The Night Watchman Said The Chapel Bell Rings For Him, Not For The Dead

The cemetery chapel has not held a service since 1998 and the bell has been out of use since before that. The rope is tied off at head height and the door is padlocked and I have watched a council man test both.

Twice a year, at three in the morning, it rings once.

Not a peal. Not a clang. One clear ring, the way a bell rings when somebody has pulled it deliberately, once, and then held the rope to stop it swinging back.

I did nights there for four years. I heard it eight times.

The council's official position is that it is the wind. I have stood inside that chapel, at three in the morning, in a gale, and the bell did not move, because the rope is tied off, because I tied it, because I checked it, because I am the sort of man who checks.

I asked the old watchman, who did the job before me for nineteen years, what he made of it.

He said: "It's not for them. It's for us."

I asked what that meant.

He said, "Have you noticed when it goes?"

I had not, and then I did, because he made me look.

Both times, in the years I worked there, it rang on a night when a grave was open. That is not spooky in itself — a grave is dug the day before a burial, and it happens dozens of times a year, and the bell only rings twice.

Here is the thing.

It rings on the nights when the person being buried the next day has nobody coming.

I checked. It took me two years to be sure and I hated myself for checking, and I checked anyway.

Both times, the funeral the next morning was a council funeral, no family, no mourners, a minister and me and two lads with a machine.

The bell rings once, in the night, for a person who will have nobody.

I stand at those funerals now. I take my hat off. I have never told the council why I do it and they have never asked.

The old watchman came to one, in 2021, in a suit. He did not speak to me. He stood on the other side of the grave, and afterwards he nodded, once, and went home.