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  • Writer's pictureRobin T

The London Dungeon

CREEPY experience. Read it below.


I’m writing this so I can learn more about the history of the land that the Tooley Street London Dungeon was built upon. The wax museum of medieval torture was noted to be haunted. I’d like to share my experience from October 2000. My friend and I walked through the first part of the museum. We made it through the Medieval and Ecclesiastical Sections with no problem. The works were gruesome to say the least. Hangings, disembowelment, primitive surgical procedures, boiling to just name a few. The museum smelled of silicone, enamels and other artist materials. After viewing a couple cabinets containing real torture devices, we both entered the next part of the museum. It was a reproduction of Newgate Prison. Now the room consisted of two prison cells and a cage with a skeleton suspended in the air behind us. I stepped to the first cell to view the exhibit but soon felt strange. Feelings escalated from the time I first walked in to that room. The instant I crossed the threshold, I no longer smelled the artist materials. I just smelled the dank, humid, musty air. I felt a heaviness come over me. It felt as though I had 100 lbs of weight on my shoulders. Going near the cell, I felt nausea and had difficulty breathing. My head was pounding. My friend said she felt it too, but it felt as though the weight was pulling on her legs. I didn’t even really get to see what was in that first cell, cause I was too focused on feeling odd. The other cell had a man forced to drink water while his distended belly rose at least 8 inches. The feeling was in the whole area, but especially by that first cell. I tried to get back over there but couldn’t get too close. It wasn’t the contents of the cell that was bothersome, cause it was only a man about to be whipped. I saw far worse exhibits there. It was very strange. I wanted to get out of there and move on. Unfortunately, we were herded in to a room and went through a mock trial and sentenced to execution. I wanted so bad to get away from the room just before it. The trial seemed to take forever. I was quite seriously afraid I was going to throw up. I NEVER get like that. I generally have a cast iron stomach and like I said, the first part of the museum was extremely gory and didn’t phase me. So we were sentenced to death and put on a water ride to pass through a replica of Traitor’s Gate. We both still felt awful. I actually kept my eyes shut cause I feared with the extreme nausea, the littlest surprise would make me sick! The water ride took us through London’s Victorian Sewers. We came to the end of the boat ride and were led to the Jack the Ripper exhibit. We stepped out in to this room that was a simulated street. Just then, I felt the heaviness lift off of me, the nausea was going away and I felt refreshed. Again we saw some more gruesome, mutilated waxwork, but the air felt crisp and I felt normal. My friend said she felt the heaviness lift after we left that area and entered the Ripper exhibit. Out of curiosity we asked the gift store employee about our feeling. She said that many people come out of there saying that they felt weird. She said that every September they have occurrences in the Ripper exhibit. The wax corpses will be moved overnight or while unattended. I can’t remember exactly, but she said it was on the anniversary of an important event that happened in Ripper’s Life. The museum is supposed to be haunted by him at times. I believe that I read that his killings were made about a mile from the location of the museum. Still trying to find some history on Southwark, we ran into an employee outside of the museum at closing. He said that it is a 300 year old warehouse and is notorious with the employees for being haunted. He said that when they close up at night and all the lights are out, they get the . He also restated that the waxworks will move overnight. It’s not far from Tower Hill and the Tower of London (where all the executions took place). There’s also supposed to be a real dungeon nearby named the Clink. I think the Tooley street location closed up 2013 (so I should be rewriting this in past tense at times) but if anyone had similar experiences, let’s post them here!

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