Ghosts of Memory 

Father Robert Sharplin

Old places have atmosphere and the resonance of past events and people sometimes flits across the imagination of those in the present – we are only separated by time after all. The seminary of the Holy Cross at Mosgiel near Dunedin had a history that reflected the ups and downs of the Church through the 20^th century: there was also an earlier admittedly hazy history that may have been the source of some of the events that will be related here. However before we proceed to recount these 'events' a little theological reflection may be in order.

St. Thomas Aquinas was of the opinion that human ghosts would generally be rather weak spirits as the human soul would be out of its proper place, which is either with a living body or, after death, in the place appointed by God's judgment and mercy. Thus ghosts would not normally be observed, much less trouble the living unless there were unusual circumstances which make the living more susceptible to an encounter. Shakespeare gives a very clear example of this in Hamlet when the troubled hero encounters his father's ghost on leave from purgatory who informs his son that his untimely death was murder. It should be noted that no good came from this ghostly revelation and that the church has always forbidden her faithful from actively seeking such contacts. This is for the very good reason that in this preternatural plane we are entirely out of our depth and thus easily subject to deception or manipulation. As my first year spiritual director the late Msgr Tom Liddy advised it is best to observe the old Latin maxim non credat facile ( do not easily believe) in such matters. Quite how we came to be discussing such matters I shall relate anon.

My own personal opinion is that sometimes present conflict or thoughtlessness for the past may excite phenomenon which have long lain forgotten and dormant. In this regard the seminary may have been very vulnerable because of the drastic changes which occurred at Holy Cross in the wake of the Second Vatican Council. It is said that those changes were more dramatic in the English speaking Church and perhaps were a little more drastic again in New Zealand, a remote country where we often flatter ourselves that we are at the cutting edge. One story to illustrate. At the end of the 1960's and the liturgical changes, the college rector – at the cutting edge of course - decided to be rid of the relics of the Latin mass and assembled a huge bonfire. It must have looked like a scene out of the Reformation with the once precious Missals and Libers, the beautifully illustrated altar charts, embroidered Roman vestments and many other altar furnishings considered even remotely burnable piled upon each other and destined for the flames the next morning.

However unbeknown to the book burners their fevered preparations had been observed by a good Catholic grandmother whose home abutted the seminary property. From dusk until midnight she laboured with her husband's old wheelbarrow to transport the best items to safety in the back of her garage. A delightful coda to the story is that she disguised her holy larceny by substituting some domestic refuse under the pile. The bonfire fumes the next morning were much more acrid and pungent than the assembled clerical notables had anticipated. These treasures of the seminary lay  hidden and safe beneath a tarpaulin until a rector with a more balanced view of the church's history arrived at Holy Cross ( the above-mentioned Msgr Tom Liddy).These and other items comprised the seminary museum in my day but the culture wars continued in other ways.

Students arrived at classes shortly after the Easter break one year to discover that virtually every crucifix in Holy Cross College had disappeared from  the walls and alcoves and it soon became apparent that the student's surprise at the disappearance was shared by the rector of the college Msgr.Vincent Hunt. It transpired  that the removal was the unilateral action of one of the priests on staff who had the notion that after Easter it was time to take Jesus off the Cross permanently and everywhere. Whatever the theological motivation behind this action it was too much even for the easy going rector  to tolerate and the miscreant was prevailed upon to cough up the items and return them to their appointed places -the rector's action being prompt enough to avoid another bonfire day! The priest involved later dispensed with active ministry in the Church -which was not an altogether uncommon   fate amongst those who taught us at the seminary - but I don't think the fault was always ours.

This incident had a further upshot in that Msgr Hunt seems to have become concerned for the fate of many old church vestments from parishes around Otago that by diocesan decree had been sent to the College and lay mouldering away in cupboards and chests of drawers throughout the echoing buildings. The ever helpful (Fr) Darren MacFarlane from my year group was put in charge of collecting all these garments, for a purpose not disclosed by the rector, and because I was well ahead with all my assignments I was dragooned as his constantly complaining assistant. A pile of these things weighed a ton and while many were very beautiful, the odour of years of mothballs or worse was very distracting.

