Sandgate Cemetery has been known as the 'dead centre' of Newcastle for too many years to count.
Here is a very interesting view from the curator of the cemetery who, I gather, had a gut full of 'ghost stories' and really didn't believe in them.
What do you think?
Ghosts ALIVE!!
And Walk in Cemeteries -The Curator's Adventures
World - Hobart Tasmania, 28th September 1922
Arc you afraid of ghosts? asks H.J.C. in the "Sun."
These formless wraiths, are said to haunt cemeteries, but a talk with Mr. W. J. Gibbs, who for 30 years has watched over 30,000 sleepers at Sandgate Cemetery' near Newcastle, will dispel any illusion on this point.
He can casually detect a human agency at the back of most ghost stories, or at least a fertile imagination.
In fact he rather delights in unravelling ghost stories.
"Why", he says, "the cemetery is a much more homely place at night than anywhere else outside."
He and his family, when returning from the town of an evening, make it a practice of walking through the cemetery rather than go round by the road. The reason for this is because the hundreds of marble headstones, and glassware reflect the light of the stars and diffuse a soft glow over the whole of "God's acre."
Such a lighting system makes safe the short cut home. But, thus it is that the lively imaginations or persons passing a lonely cemetery at night have conceived these ghastly flickering's as coming from the lantern of a restless spook.
Mr. Gibbs laughs at ghosts, Persons walking on air have no fear for him, and there should be comfort in that for less practical persons. He takes a delight in waylaying these supposed ghosts and unmasking them. His method is original and effective.
Instead of appearing before the ghost in the garb of an earthly person, he dons similar ghostly raiment and beats the alleged ghost at his own game.
A few years ago stories were rife of the doings of ' ghosts’ at Sandgate.
Mr Gibbs decided to lie in wait for them.
He had heard of a plot in which he himself was to be, the victim, and made his plans accordingly.
As the first, ghost came on the scene, stalking among the headstones., and announcing his arrival by throwing half-bricks on the roof of the curator's house, another ghost swathed himself in a sheet and a cleric's surplus, and stepped out from behind a tree, right in the path of the other.
With a frightened yell, the original ghost dropped his shroud and bolted.
Mr. Gibbs declared that he has never seen a ghost run so fast.
Others in the plot were equally convinced that the cemetery was really haunted. The Story soon spread, and all the details were given, with the exception of the part that some people played in it.
A week or two later Mr. Gibbs presented to the bogus ghost his discarded shroud and the mystery ceased to be.
THE CURATOR SCARED.
But the curator lived to a get a fright when taking a walk among the tombstones one very dark night. Strolling down a pathway between rows of graves, his foot alighted on a human form.
It groaned.
He badly wanted to run.
With trembling fingers he struck a match and looked round.
Across from the path sprawled a drunken man. He had wandered into the cemetery from a nearby wine shop and dropped off to sleep where he fell.
After being kicked into wakefulness, he stared horrified at the flickering match, and then at the headstones looming around him.
"Am I in hell?" he demanded, in a voice like to a shriek.
"No, you're in Sandgate!" replied the curator, "but if you keep on at this rate you will soon be in the other place.
It took hours to convince the tippler that he was alive, and well, and Mr. Gibbs often wonders if he took the pledge (not to drink ever again) afterward.
Another human ghost was discovered one night not long after this.
Hearing a moaning sound coming from some freshly made graves, the curator investigated, and found a demented woman searching the grave of her child, recently burled there.
She was barefooted, and clad only in a nightdress, and yet she had wandered to the cemetery from a suburb five miles distant.
How she managed to find her way through the bush on such a night we will never know.
Early next morning she was returned to her home a little the worse for the adventure.
THE AMOROUS LUNATIC.
A daylight ghost once took some handling.
A lunatic escaped from Newcastle, and made toward the cemetery. The police notified the curator by phone, and asked him to detain him.
The curator found the man in the western side of the cemetery stripped to the waist. He was standing, on a large tomb, upon which was a life-sized carved representation of an angel clasping a palm leaf.
With his fists he was violently beating the face of the figure, because, he declared, - it had refused to kiss him.
With great difficulty he was overpowered, but not before the figure was badly damaged.
Several people working with lamps about a grave brought the curator from his bed one night in search of other ghosts. The ‘ghosts’ proved to be a couple who were leaving for England next day, and had taken the opportunity to run out by car to the cemetery to clean up a relative's grave.
“Dead people can never hurt you” says Mr. Gibbs, “and if you ever see a ghost, go after it, and it is sure to run.”
Most people would prefer to let the curator do the chasing.
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