In 2008, I spent eight days living next to a cemetery. That was as long as I could last.
I was in my third year at university at the time and found myself suddenly without accommodation. I had been staying in a tenement flat on the south side for the previous two years, but my landlord had died and his family decided to sell the place.
My landlord’s name was James and he’d been good to me in my time there, even when I’d been late with my rent a couple of times. I was sad when he died but not surprised, as he had been fighting cancer for several years. I think he just couldn’t outrun it anymore.
In any case, I had to find somewhere, and fast. Luckily, I managed to snag another rental on the south side and was happy with it. I was even paying less than my last place. This was a surprise, given that it was an end-terraced house and I was sharing it with only one other student.
It was in an area called Cathcart. The reason I loved it so much was that it was right next to a cemetery. When I looked out of my bedroom window, I could see over the old wall at the rear of the house and look directly at it. Inside there were countless gravestones, some toppled over with age, others still standing staunchly.
The cemetery was very old, and although I didn’t know the exact history, I had read somewhere that some of the graves went back as far as the 1400s.
You can find it, if you look for it.
At that time, I had a creeping feeling that I was treading water in my life, studying for a degree that I wouldn’t end up using, and so in my spare time, I was trying to establish myself as a writer. Some of it freelance - articles, copy, email marketing, that sort of thing - but I was also continuing to write fiction.
Given that I loved horror so much, the cemetery, not far below and beyond my window, made me feel like I was in an old Hammer horror film. The atmosphere was just right, especially at night. Ghoulish shadows were cast from a nearby street, and I tried to use the setting as a muse for the stories I was working on. I know it sounds hokey, but it was heaven for me. At least, it was heaven for a short time.
The other person I was living with was Glen. He moved into the house the day before I did. We didn’t really click, but he was nice enough. We spent most of our short time there separately, but he liked to be out socialising a lot, while I spent most of my free time typing away at my computer at the window, enthralled by the gravestones.
It only took three days before I noticed something unusual. It was after midnight and I was at my computer when I heard a sound from outside. I barely registered the noise at first, but it stuck in my mind moments later like an echo.
I looked out and down through the window, and I could see the small garden at the rear of the house and then the cemetery beyond it.
The angle provided a good view of the night scene, with the stone wall wrapping around the edges of the cemetery and then running alongside an adjacent street. I looked at the headstones in the darkness for a moment, but it was the street that caught my attention.
From that direction, I heard someone who sounded like they had put away one too many drinks, shouting out. After a moment, a man came into view, shuffling along the pavement.
But there was something strange about his body language. He was hunched over. It took my tired brain a moment to realise that he was actively trying to hide. He was walking alongside several parked cars on the opposite side of the road, using them as cover.
I remember that as he moved, a street light momentarily lit his face. He was wide-eyed. Even from a distance, I could tell he was scared. I could also see what he was looking at.
He was staring at the cemetery opposite him, never taking his eyes off it for a second.
Then I saw him stop for a moment, shout what sounded like ‘Get away!’ and then rush off down another street, disappearing from sight. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen someone so frightened. Whatever he thought he had seen, it was enough to make him run as though his life depended on it.
Watching out of the window, I then had the strangest feeling that I was going to see something I shouldn’t; like I was prying into someone else’s business. Another feeling quickly followed, a fear that I was going to witness whatever had terrified the man, crawling out of the cemetery and running after him. I wondered if I should call the police, that perhaps he had been attacked or mugged, but when no one emerged, I decided the man was seeing things or his pursuer had given up the chase.
I sat back down at my desk, but I couldn’t finish what I had been working on. I didn’t feel like myself. It was as though my subconscious mind had picked up on something that hadn’t been fully revealed to my conscious mind. Like staring at an optical illusion or a magic eye picture waiting for your brain to make sense of it all.
No matter how much I thought about it, though, whatever my mind had taken in remained outside of me. I remember feeling a little nauseous after that.
I went to bed.
The next morning, I spoke to Glen about what had happened. He laughed and said ‘I’ve been there before, probably a bad trip.’
I wasn’t sure if he was talking about me or the man seeing things.
If I’m recalling correctly, another three or four days passed after that before anything else occurred. Again, I was writing in my room late at night, though I’m not certain exactly what time it was. What I am sure of, however, is that I heard another sound from outside.
It sounded like a shout, just a single yell. Looking out of the window, I half expected to see the same man from the other night, standing in the street nearby, crouching around in fear.
