Kensal Green Cemetery opened in 1833 in North Kensington and is one of London's grand Victorian burial grounds. Wikipedia places it in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and Hammersmith and Fulham. David Castleton's blog calls this one of the oddest London ghost stories he knows, because it joins gothic tombs with a love story and early telephone technology.
The story comes from a 1936 book, True Ghost Stories, by Marchioness Townsend and Maude Ffoulkes, who said the facts were vouched for by the late Hon. Alec Carlisle. A rich London publisher, called only L., wanders lost in the cemetery after a funeral and finds the grave of Elsie, a lover he had dropped as he rose socially, in a poor section with a leaning wooden cross. He notes the grave number. That evening, low in spirits, he asks the operator for a friend's number but gives the cemetery grave's number by mistake. Elsie's voice answers, pleased, and says she will come. A while later the front door opens and closes, footsteps drag in the hall and three knocks sound on the library door. L. faints. In the morning his valet found wet clay on the carpet and on his dinner jacket, and the hall mat disturbed. L. never used a telephone or went to a funeral again.
Castleton says no evidence exists to prove or disprove it and treats it as a period story with class and technology themes. The Hon. Alec Carlisle is the only named source and the characters are anonymised, so it reads as a literary ghost story told as fact. It is included as a documented book tradition. The pin is for the cemetery, not a grave.
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