by John Pinkney
An Uncanny Dream of Cremation
Intimations of imminent death do not always take the form of apparitions. Paranormal literature documents numerous cases in which dreams and omens have warned that a family member was about to die. A particularly compelling reminiscence of this kind was sent to me by Mrs Ann Wilson of Gosford, New South Wales:
This goes back to a time when I was living with my grandmother. She was lively and contented and apparently had nothing wrong with her. Somehow, however, I knew that a dream I had one night was directly connected with Grandma.
In the dream I stood wearing a black headscarf, looking at a wall oven. That was all. The dream seemed so trivial and meaningless I quickly forgot it.
Next morning, for no apparent reason, a large framed painting crashed down from the wall. Gran immediately said it was a sign someone was about to die. But it was she who died, several days later - and as quickly as that landscape had fallen.
Within a day or so, I began gradually to find out that my fragmentary dream had meant something after all. As I was too upset to go to a dress shop to find something to wear for the funeral, they sent out a selection for me to choose from. On top of the dresses lay a black scarf - which I had not requested.
Next day the dream’s second element came true. Grandma was cremated. The surrounds of the small doorway into which the coffin slid were the same as those on the wall oven I had dreamed about.
Stopped Watch ‘Proved’ Phantom Visit
The time on a dead woman’s watch offered a Melbourne family powerful proof that her ghost had visited the house. Janet Brett of Carnegie, Victoria, told me, ‘One night in September 1978 I had a premonition that something was terribly wrong. The feeling was so powerful I couldn’t sleep.
‘Then, at 3 am, my mother (who lived in Tasmania) appeared at the end of the bed. She was wringing her hands and speaking my name. The image only persisted for a few seconds - and then she was gone. I woke my husband and said I was sure Mum was ill. He said something vaguely comforting and went back to sleep.
‘Next day we received news that she had drowned. When we went to Tasmania for the funeral the doctor told us her watch had stopped at exactly three - the time she’d appeared in our bedroom.’
* * *
A Dead Mother’s Beauty Restored
The Australian landscape artist Ruth Epps told me a moving story about her mother, who died of cancer in 1982.
‘Just a few moments after Mum breathed for the last time she returned in spirit form - as the beautiful young woman she had been 50 years before,’ Ruth said. ‘My father and I both saw this astonishing sight - and it completely changed our beliefs about the meaning of our lives.
‘We were living at that time in Esperance, Western Australia. My mother, Estelle, had been suffering from bowel cancer for six years and we knew she couldn’t last much longer. Mum had a phobia about hospitals, so it had fallen to me to nurse her at home.
‘One night, when I took a meal to her room, I was surprised to see the figure of a woman sitting by the bed. I recognised the apparition as my grand- mother, who had died 18 years earlier. And I sensed that her presence could mean only one thing - my mother also was about to die.
‘The end came next day. Suddenly a beautiful young woman, bathed in radiance, ran into the room. My father whispered, “Oh, Stella!” He knew, as I did, that this glorious girl, with long brown hair tumbling down her back, was my mother as she had been half a century before. Her face was filled with happiness. Her arms were outstretched and her eyes seemed to be fixed on the far wall.
‘I was sure she could see Nan - her mother - and was running to meet her.’
I have received several similar descriptions of phantoms whose youthful appearance seemed to have been restored. Tony Miller of Paddington, New South Wales, recalled how an uncle, who had lost an arm in an industrial accident, appeared in the bedroom at the time he died. ‘My girlfriend Angie and I both saw him,’ Tony wrote. ‘He looked incredibly youthful and slim - and he had both his arms.’
* * *
Unearthly - and in Uniform
The Haunting of a Military Base
Neither Jock Smith nor his colleague Roy Leutenmayer had heard much about the long history of hauntings at the RAAF’s Point Cook airfield. But their education abruptly began when, amid plummeting temperatures, a faceless phantom wearing air force uniform appeared in the workshop they were sharing. The friends became the latest of many witnesses to report phenomena that had troubled the base for more than half a century…
IN 1913 THE AUSTRALIAN GOVERNMENT paid 6,040 pounds ($8,080) for almost 300 hectares of grazing land at Point Cook on Victoria’s coast. The area, frequented by seabirds and flanked by the ocean and tranquil lakes, was destined to become the nation’s first military airfield and home to the emergent Royal Australian Air Force. But it would have a second claim to fame - or notoriety.
For reasons beyond comprehension Point Cook would within a few years be recognised as one of the most densely haunted airbases in the world.
