Nearer My God to Thee

 Awake at 3am with my cat, Lucy, purring on my chest, and reading Tim's book "Beyond the Seventh Gate". I've just been reading about the ghost in the cemetery who sang "Nearer My God to Thee". Finally, I switch off my bedside lamp, and, as usual, choose a podcast to listen to. Oh! Cool! A new episode of Strange Familiars! Some time in the next ten minutes or so, I fall asleep, and wake in fright just before 5am to a ghostly voice singing (you guessed it!)... Nearer My God to Thee...

This is not the only weird synchronicity, but the culmination of many. Reading about Toad Road, Pennsylvania, I'm fascinated by the stories about a mythical "asylum" where inmates were kept by a cruel doctor since, in a town in Southern Tasmania (where I live) there are the remains of an ACTUAL asylum with stories of cruelty and dreadful conditions attached. Originally called "The Asylum" at New Norfolk, the mostly empty buildings still remain. These days, there are Ghost Tours run by a preservation committee, but there are records of the terrible circumstances endured by "patients", some of whom were reputedly the offspring of incestuous couples living in the hills thereabouts. The last patients who are still alive are residents in a local nursing home.

Tasmania was colonised by Britain as a prison when America first ceased importing Britain's felons. One of the worst places was called Sarah Island, in Macquarie Harbour, on the wild West Coast, where convicts deemed uncontrollable suffered unimaginably. Many preferred to die. One convict stabbed another in order that he be executed, rather than have to stay there.

The only access to the island was from the sea through a hazardous strait named "Hell's Gates".

The most infamous convict was Alexander Pearce who managed to escape to the mainland twice, both times cannabalizing his fellow escapees. There is a belief, amongst some Tasmanians, that the descendants of Alexander Pearce lived and live near New Norfolk, the site of the aforementioned Asylum.

Some years ago, I wrote a short story inspired by a true story told to me by a nursing home resident who grew up in Lachlan, just outside New Norfolk. The ancient lady's father had worked at the Asylum. She told me how there was a woman who had lost three children who'd drowned in the black river, and that she walked out to Lachlan every Sunday to the cemetery. The old lady's father had told his three daughters to hide if they ever saw the asylum inmate. It was only when she was older that it came to her why her father was afraid for her and her sisters.

The thing that most haunted me about the old lady's story was that the woman who had lost her children would sing "Nearer My God to Thee" every Sunday, when she visited the cemetery. Thus, that was the title I gave to my story.

It may be a stretch, but many Tasmanian convicts were Irish political prisoners. Imagine if one, or some, carried stories of Hell's Gate, the Asylum, and the dark history of Tasmanian colonisation to Pennsylvania. Apparently, 14% of Pennsylvanians are ethnically Irish. Or, even more weirdly, what if stories like these are part of our collective unconscious????