The Tab tries Blair Witch

The scene was set: the early hours of Thursday morning, three supposedly haunted locations and two torches. 

With Halloween upon us, what could beat a good, old-fashioned ghost hunt?

After weeks of meticulous planning we hit three locations, all of which are huge favourites of local ghost-busting groups: St. Andrew’s cemetery on Rodney Street, St. James’ Cemetery at the Anglican Cathedral and James Street Railway Station.

All three apparently boast more than fifty specters, spirits and vampires (yes, vampires) between them. Sounds about right.

St. Andrew’s cemetery

After a ride on the last 699 (a pretty unnerving experience in itself) we made our way to Rodney Street, labelled by some as one of the most haunted streets in the world.

We didn’t have the time or body temperature to search for all forty ghosts that occupy the street, so we focused our attentions on St. Andrew’s cemetery, home to the iconic pyramidal tomb and ghost of William Mackenzie – a guy who decided to play poker with the Devil for his soul and lost. Not a smart move.

For all the local hype that surrounds this cemetery, we really weren’t impressed.

The passing drunks and disappointing lack of total darkness probably killed the mood, but the tomb itself failed to creep us out.

A while passed and after rounds of Yvette Fielding esque conversation starters, we got bored and set off to location number two.

Creeped out rating: 0.5/10 – not a good start.

St. James’ Cemetery

In the shadow of the massive Anglican Cathedral lies St. James’ cemetery, a vast sunken graveyard home to around 57,000 graves. This was more like it.

In order to reach the cemetery we had to make our way through a tunnel. The tunnel walls also happened be lined with grave stones. The tunnel also happened to be pitch-black.

Creeped out rating – 5/10… we were well and truly awake now (and we hadn’t reached the cemetery, yet).

The cemetery’s two premier ghostly occupiers are that of the limping apparition of William Huskisson MP and Jenna Green, a witch who has been spotted by a spring that flows through one of the cemetery walls.

Running high on adrenalin, we opted to head straight for Huskisson’s grave.

Again we attempted the classic Most Haunted style questioning, searching inside William’s memorial for any sign of his ghostly presence.

The sound of breaking twigs that followed the questioning was rather too close for comfort, and the strangely-loud bang that shook us up soon after certainly didn’t help our nerves . The noises probably had perfectly logical explanations (what bangs in a cemetery at ten past midnight?!), but you know, it was dark, and we were in a cemetery, alone…

Creeped out rating – 5/10… William Huskisson > William Mackenzie.

We had momentum. The cemetery was pretty damn creepy.

A short walk from Huskisson’s grave was the famous spring of Jenna Green. This part of the cemetery was pure darkness, making photography near impossible.

Unlike the previous cemetery, St. James’ was absolutely silent – you could have heard a pin drop in the Anglican, making the ever so soft trickling of Jenna’s spring seriously spooky.

If any moment of the night provided the Blair Witch vibe, it was absolutely this.

Our torch just happened to lose all power at this point, too. Coincidence, or…?

Creeped out rating – 5.5/10 – supernatural or not, this was horrible.

James Street Station

This is where our adventures reached a disappointingly anticlimactic conclusion.

The station is not the first place you’d suggest as a potentially haunted location, but we didn’t even get the chance to put the claims to the test… it was closed.

We probably should have seen this coming, but  rumours of a WW1 soldier haunting the platforms gave us blind optimism.

Creeped out rating – 0/10 – disappointing. 

All in all, it was a pretty fun morning and although we weren’t treated to any ghostly figures we must admit at some points we were probably bordering on scared. Go spend half an hour in St. James’ cemetery tonight if you don’t believe us.

Do you have any supernatural tales to share? Get in touch [email protected] – maybe we can come check it out.