The experiences of hundreds of pilots, mechanics and others employed at the complex were typified by the minor nightmare that befell Roy Leutenmayer and his friend Jock Smith. In late 1991 the men were working at a bench in the airfield’s museum when the temperature fell sharply. Roy told me, ‘I looked up and saw a man watching us. He had a triangular face and large ears and was wearing a dark blue uniform. Although he was only about four metres away from us and clearly visible his face was a blur. I immediately found that odd, because everything else about him was clear and distinct.
‘I could see from the expression on Jock’s face that he was badly shocked - and so was I. As we stood staring at him in total silence the officer - that’s what he seemed to be - strolled casually across the room, walked straight through a steel filing cabinet and disappeared.’
The two men ran ashen-faced from the workshop, almost colliding with the commanding officer, Squadron Leader John Matthews. ‘We told him what we’d seen and he gave us a good hearing,’ said Jock. ‘It was only later that we learned he and his predecessors had received similar reports in the past. The morning after that experience we discussed at great length what had happened. We were forced to a pretty strange conclusion.
‘Somehow we knew who the ghost was.’
The friends began an intense search through old photographs of Point Cook personnel, going back to the earliest days of the base. Finally they came to the picture they wanted - and sat for a long time staring at it. Roy said, ‘Despite our ghost’s strange lack of facial features, we were in no doubt, from the distinct shape of the head in the photo, along with the shape of the ears and other characteristics that this was the person whose image we’d seen. It was Squadron Leader Stanley Gobel, who flew a Fairey seaplane around Australia in 44 days in 1924. The moment we found that photograph we were in no doubt it was our apparition.’
Squadron Leader Gobel (assuming he was correctly identified) is only one of countless phantoms to have perplexed the personnel at Point Cook. In 2005 the RAAF’s official newspaper Air Force published an article, ‘Alone in the Dark’. Its author Private John Wellfare, seconded to Point Cook by the Australian Army, said in part:
…Point Cook is widely regarded as the Air Force’s most haunted base. Numerous ghost stories have arisen over the years, encompassing most of the heritage buildings in the area. Some can be explained, such as the RAAF Museum’s occasionally missing reference books or small items apparently being moved overnight. Other occurrences cannot be explained, such as the heater that turned on one night, despite being sealed in behind a false display wall in the museum. The staff literally had to tear down the wall to turn the heater off.
John Wellfare describes the deserted buildings and hangars - some 90 years old - in Point Cook’s heritage area, and describes his initial plan to sleep overnight in one of them.
…But the reaction of base personnel I spoke to changed my mind. No one laughed at me when I
said I intended to write [about] the ghosts of Point Cook, and while no one was willing to go on record, they all could relate haunting experiences - either their own or a friend’s - and it was hearing of staff refusing to go into buildings, day or night, that I decided to scratch the idea of a sleepover.
…There have been some terrifying accounts, such as the recorded occurrences in the fire section. Many of the Air Force firemen who occupied [this] section on 24-hour shifts claimed to have a resident ghost in their building. Wing Commander Ken Llewellyn recorded accounts of the ghost ‘rattling cups, opening doors and causing the floors to creak with his footsteps. Leading Aircraftman Nick Dennis had no experience or knowledge of the haunted fire section when he was wakened around 2 am in May 1989 by tapping on the window and the sound of someone talking.’ According to LAC Dennis the voice was saying, ‘Can you remember back to 1980?’ As he rolled over the voice said, ‘I saw your leg move.’
Another Air Force fireman had a more terrifying experience while sleeping in the firehouse during the same year. ‘This young man actually felt unseen hands pressing down on his legs and shoulders,’ Wing Commander Llewellyn writes. ‘Although powerfully built he was unable to raise himself from his bed.’ This happened to the same man on three occasions, after which he refused to work on night shift.
Wing Commander Ken Llewellyn collected so many reports of RAAF-associated paranormal entities that he devoted a chapter to them in his book Flight into the Ages (1991):
In 1985 a Point Cook guard accompanied by his dog on night patrol challenged a man wearing what resembled a World War I pilot’s uniform. Ignoring the guard’s command, and the dog’s unusually ferocious barking, the intruder walked briskly past - then ‘simply disappeared’.
In 1978 a 9 Squadron helicopter crashed in South Australia, killing the commander and crew. Two days later, apparitions of the dead men were seen by a pilot at the RAAF’s Amberley base, near Brisbane.
