The London Subways May Have Been Designed To Avoid The Plague Pits
In the year 1863, the city of London began the construction of their underground subway system, also known as “the tube”. Looking at the London subway maps today, the design seems a bit odd, because the tracks go in a zig-zag pattern, rather than having the trains traveling back and forth in straight lines.
Once the workers began digging underground, they uncovered these massive plague pits. According to a researcher named Catharine Arnold, engineers found pits “so dense with human remains that they could not be tunneled through”. They had no choice but to go around the piles of dead bodies.
People working for the government say this is just a rumor, because there are no written records that indicate that the plague pits caused a problem during original construction in the 1800’s. However, it’s possible that the city did not want this on the record, because it may be interpreted as disrespectful to the dead.
Many people heard the stories that have been passed down over the years that the plague pits truly were the cause of the subway design, and the most recent 2015 expansion of the subway system uncovered a plague pit right away. With so many workers on the site, it was impossible to silence them. After all- with over 100,000 bodies buried in mass graves underneath the city streets, it would be impossible not to encounter at least one when digging tunnels under London.
In 2016, a reporter for the BBC did a lot of research into the construction of the London subway system, and learned that the workers did, in fact, find hundreds of bodies from plague pits, and that the government attempted to cover it up. In some cases, the bones were dropped inside of concrete arches and pillars, because they had no idea where else to hide them.
The Aldgate Station is rumored to have been one of the only spots where they had no choice but to build directly on top of one of the plague pits, instead of moving around it. This means that the remains of the dead were mixed with the concrete, or their bones were simply discarded during the construction process. There have been several reports of strange sounds echoing in the Aldgate Station, specifically by employees who are there alone at night.
The worst recorded event to ever happen at the Aldgate Station was when an electrician was working on some faulty wiring. Suddenly, he became electrocuted, and it sent a jolt through his body. His co-workers were nearby, and turned to look at their friend. Just as he began to convulse with electricity surging through his body, the co-workers say that they saw a ghostly woman wearing 17th Century clothing standing over the man and stroking his hair, as if to comfort him.