Toowong Cemetery
Location: Brisbane, Queensland
Location type: Public Cemetery
Location status: Open during business hours
Open for Tour groups
Website: N/A
Denomination: All
History
The cemetery is also the home of a “magnetic hill”. A small hill that if you park your car on the road, near a white Mausoleum, turn your car off, and put it into neutral, the car will roll uphill
Queensland’s second governor, Samuel Wensley Blackall was buried on the highest knoll of the cemetery on 3 January 1871. His memorial is the largest and most prominent in the cemetery with commanding views of the city and surrounds
Between November 1874 and August 1875, the Trustees of the cemetery, upon request, allocated portions of the cemetery to different religious communities. Portion No 1, was allocated to the Church of England, Portion No 2 to the Wesleyans, Portion No 3 to the Hebrews, Portion No 7 to the Roman Catholics, Portion No 16 to Paupers and No 17 and parts of No 1 and 7 to public graves, Portion No 15 is reserved for criminals. In 1879, the Chinese were allocated part of Portion 2, then relocated in January 1884 to No. 7; and then relocated again in April of that year to Portion No. 8. The various cultural and religious groups were separated and boundaries were clearly formed by winding roads. There is a strong showing of the Christian section of the graves, supporting the demographic dominance of Anglo-Saxons in Brisbane and the relocation of the Chinese several times (now in Portion 19) demonstrates the disregard afforded to this section of the community, which exhumed many of its dead for re-interment in China
The Paddington Cemeteries Act of 1911, authorised the Government to resume the several cemeteries at Milton and, upon the request of any relative of any person buried therein within 12 months, to disinter the remains of the deceased. The remains were removed together with any memorials to any cemetery agreed upon with associated costs borne by the Government. Of the 4,643 identifiable graves at Milton, there were 178 applications made. 139 remains and 105 memorials were relocated from Milton to Toowong throughout the site, with the greatest concentration to be found in Portion 6
In 1936 the last available block, Portion 30, was laid out for burial purposes. To allow for more burials, the plot sizes were reduced from 9’x5’ to 8’x4’. By April 1975, all burial plots in the Cemetery had been sold and the Cemetery was closed except for burials in family graves.
Paranormal Legends of Toowong
“The Black Prince”In 1886, a boxer named Peter Jackson became the Australian Heavyweight Champion under the moniker of “The Black Prince”.
Jackson won many fights in the U.S.A. and England and would have been world champion except John Sullivan refused to fight him because of the colour of his skin. It is rumoured if you visit Jackson’s tomb at midnight, by yourself, you will hear the sound of a ring bell sounding…
Mr. Macgregor
The proprietor of the Lyceum Theatre, Edward Macgregor was a patron of the arts. A statue of him was erected after he died in 1939. It has been reported by countless groundsmen that the statue has been seen walking amongst the headstones at dusk. That his coat can sometimes be seen swaying in the wind as he sits thinking, and that the statue's eyes move and blink as he casually watches those watching him….
Mayne Family Crypt
In the early 1840s, Patrick Mayne was a slaughterman in Brisbane. Whilst drinking in a local pub, Patrick overheard a conversation with a drunken man who was boasting about large sums of money he was carrying. The next day the boaster, Robert Cox, was found butchered. His finger was found in a gutter, his disembowelled torso in the street, and his head near a local hotel.
William Fyfe was arrested for the murder, convicted, and subsequently hung for the crime, all the while protesting his innocence.
A year later, Mr Mayne improved his butcher shop on Queen Street, Brisbane. His butcher shop became so successful he was able to invest in real estate and create a sizeable investment portfolio.
In 1865, on his deathbed, Mr Mayne confessed his sins, one being the murder of Mr Cox.
At the bottom of the Mayne family crypt are air vents, which allow liquids and gases from decomposition to escape the vault. At various times, the thick red liquid is seen oozing from the vents and down into the gutter on 12th Avenue…
12th Avenue Vampire
Only two cemeteries in the world are known to have a vampire that dwells amongst the graves, Highgate Cemetery in London, and Toowong Cemetery, in Brisbane. It is said that a black shadow with razor-sharp teeth drifts through the trees on 12th Avenue within the cemetery; that homeless people will walk a longer path, choosing to encounter the cemetery's other ghouls, rather than face the shark-like razor teeth of the Toowong vampire.
Local legend has it that two gravediggers were called upon to exhume a body; they were puzzled by the softness of the ground, which appeared to have been recently disturbed. Once they had dug down to the coffin, the men were disturbed to find the nails of the coffin had been pushed from the inside out.
They removed the lid, only to find the woman inside the coffin had not decomposed at all, after many years of being dead. The braver of the men reached in and touched her face, her head rolled to one side and she smiled, revealing two rows of sharp teeth. The gravediggers dumped the coffin back in the grave, filled it back in and left….
Angel of Death
A dark-cloaked man has been seen in the cemetery since the great depression era. Jack Sims has dubbed him “The Angel of Death”. This ghost has been witnessed at least 11 times since 1998 when tours started.
References
http://www.toowongwest.org.au/heritage_register/cemetery.htm
Black: Australian Dark Culture. Magazine, Issue 1 July 2008
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toowong_Cemetery
http://www.ghost-tours.com.au/Pages/tour_toowong_cemetery_details.htm
http://www.toowong.cemetery.org.au/
No comments:
Post a Comment