Ghost Stories of Gibraltar

The Tower of Homage, Moorish Castle, Gibraltar - not so spooky in broad daylight.  But at night.......

Gibraltar has a pretty grim history, with battles, plagues and hangings regular features, and I bet that there are some suitably spooky ghost stories to be told. And I really would like to tell them.  But the problem is that I don't know any of them.  I have a vague recollection of a story about a grey nun whose ghost haunts the Governor's Palace (the old convent), and vague stories about the old tunnels and galleries in the rock.  There were even old wive's tales about the very distant sound of screams to be heard faintly from the walls of the castle.  But I know little in detail.

Walking around Gibraltar the other night I noticed that there are some pretty dark and spooky places around, especially in the old town.  Not that I was looking for somewhere to set a ghost story in particular, it was just that I walk the dog quite late to avoid the heat of the day and I can't help stumbling into these places.  

A dark corner, Lynch's Lane

The old St Bernard's Hospital, for example, which is in the process of being converted into apartments for the elderly, was a pretty daunting place when it was up and running, let alone in its ruined state.  It did trigger off a story, but more of that later.  I also found some buildings under demolition in Crutchett's Ramp that gave me the creeps, and a doorway in Lynch's Lane that could just have had the shadow of a ghoul lurking in it. 

It was just a dark space until the camera's flash lit it.  What might have been lurking there ....

 And when a thick, grey fog slinks around the rock from the east and blankets the town, you can't help wondering just what malice it holds.

An easterly fog - the Levanter - drifting in one twilight, ready to hide all manner of things......

So I am putting a call out to Gibraltarians all over the world - tell me your ghost stories of Gibraltar.  even if you know very little, just a sentence or two, contact me through the comment box, or find me on Twitter @gibtalk and tweet me what you know.

Of course, I will be glued to my TV screen on Tuesday evening at 10.00pm for The Ghost Trail on GBC TV where paranormal investigators seek out the ghostly in Gibraltar.  Check out programme details at

http://www.gbc.gi/television/tv-programme-details.php?programme=911

This is series 2 and unfortunately I missed Series 1 - perhaps GBC will do a re-run!

I couldn't help but be inspired by the long-dead carcass of St Bernard's and the tales the security guards told me of noises and voices and disembodied moans in the darkest hours of the night, and I penned "The Last Lullaby".  The opening paragraphs are set out below.  Look out for news on when Chilling Tales for Winter Nights will be available for you.

"The Last Lullaby

  Kayla’s footsteps echoed from the high ceilings of the corridor.  The hospital was almost empty now, the building exhausted from centuries of sheltering the sick and dying, and the two nurses who walked with her were drained of strength as they approached the end of yet another twelve-hour shift. She noticed the shadows of the closed parts of the building stretching out to both sides of her.  It was eerie, this stillness in a place she had not visited frequently, but which she had always known to bustle with the to-ing and fro-ing of nurses, doctors, porters pushing wheelchairs, patients limping or shuffling about and visitors chattering eagerly and carrying gifts to sick friends.  This place, in the growing gloom of twilight, was hollow, its long corridors spread out across part of the old town like the decaying bones of a corpse long dead.

     “Here we are, dear,” said the older nurse, stopping at the only doorway where a tawny light indicated there were other people there.  Kayla stood at the arch of the door and hesitated.  Inside here, at least, although set, it seemed, in the very entrails of the building, it seemed bright and friendly, and the waiting room the nurses led her to smelt of a peculiar mixture of disinfectant and the bunches of fresh flowers that adorned the low tables set about the room round which were arranged  a number of tatty armchairs.

      “Just take a seat and relax,” the older nurse spoke again, “your midwife will be here in a short while.  Don’t worry, dear, you’ll be cared for well here.  By morning, God willing, you’ll be able to meet your baby.”  And with that she gave Kayla’s hand a little squeeze that Kayla wished she could have found more reassuring.

Kayla found her legs were trembling and she was glad to sit on one of the armchairs.  She felt small and scared, and very young.  Too young, her mother had screamed at her a few months ago when she found out.  Too young to be having a baby.  Worst of all, Kayla felt so alone.  The two nurses left her and she listened to their footsteps receding down that endless cavern of a corridor until they had faded into silence.

 Kayla ran her hand over her swollen belly.  The pains were coming regularly now, every five minutes or so, but if she relaxed she was able to control the worst of them.  The problem was trying to relax in this place, with its centuries old cellars carved into the bowels of the Rock itself, the bell tower at the far end that was now seething with bats but which once had tolled day after day for the souls of the dead.  Kayla had been born here just sixteen years earlier, but it had all been so different then and the hospital had been at the heart of the city.  It was too old now; parts of it had started collapsing and there was no space for new machinery, the new science of medicine.  So a new hospital had been built, not too far away, but in a wide open space near the sea, a clean and clinical hospital, modern with humming, bleeping machinery and suffused with light.  Only the maternity unit had stayed behind at the old hospital, waiting for the new maternity wing to be completed.  Kayla would have her baby here, soon, she hoped, and when all was well, an ambulance would take her down the hill to the new hospital to recover.  And then she would be sent home.  Except she had no home, because when he found out she was having a baby, her father threw her out, pushing her backwards out of the front door of their shoddy government apartment and telling her she was worthless.  So here she was, alone, waiting, with her whole world stuffed into a bright blue bag by her feet, and a new life kicking in her belly."