THE FROZEN CHICKEN GHOST
Pond Square in Highgate, London, is said to be haunted by the flapping phantom of the world’s first frozen chicken. JEFFREY VALLANCE recounts how Sir Francis Bacon’s early experiment in refrigeration found modern echoes in his own explorations of poultry
Pond Square in Highgate, London, is said to be haunted by the flapping phantom of the world’s first frozen chicken. JEFFREY VALLANCE recounts how Sir Francis Bacon’s early experiment in refrigeration found modern echoes in his own explorations of poultry sprituality.
In 1978 artist Jeffrey Vallance bought a frozen fryer chicken at the Ralph’s Supermarket in Canoga Park, California. He later buried the hen at the Los Angeles Pet Cemetery after a brief memorial service. He also installed a grave marker for the frozen bird, naming her Blinky the Friendly Hen. This seriocomic artwork took the concept and processes of documentation to their most absurd conclusion and offered a striking commentary on our society, the treatment of animals, spirituality and death. The year 2018 marked the 40th anniversary of Vallance’s Blinky project and in celebration of this historic event, California State University Northridge Art Galleries held an exhibition in 2019 featuring a Blinky Chapel, Reliquary Chamber, Theatre and Poultry Gift Shop. In 2020, Edward Cella Art & Architecture gallery also mounted a Blinky show including an extensive relic installation and portable souvenir cart. While Jeffrey was engaged in researching poultry spirituality, he came across the tale of Sir Francis Bacon’s frozen chicken ghost presented here.
In early April 1626, during an unseasonably bitter cold spell, 65-yearold Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626) was riding through the snow in Pond Square (in Highgate, London) in a horse-drawn sleigh. He was musing on alternative methods of preserving meat – and perhaps because it was so cold – BANG: it hit him – born was the concept of meat refrigeration. As Bacon was the Father of the Scientific Method (or the Baconian Method), he decided to test his theory right there and then. Several farms were close by in Highgate, where chickens could easily be bought. Straightaway one was slaughtered, gutted and plucked on the spot. Bacon stuffed the carcass with snow and crammed more snow and ice around it: creating the world’s first frozen chicken! Through the frigid air, Bacon was heard excitedly shouting: “I think I have found the answer to putrefaction!”
Sir Francis Bacon’s experiment in meat refrigeration was an astounding success, forging the way for a massive poultry industry that slaughters billions of hens each year. However, by a weirdly sardonic turn of fate, Bacon caught a severe chill as a result of his exposure to the snow, which quickly turned to pneumonia. As a result, he died on 9 April 1626 at the Earl of Arundel’s mansion in Highgate. The frozen chicken had cost him his life. Thereafter Pond Square has been haunted, not by the ghost of Bacon but by that of the frozen chicken.
THE CHICKEN GHOST CUSTOMARILY APPEARS DURING COLD WEATHER
Against cold meats was he insured? For frozen chickens he procured brought on the illness he endured, and never was this Bacon cured.
– Poem by Pip Wilson
Many people have reported seeing a pallid plucked chicken running around in circles, shivering and pathetically flapping its wings or roosting on the lower branches of a tree in Pond Square. When anyone approaches, it always vanishes into thin air. Passers-by have also reported hearing phantom clucking and disturbing squawking sounds. Reportedly, the hen apparition has been seen running straight through a solid brick wall. The frozen chicken ghost customarily appears during extremely cold weather. During World War II, Air Raid Wardens often saw the phantom frozen chicken. One of them even tried to capture it for dinner, but it seemed
to evaporate when he got near it. More than once, the ghost hen has put the chill on couples romantically embracing under a tree – by dropping suddenly from a branch above and plopping down hard next to them.
More recently, a local family was enjoying a swim in the Highgate Bathing Pond. A friend snapped a photograph – only later, when they looked at the photo, they saw a plucked chicken swimming next to them! Forewarning: here I must confess, on this last account of the swimming chicken ghost I fudged a bit – or rather when I was researching Highgate Bathing Pond, I confusedly misinterpreted a photo of a family swimming in Murphy’s Hole in Queensland with the phantom chicken. The family interprets the phantom image as the ghost of a drowned baby. In spite of this, I think the apparition actually looks more like a swimming dressed whole chicken.
