In order for the light to shine so brightly, the darkness must be present. – Francis Bacon
On the 14th of December 1836 London Bridge Station was opened, making it the oldest London railway terminus still running though not the earliest. This singular event laid the groundwork for many countless instances of coincidence that reverberated across the timewaves of totality. Indeed, long before this event Tooley Street in Old Southwark was and still is drenched thick with the memories, actions, incidents and dynamics of a myriad of ghost spirits, still tethered in their transitory bardo to their past hungers, violence and cyclical aimless meanderings. Industrious Roman engineers bridged and laid down roads across the three separate sandy isles bordered by a riverside of mud and marsh to create Southwark, draining the waters to build a foundation that would be part of the very bedrock of the Southbank. Mosaic paving, under floor heating, pots and dishes imported from France, bone needles, hairpins and statues to their gods all lay compacted and smashed into the substrata alongside the crushed skulls and countless human remains.
Tooley Street throughout history has held the audience and location of many ritualistic endeavours. A cage, pillory and whipping post was one such spectacle. “Visible in the streets were pillories for neck and hands, stocks for feet, chains for streets to stop them in need; in the suburbs, oak cages for offenders and pounds for animals.” – Taken from ‘Diary Venetian Embassy’ London, temp. James I ‘ Quarterly Review 1857’. In 1320, a man was put into the pillory for cheating from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Soothsayers, prophets, vintners, bakers and all manner of people were punished here for any or all seemed slights, the selling of rotten food, bad wine or what was deemed at the time immoral behaviour. In 1780 a coachman died in the pillory before the time of his sentence had expired. Such was the casual and brutal violence tattooed to the fabric of this location over time. The very air itself solid, thick, pungent, rank and dense to suffocating from the theatres, ale houses, prisons, warehouses, brothels, bear pits and bull baiting arenas. Dogs ripping to shreds poor helpless animals tethered to stakes. Copious amounts of carnage and extreme butchery everywhere.
The London Dungeon was opened in Tooley Street in 1974 by Annabel Geddes. Originally located underneath the vast 50-foot-high arches (plus 24 feet down required to firm up the foundations) of the London Bridge railway station viaduct this attraction was the bloody and torture themed damaged psychotic cousin of Madame Tussauds over in Baker Street. After 39 years The London Dungeon moved from Tooley Street in 2013. One of the early hopeful employees of the London Dungeon was a one Peter Christopherson, musician, video director, commercial artist, designer and photographer, and a former member of the British design agency Hipgnosis. The Dungeon required life like mannequins that were needed for the numerous gory and macabre historically themed tableaux that inhabited its dark labyrinthine corridors. Peter in one of his many incarnations had worked with the Casualties Union in conjunction with Red Cross and St. John’s Ambulance. In the zine Dirt issue number three he said: “…we did a train crash for the local emergency services which went very well. Appeared on Blue Peter and various things like that. I really enjoyed it actually…” He had while working with these organisations developed profoundly realistic techniques to create and photograph stunning and extremely authentic wounds in a variety of emergency situations. Some of his remarkable work can still be found in instruction manuals for paramedics. Sadly, when Peter delivered his work to The London Dungeon, they were somewhat horrified. The work he had created was deemed far to real and unsettling and was subsequently rejected for a more Disneyfied product by another supplier.
Crossfade to a postage stamp sized flat in Hackney 1997. A long-haired jobless shamanic space cadet and his Viking related Production Assistant girlfriend languish over a Saag Paneer and Naan bread whilst listening to Funki Porcini’s Love, Pussycats and Carwrecks after a large and extremely psychedelically dissolute weekend in Shoreditch. A copy of The Stage and an advert requesting for any actors to become “Warders” at The London Dungeon on the last but one page was brought to my attention. “You should go for this pet.” said she. After studying the advert, I prepared my headshot, letter and CV and mailed it off to The London Dungeon the very next day. One week later I received a letter requesting me to attend an audition at The London Dungeon. I had lived in London since I finished my three-year training at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art. While travelling to and from school in the early 90s I had lived for two years in a four-story house in Greenwich. Time and again while travelling by train I had passed over and through London Bridge station, occasionally seeing a glimpse of The London Dungeon red on black signage as I passed along the curve of the railway lines. Each time I’d travelled into London and spotted the Dungeon sign from the carriage a strong persistent flash of a strange and unspeakable knowing feeling had entered into my being. Above and across the Dungeon’s entrance the blood red words “Enter at Your Peril” were embedded into the sandy concrete, shouting at me as I walked along into the long, dark and forbidding corridor into the bowels of the Dungeon to my audition. One week later I was informed that I’d been hired and was to begin what turned out to be my two-year tenure as a “Warder” in The London Dungeon, Monday to Sunday, eight hours a day, with two floating days off per week. During my time there I reached the level of supervisor where I organised the rota and inhabited the Dungeon. A professional ghoul with a license to scare.
