October 31 — Halloween is upon us, comrades, and you know I would
never miss a chance to lean into the holiday spirit (pun intended). I’ve
been quietly stewing over what spooky tale to tell you all for weeks,
but with no luck. Nothing I've experienced thus far in London could meet
my high Halloween standards (though navigating QMUL’s many websites
comes pretty damn close), I so I’ve had to compromise. I may not be able
to scare you, but I can still tell you my personal ghost story.
Since I arrived in London, a day hasn’t gone by that I haven’t hopped on a train for some reason or other. I’ve taken full advantage of our monthly Oyster cards: between appointments, errands, and procrastinatory expeditions, I’ve spent tens of hours navigating from station to station, finding ways around rush-hour traffic, and boarding the Circle Line in the wrong direction.
Each train has its own quirks and temperament, each station its own character. If you squint, the entire city of London becomes a benevolent behemoth, the Underground serving as her inner workings. Flights of stairs and fleets of escalators take me into the great warm belly of the city, away from the crisp October air and down, down, we go– still further down at Angel Station where the longest escalator on the Underground (60m!) seems to carry one towards the center of the earth. I careen down London’s veins and capillaries in clean, white subway carriages trimmed in their lines’ respective hues; It seems fitting to me that the Central line, London’s main artery, is colored crimson.
The Underground thrums with life.
The Underground is full of ghosts.
It’s easy to forget that London carries on while I explore beneath it, since without natural light, things get sort of weird temporally. Time isn’t real underground. Nothing feels more uncanny than entering a Tube station during daylight and exiting one as night falls; I imagine emerging from the Underground only to find a hundred years have passed in a “Rip Van Winkle”-esque fiasco. The other day, I was thinking about the weird, liminal space that is the Underground, and Ezra Pound’s famous poem about the Paris metro came to mind:
“In a Station of the Metro”
The apparition of these faces in the crowd:
Petals on a wet, black bough.
—Ezra Pound (1913)
In my growing familiarity with the London Underground, I have become part of its ecosystem. I am one of Pound’s many petals; in navigating between stations, I pass by thousands of faces I will never see again. The reliability of the Tube turns humans insubstantial– the Eastbound District train will arrive at Mile End every three minutes forever, but a person will pass me once and then cease to exist. How many of these faces in the crowd have I passed in two months? And how many have in turn seen my apparition?
I need a breather.
So is the Underground really full of ghosts? Well, kind of. Take away all the weird, metaphorical ghostly people and the Tube has some genuine ghost stories– they just aren’t the type that make for entertaining Halloween tales. I don’t dwell on the ghosts of the London Underground; we have enough to fret about these days. I try instead to appreciate the moments in which I emerge from the Underground into open air and become more than my apparition.
Since I arrived in London, a day hasn’t gone by that I haven’t hopped on a train for some reason or other. I’ve taken full advantage of our monthly Oyster cards: between appointments, errands, and procrastinatory expeditions, I’ve spent tens of hours navigating from station to station, finding ways around rush-hour traffic, and boarding the Circle Line in the wrong direction.
Each train has its own quirks and temperament, each station its own character. If you squint, the entire city of London becomes a benevolent behemoth, the Underground serving as her inner workings. Flights of stairs and fleets of escalators take me into the great warm belly of the city, away from the crisp October air and down, down, we go– still further down at Angel Station where the longest escalator on the Underground (60m!) seems to carry one towards the center of the earth. I careen down London’s veins and capillaries in clean, white subway carriages trimmed in their lines’ respective hues; It seems fitting to me that the Central line, London’s main artery, is colored crimson.
The Underground thrums with life.
The Underground is full of ghosts.
It’s easy to forget that London carries on while I explore beneath it, since without natural light, things get sort of weird temporally. Time isn’t real underground. Nothing feels more uncanny than entering a Tube station during daylight and exiting one as night falls; I imagine emerging from the Underground only to find a hundred years have passed in a “Rip Van Winkle”-esque fiasco. The other day, I was thinking about the weird, liminal space that is the Underground, and Ezra Pound’s famous poem about the Paris metro came to mind:
“In a Station of the Metro”
The apparition of these faces in the crowd:
Petals on a wet, black bough.
—Ezra Pound (1913)
In my growing familiarity with the London Underground, I have become part of its ecosystem. I am one of Pound’s many petals; in navigating between stations, I pass by thousands of faces I will never see again. The reliability of the Tube turns humans insubstantial– the Eastbound District train will arrive at Mile End every three minutes forever, but a person will pass me once and then cease to exist. How many of these faces in the crowd have I passed in two months? And how many have in turn seen my apparition?
I need a breather.
So is the Underground really full of ghosts? Well, kind of. Take away all the weird, metaphorical ghostly people and the Tube has some genuine ghost stories– they just aren’t the type that make for entertaining Halloween tales. I don’t dwell on the ghosts of the London Underground; we have enough to fret about these days. I try instead to appreciate the moments in which I emerge from the Underground into open air and become more than my apparition.
—Hannah Unkrich