There is even a tasty dish called “Bacon Wrapped Chicken” created in honour of the incident. Recipe directions: Preheat the oven to 500 degrees. Prepare the chicken by seasoning the outside with salt and pepper. Cram the cavity with thyme sprigs and lemon wedges. Turn the chicken so the yawning cavity is facing you. Put one end of a bacon slice squarely over the left thigh, run it over the breast meat and finish by covering the right thigh. Repeat with more strips of bacon, slightly overlapping, until all of the meat is covered. Roast for 90 minutes then remove the chicken from the oven and allow it to rest peacefully for 15 minutes before carving. The bacon will form a hard, shelllike shroud over the meat.
By the way, artist Francis Bacon (19091992) is distantly related to Sir Francis Bacon. He is celebrated for his luscious meat paintings such as Figure with Meat, (1954), a version of Diego Velazquez’s portrait of Pope Innocent X – with the addition of two sides of beef hanging on either side of his head. Velázquez’s ruddy-faced portrait of Pope Innocent X shows his holiness dressed in a bacon-coloured cape worn over a feathery white liturgical vestment. Incarnadine curtains hang behind the pontiff with the appearance of sagging loose flesh. Bacon’s pope, framed by two bloody carcasses, looks like a depraved butcher, with his slaughtered animal victims hanging behind him. Bacon’s painting is famously featured in Tim Burton’s 1989 film Batman, in a scene where the Joker gleefully destroys several works of art in Gotham City’s art museum. However, when the Joker comes upon Bacon’s macabre painting, he spares it saying, “I kind of like this one.”
Concerning his meat paintings, Bacon stated: “Flesh and meat are life! If I paint red meat as I paint bodies it is just because I find it very beautiful. I don’t think anyone has ever really understood that. Ham, pigs, tongues, sides, of beef seen in the butcher’s window, all that death, I find it very beautiful.” Bacon also painted a series of plucked chickens such as Chicken (1982) and the strangely unfinished painting of a nude, titled Figure – looking very much like a plump raw chicken. As he was a descendant of Sir Francis Bacon, one could surmise that he’d heard the story of the death of dear Sir Francis and the frozen chicken. Was this possibly an inspiration for his chicken paintings? Unquestionably his paintings of meat have an eerie otherworldly quality.
I was attracted to this story of the frozen chicken ghost, seeing as on 27 April 1978 as a performance art piece, I buried a frozen chicken at the Los Angeles Pet Cemetery with the full funeral service including a casket, viewing room and grave marker. [ FT53:23]. And giving credit where credit is due: I have Sir Francis Bacon to thank for the invention of meat refrigeration: the method that produced the aforementioned frozen chicken named Blinky! It seems the ghost of the frozen chicken of Highgate hasn’t been seen since the 1970s. I wildly conjecture that perhaps inadvertently some kind of weird sympathetic magick took place by the ritual of burying a frozen chicken with full ceremony 352 years after Bacon’s first frozen chicken experiment. Perhaps somehow this ritual placated the wondering spirit of the Frozen Chicken Ghost of Pond Square – by at last honouring a slaughtered hen with a proper Christian Burial. Sir Francis Bacon’s refrigerated chicken was the first of its kind and forerunner of vast industrial poultry production, whereas Blinky was the first hen to be singled out from that same system to be laid to rest honourably and peacefully in hallowed burial ground, equivalent to a Tomb of the Unknown Chicken.
“Dedicated to the billions of hens sacrificed each year for our consumption.”
SOURCES
Brief Lives, “Francis Bacon: Viscount St. Albans,” by John Aubrey (1626–1697); “London’s Ghosts: The Shivering Chicken of Highgate,” by Leslie Thomas, The Evening News, London, 10 Dec 1957, p6. Reprinted in The Age (Melbourne), 27 April 1960; www.haunted-london.com/pondsquare-ghost.html; www.real-british-ghosts. com/highgate-chicken-ghost.html; https:// hauntedpalaceblog.wordpress.com/2013/04/25/ the-strange-case-of-sir-francis-bacon-and-thefrozen-chicken/; www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ article-2988212/ Woman-claims-mysterious-ghostbaby-photobombed-family-portrait.html
✒ JEFFREY VALLANCE is an artist, writer, curator, explorer and paranormal experiencer. He has published over 10 books, including Blinky the Friendly Hen, Relics and Reliquaries and The Vallance Bible. His new anthology, Selected Spiritual Writings, will be released later this year.