But there was no such man. In fact, there was no one out there.
All I saw was the cemetery and the street, both quiet and undisturbed. There were no lights inside the cemetery, primarily because it had long since been disused. Only the shadowy impression of things could be seen, revealed by the nearby streetlights.
I remember staring at the vague outline of the headstones across the way, just inside the outer wall. I found myself looking at their dark shapes, some tall and looming, others huddled-crouched like a prowler, and for a brief moment, I started to think of the stones themselves as people, looking back up at me through my window.
There was one in particular that struck me. I could only see the black shape of it, like the undeveloped negative of an old photograph.
It was a little larger than the others and was sitting beneath the jagged branches of an old, wizened tree. For some reason, I thought about the roots of the tree. The tree was so close to the headstone, I wondered if the roots had spread wide enough to pass through the corpse in the ground underneath, or what was left of it. It was unusual how the thought appeared in my mind, but it lingered.
I stared for a little while longer, almost hypnotised by the quiet of the cemetery. But the more I looked around, the more my gaze was continually drawn back to the shape of the headstone beneath the tree. Eventually, I felt that same uncomfortable feeling from the other night; as though I were seeing something but not seeing it. If that makes any sense at all. Unprocessed information blurred out from my awareness, but on the cusp of it enough for me to feel something.
I drew back from the window.
Losing the will to continue my work, I went back to bed. I didn’t sleep very well after that. I’m certain that I dreamed of the cemetery and the gravestones encroaching on me, but the dream was indistinct, more akin to a feverish impression.
In the morning, the first thing that entered my mind was the headstone beneath the tree again. The memory of its black, huddled outline made me apprehensive, so much so that I wanted to dispel its effects in the comfort of the day. I got out of bed and looked out of the window into the sunlight below.
I couldn’t quite believe it. There was no headstone beneath the tree. There was only an empty spot. It was gone.
For the rest of that day, I couldn’t get this fact out of my mind. Had I seen it at all? Had someone taken it away?
These thoughts stayed with me like a rope around my neck, so much so that when I got back from my classes, I decided to walk past the cemetery on my way home.
It was about 4 pm and I remember there was a light rain, clinging to my skin. Everything was cast in moody grey, which was normally the type of weather I loved, but not that day. Instead, I felt uneasy, almost frightened as I walked past the cemetery. I soon found myself standing where the man had been crouching behind the cars several nights before. Where he had stood terrified by something he had seen, something he seemed to believe was following him. The wide fear in his eyes had certainly left an impression on me.
I looked over at the old stone walls to the headstones and they seemed almost peaceful. Nearby, I could see the black iron gate entrance to the cemetery. I guess I was a little annoyed by how much I had allowed myself to be put on edge by the place. Something had to be done about that. It was disturbing my thoughts too much.
Slowly, I found myself approaching the gates and then slipping between them inside. The stone walls seemed to divide me from the normal world at that point, at least that was the sense that I had. The only company now given to me were the headstones, potted around the large patch of land, some of it obscured by bushes, trees, and small grassy hills.
It took me a few minutes of searching, as I was now seeing the cemetery from a new vantage point, but when I finally saw it, I knew how wrong things were. I walked over to the tree I could always see from my window and looked at the patch of grass beneath it. I was standing exactly where the gravestone had been. But, sure enough, nothing was there. And there was no indentation on the ground as though someone had removed it.
There was nothing.
I felt very confused by it all and started to worry that I had been up late for too many nights, too much focusing on writing horror stories than actually studying for exams. My mind was now playing tricks on me.
But if it was a trick, another soon appeared.
I moved to leave the cemetery, taking a single step, when I looked up and noticed two things: The first was that I had left my bedroom window open. It glinted in the daylight despite the overcast skies.
The second was that Glen was in my room. I could see his outline moving back and forward at the window, and I could just about make out that he was going through my things.
I was furious.
The thought of him going through my belongings, thinking I wasn’t around to see, made me livid. I ran out of the cemetery in case he happened to look down and see me. Then, I headed into the house and rushed up the stairs. I got to my bedroom door and I could hear him inside moving things around. I put my hand on the door handle, but then I heard another sound.
It was someone else coming into the house.
‘Just me,’ Glen said from downstairs.
I almost gasped at that. Moving slowly away from the door, away from the knocking and shuffling beyond it, I went downstairs filled with anxiety and told Glen that someone was in my room. He was kind enough to try and hide it, but I saw a slight look of disbelief.
