultural history of the vampire is a rich and varied tale that is now ably documented in From Demons to Dracula, a compelling study of the vampire myth that reveals why this creature of the undead fascinates us so. Beresford’s chronicle roams from the mountains of Eastern Europe to the foggy streets of Victorian England to Hollywood, as he investigates the portrayal of the vampire in history, literature, and art. Opening with the original Dracula, Vlad the Impaler, and his status as a national hero in Romania, he endeavors to winnow out truths from the complex legend and folklore. From Demons to Dracula tracks the evolution of the vampire as an icon and supernatural creature, drawing on classical Greek and Roman myths, witch trials and medieval plagues, Gothic literature, and even contemporary works such as Anne Rice’s Interview with a Vampire and Elizabeth Kostova’s The Historian. Beresford also looks at the widespread impact of screen vampires from television shows, classic movies starring Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee, and more recent films such as Underworld and Blade. Whether as a demon of the underworld or a light-fearing hunter of humans, the vampire has endured through the centuries, the book reveals, as powerfully symbolic figure for human concerns with life, death, and the afterlife. A wide-ranging and engrossing chronicle, From Demons to Dracula casts this blood-thirsty nightstalker as a remarkably complex and telling totem of our nightmares, real and imagined.

Watch out for a ghostly ship and its spectral crew off the coast of Cornwall Listen for the unearthly tread and rustling silk dress of Darlington's Lady Jarratt Shiver at the malevolent apparition of 50 Berkeley Square that no-one survives seeing Beware the black dog of Shap Fell: a sighting warns of fatal accidents England's past echoes with stories of unquiet spirits and hauntings, of headless highwaymen and grey ladies, indelible bloodstains and ghastly premonitions. Here, county by county, are the nation's most fascinating supernatural tales and bone-chilling legends: from a ghostly army marching across Cumbria to the vanishing hitchhiker of Bluebell Hill, from the gruesome Man-Monkey of Shropshire to the phantom congregation who gather for a 'Sermon of the Dead' ...

From the days of ancient Greece, people have hurried their steps as they passed by—or, Heaven forbid, walked through—a cemetery after dark. Indeed, over the centuries we’ve developed many a superstition to protect ourselves from restless graveyard ghosts. Haunted Cemeteries exhumes more than two dozen stories of some of the most actively haunted graveyards both in this nation and abroad, including:DIV • The Greenwood Hauntings: Greenwood Cemetery in Decatur, Illinois, is one of the most ghoulish graveyards in America’s Heartland, sporting at least five individual entities, a gaggle of ghost lights, and a whole trainload of Civil War dead./divDIV • Pretty in Pink: The ethereal ghost of the Pink Lady floats over the graves of the Yorba Cemetery in Yorba Linda, California—on June 15 of even-numbered years, that is./div • The Queen of Voodoo: The restless spirit of Marie Laveau, the nineteenth-century Queen of Voodoo, is said to appear in New Orleans’s St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 in the form of a gigantic black crow or a phantom black hellhound—when she’s not walking through the French Quarter.

Cassandra Ayers embarks on a case of grave desecration at Highgate Cemetery allegedly haunted by a terrifying ghost; however, the most mysterious and frightening case she is challenged to solve lies in her own past and is related to her mother's death. Maybe now, after Cassandra sees her mother’s ghostly hand in her photo, she will be able to find the answers. The Highgate Ghost is a dark and brooding read, the first in a series of tales for lovers of Gothic mystery, Penny Dreadful, Sherlock Holmes and Edgar Allan Poe's stories.