Uley Road Cemetery & Chapel

  Uleybury was established in the late 1840s by Moses Bendle Garlick. Garlick had migrated to Australia from Gloucestershire England in 1837. Garlick was a weaver and Lay-Preacher. Uleybury was chosen as the area's name because the district's hills reminded Garlick of his home in Cotswold. 'Uley' was Garlicks home village and 'Bury' was the term used in that region for a tree-covered hill.

 In 1841, Garlick paid 400 pounds to have a small chapel built on an acre of land he had set aside. The Uleybury Baptist Church was the first Baptist Church in South Australia built outside of Adelaide and served the local community for many decades.

 In the 1970s, the now-abandoned chapel started to attract teenagers in the area looking for a cheap scare. At that stage, the area had no dwellings nearby and was rather remote, quiet and spooky.  Along with the teenagers came vandalism, and the chapel and many graves in the cemetery were badly vandalised, with many disappearing altogether.

 On March 10, 1981, the local council stepped in and demolished the old chapel. The stone walls that now surround the cemetery were built from the stones of the original chapel. A memorial plaque marking the event was placed at the front gate.

 The ghost stories of the area were well entrenched by the 1970s, many of which emerged two decades before in the 1950s.

 In 1953, The Bunyip newspaper, in Gawler, printed a story told by Frank Ifould.

Franks tells the story of a man who worked for his father. A man who enjoyed drinking alcohol every day. On the day's Frank's, dad went into town, the worker hit the bottle harder, often getting exceptionally drunk. One evening, another worker decided he would scare the drunk man and dressed in a white sheet. Ha waited patiently for the drunk to appear, and jumped out, scaring the drunk. The drunk, in his stupor, believed it was a real ghost, and told his story to whoever would listen.

 The story of the ghost eventually spread, and as it spread the story grew, until it started to include headless horsemen and ghastly coaches eerily cruising past the cemetery. From that moment onwards, the crossroads, just a little further up from the cemetery has been known as “Ghost Corner”.

 This proves that the alleged haunting of Uley Road Chapel and Cemetery is nothing new.  There are ghost multiple stories now, but some of them are eerily similar to the original story. Today there are stories of a girl in a wedding dress who runs out onto the road screaming, another girl who steps out in front of your car, dressed in white, she screams as your car hits her and disappears into the ether.

 There are stories of shadow people, stone-throwing ghosts, and some local legends of satanic rituals happening in the 1970s – this all adds to the myths and legends of the location - which is still a popular place in South Australia to ghost hunt or scare people.

 I have visited the cemetery many times, and on a couple of occasions come across some weird behaviours. One of them being giant circles made out of stones in the top left corner of the cemetery – the photos below were taken in 2010