London’s spookiest spots for Halloween: Parkland walk

We head down to London’s abandoned railway, as one of the spookiest places in the capital this Halloween

Transcript

00:00It's October, the spookiest month of the lot, and London is a city filled with

00:06scary spots, but today I've come somewhere a bit off the beaten track,

00:11quite literally. In North London, between Finsbury Park and Highgate Woods is

00:16Parkland Walk, an abandoned railway track. Now a haven for dog walkers, runners,

00:23cyclists and those out on a stroll, it doesn't seem that scary, but when it's

00:28silent and there's no one else around but overgrown grass where tracks used to

00:32be, and ominous looking tunnels in the distance, it feels like you're in a

00:36post-apocalyptic movie. The Parkland Walk is a 3.1 mile linear green pedestrian

00:44and cycle route in London, which follows the course of the railway line that used

00:49to run between Finsbury Park and Alexandra Palace, through Stroud Green,

00:53Crouch End, Highgate and Muswell Hill. After the track was lifted, most of the

01:01platforms and stations built here were demolished. The sections of the line from

01:06Finsbury Park to Highgate and from Highgate to Alexandra Palace, excluding

01:11the intermediate section through the tunnels and station at Highgate, were

01:15converted into the Parkland Walk. Now this was officially opened in 1984

01:22following extensive resurfacing and improvements to access, and while during

01:28the day and summer months it's a pleasant walking spot, at winter and

01:33later night it's a dystopian setting. It feels like a place where werewolves and

01:38zombies, even zombie werewolves, are ready to pounce at any moment.

01:44Halloween this month, what do you think is the most spooky area of London?

01:50It's got to be SC1, isn't it? Going down into Bermondsey, those lovely little back roads,

01:54yeah fantastic, get down to Walkme Street, round there, absolutely fabulous,

01:58very, very, very atmospheric, especially if there's a bit of a mist, you know,

02:01then from right there up to Tower Bridge, yeah and I love it, or Salwane as we

02:05called it in Ireland, which is where my family's from.

02:07You know what, I don't know if this sounds, certain places like the

02:17Houses of Parliament, the Buckingham Palace, those places that where power

02:21exists, that's what scares me. Not the fabricated things that we create for

02:27Halloween, it's reality. What scares you is what people can do to you if you say

02:32the wrong thing in the wrong place. Think of, we're in Black History Month, right?

02:35Think of Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, do you have something to say? That's what you need to be

02:41scared of, the people who are in power, so I'm scared of the Houses of Parliament,

02:45even though I've presented in the Houses of Parliament, I was watching my back,

02:48do you know what I mean?

02:49For more Parkland Walk and actual news from across the capital, as well as what's on this Halloween and October,

02:56head to LondonWorld.com