During my first day I encountered what can be considered to be my one and only time coming into contact with a ghost or as one of the numerous ghosthunter teams that regularly visited the Dungeon would call a “spectral energy”. Donovan, a Canadian and former ghost house manager who was my then immediate manager had been present during my audition and kindly spent my first day showing me the ropes. I shadowed him through the vast and endless Dungeon. Without his deep knowledge and expertise at seeing in an almost pitch dark and luridly lit venue, which was violently noisy and continuously bombarded by concealed vomit worthy olfactory machines pumping out rotting flesh smells and the like, I would have easily got lost, gone mad or passed out. Blind corner after blind corner, passageway after passageway, secret passage after secret passage, hidden doorway after hidden doorway, vestibule after vestibule, I hovered closely to him like a vampire bat drawing blood through the Jack the Ripper exhibition, an autopsy theatre, The Great Fire of London, The Thomas Becket exhibit, The French Revolution Guillotine, The Court Room and an endless selection of torture equipment in cases. Finally, outside the Court Room, which was a red curtained and wooden panelled replica of an old court room where visitors would be treated to being sentenced to death by a judge, Donovan asked me how I liked the experience so far. I said that I was somewhat concussed since the trains high up above had been hammer pounding in tandem with the sensory war that I had subjected myself to. However, I was not a shirker and said that I would give it my very best shot. Each “Warder” at the Dungeon was required to inhabit a character. Donovan then asked me what my name would be. I paused to think. Suddenly from behind me in a clear, firm and sharply whispered nearly hissing voice the name “Aaaarthuuuurrrrrr” was directed at me. I looked smartly around. Nobody was there. I looked at Donovan. “Did you hear that?” I said. “Hear what?” he replied. We were completely alone. I thought that maybe some trick on the new boy was being played here but no apparent speakers or wires or paraphernalia were evident. I felt that the name was a direct order and in respect to the force that emanated it I said to Donovan; “My name is Arthur. Arthur Arthurson.” I became Arthur Arthurson over the course of two years, whom I finally created into an 18th century highwayman, alchemist, ceremonial magician and bastard child of Sir Edmond Halley. Later I was to discover that seventy people had died under the arches at Tooley Street during a bombing raid in World War Two. The arches at Tooley Street near London Bridge had been used as a shelter. No bodies were recovered from the mountain of rubble. I often wonder to this day if one of the many souls that had tragically died there had actually tried to contact me. I sincerely hope that my character gave pleasure and reverence to whomever “Arthur” was. I recorded this particular story for a sound art piece in London by Robin Rimbaud (aka Scanner).
Hiding within the exhibits was a speciality of mine. It took considerable self-control and deep levels of meditational stillness to merge with the costumed mannequins. It would take sometimes ten to fifteen minutes of total stillness before a group of visitors to slowly and nervously happen upon the exhibit I was concealed in. Ninja techniques feature an ability called Tanuki-gakure which is the practice of climbing a tree and camouflaging oneself within the foliage. During my time in the Dungeon, it is estimated I professionally frightened over two million visitors. One group of South Korean students I left screaming lying flat face down on the floor as I broke my frozen statuesque presence with the words; “Excuuuuuse meeeeee!!!”. A large sign at the beginning of the Dungeon clearly stated to visitors that “live” actors were inside the venue and that anyone with serious heart conditions should not enter whatsoever. And yet this fact was usually forgotten. Sometimes the thick stone slab floors that paved the Dungeon were wet with spilled drinks, vomit and urine. I recall a story being recounted to me by one of the older employees of the Dungeon. Allegedly an elderly lady during the 1970s had been walking down Tooley Street past the Dungeon. Sadly, without any real malice or evil intent, someone dressed as a demon faced monk jumped out from the front entrance and scared her. She allegedly dropped dead from a heart attack. I could not confirm during my time at the Dungeon whether this story was true or false. Not even my own father recognised me while I was dressed in full Dungeon cloaked battle regalia during one unexpected visit. Such was the total transformation I undertook to become Arthur Arthurson.
