The Grey Lady—CUmberland COllege
A window to the soul-The Grey Lady-Cumberland College-Dunedin
One cold frosty morning in 2012 I received a phone call from the Otago Daily Times regarding Cumberland College and the new ghost sightings by students.
“Have I heard of anything like this happening there before?” “Have you a story for us?” the reporter asked. I went on to explain that not only had I heard the story, but I had been contacted in the past regarding supposed sightings of what I believed was the Grey Lady.
I remember being invited to stay the night in the college to see the ghost for myself. I politely told the young lady in question that I ran historical entertainment tours. I was not interested in communicating with dead people and I definitely did not have the skills to officially cleanse the location of angry spirits. Not to mention, it had been at least twenty years since I had been in that building after dark.
The morning I received the phone call from the local newspaper, I wandered down to the college for a look around with my camera. I thought I would take a photo for my social media accounts as it seemed there was a bit of hype around the story. What was to follow was not what I expected … a media frenzy was created after I tweeted “The ghost of Cumberland College caught on camera.” All of a sudden, I was considered the expert on all things ghostly, and I was fielding calls from media outlets across the country. I realised this could only be good for business and was genuinely fascinated with the interest this created. A TV crew even suggested we break into the college and interview a student who had seen the ghost, or maybe film me searching the grounds for spooky spirits. I agreed to go. When we got there, we were greeted by security and told to leave the college grounds immediately. The college was on lockdown, and all the students had been given strict orders not to talk with the media. This just added fuel to the fire, and we recorded a segment on the street for the evening news.
The students in question here claimed they smelt something terrible in the hallway before seeing an image in front of them. It appeared to be a man in a coat and a hat. (In case you’re wondering, no, I was not there that evening.)
This Grey Lady is a lot more sinister than the friendly ghost in the Octagon site. It is believed to be the ghost of a young mother who was admitted to the psychiatric hospital in the 1920s after suffering postnatal depression. The story goes that the woman’s baby was taken across the road to the maternity hospital (now Cumberland College) for safekeeping. The distress that this caused probably explains her premature death. It is said that her spirit went seeking her lost baby, and as previously mentioned, she has been seen numerous times over the years. While it’s easy to dismiss the students’ claims as silly, this matter was taken seriously by the college. A chaplain, a kaumatua respected Maori elder and other religious leaders were invited to perform prayers to cleanse the grounds.
While this was going on, I was printing t-shirts saying, ‘I slept with the ‘Grey Lady’. This is an extract taken from a blog at the time, which I quite enjoyed.
“One person making the most of this boon is Andrew Smith, the owner-operator of a local Dunedin ghost tour operation. He’s been widely quoted in the national media. Though he seems like a likeable enough fellow, with a sensible head on his shoulders, he certainly seems to be making hay from this situation.”
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