Toowong Cemetery - Queensland

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

History

 

 

Officially opened in 1875, Toowong cemetery lies within the Mt Coot-tha foothills near Brisbane in Queensland, Australia. The cemetery is spread over rolling hills and valleys and covers an area of 257 hectares.

 

The Necropolis is the home to 120,000 of the dearly departed.

 

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 on 3 January 1871 and 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 upon request allocated portions to different communities. Portion No 1, was allocated to the Church of England, Portion No 2 to the Wesleyan, 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 to criminals. In 1879, the Chinese were allocated part of Portion 2, then relocated in January 1884 to the ground below 7 and then again in April of that year to Portion No 8. The various cultural and religious groups were separated and boundaries 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 with the exception of burials in family graves.

Investigations

 

Allen frequented this cemetery whilst living in Queensland, you could say this is where Eidolon Paranormal was born.

Allen tried various experiments here by himself and with other paranormal investigators and enthusiasts. He also went along on a number of cemetery tours, one conducted by the legendary Jack Sim, a local Author and Ghost Tour proprietor who has written many books about the hauntings, and paranormal events in Queensland.

Allen has a number of photos in his collection taken in and around this cemetery at various hours of the day and night, various weather conditions and moon phases, only a few contain anomalies, and Allen believes the lower amount of pixels on his digital camera at that time probably explains away the anomalies. Some of those photos can already be seen on the Eidolon Paranormal website and other places online.

 

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 his death 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 statues eyes move and blink as he casually watches those watching him….

 

 

Mayne Family Crypt

 

 In the early 1840’s, Patrick Mayne was a slaughter man in Brisbane. Whilst drinking in a local pub, Patrick overheard a conversation with a drunken man was boasting about large sums of money he was carrying.

The next day, Mr 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.

Another Gentleman, Mr William Fyfe was arrested, convicted and subsequently hung for the crime, all the while protesting his innocence.

A year or so later, Mr Mayne invested in his butcher shop on Queen Street, in the very heart of Brisbane itself, of which was very successful, and led him to invest in real estate, of which he had a small empire invested in upon his death.

 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, 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, 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, encountering the cemeteries 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 ghost tour has dubbed him “The Angel of Death” and has seen him at least 11 times since 1998 when the tours started. One tour group even managed too summon the apparition too appear within a circle they had made…..who is this mysterious dark figure?

 

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/