Elliot O'Donnell

Twenty Years' Experience as a Ghost Hunter

Heath Cranton, 1916.

Visiting the Zoological Gardens in Regent's Park, one day in the summer of 1898,

The author was struck by 'the look of yearning in the eyes of one of the lions, the desperate look of yearning to have just five minutes gambol on the sunny lawn outside...and sniff, perhaps for the first time, the fine fresh air of freedom'. He gets into conversation with an old man and his granddaughter about the cruelty of keeping large animals in cages. The man believes that they go to 'another world' when they die, to make up for their suffering.

"I used to be a keeper here many years ago...I remember one instance in particular...A young lion came here from East Africa...I know it hated its cage, and I used to do all I could to comfort it...One day it fell ill, caught a chill, so we thought, and evinced a strong dislike to its food"

He had gone home as usual that night when '"something came over me that I must go for a walk...Minnie suddenly exclaimed, 'Grandad, let's go to Regent's Park'".

"We...got to Gloucester Gate just about dusk. We had passed through, and were walking along the Broad Walk by the side of the Zoo, when Minnie suddenly caught hold of my arm, and said, 'Look, Grandad!' I followed the direction of her gaze and there coming straight towards us from the Zoo walls, was a lion...It aimed straight for us, and upon its getting close to I recognised it at once - it was the young lion that had been taken ill. To my astonishment, however, there was nothing of the invalid about it now. The expression in its eye was one of infinite happiness...It came right up to us, and I stretched out my hand to touch it...and to my surprise my fingers encountered nothing - the lion had vanished...What we had seen was a ghost"

Returning to the Zoo the next day he is told that the lion had died at eight o'clock the previous evening, '"which was the exact time we had seen it in the park"'.