Latest update March 19th, 2024 12:59 AM
Sep 20, 2015 Features / Columnists, Murder and Mystery
Who is this mysterious man buried beneath the National Stadium’s parking lot?
By Michael Jordan
The man who accompanied me to see Chester Williams was a strapping ex-soldier who loved contact sports and who had lost part of a finger while fighting off a charging bull. But this man wanted no part of Chester Williams…even though old Chester had been dead and buried for over two hundred years…two hundred and fourteen, to be precise.
He remained at a respectful distance as I entered the little picketed area that enclosed the tomb. I knew that he thought me to be either brave or foolhardy to have stepped so close, to have taken this chance. It was a plain white tomb with the inscription: Chester Williams: 18 Nov. 1801 on a book tombstone. Someone had taken pains to paint the old tomb, and enclose it in a white picket fence, and to plant palm trees in the enclosure.
But the most intriguing thing about that tomb was its location: the parking lot at the National Stadium at Providence.
What was it doing there? And why did its presence seem to evoke so much fear?
I first learned of the existence of the tomb about five months ago from the same man who had followed me to the Stadium. It was he who had told me of the legend of Chester Williams, and what they claimed happened to those who failed to respect his resting place.
The area where the tomb and stadium are located was once Plantation Providence; where rows of sugar cane stretched for miles. It was quite likely that Chester Williams was once some senior estate employee.
Intrigued, I set out to find out who Chester Williams might have been…and came up blank. No
one seemed to know anything about the tomb; not officials from the National Trust of Guyana or officials at the National Archives, not noted Professor of History, Dr. Winston McGowan, or Director of Culture, Dr. James Rose. In fact, many of the experts to whom I spoke had no idea that the tomb existed.
But the older residents of Providence had known about the tomb since they were children. Some had worked on the estate in their younger days, and none of them had anything good to say about the tomb and its long-dead occupant.
Despite the English name engraved on the tomb, they were all adamant that Chester Williams was ‘Dutch.’ And to them, that seemed to explain why any sensible Guyanese should steer clear of the old tomb.
I was taken to the home of one of the oldest residents of Providence. He claimed that there was no name engraved on the tomb back then, and he didn’t believe that ‘Chester Williams’ is the occupant’s real name.
He had worked on Estate Providence in his younger days, and even back then, workers blamed the ‘Dutch’ tomb for what they claimed were bizarre things that happened to those weren’t careful in its proximity.
“The tomb was there and all around was cane,” he said. “They would cut canes around the tomb and avoid their bundles touching it. You would cut the cane around it and not trouble the tomb. If yuh spirit weak and yuh go near yuh fall down. It bruck tractor plough. One man go to lift bundle and he left stiff, till they took him to the dispenser. You got men carrying new cutlasses, and the cutlass would disappear and only the handles would lef.”
He spoke of workers falling ill after breaking ‘Dutch’ pottery in the area. He also blamed the presence of the tomb for an incident in which two workers were reportedly struck dead by lightning.
The old man claimed that between noon and 1.00 p.m was the most dangerous time to work in that location. According to him, estate workers would sometimes see horses and huge black dogs that would mysteriously disappear.
He is convinced that the entire Providence area is haunted. He claimed that employees at a building near the Princess Hotel would sometimes “hear people walking and groaning,” or hear doors slam.
And he says that he was the reluctant participant in one such unusual experience.
The elderly resident’s story is that a few years ago, he rode his bicycle to an area behind the stadium, and was cutting grass for his cows when he suddenly began to feel unwell. This sudden illness so overwhelmed him that he dropped the bundles of grass and rode home.
“But when I reach home I tell myself that this (experience) was Aesop’s fables (nonsense), so I decided to go back to the same spot.” This time, he said, the same agony struck him the minute he began to cut the grass. Again, he was forced to leave the bundles of grass and hurry away from the area.
“It’s a dangerous place. It’s haunted; it’s very evil,” he says.
Even men whom I felt would not be prone to superstitions hinted that odd things indeed happened in proximity of Chester Williams resting place.
“In this world, good and evil exist in equal measure,” one respected engineer who worked at the site said. “I told them (during construction) that I would not desecrate it (the tomb) or break it. We know we got our superstitions. So anyone who thinks they brave enough (to remove it) I wish them all the best.”
Former Minister of Public Works Anthony Xavier, who was appointed Site Manager when the stadium was being constructed, cleared up the mystery of who had enhanced the surroundings around old Chester’s tomb.
“When we built the stadium, and we found the grave, we did nothing to touch (trouble) it. We built everything around it. We cleaned it up and painted it and planted trees and kept it clean all the time.
“I don’t believe that you should disturb the dead. I did not trouble it when I was Minister, and when I was manager. Everybody that comes to the stadium has respect for the area.”
Like others, he had no idea who Chester Williams was, but suggested that he might have been an estate manager. And yes, there were some rather odd happenings back then, too, he said.
He recalled that during the early days of construction, workers, for some unknown reason, covered the tomb with a length of tarpaulin. “Once this was done, the rain began, and someone said that if you unpin (uncover) it the rain would stop, and it was unpinned and the rain stopped.”
Mr. Xavier also recalls the day that the stadium lights kept flickering on and off. But he suspects that a glitch at the Guyana Power and Light (GPL) caused the lights to malfunction. He feels that most of the other ‘supernatural’ incidents can also be logically explained.
“Guyanese tend to blow things out of proportion. I never had any experience, and as far as I know, the gentleman (Chester Williams) is lying peacefully.”
But Mr. Xavier also told me the story of the contractor who had, “in a fit of anger,” reportedly urinated on the tomb. Within a week the contractor was dead.
The victim was actually the son of the land preparation contractor, Mr. Khemraj Singh. Mr. Singh told me that while the medical diagnosis was that his son had a pancreatic ailment, “the old people ‘check book’ and say that he (the son) interfere with the tomb and it tek life.”
Mr. Singh said that the tomb was “broken up,” and that workers repaired it.
The old Providence resident with whom I spoke believes that the Indian nationals who were involved in the stadium project did something to ‘quiet down’ the ‘entity’ in the tomb.
If that is so, it doesn’t seem as if they did a good job, since some claim that, occasionally, odd things still happen near Chester Williams’ tomb.
There’s a persistent rumour that a young woman who went to a show at the National Stadium not too long ago fell into a fit after urinating near the tomb.
Though they claim to have never had any odd experiences, some stadium employees say they steer clear of the burial site.
“He deh in he corner and ain’t bothering nobody,” one staffer said. “Them (the ‘Dutch’) is funny people. “
They also caution visitors to give old Chester his space, and to never, ever, answer a call of nature near his tomb.
If you have any further information about this or any other strange case, please contact us at our Lot 24 Saffon Street, Charlestown location, or reach us on telephone numbers 22-58458, 22-58465, 22-58473, or 22-58491.
You can also contact Michael Jordan on his email address [email protected]. You need not disclose your identity.
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