London Haunted Southwark Self Guided Ghost Tour
- 1h 30m
- Free cancellation up to 24h before
- Guided in English
- Instant confirmation
Highlights
This self-guided ghost walk will take you on a chilling journey through the creepies places in Southwark. Along the way, you'll learn about the bishop who owned licensed brothels here, debtors who died in the Marshalsea, and fifteen thousand paupers that went into one graveyard. The Questo app makes you the newest recruit of a paranormal bureau and gives you its Bankside file, unsolved since 1956. At 13 stops from the Clink to the original Globe site, the dead make their case: a priest starved in the Clink, the licensed women known as the Winchester Geese, a prison keeper tried four times for murder, the poor women operated on in a church roof. You check what they claim against the record, and not every legend survives. Each stop has a hands-on challenge, from a blue plaque to a galleon carving hidden under a sticker. Most players take two hours over the 2.1 km. Start at any hour, with hints and our 24/7 team on call.
Inclusions
What's included
- Full availability: Every day of the year.
- Flexibility: start, take a break and continue at your own pace.
- Access to the self-guided city exploration game in the Questo app
What's not
- Live game master or physical guide
- Private transportation
- Meals
Itinerary
The case opens on Clink Street, outside the museum on the site of the bishop's prison. You'll find the blue plaque and read how the site was chosen for it. The Clink stood here for six hundred years, long enough to give English its word for every jail since, and a priest named Laurence Vaux starved inside.
A few steps on, one wall of the Bishop of Winchester's great hall still stands, rose window and all. You'll complete a note about that window using a text on the wall nearby. The bishop licensed the Bankside brothels from this hall under ordinances dated 1161, then refused to bury the women.
Squeezed into the dock next door is a full-size replica of Drake's galleon, the Golden Hinde, and the real ship shows you which carved animal a sticker hides in your photo. A few steps on, Southwark Cathedral is four hundred years older than everything around it. You'll match a statue outside to the right one of four photos, and inside lies John Gower, Chaucer's friend, who designed his own tomb down to the three books under his head.
Under the railway viaducts, Borough Market has traded on or near this spot for about a thousand years. You'll find what's been erased from a photo of an old merchant's sign. Parliament abolished the market in 1755, so the parishioners bought a patch of land and started it again the next year.
On St Thomas Street, a church tower hid a room nobody on the street knew about for ninety-four years: an 1822 operating theatre built into the roof. A scrambled message points you to the heads above the door. Nearly half the poor women operated on up there never came out.
Back on Borough High Street, a rhyming riddle about the hanging sign of the George, London's last galleried coaching inn, gives you a name. A little further down, Chapel Court hides the Marshalsea debtors' prison under its paving, and you'll restore a question with every vowel crossed out. In 1729 Parliament counted 300 dead here in a single quarter, and the keeper was tried for murder four times and acquitted four times.
Beside St George the Martyr, an alley runs along the last surviving wall of the Marshalsea. You'll go round to a small black door and fill in the missing first word of its stone plaque. Thomas Bliss, a carpenter jailed over nine pounds, tried to climb that wall with a rope, and they cut it while he was on it.
Red Cross Garden is the first thing on the route built to be kind: a pond, a bandstand and six red-brick cottages, laid out by Octavia Hill in 1887. You'll spot the extra detail in a photo of its welcome sign. Hill went on to co-found the National Trust, which is why the George Inn is still standing.
The gates of Crossbones Graveyard are covered in ribbons, beads and notes. You'll use a number code on the text by the gate to get a five-letter password. About 15,000 people lie under this road, the Winchester Geese among them, and on the 23rd of every month strangers gather here to read out their names.
On Park Street, a plaque high on a wall remembers the day in 1850 when brewery workers chased an Austrian general known as the Butcher down to the river, and you'll find what's missing from your copy. The file closes around the corner, at the outline of the original 1599 Globe in the paving, a short walk from the rebuilt theatre.
Cancellation
Free cancellation up to 24 hours before the experience starts, for a full refund.
Know before you go
- Meeting point
- The game starts at the Clink Prison Museum. After booking, we'll message you a code and activation link. Activate with your own email, then log in to the Questo app with that email. No message? Open the Questo app, tap "Bought a quest somewhere else?" and enter your booking reference number.
- Pickup
- Everyone meets at the starting point; there is no pickup.
- Ticket type
- Mobile or paper ticket accepted
- Operated by
- Questo
- Service animals allowed
- Public transportation options are available nearby
- Infants and small children can ride in a pram or stroller
- Suitable for all physical fitness levels
- A charged smartphone with internet is required to play the game in the Questo app
- Comfortable walking shoes are recommended
How it compares in London
- Its from-price is 95% below the median of the 4793 experiences we list in London.
- It is shorter than most of them.
- The operator lists free cancellation on it.
About London
London mixes royal ceremony, world-class museums and riverside landmarks with distinct neighbourhoods, markets and parks to explore on foot.
The Thames threads the city together. On its banks stand the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben, the Tower of London with the Crown Jewels, Tower Bridge and the long South Bank walk past the London Eye, Shakespeare's Globe and Tate Modern. St Paul's Cathedral and Westminster Abbey anchor the older skyline, while glass towers crowd the financial district.
Top-ranked sights in London: St. Paul's Cathedral, Stonehenge, Tower of London.
Special offers in London
Was/now prices come from the operator, never from us.
