The Cave Dweller

While taking refuge in London’s Chislehurst Caves during the Blitz in the winter of 1940, a young English woman explores the supposedly haunted pool within. Are the tales she’s been told just ghostly fiction, or is something supernatural hiding below the surface of the dark water?

Created & Produced by Samuel Weston Evans
Written & Directed by Samuel Weston Evans
Sound-Designed & Edited by Samuel Weston Evans

Vocal Performances by:
Rebecca Newall as Margaret
Samuel Weston Evans as The Keeper

Cover Art Illustrated by Mongemanuk.std
Special Thanks to Ren Dara Santiago
Website: https://aloneintheattic.buzzsprout.com/
Instagram: @_aloneintheattic

Transcript

Good evening.

Your return to the Attic is a welcome sight. I take it you’re still hungry for a haunting tale?

Well then. Come take a listen.

Which story will it be this time?

I see. The lantern you have in your hands belonged to Margaret Halliwell, a young woman who found something frightening while taking refuge in the dark caves of Chislehurst. This is the tale of...“The Cave Dweller.”

You remember what to do: close your eyes, open your ears, and journey back to that frightful evening.


It was December of 1940 and I had been living underground in Chislehurst Caves for a little over three months.

When the bombings began on the 7th of September, my family and I evacuated our home in Bromley and went to the caves for shelter at night. The Germans flew over London every evening and lit up the dark skyline with explosive fires. Thousands of people migrated from nearby towns to get away from the nightly chaos in the heart of the city.

There were various shelters throughout London, but only a short bus ride away from our neighborhood was the vast underground tunnel system of Chislehurst Caves.

When we first arrived, the accommodations were quite minimal. We brought clothes, gas masks, and some provisions with us, but there were no lights or beds in the caves at that point, so we slept on the cold ground and used candles to see in the dark.

But over the following weeks, electrical lighting and bunks were installed, which was a welcome improvement. As more people started moving into the caves, it turned into an underground city. Soon there was a church, a theatre, a couple canteens, and a hospital.

I spent some time in the hospital after burning my leg on a candle one night, and it ended up being a significant experience for me. Biology and anatomy had fascinated me in school, but watching the nurses in action made me want to become one. Even after I had recovered, I spent many nights talking with the young women who worked there and becoming friends with them, since they were only a few years older.

My older brother, Peter, who was twenty years old, was serving the country as a pilot in the Royal Air Force. I wanted to do my part for the country like him, but I wasn’t old enough to become a nurse yet. I felt restless hunkering down in the caves, while he was out fighting and risking his life to defend Britain and keep us safe.

I thought of him often and worried for his life, but since I couldn’t do anything to help him, I shifted all my attention towards my younger brother, Harry, instead. I wanted to protect him from the horrors outside. I knew he was scared and was thinking about Peter a lot too, so I frequently brought him to the theatre to help take his mind off things. He loved it so much that he ended up joining the youth concert troupe. He made a couple friends in the troupe, and performing helped him overcome some of his fears.

It was a frightening time having the constant threat of death and destruction hanging over us, but the overall morale was still strong. The motto, “Keep Calm and Carry On,” was practiced regularly, and inspiring speeches from Winston Churchill lifted our spirits. We would listen to the radio each day to stay informed on what was happening and how we could help the war effort from home.

But, as much as the war dominated life during that time, we also found many ways to fill our time and distract ourselves. While living in the caves, I made a couple friends who were also in sixth form. They were called Betty and Eileen, and we very quickly became the best of friends.

All three of our families were assigned to Section M in the dormitory area of the cave, so our pitches were right near each other. Before lights out, we would gather at one of our bunks to tell each other stories, laugh together, and chat about who we fancied at school. We could be quite loud, so the other cave dwellers loved to shush us. And our section marshal, Mr. Hale, often had to remind us of rule number 10 of the wartime cave notice, which stated “Lights out and absolute silence by 10:30pm in the Dormitory Section.”

Mr. Hale never got mad at us though. He was happy to see us finding joy during such a dark time. He was quite understanding, having been “a rambunctious teenager himself once,” as he put it. He was an older gentleman, who had worked in the caves for a number of years as a mushroom farmer before retiring.

Since the girls and I loved hearing stories, we would frequently ask him about his time in the caves before the war and what he knew about their history. He gladly obliged and told us many tales, which were quite fascinating to hear.

Believed to have first been dug hundreds or possibly thousands of years ago, the man-made tunnels of the caves served many purposes throughout time. He told us about the Saxons, Druids, and Romans, which were the three sections of the caves, each named after the groups who supposedly dug them. The tunnels were originally used as chalk and flint mines for many years, but after the mining stopped, the caves were opened up to the public as a tourist attraction in 1903. During The First World War, they were used as an ammunitions depot, and became a mushroom farm during the 1930s, which is when Mr. Hale worked there.

