In Plain Sight, Below: The London Underground and Subterranean Gothic

The London Underground, opened in 1863, stands as the world's first subterranean railway system. Its construction and operation have been accompanied by numerous accidents and eerie tales that have become part of its lore.

The initial construction employed the ‘cut and cover’ method, which involved excavating trenches along streets, laying tracks, and then covering them. One of the earliest major accidents associated with the London Underground system was the Hammersmith & City line disaster in 1861.

During the construction of the Hammersmith & City Railway, a viaduct was being built to carry the line through the Ladbroke Grove area. On November 6th, part of the viaduct collapsed, killing some of the construction workers. The collapse destroyed fourteen of the arches that had been completed and were being used by construction trains at the time.

An inquest into the disaster concluded that the deaths were accidental. No formal blame was assigned, but the incident underscored the challenges of early railway construction and the importance of geotechnical considerations.

These early tragedies not only highlighted the risks of subterranean engineering but also laid the groundwork for an atmosphere of dread that would later be echoed in ghost stories and gothic fiction.

The Underground's deep tunnels have given rise to numerous ghost stories. Covent Garden Underground Station is famously associated with the ghost of William Terriss, a celebrated Victorian actor. He was known for his performances at the Adelphi Theatre in London's West End. On 16 December 1897, Terriss was fatally stabbed outside the stage door of the Adelphi by fellow actor Richard Archer Prince.

Even though Covent Garden Station opened in 1907, a decade after Terriss's death, reports have linked his ghost to the station. Jack Hayden, a station employee, reported seeing a tall man in old-fashioned attire on the platform after hours in 1955. When approached, the figure vanished. Days later, both Hayden and a colleague, Rose Ring, heard screams from a young worker who claimed to have seen the same apparition. Upon being shown a photograph, the worker identified the figure as William Terriss.

Before the construction of Covent Garden Station, the site housed a bakery that Terriss reportedly frequented. Some speculate that his fondness for the location in life has tethered his spirit there in death.

As Above, So Below

The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans

The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans (1908) by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is a later Sherlock Holmes story featuring the London Underground. A man named Cadogan West is found dead on the tracks of the Underground near Aldgate, his body discovered mysteriously without a ticket and with secret submarine defence plans in his pocket. Holmes is called in to investigate, and it soon becomes clear that espionage, government secrets, and a carefully calculated murder are at play.

The story hinges on a hidden train siding—a non-public stretch of track where someone could place a body without being seen. This suggests that beneath London’s busy surface, there are secret spaces, forgotten parts of the city, hidden in plain sight—a trope in gaslamp fiction and horror. This suggests that the Underground is not only a transportation network, but a landscape of secrets like a hidden London beneath London.

The image of a body left in the cold, echoing tunnels of the Underground, untouched and unnoticed until morning, evokes feelings of claustrophobia and isolation. It uses the Underground not just as a setting, but as a symbol of buried corruption and the unknown.

The Red-Headed League

The Red-Headed League (1891) from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes plays into the subterranean/underground theme. A red-headed pawnbroker, Mr. Jabez Wilson, is hired by an unusual organisation—the so-called Red-Headed League—to copy out the Encyclopaedia Britannica for hours every day, leaving his shop under the care of his assistant, Vincent Spaulding. When the league suddenly vanishes without a trace, Wilson turns to Holmes. What unfolds is a cunning bank robbery plot involving a secret tunnel dug beneath the shop to reach a bank vault next door.

The entire scheme depends on a tunnel dug from the cellar of Wilson’s shop happening underfoot. It’s the perfect metaphor for the darkness beneath the respectable Victorian façade.

Spaulding is not who he claims to be, and neither is the street-level business. Just like the tunnel beneath the shop, the criminal intent is buried under layers of ordinary life, echoing the gaslamp motif of the sinister being in plain sight, unseen.

The Time Machine

The Morlocks from H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine (1895) are a quintessential example of subterranean horror. Though most of the story is set in the far future, it is steeped in Victorian anxieties about class and the unseen horrors that lie beneath.

The Morlocks are the evolutionary descendants of the Victorian working class, while the Eloi, the delicate surface dwellers, represent the upper class. The Morlocks represent a literal and metaphorical underclass hidden beneath the surface.

In the Victorian era, the upper classes believed they were in control. The Morlocks turn this upside down - the underclass evolves to become the predator, while the surface dwellers are soft and helpless. This taps into fears that the carefully constructed social order might not last, and might turn on those who benefited from it.

The Beast in the Cave

H.P. Lovecraft’s The Beast in the Cave, written when he was a very young man (1905), also explores what lies beneath, but shifts the focus from social structure to individual psychological horror. The story follows a man who becomes lost in the vast Mammoth Cave system in Kentucky, and as he is consumed by darkness, he is pursued by a strange, shuffling creature. When the creature is finally killed, it is revealed to be a man, long-lost and transformed by years of isolation underground into something subhuman.

The cave here is not just a setting, but a place of degeneration and forgotten time. Like Wells, Lovecraft imagines what happens when a human being is removed from the light of society, and the result is similarly monstrous.

The horror of The Beast in the Cave lies not in the creature’s violence, but in what it once was. The underground becomes a mirror of the human psyche, a place where identity disintegrates and reason fails. The claustrophobic setting, the loss of light, and the overwhelming silence all contribute to a slow unravelling of humanity itself.

The Cask of Amontillado

The Cask of Amontillado (1846) by Edgar Allan Poe follows Montresor, who lures his unsuspecting victim, Fortunato, into the catacombs beneath his palazzo, to verify a rare wine—Amontillado. Once deep underground, Montresor chains him to the wall and bricks him in alive, taking cold satisfaction in his perfect revenge.

The setting moves deeper and deeper underground, from the noisy carnival into the dark catacombs. With every step, the atmosphere becomes more claustrophobic, the air more oppressive, and the tone more sinister. It's a metaphorical descent into death, madness, or hell.

One of the most primal fears Poe exploits is being sealed away, trapped, and forgotten. Fortunato's terror turns from confusion to panic to despair as the bricks go up to seal a slow, inevitable end. This is psychological horror where the underground setting is both a place and a prison.

Beneath the Surface

From real-life construction accidents and ghost stories to classic literature, the subterranean world has always captured the Victorian imagination. The London Underground was a marvel of modern engineering, but it also opened a gateway into something deeper—into darkness, into isolation, into the unknown.

Writers of the gaslamp era and beyond used the underground not only as a setting, but as a symbol. It represents the buried things like secrets, guilt, class tensions, madness, and death. Whether it’s Holmes solving crimes beneath London’s streets, Morlocks feeding on surface dwellers, or Poe and Lovecraft exploring psychological and physical descent, the underground is always more than tunnels and tracks.

It is a space of transformation, where the known becomes the unknowable. Perhaps that is why it continues to haunt us, because deep down, we’re not afraid of the dark, but of what we might become in it.

Below is part 1 of my very own story of what could be Hidden Beneath: