Bad vibes in certain places in london

[stevens27]

Does anyone else just get a horrid feeling in certain places in london?

The only one that particularly freaks me out is Russel Square tube station. I feel so much sadness and get quite on edge down on the platforms and I don't know why! Does anyone else feel this way about anywhere in London?

My only contribution to this is that Aldgate smells of poo. Always has done. Apparently there’s a massive sewer running down there.

Croydon is a London Borough

The platform at Moorgate that has the overground trains is like going back in time to the 1980s, with the Network SouthEast signs still up. Freaks me right out.

Street wise, the roads between Essex Road and Southgate Road in Islington are so creepy - big houses, but so q-u-i-e-t. I used to live nearby, but would do detours to avoid that bit.

I have a big soft spot for Caledonian Road (we used to call it Cally Road). Although I went there recently and was a bit sad it’s become more gentrified. Used to love the Ethiopian restaurants and short walk to Kings Cross and all the lovely pubs in Barnsbury.

One of those two platforms was the scene of a truly awful tube accident in 1975 in which 43 people died. (it used to be a tube terminus, but the platform itself is more or less unchanged). I only discovered this a few months ago despite using the line for decades. Explains a lot about the desolate feel. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moorgate_tube_crash

Yes! I remember that accident, as my dad was coming back from London that day and was late home. Scared me to death!

Haringey covers a very broad socio-economic spectrum. Highgate at one extreme and Tottenham at the other. Crunchy Crouch End in the middle. We have this in our hall:

Wait, you dislike the whole of North London from Tottenham and Finsbury Park to Hampstead and Totteridge?! 😃
What about the north city centre, like Regent Street and Trafalgar Square? Do they count? 🐉

Anywhere near the marches on a Saturday

I was brought up in Sanderstead but also lived in west Croydon for a few years after ds was born. So I know both ends of the Croydon spectrum pretty well 😂

Love it. I started off, more than 40 years ago, in Finsbury Park (v rough in those days) before moving up the Harringay ladder (fabulous fruit and veg and bread) and then scaling the heights of Crouch End/ Hornsey before moving out of London. I'm no stranger to some of the less salubrious bits of north London, I promise. I'm not wild on the over-gentrified, bland bits. But that morning in Wood Green... I used to use Wood Green tube station sometimes. I would definitely think twice about doing that now.

Definitely Stratford. Doesn't even feel like London to me as so much of it is newly built. I know the Olympic development is deemed a success overall but I find the whole place soulless and a bit menacing although admittedly I didn't know pre-redevelopment Stratford so have nothing to compare it to. Perhaps someone born and bred could confirm if they think it's an improvement or not.

Why do you think that something that happened nearly 50 years ago would result in a desolate feel now? Do you believe in ghosts or something? If so, how can you walk or travel around anywhere in London without getting a desolate feel? The plague, the Great Fire of London, the Blitz and all the other awful murders and accidents that will have gone on there over the centuries. If they all left their mark no one would be able to bear to live there, surely?

During the day the Wellcome Museum- cafe, free museum and reading room nice loos.......

@OldHabitsDieScreaming 🤣🤣

I don't think it's anything supernatural. Just part of our animal senses and instinct picking up tiny details and telling us whether there is a threat or whether we can relax. Of course, often it's OTT or our brains misinterpret the information.

Sad about Croydon. As a teenager in the 90s I spent many happy Saturday afternoons hanging out at the Whitgift Centre… walking through Allders, popping into Athena to look through the posters…
Surrey Street Market always had a real old-school London feel to it.
Hope it gets some investment soon.

@Abeona - it's all pscyhology based. This is article below is an interesting read.

Aparently quietness or more quietness than you'd expect also makes people feel a place is a bit creepy. I think that's why a number of the tube stations here are mentioned - they tend to be Picadilly line ones which in central london are very deep and quiet late at night other than the train sound. they are isolated from traffic noise.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/out-the-ooze/201511/what-makes-house-feel-haunted

Fair point. On reflection, “explains a lot about the desolate feel” was not what I really meant to say.

What I meant was that the place already feels dark, cold and oppressive and to then learn that in my lifetime, in a spot that still looks identical, 43 people had died doing what I was doing- just going to work, makes the station feel even more grim and desolate to me. So it amplifies how negatively I feel about the place now, but does indeed not explain anything about how I found it unpleasant before I knew about the accident.

Barnes is spooky 😂 I love it despite it's strangely murderous history. Amelia Dyer the baby farmer killed and disposed of hundreds of babies, there was a strangler on the common and there's a hidden, disused graveyard. Where gay men go cruising.

I feel sad when I go past the King's Cross memorial for the victims of the 1987 fire, which I do several times a week. Not desolate exactly - I don't believe in ghosts- but sad. They didn't have an easy death.

After saying that today they actually announced the train platform 15 minutes early and we got to board straight after they announced it 😁

West Londoner here, and anywhere north of the Harrow Road is the badlands of London. Same goes for anywhere east of Piccadilly Circus and south of the river 😉

Thank you for being so rational about it.

Sorry if I sounded fierce! I used to work with someone who had grown up just down the street from Dennis Nilsen's house in Cranley Gardens, Muswell Hill. We started working together in late 1981 and because my family had originally come from Muswell Hill we talked about the street and she said how nice it was, how much her parents liked living there etc. Then in 1983 when they started to dig up the drains and find the remains of all his victims she changed her tune and started talking about how she'd known there was something creepy going on there, she'd always had a bad vibe walking past the house to school (which would have been before he even lived there). I'm afraid it's one of those things that drives me bonkers.

Totally agree about the bad vibes around Euston though, there's something off about that area. And I hated going through Brixton, I don't know if it was the prison or something like that, although going past Wormwood Scrubs never makes me feel that strange.