But the stories that he most loved to tell were about the alleged ghosts that roamed the caves. He claimed to have heard many faint screams and scary noises, while working in the tunnels. And he shared legends of Druid sacrifices on a stone altar in one section of the caves. Although, I heard a retired miner say it was actually just a mining work bench.

Frankly, I didn’t buy into any of the supernatural nonsense he was going on about. It made for great stories, but I believed in science, not superstition. When I told him this, he smiled and said he used to be the same way before he started working in the caves. But then his face turned serious and he explained that what made him start believing in ghosts was...”the woman of the well.” Supposedly, a woman was drowned in a pool of water that used to be an ancient well, located in the Druid section. Ever since then, her spectre has roamed around it, looking to drag someone down to join her.

He explained that one day he was working near it and saw a ripple of water on the surface. He was alone and didn’t see anything around it, so he went to take a closer look. When he leaned over with his lantern and looked into the water, he saw a woman’s face at the bottom of the pool with dark eyes staring up at him. It shook him so deeply that he immediately ran away and never went back to the pool again. Some of his coworkers had reported seeing her in and around it as well, so he warned all the kids in the caves to not go near the pool alone.

I still didn’t buy his story though. I figured he came up with it as a way to scare children away so they wouldn't accidentally fall in and drown. The pool was a few meters deep and was a good distance away from the dormitory section, so if someone was alone and went under, nobody would know.

My mother tried to warn Harry about the haunted pool, but he was fourteen, and the moment you tell a fourteen year old boy not to do something, they immediately want to do it.

So that evening, Harry and a couple of his mates snuck off to the Druids section to investigate the pool. I wanted to keep an eye on him, so Betty, Eileen and I all went along too. It was far from the Dormitory Section, so it took us about 20 minutes to walk there. We had taken a few torches with us, so we shined them into the water to see if we could spot anything at the bottom. It was quite deep and cloudy, so we could only see part of the way down.

We tossed a few lumps of chalk in to see how far down we could watch it sink, but the pieces disappeared after a few seconds. We guessed it was around four meters deep.

Since we didn't see anything unusual or exciting, we came up with a game to amuse ourselves. The six of us spread out around the pool and turned our torches off. The way the game worked was that the first person to move or make a sound was the loser. We were in complete darkness, so our sense of sound became heightened. The cave was silent, except for the slight echo of dripping water.

Soon my mind began to wander in the silence and I recalled Mr. Hale’s description of the woman’s face in the water. I felt a chill run down the back of my neck. I didn’t believe him, but being in the dark has a way of making the unimaginable appear real.

My mind snapped back to the present when I noticed a rippling coming from the water. It sounded like someone was running their hands along the surface, but I couldn’t call anyone out for moving because then I would lose the game. Nobody else said anything either and then the noise stopped.

Suddenly, Harry screamed. We all turned our torches back on and shined them at him. “Who did that? That wasn’t funny,” he shouted at us. We didn't know what he was talking about, but then he explained that someone with a wet hand grabbed the back of his neck. I looked at his mates, figuring it was one of them who had done it, but they both denied it and stared accusingly at us.

I knew Betty and Eileen wouldn’t have done it, so it had to be a prank by one of the boys. Their hands didn’t look wet, but they could’ve easily dried them on their clothes before we turned our torches back on. I told the boys I heard their hands in the water while we were in the dark, but they said it wasn’t them and that they heard the rippling too.

We continued arguing until somebody checked the time and realized it was just after nine o’clock. Rule number one on the wartime cave notice stated “No admission or re- entry to the Dormitory Section after 9:30pm.” So we quickly began the journey back.

Once we made it to the Dormitory Section, Harry’s mates headed off to their pitches and we all got ready for bed. The four of us chatted quietly in our bunks about what happened, but we didn’t tell our parents, since we didn’t want to get in trouble for visiting the pool. Harry still seemed a bit frightened by the whole thing, but eventually he and the girls were able to fall asleep.

I, however, had a hard time dozing off. I tossed and turned for a long time, thinking about the strange details that Mr. Hale and Harry had each described. It couldn't possibly be real, but my mind started to play tricks on me in the dark. Curiosity began to creep in and I longed to investigate the pool further.

After hours of restlessness, I concluded that the only way I’d be able to get sleep was if I figured out what was really going on. So I decided to venture back in the middle of the night.

I carefully crawled from my bunk and lit an oil lantern, since I could dim the light more than a torch. I tiptoed as silently as I could through the rows of bunks and snuck out of the Dormitory section.

I listened to hear if I had awoken anyone, but not a single soul was stirring. The only sound I could hear was the faint rumble of bombs being dropped far above our sanctuary.

