OLD BAILEY HAUNTINGS

The Old Bailey / Central Criminal Court

The Old Bailey in London is haunted by a ghost which usually appears after very serious trials have been held.
The ghost is very shadowy and hard to tell if it is male or female.
Some people think it may have been an innocent person sent to his death from the Old Bailey.

A court of law has stood on this site for several hundred years, however, before the Old Bailey was build, the court was secondary to the massive prison that stood on the site. Newgate.

Renowned throughout the city, and throughout the world for its inhospitality and the many condemned that passed to their executions in the streets outside. The church across the street, St Sepulchre's tolled out the hour of execution, and even had a tunnel running to the prison, where a bellman would walk every night ringing his handbell and saying:


"All you that in the condemned hold do lie, Prepare you, for tomorrow you shall die; Watch all and pray, the hour is drawing near That you before the Almighty must appear; Examine well yourselves, in time repent, That you may not to eternal flames be sent: And when St. Sepulchre's bell tomorrow tolls, The Lord above have mercy on your souls. Past twelve o'clock!"


This gruesome tradition continued until Newgate was closed in the 20th Century, and the Old Bailey was built in its place.


In the Shadowlands, the building was often a huge centre for negative energy, and was mostly avoided until the prison was destroyed. After this however, the Hierarchy made use of the abandoned spaces beneath the new courtrooms and condemned their most hated enemies to be locked in cells in the old Newgate Prison where they would remain, fed by centuries of Angst until they were consumed slowly and painfully in the silence by their own Shadows. After that, their Shadow-Eaten souls would writhe in the pain of Oblivion until they, at last, were consumed. So brutal were the Hierarchy in bringing this about that the victims were often soulforged into their cells so that they may never escape. Many Renegade lords met their final ends here, and while no one has yet ventured back to Newgate since the Maelstrom, it is assumed that many of them are still there, crazed and Shadow-Eaten behind the cold brick facade that overlays the more modern court.