Haunting at Halloween

Halloween - All Hallows' Eve -  is about the thinning of the veil between worlds, where planes of existence overlap just for a few hours. 

This weekend has seen the height of modern Halloween fun, overtaken, as some might complain, by commercial gain.  Shops are brimming full of plastic masks, nylon costumes and all sorts of accessories to make the dressing-up, partying and the trick or treating (bags of themed, ghoulish sweets) as easy as possible. There are people face-painting, pumpkin-carving, window-dressing, performing in zombie/vampire hunts (yes, people really do pay for the pleasure of being scared out of their wits) and all sorts of revelries, many of which are have the sole objective of getting the till bells ringing. 

I am a bit of an old cynic at times, and I really don't like all the associated gore and the whole flesh-eating 'evil dead' and serial killer thing, and killer clowns are best consigned to the movies. But each to their own, I guess, and so long as the fun remains harmless, there's nothing wrong with dressing up as a rotting corpse.

But it's a traditional haunting that I like. Good old-fashioned ghosts, spirits that wander the world of the living, earth-bound because of some promise, some need for revenge, trapped by their own hatred or anger, or the desperate desire to communicate some truth that they were unable to tell while still living. And I do like demonic creatures - my fascination with vampires, werewolves and other ghoulish creatures whose provenance may be from other -  evil - worlds remains as child-like as ever.

Here is my current favourite haunted place in Gibraltar from my very casual anecdotal research so far, a place that may well be usurped as I find out more local stories. I am not a ghost-hunter, but a gatherer of stories (shameless plug of my paperback of short stories now out on Amazon: "The Last Lullaby", the link is in the menu!), so I have no intention of carrying out a 'paranormal investigation', although if anyone has or does and would like to chat about it, please contact me by commenting below!

Gibraltar Museum

The Gibraltar Museum is situated in Bomb House Lane in the heart of Gibraltar's Old Town. The museum itself was founded in 1930 but the building dates way back to Moorish times, the baths that are housed within the museum building having been built in the fourteenth century, at about the same time as Gibraltar's Moorish Castle.

Museums are pretty creepy places at the best of times: collections of ancient items, things that perhaps were of great emotional value to someone at some point in history. That the Gibraltar Museum was a place which in its time was used by so many people doesn't help. It is a higgeldy piggeldy building, and undeniably creepy, and even in the middle of an August day in Gibraltar, the place gives you the chills. And it helps even less when you learn that, being set within the old city walls and close to what in the times of the Great Siege was the sea, the museum building took a direct hit from sea bombardment and exploded into flames. The fire was almost all-consuming and a number of people died where they stood, right there, in the middle of what is now the Gibraltar Museum. 

Now, while I may like ghost stories, I am not much of a "believer". But even I find the place eerie. When my daughter was younger, nothing would induce her to go upstairs in the museum. She would scream and say there was a really nasty man who would not let her pass (in one of the upper corridors at the top of the stairs). Now, an older teenager, I put her reluctance to go the museum to her age and her preferring to 'hang out' in town with her mates. But the place  really does make the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.

The local legend says that there are at least two ghosts in the museum. One is the ghost of a former curator, an older man, who appears as large as life and utterly 'normal'. He takes charge of groups of visitors and shows them around the exhibits. Visitors don't realise that he is a ghost until afterwards, when he wonders off and they talk to museum staff, finding out then, that there is no museum guide that answers their description of him. Now this ghost seems more of a friendly ghost, the spirit, perhaps of someone who loved what they did in their lifetimes and hangs around to keep doing it.

It is the unfriendly man upstairs that is sinister. Some people claim to have had their hair pulled, or feel that there is someone right behind their shoulders about to strike them on the back of the head, but when they turn there is no-one there. They claim to feel threatened, unsettled, fearful, that, despite modern air conditioning and ventilation, they feel they are suffocating. 

Gibraltar has a long military history and many of its inhabitants were very violent. There is also a long history of smuggling, stealing, piracy and other nefarious activities, and there could be a link to dodgy goings-on in the building in past centuries. Whatever haunts the Gibraltar Museum's upper corridors, it is angry and malevolent, reflecting, in death, what may well have been the over-riding emotions of his life.

The haunted Gibraltar Museum is certainly not a place I would willingly approach on All Hallows' Eve!