With my lantern held out in front of me, I began my journey back to the pool. As I made my way through the tunnels, the shadows from the flame traveled across the jagged walls.

Every few meters I would see small round faces carved into the chalk. Mr. Hale had told me they were made by World War I soldiers passing the time in the ammunitions depot. But they felt quite ominous. Their eyes were hollowed out and it was like they were staring at me from the shadows.

I could only see a few meters ahead of me, and whenever I turned to look back, I watched my path get swallowed by black. I didn’t like being alone in the dark. But it wasn’t because I was afraid of finding something, it was because I was scared of not knowing what was hidden within the gloom. That was why I needed to push on and investigate the pool.

The tunnels were empty and cavernous, and I felt so small moving through them; like a rat in a sewer. My footsteps echoed quietly as I traveled into the Druids section. I started to hear the dripping water and knew I was getting close.

It was cold in the caves. And it never changed temperature. Every section, at any hour of the day and any time of year, was always 10 degrees. I had slipped on my coat before leaving and the lantern was at least giving me a little warmth too.

When I finally arrived, I looked around the cave to see if there was anything strange or out of the ordinary. I didn’t notice anything too odd, so I walked towards the pool.

But suddenly, I slipped and fell. My lantern hit the ground and the glass broke. Only part of it opened though, so the flame still flickered. I gently picked it up and used my other hand to help myself back on my feet. But when my fingers touched the cold ground, it felt wet. I shined my lantern light on the area where I fell and saw that there was a thin patch of water. It looked like a footprint. I then noticed that there were a few more behind it, coming from the pool.

The footsteps stopped right where I had fallen, so it was like whoever made them vanished from the place I was standing. The other strange thing was that it was the same spot where Harry had been standing earlier.

It was an eerie mystery without a clear explanation, so I followed the path to the pool, in search of any clues. I leaned over the rocks and looked into the water, but it was fairly murky. I couldn’t see much, but it looked like there was something floating a couple of meters below the surface. I held the lantern closer to the water to try and illuminate whatever was down there. It was swaying...like dark seaweed. When it parted, I could see something round and pale underneath. It slowly floated upwards, allowing me to make out more features. Shrouded with long black hair, I noticed a nose, a mouth, and two closed eyes.

Suddenly, the eyes shot open and locked on mine. They were dark and sunken. I was so startled that I dropped the lantern into the water. I quickly backed away from the pool and tried to get my bearings, but I was in complete darkness down in the caves. I couldn’t even see a centimeter in front of my face.

I then remembered that I had a couple matches in my pocket, so I fumbled to get them out and light one. But as I was doing that, I heard a rippling coming from the pool. It sounded like something was emerging from the water. I heard a splash and then wet footsteps started heading towards me. I tried to light the match in my hand, but I was so panicked that I dropped it on the ground before I could ignite it. I knelt down and felt around for it, but I could hear the footsteps getting closer and closer until they were just a meter away from me.

But then my hand found the matchstick and I struck it against the box. A small flame ignited and illuminated my immediate surroundings. There was nothing there. I looked all around me, but didn’t see anything in the dim light. I saw another trail of wet footsteps, but they stopped right where I was standing.

I was about to run out of there, but I stopped when I felt something dripping on me from above. I started to look up, but before I could see where it was coming from, it dripped on the match and snuffed out the flame. I was left in complete darkness again.

Without any time to think, I darted away, but I must’ve gotten turned around because I ran right back to the pool and fell in. I flailed around, trying to get myself out of there, but then I heard another big splash. Something was in the water with me.

I reached out for the rocks to pull myself out, but my arm brushed against a soggy, wet hand. I then felt more cold fingers wrap around my leg and pull me—


Margaret Halliwell disappeared in the dark caves of Chislehurst. Another life lost during the Blitz, silently swept away in the night. But now you have heard what really occurred that evening, and you have set her spirit free.

That is the end of your visit tonight. It’s time for you to say farewell.

Keep an eye and an ear out for the door. I will open the Attic for you again soon. Thank you for you time and service.

Stay safe out there...and don’t explore any dark caves alone.


Thank you for listening to Alone in the Attic. Tonight's episode was written, directed, and edited by Samuel Weston Evans, with vocal performances by Rebecca Newall as Margaret and Samuel Weston Evans as The Keeper.

Join us next week to hear the haunting story of...“The Hitchhiker.” When a hippie hitches a ride home from Woodstock in the summer of 1969, he begins to suspect that the driver might be a member of a creepy cult and starts noticing many strange things outside the van while parked at night. Is he still just hallucinating from the drugs he took or is he now witnessing something terrifyingly real?

Find out next time...Alone in the Attic.