"Trust no-one." The X-Files

FT108: Michael Gross is perhaps too quick to dismiss as London legends stories of deserted underground stations complete with Fry’s chocolate machines, lines leading nowhere, secret bunkers, sewer-pigs and alligators ["Going Underground", FT105:24]. There are some 40 "lost" underground stations, including Brompton Road, City Road and British Museum (the latter is now used as a British Army HQ). Some of them still retain their original fittings: tattered posters warm that "Careless Talk Costs Lives" at King William Street station.

At Mount Pleasant and King Edward Building there are lines going nowhere, the beginnings of extensions to the Post Office’s railway network that were never completed. There are also plenty of subterranean citadels built by the government which remain partly or completely secret. During World War II the Admiralty had theirs under Whitehall, the Air Ministry built one at Harrow, and the Cabinet Office had an underground complex, codenamed "Paddock", under the old Post Office Research station at Dollis Hill. Some of Paddock will be opened to the public, but only a fraction of its several acres. Others include "Bastion" at Covent Garden, "Rampart" at Waterloo and "Fortress" at Moorgate, all disused remnants of the Cold War.

All this and more is revealed in the wonderful and highly recommended London Under London – A Subterranean Guide by Richard Trench and Ellis Hillman (new edition by John Murray 1993). This records developments underneath London from the very beginning and includes curiosities like the network of pneumatic pipes that once carried messages beneath the city and the manhole covers marked "Elf King".

As for wildlife, sewer alligators are not an exclusively American phenomenon. In 1984 a live baby Nile alligator was found in a Paris sewer. Britain has its share of underground animals too: a 10ft (3m) reticulated python turned up at Northumbrian Water’s Howdon sewage works in 1993; Andy Gates of Southern Water reports that goldfish and terrapins are regularly found swimming in the sewer system. There may not be herds of swine under London, but there are pigs. In engineering parlance, "pig" is a device which travels along pipes to clear out blockages. According to the OED, the name comes from the noise they make rather than Mayhew’s story of pigs in the sewers.

More sinister are the sewer bacteria. One called Microthrix parvicella forms a brown foam so stiff rats can walk on its surface. It’s so prolific that it has been known to climb out of sewage tanks and, as researcher Christopher Forster puts it, "go walkabout" like some primordial B-movie Thing.

When it comes to the tribe of cannibal troglodytes, who knows? London Underground can deny it, but this is exactly the sort of cover-up one might expect. There are certainly plenty of disused tunnels and spaces for them to hide in – Telecom cable tunnels, the old Tyburn sewer, Bazalgette’s tunnel under the Embankment, and many more. Get the flashlight Scully – I think there’s something down here… David Hambling (by email).

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FT113: David Hambling’s piece on lost underground stations and subterranean citadels which exist beneath London [FT108:55] reminded me of something a neighbour told me in the summer of 1996. He was a maintenance and repair engineer for large and heavy duty machinery and explained that once he had a repair job under the Palace Theatre in Manchester city centre. After finishing a job he tended to wander around to kill time, or to duck out of other work required of him elsewhere. This time, he meandered around many corridors and down stairways and was amazed at the length of the corridors and rows of doors facing him. He was further astonished to find some open areas resembling poorly lit streets. Although it was difficult for him to judge their actual size, he noticed there were very large and very clean corridors and types of streets going in all directions.

Feeling a little uncomfortable, he decided to head back up, but was confronted by two men who took him to a room and questioned him for over an hour. Both were dressed like military police, but somewhat dated in appearance. One of them searched his wallet for identification. Having nothing to hide, he answered all their questions, although they never seemed happy with his answers. To his relief, he was eventually guided up stairs and through doors and allowed to go on his way.

Expecting that a complaint would be made to his employer followed by a reprimand, and not having time to get to the next job, he felt rather disgruntled and went home – only to find his house and been broken into and ransacked. He reported this to the police who found it very unusual that nothing seemed to have been stolen. He never received any complaint from work and only then did he feel that the two incidents were linked. Tony Cranstoun, Brownley Green, South Manchester.

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FT113: Sceptics maintain that the so-called "Philadelphia Experiment", when the USS Eldrich was allegedly teleported briefly in 1943 from Philadelphia to Norfolk, Virginia, can be traced no further back than a letter from Carlos Allende to Dr Morris Jessup in 1956, the implication being that Allende made it all up.

I joined the Navy in 1948. In 1949 I was laid up in a Philadelphia Navy Hospital for a month with pneumonia, where I heard tales and rumours about something that happened near the end of the war, with sailors blinking on and off. That’s all I heard, but I did hear it! George ‘Yuri’ Mayerchak, Long Prairie, Minnesota.

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FT113: I write concerning a law passed by the UK Government known as The Outer Space Act 1986. Section 3 of the Act prohibits persons from activities as described in Section 1 without a licence from a UK Secretary of State; in particular, Section 1(c) any activity in outer space. The definition of outer space as set out in section 13(1) is "The Moon and other celestial bodies".

Thus the British Government claims the right to forbid activities on the Moon and in outer space. Presumably if a UFO lands in the UK the police could arrest the alien crew for not getting a government flying licence. This daft law must be corrected – lobby your MP! Dr Brett Allen, St Albans, Hertfordshire.

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 FT120: In the booklet that came with my Girobank Visa card statement was an explanation of the insurance offered by the credit card company. In the section for exclusions it had the usual list of circumstances under which there would be no payment – flood, war, earthquake etc. It also had the slightly worrying "radioactive contamination" and the fortean "mysterious disappearance". Either they know something we don’t, or people with Visa cards have been buying some very strange items. Paul Wells, Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire.

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FT125: I’m employed in a maximum security prison in New York State. I work in a wall tower, so I spend eight hours a day looking out the window. The prison, Green Haven Correctional Facility, isn’t that far from an Air Force base and it seems to be a convenient landmark for helicopters, because I see them flying over several times a day. Sometimes the pilots circle the place, out of curiosity or for practice circling, I don’t know. But as helicopters can represent quite a risk to security, I try to read the markings on them whenever I can. I can say without doubt that black, unmarked helicopters do exist, for I have seen them on several occasions. Donn Geyer (by email).

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FT139: Last summer, on my way to work, I drove past our local Air Force Base on the Freeway. I noticed two cars get on the Freeway at an entrance ramp next to the Base. Both were jet black four-door sedans, possibly Crown Victorias, with darkened windows and no license plates, front or back. Each had spotlights by both driver and passenger side mirrors. I could see the silhouettes of two men in each car. They stayed together, driving about 15mph (24km/h) over the speed limit. I watched them as far as I could and I never saw them separate or exist the Freeway. I got an extremely creepy feeling watching them. Have any readers seen anything similar? C Haynes, Layton, Utah.

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FT142: Regarding mysterious black cars around airforce bases [FT139:52]: during my tour with the US Army’s Military Intelligence, I worked for PIC-K (Photo Interpretation Centre – Korea) in Yongsan Barracks, Seoul. I had a Top Secret SBI (Special Background Investigation) clearance. At times our mission was to pick up "hot rolls" from Osan AFB. These were classified reconnaissance satellite and reconnaissance aircraft photos of Red China and North Korea. The vehicles we drove were black sedans with tinted windows and no license plates. We kept a "No Stopping This Vehicle" sign available for any police that were ignorant of our safety route. All local police were informed of our mission and would not pull us over. Many times we went over the speed limit. What C Haynes most likely saw was Air Force Intelligence Officers delivering or picking up classified information. Paul Dale Roberts, Elk Grove, California.

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