Milltown City Cemetery, Falls Road
When it comes to graveyards, the opinion is divided as to whether you’ll come across anything of a supernatural nature. Some believers in the paranormal say that you are not likely to see a ghost in a graveyard, as they are more attached to people and the places they loved in life. The latter group of believers will argue that graveyards are a hive of paranormal activity. In fact I even have a friend who has founded their own paranormal research group and they are forever showing me footage suggesting that the graveyards they have researched are very much active and haunted.
Without a doubt graveyards are enigmatic places, they definitely possess an atmosphere of intrigue and perhaps a creepy vibe which would make the most discerning of minds run amuck if walking alone through one on the darkest of nights! One such place local to Belfast can be found on the Falls Road, otherwise known as Milltown City Cemetery.
Before we get down to the ghosts and ghouls, let’s start with some interesting facts. Milltown Cemetery was founded on 1st August 1869 due to the ever growing population rate of Belfast. Both denominations of the Catholic and Protestant faith were buried here, in fact there are underground walls within the cemetery that were to divide each plot of land according to religion. I kid you not. Even in death, religious segregation was prominent and taken seriously in the 19th century.
These nine foot underground walls also separated a plot set aside for the Jewish community in 1916. It is said that some of the plots were non-consecrated ground. Paupers were buried here, as were the rich and famous. The first members to be buried were two pauper girls. Mortality rates amongst children were significantly higher in the 19th century due to there being a vast amount of poverty, no National Health Service and poor diet, amongst other factors such as children being made to work long gruelling hours from a young age.
Poverty was rife, leading to high death rates among children.
Daniel Joseph Jaffe rests in Milltown Cemetery, the funder and founder of the first synagogue in Great Victoria Street. His son Otto Jaffe was one of the many Lord Mayors of Belfast, who erected a fountain memorial in his father’s honour which can be seen outside Victoria Square today. Daniel Joseph Jaffe was also an active philanthropist and successful linen merchant. However being Jewish made him the target of anti-semitism, leading to his gravestone being vandalised. It is said that the ghost of Daniel Joseph Jaffe stills haunts passer’s by out of wrath for the vandalism directed at his gravestone.
Daniel Jospeh Jaffe’s Memorial
Another tale is retold by a pharmacist working near Milltown City Cemetery who got chatting to a man who came in with a prescription of painkillers. This man is called John and he was meeting his girlfriend at the graveyard for a carry-out of beer and vodka.
John made his way through the graveyard and sat down against a grave marked with the inscription ‘Charles Abernethy...died 19th September 1933′. He opened a cold beer and sat back to enjoy the remaining sunset of that cool winter’s evening. It was then he felt the ground open up and move from beneath, trailing him beneath the soil.
The more he tried to sit up, the more the earth swallowed him up. His mobile phone rang, his girlfriend wondering where he was. He could do nothing but hit the answer button, and hope for someone to come and find him. For this point the gravestone fell on top of him, pushing him further into the darkness the dirt blinding his eyes, blocking his ears, suffocating his airways into dark silence...
Police eventually found him from reports of him being missing from the hostel and a very concerned girlfriend on their case to find her boyfriend. It took a crane to pull the gravestone off John and he was brought to A&E, hence winding up telling the pharmacist his tale while waiting for his painkillers!
What could have possibly happened to John? Did he happen to sit on a crumbling 9 foot underground wall? Did he get sucked into the dark depths of a grave, controlled by the spirit of Charles Abernethy who sought to punish for his lack of temperance on the resting place of the dead? No-one will truly know, but he is very lucky that he was found!
Milltown City Cemetery, Falls Road
Another tale occurred just outside the cemetery, of a woman who got ran over by a black taxi on one wet and dark December’s day. People driving past the cemetery around the same time of year see a young woman run in front of their car and get knocked down. Thinking they’ve ran someone over, they get out of their vehicle to see no sign of anyone there.
One of the things I love about Belfast is there is always something slightly more unusual in its way of life-and perhaps in its way of the afterlife too. I will leave you with a parting article which puts one in mind of the phrase, ‘if only gravestones could talk...’ The following can be found in the Public Records of Northern Ireland (PRONI) archives. It was published in the Irish News. Until next time, sleep tight....
“Wednesday, July 28th 1926
PHOTOGRAPHING SPIRITS
Remarkable Service in Belfast Cemetery
Our Belfast correspondent states that unusual scenes were witnessed at a Service held yesterday at the City Cemetery under the auspices of the local Christian Spiritualists' Association. The Service took place around the grave of Mrs McDermott, mother of Mr John McDermott, medium of the Association, who died about three weeks ago. Upwards of a hundred spiritualists, some of them carrying cameras, wre present and during the singing photographs were taken. Mr McDermott conducted the Service, which consisted of prayer, singing and an address.
Mr. Edwin Graham, secretary of the Association, explained that the Service was purely evangelical, and that many photographs had been taken with the object of photographing the spirits of departed friends of persons present at the grave. "It is a very hard thing," he added "to obtain spirit photographs". He added that when the photographs were developed, in a day or two, they would know whether they had succeeded in their object. Mr Graham explained that a special Service for Mrs McDermott had been held previously in the Hall. She was a native of Glasgow but had been in Belfast for the past year”
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