GHOST STORIES OF LOVEDALE

 

GHOST STORIES OF LOVEDALE 

The last three posts were part of a new series on Old Lawrencians who were In The Spotlight.  Today, we go back to general stuff. 

A quote from the famous writer, Ruskin Bond set me reminiscing. He said, "Ghosts are all around us. Look for them, and you will find them! " In Lovedale, I don't think we had to go looking for ghosts as ghost stories were never in short supply.  We didn't have to find them, they found us!! 

They found us in a chilly, misty afternoon as you wandered in the area near Cem looking for "hill guavas", berries, or anything remotely edible. We could swear we saw wispy shadowy figures slink past. They found us as we came down from Nilgiri House to use the loo downstairs in the middle of the night, shivering in the cold- to shiver even more on hearing loud creaks as someone walked up the wooden steps leading up to Large Hall. 

In short, they found us in many places, most of all in our minds! 

                                        Picture Courtesy: OL Sangeetha Jairam

Being in Nilgiri House in the 1960s, our dormitory was the closest to the grand piano in the Large Hall. Boys swore that in the early hours of the morning they could hear someone play the piano. Not so loudly as to wake up everyone but so softly, so persistently, and yet so dramatically that the experience stayed with you for life. Some believed the nocturnal pianist was the ghost of an old piano master who had passed away on the job.Died in harness, as it were. Others believed it was no less than the gaunt, angular Sir Henry Lawrence stepping out of his impressive portrait that hung in the Large Hall. 

In our Junior School days, in an outbound camp, the late Mr M "Trout" Mukherjee scared the daylights out of us with such a gripping ghost story that I remember every detail of it even to this day. And, that was recounted 60 years ago!! For months after the camp, there were rumoured sightings of the main character of the story, a man who had one real leg and a peg-leg. 

Lawrencians, across generations have seen ghosts or have talked of/heard of ghosts that haunted certain areas of the school. Many stories centred around the cemetery in our campus, known simply as "Cem". This has been cleaned up a lot in recent times but in the 60s and 70s was largely unkempt. 

                                                    Pic Courtesy: OL Vinod Jayachandra

                                                   Picture Courtesy: School Archives

In our times, there were stories of the legendary "Sargie" Nicholls seen walking up or down the 67s, his dogs trailing behind him. His quarters were in the present Junior School and much of his work was in the Senior School, which made this story plausible. Such stories were so widely prevalent that they were even mentioned by the Headmaster Mr K I Thomas in one of his speeches. 

Ghost stories were not the exclusive privilege of the Boys’ School. The Girl’s School was built in 1911 and must have had its fair share of ghosts. 

Sita Bali wrote in The Lawrencian of July,1976.

 

"The girls school Chief Ghost (which is quite a post of honour) wears anklets, a silk saree, and carries a walking stick! would you believe that? The main job of this ghost is parading up and down the corridors, mind you, without waking the ayah who sleeps in the corridor, but terrifying the girls in the dorms. Its side job is to stop the girls who are trying to get to the toilet with menacing waves of its walking stick!!

Another ghost who did the rounds of the staff quarters near the Junior School was the ‘Lady in White’. Knocks on the door late at night revealed a beautiful lady in white. Interestingly, she would be soaked to the skin if it was not raining and be perfectly dry on a rainy night when it was pouring outside!

                                         Picture Courtesy:  OL Vinod Jayachandra

Ramanand, VIN 1970 has an interesting story in his blog. This is shared here with his permission.

 "My own Lovedale ghost story dates back to one evening nearly thirty years after I left school. I had gone to pick up my daughter, then in class eight, for the term break. We set out from Girls School well after dark in the midst of very heavy drizzle. Our destination was the Wellington Gymkhana Club for an overnight stay before we headed home to Hyderabad. We drove past the Flagstaff onto Bellie Gowder bridge over Lovedale station and thence onto Grant Duff road (it still goes by the same name).

By now the rain had picked up and it was pouring in sheets. The mountain mist made visibility very low reducing our speed to almost a crawl. Somewhere near Lena school where the road was at its narrowest with deep ruts on either side of the road I saw a lady dressed in a sari walking towards the car from the opposite direction. She would have been some thirty yards away and was walking right in the middle of the road. I further reduced my speed to almost a halt and waited for the lady to get off the road. Instead she continued walking in the middle of the road towards the car in a very defiant manner and showing no signs of making way for me. I got a good look at her and noticed that she was not using an umbrella and her clothes did not look as rain soaked as they should have been that evening. As she got closer I figured she had no intentions of getting off the road and she appeared to be walking straight into the car. And when she was just a few yards from the car I got a good look at her face. I felt her large saucer like eyes piercing through me in a kind of a glare that only an angry woman can give as if to say “You are trespassing in my territory".

And then the strangest thing happened. She took a few more steps and walked into the car and vanished or in sci-fi jargon she just dematerialised. My first instinct which I followed was to drive on as the road was now clear. As I engaged the gear started moving it dawned on me that I had seen something out of the ordinary – I turned my head around and saw nothing. By now I was sweating and my only thought was to make a quick escape before anything untoward happened- I did not know what. I made my way as quickly as I could and mercifully my mind was diverted as I had to concentrate on the difficult drive and did not stop till I reached the Ooty- Coimbatore highway .

My wife who was in the co- passenger’s seat admits that she saw the woman walking towards the car and she also confirmed the angry look but does not remember where she went or anything thereafter. She dismissed the whole incident as a figment of my imagination. My daughter claimed that she was dozing in the back seat and saw nothing. But when I told her what I saw she dismissed it and said “What’s the big deal? I have seen her before. She was an ayah in the Girls School kitchen and often visits the kitchen. She was murdered by her husband 100 years ago and is now looking to kill him!’

And so to this day I am wondering whether my wife dismissed the whole incident as a figment ofmy imagination to reassure me or even herself . And whether a thirteen year old school girl has the ability to so glibly spin a yarn or was she simply stating a fact. Or did my schoolboy ghost memories get the better of my imagination ? I will never know but I choose to believe that this was the closest I ever got to seeing one of the many resident ghosts of Lovedale."

Thanks, Ramanand, for sharing your story. 

For the rest of you, keep your eyes peeled and your wits about you when you next drive near Lovedale on a rainy day!! 

If you have a story to share, write in to us at: olalovedale@gmail.com with "For Team Glimpses" in the subject line.