Hillingdon Cemetery
Just a few minutes leisurely walk down the road from the Red Lion is Hillingdon cemetery. This is quite large, and as far as gathering places for the dead go – quite park-like to walk around. Though some will see it as a little ghoulish, both Di and I enjoy the history that is contained within cemeteries, each headstone details just a little of what was once a life full of emotions experienced, stories told, relationships formed, happiness and sadness shared. There is nothing non-living better than a headstone to act as a conduit to a true focus on day to day life, and remind us of the gift that life is but which does not last forever. Eventually we will be no more than that, an inscribed headstone, our mouth will no longer be imparting our thoughts upon others, and the inscribed words are our last words though written for us rather than by us. So when we are in amongst the years of life we are provided with we should use them wisely and value every minute.
One of my rather strange goals I wanted to try and achieve while in the UK was to have a ghostly experience. After all, we fairly regularly hear about people seeing or hearing ghosts in the numerous historic houses and castles dotted around Wales, England, Scotland and Ireland, so surely we would get to see something spooky! To try and aid my quest for the supernatural I had loaded an application on my phone called “Ghost Hunting Tools”. The main “tool” on the app that I occasionally use is one that emits white noise that apparently (according the app designer) allows spirits to use as a type of energy and in turn select from a database of words and accordingly bring them up on your phone screen. Yes, the likelihood is that it is all a load of nonsense and random words just pop up on the screen no matter what, but hey it’s just a bit of fun.
As we entered the cemetery I turned the app on, and it started making its slightly annoying ‘white noise’ sounds. If ghosts do in fact use this sound to extract energy to communicate I have to wonder whether it is because they are desperate to speak with the living, or whether they hope it will mean the dumb ass using the app will shut it off and stop the awful noise being emitted!
For the first fifty metres or so of strolling through the cemetery no words came up on the screen of my phone, and it appeared the spirits there simply had nothing to say. The other possibility may have been they feared not being able to understand my accent if I attempted to speak back to them.
As I approached one grave some words started to show on the ghost finder app. “Sorrow” “Pain” “Loss”. Now keeping in mind this is just an app, and it is filled with words that can in turn supposedly be selected by spirits, having these particular words crop up can’t be too much of a surprise. The next word was “Mother”. I noticed on the grave that I had approached that seemed to trigger the words quickly appearing on my phone screen had a woman’s name on it – Josephine, though I can’t recall the surname now. Interestingly when I walked away from the grave the words stopped coming up, when I turned and walked back towards it they started coming back on my phone screen. Yes, definitely interesting. As we walked around the rest of the cemetery I passed an unnamed grave, words again started coming up on my screen, this time with a slight creepy tinge to them. “Revenge”, “Hate”, Suffer”, “Kill”. Call me superstitious, I don’t mind – I have been called a lot worse, but with the words and a feeling of something bad, something that really didn’t feel right, I decided it was time to move as far away from that particular grave as was possible. As we walked out of the graveyard, I again came close to Josephine’s grave, and the same words “Sorrow, Loss, Pain” once again showed on my phone, but also one other “Love”. Maybe just all nonsense, maybe all just a coincidence – and maybe not. How about if you visit Hillingdon, pay the cemetery a visit and see whether you get the sad words, or the bad words.