One of my particular responsibilities in this endeavour was to put aside as many black funeral chasubles as I could find – to be worn in their coffins by deceased priests of the Dunedin diocese. I think I found enough for them to be getting on with for many years.  I particularly remember one magnificent example in black watered silk and very heavily decorated in gold with Celtic symbols  and designs but I decided the price for ever wearing it was too high. Eventually Darren and I had all the remainder stowed in a disused sacristy and they were later taken away by someone we were told was collecting them for a theatrical society. However this gentleman did not look very theatrical in my opinion and an alternative narrative has it that he represented a group devoted to the Old Mass and which has, since the renewal of Latin liturgy under the present Pope, been re-incorporated into the Church. I rather hope this is true as many of these garments had been presented  to the Church by pious faithful and often paid for by the pennies of the poor. I would like to think they were saved by a whisker and have a second liturgical life.

So I meant to tell only one story about the theological chasms that rent asunder the peace of the seminary in my time there but the above incidents all provide background to another even stranger string of events that unfolded over several years. In recounting these events I can only  be certain of the accuracy of the phenomenon I myself witnessed or experienced and have had to rely for the remainder on many stories and anecdotes that circulated among the College residents.

It was the late March of my first year and owing to the departure of a year group member several weeks before I had secured one of the larger 'prefects' rooms on the top floor at the end of the Old Student's wing that was reserved for those in their freshmen year. This long, high but narrow room had two large sash windows; one facing on to a  garden and woodland and the other facing across a courtyard to the Burns building – the old mansion at the centre of the seminary complex. It was an unusually warm day, a Sunday and I must say all the details have remained very vivid. We had a roast lamb dinner at midday and after a desultory attempt at some spiritual reading I had gone for rather an extensive walk before returning by way of the library. It was by now late afternoon but still warm and I had both windows wide open to catch the slight breeze that barely rustled the leaves of the forsythia tree below my room. I was a bit drowsy and I lay down on the bed but I never fell asleep not even for a moment.

There was a sudden gust of wind almost the moment I lay down but instead of feeling a pleasant freshness I could scarcely breathe, in fact I was choking, gasping for air as an immobilising force was stifling, smothering me. As I struggled to lift even a finger I saw standing by me, level with my shoulders, a figure unmistakably in women’s clothes of another era. A wide skirted black dress buttoned up to the neck and a shawl of a brownish colour so that the figures arms were indistinct.

There was a small cap above the figure's blackened mummified face, a face which in that moment seemed to be pure malevolence. I had no breath, no voice, I was petrified with fright and then I let out a  terrified scream that surely echoed around the seminary. My horrified yell seemed to break the spell, the apparition vanished and most  welcome of all my dread panic evaporated as well. A classmate whose room was down the hall popped his head round the doorway - “Rob are you all right? I heard a horrible gurgling sound”, he said. “Yeah, yeah I'm fine.” I replied rather limply. In fact the strangest thing was that I was feeling fine, considering my distress a few moments before.

The next day I went to see the priest in charge of our first year program. Perhaps the strain of seminary formation was not for me although I was quite certain that this experience was not a dream or fevered imagination. I broached the subject of this experience rather diffidently and was  both relieved and surprised when Fr quickly interrupted to ask me whether I had experienced the smothering sensation as well and how had “she” appeared to me. I was particularly surprised by the use of “she” as I had not yet attributed any gender to the apparition in my description to him. In fact this presence and the associated sensations I had experienced had been noted in the College almost from the beginning but with increasing frequency in recent years. She even had a name, 'Genevieve' almost certainly made up but based on the fact that all who experienced this presence  recognised it to be feminine – at least in origin. Most, if not all, felt it to be disturbing and to varying degrees ill intentioned.

