3 nights · 3 haunted hotels
London has more ghost stories than any city in Britain, and some of the best are in its grand hotels. This itinerary moves you to a different haunted hotel each night, so you can ask for a famous room three times over. Each day keeps to one part of the city, so everything is walkable or a short Tube ride away.
Day 1
Westminster, Whitehall and the Strand
Start where London's history is thickest: the abbeys, palaces and government buildings of Westminster, then walk up Whitehall to the Strand for your first night.
Westminster Abbey
Coronation church and burial place of kings and queens for a thousand years. Its cloisters are said to be haunted by a monk known as Father Benedictus.
Banqueting House, Whitehall
Charles I stepped from a window of this building onto the scaffold on 30 January 1649. Look up at the Rubens ceiling he walked beneath on his way to his execution.
Churchill War Rooms
The underground bunker where Churchill ran the Second World War, preserved as it was left in 1945.
Dinner on the Strand
Have a drink in the Savoy's American Bar, one of the oldest cocktail bars in London, before heading up to the fifth floor.
Popular slots sell out, especially in October.
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London's most famous luxury hotel, opened on the Strand in 1889. A little girl is said to haunt its lifts and Room 502 on the fifth floor, and the 1923 shooting of Ali Fahmy in one of its suites remains one of the capital's most notorious crimes.
Ask for Room 502 or the fifth floor, where a little girl is said to haunt the corridor and ride the lifts.
Alternative
The Royal HorseguardsA cheaper option a few minutes away on Whitehall Court, with its own Room 333 legend.
Day 2
The Tower, the City and Whitechapel
Today goes east into the old City of London, where centuries of executions, fires and plague have left the darkest stories of all, and ends with a night in Georgian Soho.
The Tower of London
Anne Boleyn was beheaded on Tower Green in 1536, and her ghost is the most famous of the many reported at the Tower. The Yeoman Warders' tours are full of ghost stories. Arrive at opening time to beat the queues.
Tower Hill scaffold site
Just outside the walls, a memorial marks the public scaffold where more than a hundred people were executed in front of the crowds.
St Paul's Cathedral
Wren's cathedral rose from the ashes of the Great Fire of 1666, which followed the Great Plague of the year before. Climb to the Whispering Gallery.
A Jack the Ripper walk in Whitechapel
Guided evening walks follow the streets where five women were murdered in the autumn of 1888. Most start near Aldgate East station.
Popular slots sell out, especially in October.
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A Georgian townhouse hotel in Soho where the essayist William Hazlitt died in 1830. His ghost is said to sit reading in the library and to move things in the dining room.
Three panelled 1718 townhouses in Soho, where the essayist William Hazlitt died in 1830. His ghost is said to sit reading in the library.
Alternative
Grange Blooms HotelA quieter, more affordable Georgian townhouse beside the British Museum, with a gentle house ghost.
Day 3
Highgate, Mayfair and Marylebone
Finish with London's most atmospheric cemetery, its most famous haunted house, and a night in the room that started it all.
Highgate Cemetery
Victorian catacombs, Egyptian Avenue and the grave of Karl Marx. In 1970 the cemetery was overrun by vampire hunters after rumours of the "Highgate Vampire". The West Cemetery can only be seen on a guided tour, so book ahead.
Book a tour on the Highgate Cemetery website50 Berkeley Square, Mayfair
Long called the most haunted house in London, with Victorian tales of a room so terrifying that people died of fright. You can only see it from the outside, but it's a short walk from Green Park.
Afternoon tea in the Palm Court
Check in early at the Langham and take afternoon tea in the Palm Court, which the hotel claims as the birthplace of the tradition.
Ghosts and Legends of Mayfair Walking Tour
Join a two-hour guided ghost walk through Mayfair and St James's. It meets at Grosvenor Square and takes in 50 Berkeley Square, a forgotten plague pit, the site of a 17th-century duel, the Royal Academy's tale of screaming nuns, and the ghosts of Green Park, finishing with a murder mystery at St James's Palace. From there, walk to Green Park station and take the Victoria line one stop to Oxford Circus, a few minutes' walk from the Langham and your night in Room 333.
Popular slots sell out, especially in October.
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London's first grand hotel, opened in 1865 opposite what is now BBC Broadcasting House, and often called the capital's most haunted hotel. Room 333 is the centre of the legend, with a Victorian ghost said to appear there in October.
Ask for Room 333, where a BBC announcer saw a Victorian ghost in 1973. He is said to appear mainly in October.
Alternative
Brown's HotelLondon's oldest hotel, in Mayfair, with a ghostly maid and Kipling's phantom typewriter.
Want to build your own route? Browse every haunted hotel in the area or see more itineraries.