The Grey Lady of Gibraltar's Convent
It's a gloriously sunny spring Sunday as I write this. The sun is streaming in through the window and the chattering of children playing in the sea-front park can be heard. The cry of gulls and the scent of a calm sea completes an idyllic calm. Not quite the perfect inspiration for blogging about ghouls and ghosts and looking ahead to another Halloween.
But undeterred, if frequently delayed, I continue to nose about the plethora of ghost stories that abound in Gibraltar. Call them urban legends, the figment of many a drunken or darkened pre-Victorian imagination, even another tool in the armoury of fearsome weapons used by desperate parents trying to keep their kids in bed and from wandering around a darkened home...a quick digression here: why would any rational person think that telling a youngster that a bloodthirsty ghoul will consume their souls if they dare step out from under the covers would succeed in getting them to sleep quickly, is completely beyond my understanding!
Moving on.
The world seems to have a reasonably good number of ghostly ladies - grey, black and white mostly, and, in many cases, they have been nuns or locked into some kind of religious order, and, also in many cases, they have died in horrible circumstances. Most common cause of death - ghastly punishment inflicted because these women dared to disobey the social order as enforced by their fathers or husbands or brothers or other men, and have love affairs against their vows or their significant their men's wishes. The patriarchy at work!
Gibraltar (should I note here that it was very much part of the patriarchy and mostly still is? Probably not, but I'm not deleting this statement and eagerly await a cascade of comments from readers!) has its very own Grey Lady.
Having nosed about various sources, I find that the Grey Lady is probably our most well-known ghost. She haunts the Convent. This elderly building found near the southern end of Gibraltar's Old Town has, since 1728, been the Governor's Palace, the Governor's official residence. But, built in the early sixteenth century, the Convent had originally been a Franciscan monastery. Reports of sightings of a Grey Lady wandering the private rooms in the Convent have been recorded since at least the early nineteenth century. As recently as the 1960s, no less a personage than Lady Anderson, wife of the then governor, claimed that her grandchildren had told her that they had been playing in the rooms around the residence by running through a lady dressed in grey! Residents and staff at The Convent have made comment on having seen a ghostly figure moving about the corridors of The Convent, and of objects moving about, pictures being knocked off the walls and the like.
There is an excellent account of the Grey Lady story in a blog post in "The People of Gibraltar" blog, where the writer, Neville Chipulina, has carried out a fair amount of research to see if any of the stories surrounding the Grey Lady could be confirmed. Unfortunately, little can be backed up with any kind of definitive evidence, but that's fine by me. Ghost stories don't need to be grounded in fact, they just need to be unnerving, giving a sense of something beyond the real experience of the every day.
The story of the Grey Lady of Gibraltar's Convent
The general thread of the story is suitably gruesome and tragic. A young woman, possibly called Alitea and quite possibly a member of the rather well to do de Lacey family from Sevilla, had fallen in love with a common man called Silvano, perhaps a peasant and certainly not the kind of match her father would have wanted for her. When he found out, her father was furious and he had her taken to Gibraltar and delivered to the clutches of the Convent of Santa Clara in Main Street.
Heartbroken but not yet having lost all hope of being close to his beloved, Silvano joined a monastery also in Gibraltar. They began to meet in the secrecy of the confessional in what is now The King's Chapel. When Alitea's brother, Humberto, uncovered the affair, he was furious. He had the lovers watched and soon found out that Silvano and Alitea were plotting to escape, fleeing Gibraltar and the clutches of both the Church and Alitea's family by sailing to Morocco.
On the night of their planned escape, Alitea and Silvano made their way towards the south of Gibraltar, to where Silvano had a boat prepared at a small bay, possibly Rosia Bay. Here, Humberto's men caught up with them, and in the scuffle that ensued, Silvano fell overboard and disappeared into the sea. A devastated Alitea was dragged back to the Convent of Santa Clara, and then had to stand trial under the rules of the Inquisition. The Inquisition, ever merciful, decided not to have her flayed or burned to death, but instead had her buried alive in some nook or in the walls of the Fransiscan monastery that is now The Convent. It is Alitea's ghost, always seeking to leave, to escape and once again join hands with her lover, Silvano, that is reputed to be the Grey Lady.
I do wonder why religious orders seem to number so many ghosts among them. Perhaps it is because of the belief in life beyond death that is part of most religions which means that followers tend to believe in these ghosts. Perhaps it is because of the general aura of mystery that surrounds religious orders, especially closed orders. I also think that the cruelty and the darkness of religious orders that, are associated with events such as the Inquisition may well have something to do with the tendency to link horrific deaths or personal tragedies instigated by the religious order, or prompted by religious beliefs to unusual events or sightings of figures that could be thought of as ghosts.
Gibraltar during the couple of centuries of Spanish occupation was deeply, and darkly, Catholic with all the fire and brimstone and demonic figures that this brought with it. There were numerous churches, convents and monasteries. Punishments were harsh and misogyny acceptable, even required. It is of no surprise that there is a Grey Lady that haunts the site of a former monastery. What I'd love to know, is if there are other 'religious' ghosts out there in Gibraltar. There must be - please let me know if there are!