In fact Fr seemed so knowledgeable on the topic I speculated that he too may have had such an experience  although I was far too relieved at not being shipped off or at least sent for some sort of 'assessment' that I did not put the question. Some weeks later,’ Genevieve'  herself put on another performance for a student who had made a comfortable study room for himself in the little frequented ground floor of the Old Student wing. He was so discomforted that he would only re-enter to reclaim his possessions in the company of another student. For my part the most extraordinary thing in the aftermath of my experience was that I felt no further trepidation at all. I did not even trouble Fr to take up his offer to bless my room; I was so certain that whatever had been there had been overcome. Indeed from that time I never had any qualms about exploring the loneliest recesses of the College and its grounds.

Later that term the attention of our year group was distracted from these goings on by the unexpected and much lamented death of our Scripture teacher a former Presbyterian minister who had converted to Catholicism. He had returned home from the College one evening feeling out of sorts and died very suddenly of a brain aneurism. When you look back a lot happened in that first year at holy Cross; indeed in every year.

The Presbyterian reference brings me to discuss some of the explanations for the origin of the apparition but here I must emphasise that we are dealing with rumours and gossip that had circulated in the College and also the township of Mosgiel over very many years and the likelihood is that distortions surround a remaining kernel of truth. The seminary I am sure I have mentioned before was centred on the Burns Mansion which had been at the heart of a large estate owned by one of the first and most prominent of the early Presbyterian Ministers in Otago. There had been nothing dour  or puritan about the house however as it was conceived on a grand scale and well appointed and decorated by the standards of the time. This style had survived some of the utilitarian adaptations made  by the seminary. Actually a bit of restoration work was attempted in my time there and behind a mangy partition wall an impressive  carved grey Italian marble fireplace was revealed and a section of riotously coloured original wallpaper featuring peonies and chrysanthemums in oriental style. How did this splendid and much loved home of the original Scots settlers, themselves reputed descendants of the renowned poet Robbie Burns, come into the hands of the Roman Catholic Bishop of Dunedin for a very reasonable even knock down price? Ecumenical relations not being all they could have been in 1900 to say the least.

Here we leave the realm of established fact and run up against the widely circulated story that 'Genevieve' was a servant of the Burns House in its heyday; when the lingering glitter of the Otago gold rush ensured there was still a lot of hey in the day! As was sadly not uncommon in that era this poor young woman, whatever her real name, found herself  unmarried but in the family way. Here the story becomes very uncertain as to the identity of the other party or even if he was a member of the household at all. Nevertheless the temper of the times was such that the consequences for the young woman would be very severe indeed; Dunedin's underside in 1900 experiencing poverty and a mortality rate comparable to a Calcutta slum today.

One warm Sunday afternoon according to a particular version of  the event the family were at a  garden fete at the little Gothic church at  East Taieri,  a few kilometres away. Friendless and desperate the maid took her own life by hanging herself from the  curtain rail in the master bedroom the windows of which would later face out towards the Old Student Wing. The remains of this heavy curtain rail, designed to support the long thick drapes of that period were still in that room in my day. The story runs that the  lifeless body was undiscovered for several hours until the family gig returning from church rounded the corner of the sweeping driveway. The sad and appalling sight was said to have deeply affected the women members of the household in particular and the days of the Burns mansion as a family home were  numbered thereafter.

I never again had direct contact with the presence known as 'Genevieve' but she did make her presence felt in my life again in my third year when the College was the subject of an Apostolic Visitation. Yes, news of the goings on at the College had percolated through to Rome itself but it was not rumours of phantasms rather the conduct of the living that was of more concern in the Vatican . As usual Rome was hopelessly late and the long-suffering Msgr Hunt was left  to explain what was alleged to have happened under previous rectors. An Australian auxiliary bishop was sent to collect information and make a full report. That Genevieve should intervene again upon this occasion was entirely in character for this strange and troublesome spirit... more in the next intriguing edition... until then sleep tight!