British Museum Underground Railway Station

Opened on 30 July 1900, British Museum Station at Bury Place served the Central Line on London’s underground rail network. The station was closed on 25 September 1933 when platforms for the Central Line opened at the nearby Holborn Station. For a brief time in the 1960’s a military emergency command post occupied the station but now there is no access to the station from the surface, the platforms have been removed and it is used to store track parts by engineers.

The station has become associated with the British Museums myth of the mummies curse. It is said that the ghost of Amen-Ra, an Egyptian Princess, dressed in a loincloth and Egyptian headdress would haunt the station and her screams could be heard in the tunnels.

In 1935 the film Bulldog Jack involved a fictitious Underground Station called Bloomsbury (supposedly based on the British Museum Station) which had a secret tunnel leading into the British Museum and exiting in from Egyptian sarcophagus. This was probably inspired by the ghost story. The opened in April 1935 and there is a story that on opening night two women disappeared from a platform at nearby Holborn Station and strange marks were discovered on the walls of the then closed British Museum Station.

Some sources suggest that a newspaper offered a reward to anyone willing to spend a night in the haunted station, prior to its closure in 1933. Apparently no-one took them up on the offer.