Haunted London Walk!!!

For first timers to both London and Paris, I would highly recommend getting this nifty travelling tool known as the London Pass (or conversely the Paris Pass). For the price of £77, one gets access to all the major tourist spots with special cut-the-queue lines, discounts on various restaurants and services and more importantly, FREE access to the London Tube for three full days! A VERY good deal indeed for those planning on maximizing their visits on limited tour dates.

Upon looking at the London Pass booklet, my cousins and I were stoked to find a special offer for the Blood and Tears Haunted London Walk. For the price of £7.00, we got to go on this highly-rated and recommended walking tour, focusing on the bizarre, creepy and occult-ish elements of this medieval city.

* Having met our guide, Declan McHugh, on the Barbican tube station, we started our one hour and 45 minute walking tour of London's gruesome and freaky history, including areas where Jack the Ripper's victims were found as well as other English oddities.

* What fun it was finding William Wallace's (aka Mel Gibson of Braveheart) execution spot etched on some random building!

* Taking us on twists and turns around London's streets and alleyways, our guide led us to the Golden Boy of Pye Corner, a monument denoting the spot where the Great Fire of London of 1666 (the date itself being significantly creepy) mysteriously stopped.

* Walking by the Holborn Viaduct, we came across this well-lit church with a gated fence. Oddly named the St Sepulchre-without-Newgate Church, this was a site of a lot of executions back in the day.

* Right across the Church is the Central Criminal Court of England and Wales, more colloquially known as Old Bailey, where criminals have been tried and executed for hundreds of years. A well-known story involves a figure suddenly appearing in the building during important trials, as having been witnessed by judges, lawyers and policemen.

* Don't expect this tour to be a leisurely walk amidst the quiet streets of night time London! Prepare very comfortable walking (or running) shoes as our guide likes to walk briskly from one point of interest to another.

* The creepiest part of the tour, where I legitimately got goosebumps and chills, was when our guide motioned for us to enter this narrow and dark alleyway located on Fleet Street...

* Upon reaching the end of the alley, we were told that this was the site of Sweeney Todd's barber shop! While I was grasping at the fact that Sweeney Todd was an actual historical person, our guide recounted his infamy, having allegedly robbed and killed at least 150 people here by slitting their throats. You know that eerie, unsettling feeling that someone's watching you? Yep, got it here!

* Another point of interest along Fleet Street is this monument with a statue of a dragon on top, denoting the location of Temple Bar. Our guide had some weird conspiracy theories about this monument, the gist of which escapes me.

* Other stops in the tour included areas where Jack the Ripper and the Yorkshire Ripper supposedly hung-out in, Pubs where patrons have mysteriously disappeared from and a house which our guide felt belonged to a person who was truly evil due to some weird figurines posted on his windows (including a demonic figure)... possibly an ex of his?

* All in all, Declan was an awesome tour guide! Filling his set with theatrics, psychological tests, serial killer profiling tips, a discussion on highly-rated horror flicks, and the occasional odd story here and there, this walk was very worth the £7.00 that I paid. Aside from this haunted walk, he also does the Shakespeare city walk, for those of us who are interested in the playwright's life.

Props to the guide! (Shown here signing his book, Bloody London: A shocking guide to London's Gruesome Past and Present, for sale in Amazon.com and for a special discounted price, from the author himself)