Welcome to Hidden Highgate – an online resource, celebrating Highgate’s forgotten history & paranormal present
My name is Della Farrant and I am the creator of this site. I’ve been researching sightings of ghosts in Highgate for years. That’s me to the right, in typical camera-shy fashion! But this site isn’t about me. I’m just a scribe.
In the summer of 2013 I was invited by publishing house History Press to write ‘Haunted Highgate‘. During the course of researching my book, I turned up many fresh accounts of haunted houses and pubs, and encounters with spooks on deserted roads late at night, which as an author is great. But as I dug deeper my enquiries also began bringing to light forgotten tales of secret tunnels and concealed chambers, underground rivers, alleged ley lines and even some gruesome murders. I had not come across this sort of material in the popular primers about Highgate’s history, and I was intrigued.
This site remains online as an archive of brief articles written by myself which may be of interest to folklorists, paranormal researchers and historians alike.
Why is Highgate called Highgate?
What can we glean about how Highgate may have looked in the past by studying its name? And what does it tell us about Highgate today?
Many local history primers confidently (and rather dryly) inform the novice reader that Highgate takes its name from its previous role as a kind of border pass, situated on extremely high terrain and invested of a large gate, through which travellers to ‘the north’ could pass upon paying a toll.
But the name has much deeper origins and meaning …
This site began life as a way for me to collect real life stories and historical background information for my 2013 book Haunted Highgate.
It is available on Amazon and continues to receive great reviews. Unlike many ‘ghost books’ Haunted Highgate attempts to provide thorough historical contexts to incidents of high strangeness. I have also interviewed the vast majority of witnesses in person. A true labour of love which I hope gives pleasure to many!