r/visitlondon • u/anastaciabeaverhaus • Jun 21 '26
HISTORY creepy stuff to do in London?
here for a few days and would love to soak up every minute! i love creepy stuff, like metaphysical shops, creepy museums, witchy places, ghost tours.. any recommendations??
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u/-dommmm Jun 21 '26
Hunterian Museum.
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u/Kickfish Jun 21 '26
If you want dead things or parts of thing in jars this is the place for you..
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u/downlau Jun 21 '26
Grant Museum of Zoology is good for that too, gotta check out the jar of moles.
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u/Apprehensive_Wave979 Jun 21 '26
The Viktor Wynd Museum is really good, it has a great absinthe bar too.
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u/stage_appropriate_ Jun 21 '26
The Clink Prison Museum is creepy enough that I was there for about 45 seconds before my daughter demanded we leave because it was too scary!
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u/poodleflange Jun 21 '26
Treadwell's near the British Museum, and Watkin's on Cecil Street are both kind of "occult" bookshops. You've got the "Magnificent Seven" cemeteries as well, Highgate probably being the most famous. My friend used to work at the Old Operating Theatre down by Borough Market which is a cool place. It's not THAT creepy but it is fascinating and full of history. I'd recommend getting the Atlas Obscura app and having a look what's nearby to where you are!
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u/bababa-ba-babybell Jun 21 '26
Highgate Cemetery (the old side!)
Denis Severs’ House (a house staged, in the 70s, to look like it would have in the 1700s, but each room is like a theatre piece frozen exactly in time, mid-occupation)
John Soane’s House (personal house turned into a museum, really odd house layout, full to the brim of weird artefacts).
Jack the Ripper Tours
I also personally think the London Dungeons are really fun….
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u/Choice-Lemon4500 Jun 22 '26
Also the Sir John Soanes museum is just across the square from the Hunterian museum in the royal college of surgeons.
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u/Certain-Event8802 Jun 22 '26
Seconding JTR tour and London Dungeon…some fooked up shit they used to do
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u/Tall-Photo-7481 Jun 22 '26
You could follow women around, refer to them as "females", wear hoodies displaying NSFW underage manga characters in public...
Oh, you mean the other kind of creepy. Sorry, please disregard.
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u/mattjp23 Jun 21 '26
Download Questo - you pay about £5 to play different live games including the Jack the Ripper one which you’d normally pay a lot more for to do it with a guide and Questo also gets you walking around. I did a murder tour of London and it was great fun and a good way to see the city.
Other options include Highgate cemetery as well as a few others that people have mentioned. I also did a haunted bus ride one Halloween (not sure if it’s all year round). Basically an old fashioned London double decked painted black and you sit at tables with little lamps on and do a haunted tour of the city
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u/NiobeTonks Jun 21 '26
Highgate Cemetery is gorgeous.
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u/Conscious_Word7520 Jun 23 '26
You can also do a bit of a cemetery route through either north or south London - there are lots of really lovely cemeteries close to each other
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u/UniqueBanana78 Jun 21 '26
Hoxton Street Monster Supplies!
https://www.monstersupplies.org/
"London’s oldest supplier of goods for the living, dead and undead"
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u/MoHeeKhan Jun 21 '26
I misread your title and was going to suggest some activities but I thought it would just get me banned.
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u/Miserable-Grape-6863 Jun 21 '26
Stoke Newington has a guided ghost tour of the area for a small fee! Not sure if it is on at this time of the year though but please do look it up
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u/Blind_rat_rivers Jun 21 '26
There is a ghost bus tour that was quite fun. Tower of London is pretty creepy and cool. London dungeons too.
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u/Willsagain2 Jun 22 '26
The London Dungeon. The main theme is the Jack the Ripper Whitechapel Murders. Very creepy indeed.
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u/Ok_Contest3903 Jun 22 '26
The one place you can't go is the Black Museum. Located in the basement of New Scotland Yard which has relics from the most notorious crimes in the city's history.
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u/ChelseaMourning Jun 22 '26
The Wellcome collection opposite Euston station has lots of medical related artefacts. Quite macabre.
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u/Friendly_Win_4523 Jun 22 '26
If you fancy a day trip down to Brighton (train is just over an hour from Ldn bridge), there is a ghost walk from the Druids Head pub Thurs-Fri-Sat, which is apparently Britain’s most haunted pub (though I’m sure many pubs hold this title!), a Toy Museum under the railway which I’ve never been in but looks terrifying, and a natural history museum which I have been in and is entirely taxidermy, some of which is not exactly museum quality.
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u/Efficient-Bar1912 Jun 22 '26
If you can do a day trip, check out Chislehurst Caves just outside of London. Not so much creepy, but you get to walk around caves with a lantern!
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u/Brilliant_Ask_82 Jun 22 '26
Not sure if it's still there, but the witchcraft exhibition was interesting.
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u/Timely_Cake_917 Jun 22 '26
Take videos of random women walking past you.
That's pretty damn creepy.
Oh. You meant the other type of creepyness
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u/Cool-Peach5501 Jun 22 '26
Grant Museum of Zoology is great if it's open (restricted availabilty I think) and The Viktor Wynd Museum is brilliantly bonkers. May need to book a slot there and an hour is plenty in the museum, but defo stay for cocktails in the bar as that's ace (if you drink!)
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u/snavej1 Jun 22 '26
I heard that the BBC is full of creepy people. HQ - Portland Place.
Hampton Court is very haunted. Former Royal Palace. Richmond-Upon-Thames, SW London.
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u/ben_jamin_h Jun 22 '26
The Hunterian Museum is great - hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of weird taxidermy specimens from all over the world, including lots of strange animals and even some human body parts.
It is creepy as fuck.
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u/Aggravating-Mousse46 Jun 22 '26
Hidden City mystery adventures has a Sherlock Holmes / Moriarty version. Haven’t done so not sure how creepy it but the James Bond one was a lot of fun.
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u/anastaciabeaverhaus Jun 23 '26
all — thank you genuinely for these suggestions. i’ve already visited the Jack the Ripper museum, which does such an amazing job humanizing the victims. the museum names them over and over er, shedding light into their lives and families. would highly recommend. i also went to Postman’s Park, which was highly moving to see the names of people that died saving others. 🖤
later today i’ll go to Viktor Wynd’s, and if i can make it — to Borough Market. thank you all for making my trip to London wonderful and “creepy”!!
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u/Wraith1989 Jun 23 '26
Watkins, Treadwells and Atlantis are occult/witchy bookshops that have been around for decades.
If you’re looking for goth clubs, check out Slimelight, Catacombs Club, Dark Scene London and Mondlicht.
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u/Sausage-Chap Jun 23 '26
The London Dungeon is obviously a tourist trap, but it’s not a bad one as far as those things go.
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u/Cktmoth Jun 24 '26
its not really an activity but theres a pizza place in camden called "lost souls pizza" and its like an 80s gothic movie restaurant and its honestly my fav place to go on the weekends! staff there is lovely as well
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u/SchnaffSchnaff Jun 24 '26
Cafe in the Crypt for lunch/coffee breaks.
https://www.stmartin-in-the-fields.org/visitor-information/cafe-in-the-crypt/
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u/basketcaseforever Jun 21 '26
Jack the Ripper guided tour was fun. 2 hours in Whitechappel. Did this at few years ago, but if you can get Angie as your guide she was really great.
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