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| By Bjørn - Flickr: IMG_8657, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22413398 |
But undeterred, if frequently delayed, I continue to nose about the plethora of ghost stories that abound in Gibraltar. Call them urban legends, the figment of many a drunken or darkened pre-Victorian imagination, even another tool in the armoury of fearsome weapons used by desperate parents trying to keep their kids in bed and from wandering around a darkened home...a quick digression here: why would any rational person think that telling a youngster that a bloodthirsty ghoul will consume their souls if they dare step out from under the covers would succeed in getting them to sleep quickly, is completely beyond my understanding!
Moving on.
The world seems to have a reasonably good number of ghostly ladies - grey, black and white mostly, and, in many cases, they have been nuns or locked into some kind of religious order, and, also in many cases, they have died in horrible circumstances. Most common cause of death - ghastly punishment inflicted because these women dared to disobey the social order as enforced by their fathers or husbands or brothers or other men, and have love affairs against their vows or their significant their men's wishes. The patriarchy at work!
Gibraltar (should I note here that it was very much part of the patriarchy and mostly still is? Probably not, but I'm not deleting this statement and eagerly await a cascade of comments from readers!) has its very own Grey Lady.
Having nosed about various sources, I find that the Grey Lady is probably our most well-known ghost. She haunts the Convent. This elderly building found near the southern end of Gibraltar's Old Town has, since 1728, been the Governor's Palace, the Governor's official residence. But, built in the early sixteenth century, the Convent had originally been a Franciscan monastery. Reports of sightings of a Grey Lady wandering the private rooms in the Convent have been recorded since at least the early nineteenth century. As recently as the 1960s, no less a personage than Lady Anderson, wife of the then governor, claimed that her grandchildren had told her that they had been playing in the rooms around the residence by running through a lady dressed in grey! Residents and staff at The Convent have made comment on having seen a ghostly figure moving about the corridors of The Convent, and of objects moving about, pictures being knocked off the walls and the like.
There is an excellent account of the Grey Lady story in a blog post in "The People of Gibraltar" blog, where the writer, Neville Chipulina, has carried out a fair amount of research to see if any of the stories surrounding the Grey Lady could be confirmed. Unfortunately, little can be backed up with any kind of definitive evidence, but that's fine by me. Ghost stories don't need to be grounded in fact, they just need to be unnerving, giving a sense of something beyond the real experience of the every day.
The story of the Grey Lady of Gibraltar's Convent
The general thread of the story is suitably gruesome and tragic. A young woman, possibly called Alitea and quite possibly a member of the rather well to do de Lacey family from Sevilla, had fallen in love with a common man called Silvano, perhaps a peasant and certainly not the kind of match her father would have wanted for her. When he found out, her father was furious and he had her taken to Gibraltar and delivered to the clutches of the Convent of Santa Clara in Main Street.
Heartbroken but not yet having lost all hope of being close to his beloved, Silvano joined a monastery also in Gibraltar. They began to meet in the secrecy of the confessional in what is now The King's Chapel. When Alitea's brother, Humberto, uncovered the affair, he was furious. He had the lovers watched and soon found out that Silvano and Alitea were plotting to escape, fleeing Gibraltar and the clutches of both the Church and Alitea's family by sailing to Morocco.
On the night of their planned escape, Alitea and Silvano made their way towards the south of Gibraltar, to where Silvano had a boat prepared at a small bay, possibly Rosia Bay. Here, Humberto's men caught up with them, and in the scuffle that ensued, Silvano fell overboard and disappeared into the sea. A devastated Alitea was dragged back to the Convent of Santa Clara, and then had to stand trial under the rules of the Inquisition. The Inquisition, ever merciful, decided not to have her flayed or burned to death, but instead had her buried alive in some nook or in the walls of the Fransiscan monastery that is now The Convent. It is Alitea's ghost, always seeking to leave, to escape and once again join hands with her lover, Silvano, that is reputed to be the Grey Lady.
I do wonder why religious orders seem to number so many ghosts among them. Perhaps it is because of the belief in life beyond death that is part of most religions which means that followers tend to believe in these ghosts. Perhaps it is because of the general aura of mystery that surrounds religious orders, especially closed orders. I also think that the cruelty and the darkness of religious orders that, are associated with events such as the Inquisition may well have something to do with the tendency to link horrific deaths or personal tragedies instigated by the religious order, or prompted by religious beliefs to unusual events or sightings of figures that could be thought of as ghosts.
Gibraltar during the couple of centuries of Spanish occupation was deeply, and darkly, Catholic with all the fire and brimstone and demonic figures that this brought with it. There were numerous churches, convents and monasteries. Punishments were harsh and misogyny acceptable, even required. It is of no surprise that there is a Grey Lady that haunts the site of a former monastery. What I'd love to know, is if there are other 'religious' ghosts out there in Gibraltar. There must be - please let me know if there are!
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| Image by cocoparisienne by Pixabay |
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