So there I stood, motionless in front of the abandoned, haunted church. The squeals coming from inside were getting louder. I looked behind me, wondering why I had come to this place. There was nobody in sight.

The windows of the giant building were all broken out and there were no doors. I was standing in the graveyard, contemplating my next move. I glanced at what was left of a grave just by my feet. The epitaph declared that the woman buried there had died in 1921.

The piercing squeals coming from inside the church were like an anguished symphony telling me to turn around and never return. But I had come this far. Skull Point in Manchester is some distance from Kingston and I was not about to turn back now. I had come to see what was going on inside the church.

On my way to find the place, I had stopped at a small shop in nearby Mile Gully and asked around to find out what people had heard about the church that is widely believed to be haunted.

"Don't go there mi son. Is pure duppy in there. People say that di church had was to be abandoned because duppy wouldn't stop come in there pan di congregation," said Miss Imogene, a 72-year-old shopkeeper.

She went on to explain the story of how Skull Point got its name.

Beheaded slave

Legend has it that long ago, a slave called James Knight from the Lyndhurst estate in the parish, became a Christian and started preaching to fellow slaves. This angered his owner who ordered Knight beheaded. The slave's killers carried out the order and then stuck Knight's skull on a pole and placed it in the community as a warning to all other slaves. It is said that because of Knight's violent death and the fact that he wasn't given a proper burial, his spirit has been roaming the community ever since.

There aren't many people still living in Skull Point, but tales of unexplained noises coming from the church have spread all across Manchester. Now here I was, hearing the sounds for myself.

I took a step closer to the church, then looked around, I suppose, hoping for a distraction that would force me to stay outside. I heard a car coming around the corner and looked back. As the vehicle zipped by the church, someone shouted "Oy! Mind di duppy dem run out pan yuh!" Then the car disappeared around the corner and I was alone again.

I was standing at the steps leading up to the church and could see from there that the building had been completely gutted. I saw a cross in the distance and a few pieces of wood strewn about, but that was it.

I slowly walked up the steps, cautiously peering inside. The sound of my shoes pressing against pebbles on the floor seemed exceptionally loud.

I stuck my head inside the church, careful to keep the rest of my body on the outside. It was dark in there, but limited sunlight coming through the broken windows and doorways allowed me to see. There were giant bats flying all around, making the most terrible sounds and a small rat ran right next to my feet. It smelled like wet wood in there and it was giving me the heebie-jeebies. The bats were flying low and kept coming too close to my face for comfort. Could the bats have been the cause of the scary sounds that residents have been talking about? I snapped a few pictures of them.

I walked back outside to the graveyard and spent some time walking around, reading the inscriptions on the tombstones. Some go as far back as 1915.

Now I had been at the supposedly haunted church for close to an hour and was by then, much more comfortable. It had been the bats all this time. That's not so bad. So, armed with my pictures of the culprits, I hopped back into my vehicle and left Skull Point, without giving the issue a second thought. All was well with the world.

Phantom

The trouble though, is this. I came back to Kingston proudly proclaiming to all and sundry that I had bravely solved the mystery of the haunted church of Skull Point. I had no reservations about doing this, because I had the pictures to prove it. Well, things did not quite go as planned. You see, as I'm writing this, I'm frantically going through the pictures for the ninth time trying desperately to find the bats. All the pictures I snapped of the bats flying around, for some reason, are showing nothing but the bare roof of the church. But there has to be some logical explanation. Right?

robert.lalah@gleanerjm.com

A few of the oldest graves at the church.

Many of the graves have been there since the 1920s.