The advert in The Stage had drawn a large, wide and eclectic crowd of actors, performance artists and consummate performers to the Dungeon alongside the pre-existing inmates of this wild and varied troupe; Mr. De’Ath (a former James Bond live on stage show stuntman/actor and an EastEnders walk-on part character who later became the Events Manager), Kat (a blonde female artiste who stated to me that she was part of the army of the undead and who had incisor fangs with re-enforced titanium stents surgically implanted into her skull), Edward T Bone, The Beast of Whitechapel (a six foot tall South Londoner who wore a real human leg bone chained on his back with a long black smock, spiked gloves, belt and make up that looked tribal and utterly insane), Peter (a performer who had a very serious fixation on Charles the First and dressed in historically precise and correct costume with gory severed throat make up), Dingle Fingle (a circus artist still active today dressed in traditional and immaculate Count Dracula costume who only appeared at corporate events with a head high trapeze perch that he did astounding acrobatics from), Mr. Pinkus (a former NASA scientist who renounced his former life and became a Ninja swordsman with monks in Japan and dressed like a Jedi with his hair in vast dreads. He taught and trained me in the ways of sword fighting at sessions that were held in public for a select chosen few in the Dungeon), Paul (a stand-up comedian and former Natural Theatre Company member who occasionally turned up on adverts for a well-known painkiller), Mother (a completely silent ultra-thin punk Goth who dressed as the Grim Reaper with a massive scythe while operating the boat ride called The River of Death), Nick (a former lawyer who was dressed in perfect 18th century clothing with death face make up), Lou (a petit and beautiful classically trained violinist who ended up having a child with one of the Massive Attack crew) and a Town Crier champion, a real ex-former Dungeon mistress and numerous seasoned performers of varying skills and abilities. To say the atmosphere inside the Dungeon was heady and fertile with possibly and electricity was an understatement. It was the Suicide Squad, Doom Patrol and The Rocky Horror Picture Show all rolled into one. Occasionally a low comment from a spiteful member of the public such as, “This is where all the failed actors go!” from some ignorant and stupid fool would be reported and acted upon like a virus across the Dungeon by its inhabitants, with that person being targeted without any mercy in the most unholy and relentless way, often ending in tears on their part. On another occasion Grace Dent, the columnist, broadcaster and author, after having looked over my Twitter feed, decided that the best way to insult an act for one year’s Eurovision Song Contest was to drunkenly type; “Get off the stage you failed London Dungeon actor!!!” People like Dent only have sarcasm and don’t possess the actual balls or ability to work in such a physically demanding and pressured environment.
Indeed, it didn’t just take balls but also personal sacrifice, raw physical strength and unending endurance. Such was the hardcore devotion and deadly seriousness of this cult, our cult, our world and our sublime, unadulterated and unspeakable magick, often unseen and always underappreciated eight hours a day. Such was being a part of a crack team of attack artists who took pride in their ability to force coach load after coach load of arrogant self-possessed teenagers to end up pissing on the floor in uncontrollable fear. Corporate events offered me a chance to enjoy the company, if only briefly, of some well-known people. Ingrid Pitt, the actor of many Hammer films turned up for a spot of radio and was a charming and lovely presence, signing photos and recounting stories of her time in film. Barry Humphries (Dame Edna Everage and Sir Les Patterson) turned up outside the Court Room suitably dressed in a suit, cloak and wide brimmed hat while I lead him to his death sentence by the Judge, a similar fate that was meted out to Judith Chalmers (TV presenter of the travel show Wish You Were Here…?) which I mentioned while passing sentence as the Judge on her that maybe she “Wish you weren’t here! Mwah, Ha, Ha, Haaa!”. An original sixteenth century judge’s death script was employed during the Court Room sessions which inevitably descended into some form of comedic ribald earthy chaos. “Don’t be shy, it’s time to die!”, “Enjoy your death, it’s your birth in reverse!” and “I’ll see you in Hell!” were catchphrases that I used on a regular basis. However, one particular celebrity proved to be more than able at giving back what he was given after I was ordered by a then recent new Dungeon General Manager from Newcastle to deliver his displeasure. Jonathan Ross (TV and Radio presenter and film critic) was expected to meet and greet the winners from a well-known gaming console competition inside the Dungeon. He never turned up. It seems that his management and the Dungeon management had failed to acknowledge the fact that Mr. Ross was vector inbound from a holiday in Florida with his family and that the proposed meet and greet wouldn’t be physically possible. Later in the evening Mr. Ross would attend the second part of the competition prize event. The General Manager of the Dungeon had ordered me to “have a go at him” at a screening of William Castle’s 1959 film The Tingler in The Barbican that a group of Dungeoneers were meant to stalk and haunt along with the winners of this now fast failing competition prize event. As soon as Mr. Ross began his presentation of the film I began to heckle him persistently. It wasn’t easy and had to steal myself to do it. Finally, Mr. Ross responded, “Do you know what they call people like you in the profession? A fucking nuisance!” The audience fell apart and my objective had been achieved much to the appalled horror of my fellow Dungeoneers. Afterwards in the bar I talked to Mr. Ross and explained why I had been asked to heckle him. He stood there six foot tall looking down at me, probably perplexed why I even existed. We then chatted amiably since it quickly became apparent that I had hung out and knew his father-in-law through a friend. Strangeness and coincidence, it seems comes in many unseen and unpredictable forms.
