KARORI GHOSTS

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 256, 27 July 1939, Page 13

KARORI GHOSTS

Cemetery Reported To Be Haunted MYSTERY OF STRANGE LIGHTS Stories of ghosts haunting a Wellington suburb have caused alarm to residents of lonely homes, and roused a storm of rumour during the past week. They have been brought to the attention of the police, and have been reported again and again to the Press. Last night, however, psychic investigators traced their origin to a by no means supernatural source. Ghosts walk Karori Cemetery of nights, said local dwellers who have seen strange lights flickering among the gravestones after dark, the last, few nights, anil have hurried away to eompjain to the police, report the phenomenon to “The Dominion,’ an I alarm their neighbours. From numerous sources, excited tales of white shapes seen flitting between the shadowy trees have been retailed by frightened women and sceptical men. In almost every case, it Has been someone other than the narrator who observed these things. It has been always the friend of a friend who had it. on good authority, or the cook next door but three, who swears she won’t go in the cemetery after dark all her life long—though why anyone should want to spend the evening in a graveyard is a subject for conjecture. Police Inquiries. These stories were reported to the Central Police Station, and a car-load of constables visited the district and made inquiries, without disclosing anything of supernatural origin. But the credulous were still dissatisfied. Last night a party of investigators watched the graveyard from Wilton's Bush Road, from where the movements in the cemetery have been observed. This dark and lonely road is a favourite resort of young lovers on moonlight nights. It looks across a deep gully at the gloomy hillside, on which the white ranked gravestones can be dimly discerned. At the top of the cemetery is a wood of pines, casting a black shadow on the slopes immediately underneath. Below the copse, four or five cypresses stand like sentinels. Lelow them again, where the white gravestones are ranked in tiers along the steeper slopes,, the mysterious visitants had been observed. Strange Lights Seen. Hardly had the watchers’ car drawn up opposite the cemetery than suddenly, near the bottom of the slope, a yellow light flickered into a wan glow, lingered for a couple of minutes, and went out. Binoculars gave no clue to its nature. No movement could be seen among the graves. From a point further along the road, a strange shape glowing with a reddish light could be seen in the cemetery, halfway to the bottom of the slope. It shone out brightly, astonishingly, glowing with an amazingly bright phosphorescent effect difficult to explain. Staring at that, solitary spot, it was easy to believe it moved. But a glance through the binoculars explained the truth. It was a gravestone. But why • it shone so, unless .someone were focussing it with a torch, was another question. A party of local people stood on the highway, pointing it out one to another, and speculating as to its nature. Graveyard Visited. But a visit to the graveyard proved that it was quite an ordinary gravestone —-and nobody was hiding anywhere near it. Karori cemetery is left open to the public, day and night. It is not a cheerful place, naturally, after dark, and it was easy, among the weird silhouettes of the standing stones, to imagine one shared it with the spirits of the departed. At least one of the party felt happier for having a handy cudgel, though it is questionable whether a cudgel would be very effective against so intangible an opponent as a hostile ghost. But there were no ghosts seen, only the plain stone of dark-grey granite, and it is no different in appearance from many others of those near it. It would have been hard to credit it was the actual stone that glowed so bright from the farther side of the gully, had not the watchers there confirmed the identification, and said that it was glowing even while the investigators examined it. Stone at Slight Angle. It was a family stone, bearing dates from 1899 to 1936, and it had evidently stood there for some years. Why of all the gravestones it alone caught the light, and from where, and why it reflected it in such an odd manner, was probably explained by a slight difference in angle from its neighbours, a minute error from the perpendicular. And the lights in the cemetery that came and went were the reflected lights of cars moving on the opposite hill.

There was less cause for alarm than in the instance recalled from the time of the Dunedin Exhibition, when an old Irishwoman tending a grave in the gathering dusk looked up to see, to ber horror, a tiny hobgoblin in coat and trousers squatting on the headstone leering at her. She did not wait to discover that it was merely a tame monkey, escaped from a sideshow and wanting to be friendly. But because no ghosts stalked last night between the stones, and at least ninety-nine per cent, of the rumours are founded, no doubt, on tiffs illusion of the lighting, is no proof that the spirits of the dead do not linger about their burial places, there or at historic Bolton Street graveyard, or where the chiefs of the Maoris sleep at I’etone and Otaki and Kapltl, or wherever else moulder the bones of the heroes and the warriors of the past.