Paranormal record / 1897
Monday, 16 August 1897. A large crowd collected in Aldgate, London. They had come to watch something in the churchyard. What seemed to be a white figure, performing curious antics among the trees. The excitement spread. The crowd grew so large that the police were forced to make people move on to prevent an obstruction to the traffic. Then came the answer. It was subsequently found that the phantom was the reflection of an electric lamp. A curious gap in the branches had shaped its glow into a shining human figure. In the words of one Welsh newspaper, Whitechapel had been robbed of its ghost.
By the summer of 1897, the churchyard of St Botolph's Church, Aldgate, had become public open space. In 1892 Fanny Wilkinson of the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association laid it out as a public garden. Railings, grass, flower beds. Plane trees in the north churchyard. Beside it ran a busy road with electric lighting. Both details would matter.