The Weeping Slate

The old chapel sat atop a windswept hill in the Welsh Marches, its slate roof sagging like a tired spine. My friends had dragged me here for my hen weekend, promising a ‘private ghost hunt’ in a place with ‘real history’. I’d seen spectres my whole life, but I never told them why I sometimes froze mid-sentence or stared at empty corners. I’d learned to keep that part of me locked away.

Ade, the guide, was all gothic enthusiasm and impractical boots. He led us through the crooked gravestones as dusk bled into night, his torchlight tracing names worn smooth by a century of rain. I felt them immediately – the watchers. They stood at the edges of my vision, faces pale as lichen, always drifting away when I turned. I didn’t mention it. It was expected, here.

The chapel itself was a husk, its pews stacked against scaffolding, the air thick with dust and old incense. Our footsteps echoed in the nave as we performed the rituals – EMF meters beeping, spirit boxes crackling. Down in the crypt, the temperature dropped sharply, and I heard a sound that made my blood run cold: a low, rhythmic scratching, like fingernails on slate. Ade dismissed it as rats. I knew better.

Upstairs, in the gallery, I felt it – a pull, a wrongness, a silent command to leave. It pressed against my chest, filling me with an iciness that had nothing to do with the cold. I stammered an excuse about vertigo from the sloped floor, and Megan, my best friend, gave me a knowing look. She followed me down to the vestry, where we waited, listening to the muffled voices above. ‘You felt it too, didn’t you?’ Megan whispered, her eyes wide. I nodded, not trusting my voice.

Ade and the other two women clattered down the spiral stairs, flushed with excitement. ‘Did you catch anything?’ Ade asked, his voice eager. I forced a smile, but my skin prickled. Something had followed us down. I saw it in the mirror behind the vestry table – a woman in a long grey dress, her face obscured by a tangle of black hair. She was weeping, silent tears streaming down her cheeks. As I watched, she raised a hand and pointed, not at me, but at the floor beneath our feet.

We were about to leave when Megan gasped. She was staring at the same mirror, her face ashen. ‘There’s someone else here,’ she said, her voice barely a whisper. The other two women laughed nervously, but Ade’s expression turned serious. ‘Wait,’ he said, pulling out a plan of the chapel. ‘The crypt extends further west than we explored. There’s a hidden chamber.’

We found the entrance behind a loose panel in the vestry, a narrow stairway that had been bricked up and then recently unblocked by the renovation crew. The air that rushed out was stale and bitter. We descended, our torches carving shapes out of the dark. The walls were lined with clay pipes and rubble, and the floor was uneven, slick with moisture. At the bottom, a low-ceilinged room, empty except for a rusted grate in the centre. The weeping was louder here, a soft, keening sound that seem to come from the walls themselves.

I later learned the chapel’s history – how a young woman had been walled up in that chamber for blasphemy, sealed alive with only a slate slab for company. The grate was the only thing that had saved her from total darkness, letting in thin light from the room above. She had scratched at it, her fingers raw, until she starved. Her ghost was still there, waiting for release.

We didn’t stay long. We scrambled up the stairs, our hearts hammering, and left the chapel without another word. I haven’t spoken of it since, but sometimes, late at night, I feel a cold draft on my fingertips and hear the faint, rhythmic scratch of slate against stone. And I know she is still waiting, her tears watering the dust, for someone to find the key to that grate and let her out.