One of the (very few) older bits of ghost folklore attached to the South Brisbane Cemetery relates to a ‘Lady in Black’. Tracey Olivieri, cemetery historian and author of ‘The Ghosts of South Brisbane Cemetery‘, grew up in the local area during the 1970s and recalls children back then trying to scare each with ‘lady in black’ tales, telling each other of a dark figure that was on occasion seen moving silently through the cemetery. In recent years, however, this particular Lady in Black has been suffering something of an identity crisis.
According to Tracey, the 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 so she still tended the grave, wearing her mourning clothes. “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’ section of cemetery, on the hill near the main entrance (so named because the cemetery roadway circles around it to form the shape of a teardrop).
However, this backstory changed dramatically when ghost tours started in the cemetery. Tour marketing from 2001 claimed that:
“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 stereotypical 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.
The original tour story, as it was relayed to me by a witness, went something like this: Because she was a woman, Ellen was given special dispensation to be buried outside section 6B (where executed prisoners were interred), 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…
What I find most interesting about this tale is the fact that after a few years it suddenly vanished without trace from the tour itinerary, and was replaced with an all-new version of the ‘lady in black’ in a different part of the cemetery. So why was the story of Ellen’s ghost dropped so abruptly, never to be spoken of again?
It turned out the ghost tour had been taking people to the wrong grave. The executed Ellen Thomson actually had been buried in section 6B after all, back in 1887. The ghost tour had been stopping at the grave of a different Ellen Thompson (with a ‘p’), who died in 1903 and was buried in section 10C.
Unfortunately, this glaring mistake had left the alleged 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 as the new Lady in Black was now a nun who haunted the Teardrop (the location of the older story told by Tracey). In a bizarre contrivance, the nun had a skull for a face.
An important question in this whole episode is what happened to the older ghost in 10C? Even if it had been misidentified as the wrong person, surely the same ghost would still be around there anyway? It would be no less incredible, even if it was somebody else. Apparently not. When the mistake was realised, the tour spot vanished and so did the alleged ghost.
The only logical conclusion to be drawn from this sudden disappearance is that the first ghost was never there in the first place, and that the misidentified grave site (and accompanying backstory of murder and execution) was a convenient spot for a dramatic stop on the tour. It is also notable that it was conveniently replaced with a never-before-mentioned skull-faced nun.
Sometimes, we can learn more about the nature of these tours not from what is left in, but what was left out.
The story of the Lady in Black persists, despite a lack of recent sightings, and provides us with a good example of the fickle nature of folklore and commercial influences.
Christopher Dawson 