‘I’ll come with you,’ he said, before trying to put me at ease. ‘It’s probably a bird or something, you shouldn’t leave your window open all day.’
I grabbed a knife from the kitchen.
‘What’s that for,’ Glen almost laughed.
I didn’t answer him.
We walked up the stairs, and, I know this sounds strange, but I felt like we were walking upward into a grave, but one that wasn’t still as it should have been. There was something moving around up there.
I asked Glen: ‘Can you hear anything?’ worrying that I was starting to lose my mind.
Glen stopped for a moment and listened. Then, he nodded, all humour gone from his face, and said in a low voice: ‘Someone is definitely up there.’
We got to the top of the stairs and stood on either side of my bedroom door. The sounds were still coming from inside, my belongings being moved and thrown around, and I was certain that I could hear a strange padding noise, almost like the person inside was pacing up and down barefoot.
I didn’t want to go in, but with Glen there, some courage came to me.
I mouthed the numbers ‘1, 2, 3…’ and I threw open the door.
Something brown and black shot across the room. It looked like a bunch of old rags, fluttering in a wind. Whatever those rags concealed, it flung itself out of the open window into the grey early evening.
Glen didn’t even enter the room. He stood there at the door with his mouth wide open in shock.
I found myself stepping inside alone. There was a strong stench of something, almost like the smell of putrid earth, and I could see dark patches of what looked like soil and congealed festering fluid here and there on the floor. The smell was so overpowering my eyes watered and I felt like I was going to vomit.
When I got to the window, I looked down at the garden and saw a greyish shape slip over the cemetery walls and out of sight. It was daylight, and I’m still unsure what it was.
That was about the end of it, or rather it should have been.
I took Glen downstairs and poured him a strong drink, and we talked about what we had seen. The strangest thing is that each of us described something different. I’ve told you what I saw, but Glen added some other details. He said the thing had strands of white hair on top of it, and that when it escaped through the open window, he saw a hand that seemed to be more bone than anything else.
I can’t vouch for that. The mind plays tricks.
What I can vouch for is that I left that house in a hurry. The landlord was furious and spoke of the mess I’d left behind in that room. He said no amount of cleaning could get rid of the smell. I didn’t know what to tell him, other than that he could keep his deposit.
Glen didn’t stay either.
We both went our separate ways, though we spoke about it a few times to each other over the phone. In a funny way, the fact that we had both encountered something truly bizarre together had finally given us something to talk about. Eventually, we lost touch.
Years went by after that, and I never told anyone about it. Most people would have thought that I was insane or making it up.
There’s only one other piece of information I can give you. In 2015, I received a DM on Twitter out of nowhere. It was from Glen. He had been trying to track me down. There was something he wanted to tell me, and since I was the only other person who could possibly connect to it, he felt a need to send me a message.
He said that he had been out drinking a few weeks previous and had found himself talking to someone at a bar on the south side, not far from where that old cemetery lies.
The man he struck up a conversation with was called Henry and, as it turned out, he had a pretty unique job. He worked landscaping cemeteries around Glasgow. He was even sometimes contracted to clean up and fix old gravestones.
Glen asked Henry if he had ever done some restoration work in Cathcart cemetery, and Henry said he had.
Well, Glen couldn’t help himself. He asked Henry if he knew of any strange stories from the old cemetery in Cathcart. At first, Henry said no, but when Glen had a couple more drinks and felt confident enough, he told Henry about what had happened to us.
Henry said he had never heard of anything exactly like that, but he did know one old myth about the place that might be connected to what we had seen.
Apparently, back in the 1800s, there had been some grave robbing going on; body snatching for medical research, that sort of thing. It was quite a lucrative business. A black market for bodies and body parts rose up at that time throughout Scotland and other parts of the UK, with doctors willing to pay a lot of money for a fresh corpse to work on and experiment.
Henry said that an unknown grave robber was rumoured to have been caught in the act of stealing a body in Cathcart cemetery back then. Unluckily for the grave robber, the body he was trying to steal was that of a young man who belonged to a rich family.
He was spotted by one of the relatives. There was an altercation and the grave robber was bludgeoned to death. The murderer panicked and paid off the gravedigger who was working elsewhere in the cemetery that night to help him.
The digger disposed of the body where no one would look for him: in the cemetery itself. It’s said that the grave robber’s body was buried beneath an old tree and that no headstone was ever laid to mark the spot.