During the last month of my employment at the Dungeon I suffered what I can only call a total and complete nervous breakdown. Being forced to move five times across London in as many months while caring for a seriously disabled partner with Fibromyalgia, working in for all intents and purposes what was a sensory concussion chamber were all contributing factors of this sorry state of affairs. Even the regular imbibing of strong hashish with a small select group of fellow Dungeoneers while dressed in full costume, strolling in full character berating the general public along the riverbank could alleviate the crushing black scorpion depression that straddled my troubled mind. We looked like a gothic stoner version of The Reservoir Dogs, smoking joints while casually walking away from some wet work in a torture chamber. I made attempts at reaching old friends to help me with my depression and subsequent breakdown. I phoned in desperation a friend in Brighton, telling them that I’d had a breakdown. It very much saddened me that they genuinely believed in the New Age verbal diarrhoea reply I received from them on the other end of the phone; “You’ve a had breakthrough darling! A breakthrough!” I had been trained to operate the Dungeon’s indoor boat ride called The River of Death. This was sold by the Dungeon at one point as “Europe’s only indoor boat ride” which I found to be somewhat embarrassing and very possibly untrue. There was a microphone connected to a speaker system inside and around the boat ride which delivered my state of mind on one occasion. “Deploy and destroy!” I barked. I pressed the red button that sent the river boats with guests off for execution down The River of Death to finally end up in front of a firing squad armed with muskets at the top of a fifty-foot-high lift only then to be reversed on a turntable propelled backwards down a death slide for 100 feet. At one point I was filmed by the BBC programme See Hear alongside the Dungeon’s superb deaf actress Sarah Beauvoisin, who’s detailed character work added depth and passion to the proceedings. During one long hot Summer the boat failed and a group of five people were left hanging in a steep gradient angel, stuck on a portion of the death slide. It took mechanics three hours to extract them from the boat which had little skeleton stickers warning folks not to stand up and rock the boat.
“When I leave the Dungeon there will be nothing but chaos and justice.” was peculiar missive that passed from my lips on my very last day at the Dungeon over the boat ride speakers. Bizarrely on that very day a rubbish bin for some strange reason outside on Tooley Street inexplicably caught fire, a fire that I saw spread in my mind’s eye in a vast THC induced slow motion backdraft plume long and deep back into 1861, when tons of tallow and oil poured and oozed down into the river from burning warehouses during the Tooley Street fire, settling into a massive slick onto the surface of the Thames River, which then itself caught fire, burning like the very flames of hell itself one hundred feet high, the docks melting white hot, animals and people screaming, screeching, dying, the fire never stopping for two solid weeks unabated. In the ashes of my memories, a mountainous desert of red and black ruin, smouldering and steaming, I can only salvage these charred fragmentary words and hope that they do service and remembrance to the legions of the dead that still stalk and haunt the transformed and now mutated concrete, glass, steel and chrome sanitised environs of Tooley Street.
This is an expanded version of the article that originally appeared in Rituals & Declarations – Volume 2, Issue 2 – Spring 2021.
Sheer Zed ~ Author • Buddhist Shaman • Musician 