How to Be a Dark Tourist in London

The Old Operating Theatre in Southwark lures you into a false sense of security. “Oh, this isn’t so bad,” you tell yourself as you enter a quaint-looking attic, meandering past herbs and tools once believed to herald medical miracles. Then you meet that hanging skeleton, its ribs deformed by a lifetime of wearing corsets. You read the diaries of patients that endured brain surgery without anaesthetic. You see, on the walls, looming diagrams of eye surgeries, scissors graphically piercing the whites. Hypochondriacs need not enter.

You’ll have to venture off the beaten track for this man-made cave network, which was chiselled into the far side of Elmstead in southeast London. However, the journey’s worthwhile. Chislehurst Caves have served all manner of ghostly purposes since opening to the public in 1900, from storing World War I munitions to being the deepest air-raid shelter in London during the Blitz. Today, they’re an esoteric locale for concerts and weddings, albeit plagued by something… sinister. A priest supposedly died of fright down here and a man that stayed overnight reported sounds of heavy breathing behind him; he’s since said that nothing could tempt him back.