By Meda Marwein
It was a foggy afternoon here in Mawroh. The pine trees that ruefully obstructed the image of the painted blue sky on a regular basis were now drenched in the cold autumn rain. The air was damp and the road was almost coloured in an orange-muddy hue. A group of people with their heads bowed down, silently walked towards the Lumshyiap graveyard, with one hand holding colourful umbrellas and the other carrying wreaths of white lilies and carnations.
Passing by this despondent group, one could hear the low mutterings of a talkative kong on the nature of the gathering. One could make out from her faint whisper to another kong as she tightened her grip on the umbrella handle as they sped up toward the graveyard, “It has been almost two years (te ei)… she always keeps a cake by his grave; she believes his spirit will visit the grave and eat it… peit ne shibit (you’ll see later).”
The weather was not as inviting as one would have thought so in the autumn season.
In place of the falling of leaves one was greeted by the Indian Meteorological Department’s (IMD) alert caution – to keep a sharp eye on cyclone Sitrang’s rough splashes of rain.
Despite the warning, this group ventured into the thick pine-covered graveyard to pay homage to a departed loved one in hopes of somehow catching a glimpse of his apparition as he lingered around his tombstone. One could not help but quietly slide into the mourning fold perchance the spirit made its presence known.
Cemeteries (or graveyards), for the morose and sombre individual, are spaces of self-reflection, where thoughts on man’s greatest weakness – his mortality – mingle with the common folks who look toward them as a symbol of fear and horror. In these acres of inhabited lands of the dead, Lumshyiap graveyard entices the people regularly with its tales of horror.
Lumshyiap graveyard, situated in between the Khlaw Mawroh (Mawroh Forest) and Shyiap locality in Shillong, is one unique graveyard wherein departed souls from different religions make their final resting place in these grounds.
The place is divided into different sections based on the religion of the dear departed. One section belongs to the Presbyterian Church, another section belongs to the Catholics, and so on. Symbolically, the Niam Khasi’s crematorium sits in the middle of the graveyard, which reminds one that at the end of the day, we are all Khasi… no matter our religious preferences.
Despite its distinctive feature, the graveyard has, over the years, churned out eerie stories of ghostly figures and terrifying sounds. Lumshyiap graveyard is no London Highgate Cemetery where a famous vampire or banshee prowls the area, looking for their next victims, but it houses stories that ooze of local superstitious beliefs.
Inhabitants of the area, Christians and Niam Khasi alike, believe in the wandering spirits loitering in the graveyard.
Cases of bumping into spirits and encountering otherworldly experiences have always played a crucial role in the inhabitants’ bedtime stories or among children, perhaps just to scare them, but it is human nature to dive into the supernatural and slap it with unnerving stories that the five human senses cannot fathom.
Mawroh and Lumshyiap seem to be tranquil serene localities but the more we unearth their skeletons, the more interesting and macabre these places unfurl. In one dukan die sha (tea stall) in Shanmari near the shyngiar (spring), an area in the Lumshyiap locality, four customers sitting on a bench, were conversing on the death of a renowned Khasi quack doctor, from the locality what happened a few years back. This, while sipping sha (tea).
Ki ong hana shwa ba un iap u shah rah rngai te hangne ha lumjingtep. Por ba wan mut phai sha iing, ka kali kaba iaid sha surok ka shu hap beit kynsan ha thliew jingtep (They said that before he died, the spirits took him to the graveyard. He was on his way home and the car he was driving on the road, suddenly fell right in a newly dug grave), one of them said.
The other three shook their heads as they recalled the incident. Spirits, either good or bad, haunt these graves; one pines for their living beloved and the other jealously guides people to their misfortune. This group of four was discussing the rngai sniew (bad spirit) and claimed that it was it… the one that had marred that quack’s soul.
In another incident, Anisha Nongrum, a local who would usually pass by this area for her regular evening walk described her encounter with a spirit calling unto her to stop and wander into the neighbouring woods, next to the grave. As if in a trance, she was about to walk into the thick forest but her stopwatch’s sound alarmed her, snapping her out of the spell. She quickly dashed out of the place but when she came back to the same spot, a car had already crashed there just next to a newly built tombstone.
In 2014, satanic cults started surfacing in the state and made headlines in the local papers. Lumshyiap graveyard was not even spared! In a report made by one prominent local paper, a chapel belonging to the Catholic cemetery, which lies in the uppermost section of the area, was badly damaged.
One police officer who was in charge of the investigation recollected the incident:
“I remember this investigation. It was in the month of July 2014, if I remember correctly. By the district’s order, we went to look at the site and the scene was nothing that I have ever imagined. These so-called satanic worshippers broke into the chapel of the Catholic cemetery and took outside the statue of Jesus, covered his face and kept an upside-down cross in front of it. There were words and signs that they wrote, which were sacrilegious and blasphemous to the church and to us too.”
Stories of these cults circulated all around the area, raising everyone’s concern – what if these rituals somehow evoked insidious spirits that will eventually harm people who walked by the graveyard?
The police officer, on recounting his story, could not comprehend if the incident was carried out by real demonic worshippers or just teenagers wanting to scare the community.
It has been eight years ever since the incident at the graveyard happened and rumour has it that the place has become an epicentre of the supernatural. A friend, who once passed by the road through this cemetery, trembled as he added that he had seen a naked man walk right past his car in a flash. He brushed it off, blaming that, perhaps, it was his mind playing tricks on him on a hectic day.
Nevertheless, stories of sightings still emerge to this day or as Markynsai Kharkongor, a church elder, would say, “Once you hear dogs howl in this part of town, you know that spirits are walking among us.”