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A woman’s terrifying experience in a neglected Edinburgh cemetery reveals a terrifying link to a historical tragedy, writes JOHN TANTALON
As the dark nights return and a chill fills the air, it’s time to think back to a fitting autumn story. As the impending excitement of Halloween, the season of the dead, occupies store windows across the country, one specific story always comes to mind.
This story was told to me some time ago by a woman. The witness is a resident of the leafy area of Newington in Edinburgh. She walks the route to nearby Newington Cemetery with her dog every morning before work. October mornings create a dark and ominous atmosphere within the confines of this location.
The Victorian Necropolis was built in 1846 to meet the demand of the city’s growing population. Vaulted arches with elaborate tombs criss-cross the cemetery walls. The many graves, now sadly neglected, form the landscape of this overgrown and now abandoned cemetery. Its paths have now been completely reclaimed by nature’s grasp.
It was a morning leading up to Halloween when she had a terrifying encounter in an old part of the cemetery. Her dog stopped at the foot of a large, imposing gravestone.
Revelation of Newington Cemetery
Although the stone was more than 100 years old, it had a reflective granite surface. The names of those buried gleamed in the forming morning light. The witness was suddenly startled when she became aware of what she thought was her dog reflected in the glaze of the stone. She screamed out loud and realized that her little black dog was running within the confines of the other side of the cemetery.
What stood behind her was walking upright, crooked and in the opposite direction. Horrified by what she saw that morning, the woman left hastily and did not return to Newington Cemetery for several days.
Our witness returned with her husband on October 30, the day before Halloween. After explaining the frightening story to him, they started looking for a logical explanation for the event. Her husband walked where the figure would have stood. He moved back and forth until his body became visible in the reflection of the gravestone. He stood directly at the foot of an old and overgrown grave.
The woman stated that in the many years she had visited the cemetery, she had never seen this grave. She tended some stones and laid flowers at the resting place of many Newington residents, but this was the first time this overgrown plot had caught her attention.
Her husband removed the foliage from the flattened grave; the inscription on the grave reads as follows.
‘Janet Aitchison, died October 1943, beloved wife’.
Above the inscription was the name of her husband, who was also buried, in barely legible script.
‘William Aitchison, RIP, may the waves carry you to our Lord, 1881’.
The revelation of the name sent a shiver down the woman’s spine. Suddenly it became clear to her. She felt dizzy and scared. A feeling of nausea settled in her stomach and her arms became heavy as blood rushed from her limbs. William Aitchison was the name of a relative, her great uncle. An uncle from an extensive line of fishermen who had died in The Eyemouth fishing disaster on October 14, 1881. The worst fishing disaster of its kind on the coast of Scotland.
Most of the fishing boats on Scotland’s North Sea coast docked in port on that clear, sunny, almost windless morning. A storm was coming – not just any storm, but a hurricane-force cyclone. However, Eyemouth skippers and several fishermen from nearby ports ignored the weather warnings and left at the crack of dawn. Around noon they were hit by a heavy storm that their wooden boats were unable to withstand.
Many fishing boats capsized; others were wrecked on the rocky coastline, and during the return journey to port many failed to reach the outdated and poorly maintained harbor at Eyemouth. By the time the storm had subsided, 26 of Eyemouth’s 46 fishing boats had been lost, along with 189 fishermen, 129 of whom were men from the town.
By the end of that fateful day, fishermen from Eyemouth, Burnmouth, Newhaven and Musselburgh were all lost due to the ferocity of the storm. The day would become known to the people of Eyemouth as ‘Black Friday’, a day that residents would never forget for generations to come.
It would take many years for the ports to fully recover. The fishing industry would suffer for years, causing poverty and hardship. The dead would be buried, locally and beyond.
For the stunned Newington resident, the connection was all too real. A faded photo of a bearded man dressed in old-fashioned oilskins provided a tragic reminder of the events. Would he have contacted her that day? One hundred and forty years later, that same month. The month of October, the season of the dead?
JOHN TANTALON is an Edinburgh-based author, the face and voice behind it Nightmares in North Edinburgh, the two books and several videos. It covers stories about Edinburgh’s spooky history and things that happen at night. The haunted Edinburgh guide covers three separate parts of the city and its many terrifying stories. His new book The Haunted Realms of Surrey and Hampshire is available from Amazon.. You can follow him Tweet, Instagram And YouTube.
