St James Garlickhythe stands on Garlick Hill in the City. The medieval church was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666 and rebuilt by Sir Christopher Wren between 1676 and 1682. In 1855 a mummified male corpse was found in the crypt and put on show in a glass-panelled coffin for visitors prepared to pay a small fee. The body became known as Jimmy Garlick. Spooky Isles notes that vestry minutes from 1838 may point to an earlier discovery under the chancel floor.
Who he was is unsettled. Theories have ranged from a Roman general to the first Lord Mayor of London, and Dick Whittington has been suggested too. A 1986 conservation study suggested an adolescent who died around the turn of the 18th century, and the funeral historian Julian Litten proposed Seagrave Chamberlain, a 16 year old Barbados planter's son commemorated on a wall of the north aisle. Later carbon dating for a television programme gave a range of 1641 to 1801, with the strongest peak around the time of the Great Fire. The body also had pierced ears and signs of balding and osteoarthritis, which does not fit a child.
The haunting reports start after the Second World War. Peter Underwood, quoted by Spooky Isles, recorded that during the Blitz a fireman saw a white figure in the church that ignored calls to take shelter and vanished when approached. A visiting priest saw a white figure in the nave for a few seconds, and a woman in a pew saw a tall figure with folded arms on the north side staring towards the tower. An American tourist's son was frightened out of the church after seeing, on the balcony stair, a man wrapped in a white sheet with a face and hands like dried skin. A phantom cat and moved objects are also mentioned.
Londonist's haunted tube map adds that during the Second World War a robed figure was seen walking through the church before air raids, and that the church escaped the Blitz. That detail is a retelling and the original witness is not named. Jimmy was later taken off display and placed in a new coffin in the crypt, and Spooky Isles reports that the activity seemed to fade after that. Most of the sightings come through Underwood and later retellings rather than dated first-hand reports, so the confidence here is traditional.
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