The Woman in Black: Solving the mystery of a vanishing ghost

Every town has a 'white lady' ghost story. I know my hometown does, and they're pretty much par for the course as generic ghostlore goes. ‘White Lady’ stories have been around for centuries in Britain, and are generally associated with some romantic tragedy or other, usually being women who have lost a husband or lover and wear Victorian-era clothing. A variation on this theme are 'Lady in Black' stories, and the South Brisbane Cemetery has one of its very own. In recent years, however, this particular Lady in Black has been suffering something of an identity crisis, but I think we can now resolve some of those issues for her. 

Tracey Olivieri, author of 'The Ghosts of South Brisbane Cemetery', grew up in the local area during the 1970s and recalls children trying to scare each with ‘lady in black’ tales back then, telling each other of a dark figure moving through the cemetery. The most common theory was that it was the ghost of a heartbroken young 19th-century widow who used to visit  the grave of her dead husband every day. She died unexpectedly, but had not realised this and still tended the grave, wearing her mourning clothes. According to Tracey, "If anyone approaches her she just lowers her head and simply disappears amongst the graves. She is not menacing and is not a ghost to be scared of". She was only ever seen within 'the Teardrop’, which is the part of cemetery on the hill near the main entrance. The cemetery roadway circles around it to form the shape of a teardrop.

 

By the late 1990s, however, ghost tours had started in the cemetery and the backstory changed dramatically. This online version dates from 2001: 

"A woman in a black Victorian dress often walks down the road through the cemetery towards the prison... Many old-timers claim she's the tormented spirit of the only woman who was ever executed in Queensland!" 

The woman that the 'old-timers' refer to here is Ellen Thomson, who was executed at Boggo Road in 1887 and is a rather obvious candidate for a ghost story. She was the only woman hanged, a mother of six, a convicted murderer, and an Irish Catholic who died clutching a crucifix and proclaiming her innocence. If you are doing a tour in the cemetery where she was buried, next to the prison were she was hanged, it's a no-brainer. The basic story, as it was relayed to me, went something like this: Because she was a woman, she was given special dispensation to be buried outside section 6B, where executed prisoners were normally buried, and now her ghost could be seen wandering near section 10C, wearing the black dress she was buried in and clutching a string of rosary beads to her chest etc etc...

Ellen Thomson, 1887
(QSA, #ID2947)

What is interesting about this tale, however, is the fact that it was the headline story for the cemetery tour for a few years before it completely vanished without trace from the itinerary. A new story with an all-new 'lady in black' suddenly appeared, this one featuring a nun with a ‘skull’ face. So what happened to Ellen? Why was her story dropped so abruptly, never to be spoken of again? Surely her story and character were sufficiently interesting, and much more believable than a skull-faced nun?  

Scooby Doo, where are you?

After recently speaking to people who went on those early tours, I think the mystery of the vanishing ghost has been solved. It turns out the ghost tour had been taking people to the WRONG GRAVE! The hanged Ellen Thomson actually had been buried in section 6B after all, back in 1887. The ghost tour people had been taking customers to the grave of a different Ellen Thompson, who died in 1903 and was buried in section 10C. Whoops. 

South Brisbane Cemetery

This was a glaring mistake that couldn't go undetected for long, and sure enough the truth was realised at some point prior to 2004. Unfortunately, this left the ghost of the executed Ellen Thomson haunting the wrong part of the cemetery, so it seems the story was quietly disappeared while a new one appeared in its place. The Catholic element was retained, but the action moved to the Teardrop, a different part of the cemetery.

And what happened to the older ghost? The one that used to wander around in the black dress with the rosary beads? If that part of story was true (even if this was the wrong Ellen Thompson grave) surely the same ghost would still be around there anyway, right where ghost tours had so long claimed it was? Apparently not. When the mistake was realised, the tour spot vanished and it seems that the ghost went with it.

This is a nice little example of why things like the Friends of South Brisbane Cemetery and Moonlight Tours become necessary, to make sure that the ever-unfolding history of a place like South Brisbane Cemetery stays on the straight and narrow. 

PS: I am not going to get caught up in any debate about who the so-called Lady in Black actually is, because I don't know if ghosts even exist, or what they are, or if we can attribute identities to them. If we can connect ghosts to specific tragic tales, then a good candidate in this case would be the local woman whose husband drowned at sea in 1899, several weeks before her two-year-old daughter burned to death, and six months before she killed herself. Her other children found her suicide note at dawn, and her movements were traced to the South Brisbane Cemetery, where her hat and cloak were found near footsteps leading to the riverbank. Later that day the police recovered her drowned body from near the same spot. 

She was buried with her little girl in a grave near the Teardrop.