In 1986 a phantom figure dressed in a flying suit appeared to an F111 navigator at Butterworth Base, Malaysia. Matched reports show that at the moment the entity materialised a young Mirage pilot had died off the Newcastle coast.
Point Cook is also linked to one of the most puzzling incidents in the nation’s aviation history. John Wellfare writes:
Australia’s first air-sea rescue flight was made from [the base]. Flying instructor Captain William Stutt and his mechanic Sergeant Abner Dalziell left Point Cook in a De Havilland 9A biplane on September 5 1920 to search for a missing schooner, Amelia J, which had disappeared while crossing Bass Strait.
A second plane also joined the search, piloted by Major William Anderson. [He] saw Captain Stutt’s aircraft fly into a cloud and disappear. Despite extensive searches the missing aircraft and schooner were never found.
The Point Cook hauntings should be seen in context. Reports of ghosts have been made and officially chronicled at military air facilities around the world.
British airfields are particularly phantom-prone. One UK case fits within the Australo-centric boundaries of this book. On moonlit nights at Lakenheath RAF Base the transparent image of a man in Australian pilot’s uniform is often seen walking across the airfield. It is thought to be the spirit of an Australian who died when his bomber crashed in 1945.
The Ghost-Girl of Duntroon
The RAAF is not the only arm of the military to have been beset by apparitions. During the 1970s, couples living in the married quarters at Duntroon Military College repeatedly reported seeing the glowing ghost of a young woman, in clothes of the late 19th century, inspecting their furniture and belongings. Residents of one apartment complained that a bed, freshly made in the morning, would be found in a tangle an hour later, its pillows hurled around the room.
When a distressed mother said she had several times found the ghost standing by her four-month-old baby’s crib, a colonel arranged an exorcism. The ceremony was temporarily successful.
The Royal Military College Duntroon was established in 1911 in a mansion built 70 years earlier for the Campbells, a family of shipping merchants. In 1885 the 29-year-old daughter Sophia Campbell died after she fell - or was pushed - from an upstairs window.
Spectre-Plagued Soldiers -
and a Scandalised Citizen
In its 6 April 1987 issue Woman’s Day published a report by Tony Fawcett sub-headed ‘Eerie voices and strange sightings…even the army avoids it at night’. The article described uncanny events in the corridors of Fortuna House, Bendigo: an 1860s mansion converted into a military HQ.
The story so infuriated an Adelaide reader that he sent the Army a withering letter of rebuke.
The magazine article read, in part:
…According to chilling official reports by the Army Survey Regiment, which has been stationed here for 44 years, Fortuna is indeed haunted. Formerly the home of Australia’s ‘Quartz King,’ George Lansell, the grand ballrooms now house scientific equipment and busy army personnel. But tour the 1860s mansion and you won’t find a bed. For no one sleeps here at night.
Today at Fortuna, when soldiers talk of ‘George,’ they are referring to the ghost of George Lansell, who, if you believe the evidence, still regularly stalks the corridors and balconies. And then there is the female voice, supposedly that of Lansell’s first wife Bedillia, who died under ‘uncertain circumstances’ in the 1880s. The voice, which seemingly comes from no visible body, has had tough men shaking in their army boots.
‘There have been too many incidents to dismiss it,’ said the regiment’s commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Don Swiney, in his office which was once George Lansell’s bedroom. ‘In the cold hard light of day we can sit in this office and laugh about it, but I would suggest to you that at midnight perhaps you wouldn’t be laughing. It’s got to the stage where duty officers will no longer sleep in the main building…There was one fellow who wouldn’t sleep there unless he had his dog, a Doberman, with him. And at the same time every night that dog would go berserk in a particular corner.’
Tony Fawcett persuaded the Army to give him several of its official records documenting the haunting.
In February 1973 a captain reported, ‘Whilst on picket duty at about 0450 hours I crossed the road in front of the new barrack block to go down the stairs leading to the path around the lake. Out of the corner of my eye…I noticed an object standing by the double doors of the kitchen…I saw an apparition, like a shroud, hovering by the door and moving slowly from side to side. The form was about 1.8 metres tall. Brickwork could be seen through it…It rotated slowly from left to right and then suddenly stopped. I got the impression it had sensed my presence…The whole sighting lasted for a couple of minutes.’
In 1982 a sergeant reported: ‘I was performing a security check of the main building…As part of my duties I was to check incoming telex messages. I checked the door to the telex room and found it to be locked as would be expected. I then proceeded to the main keyboard located in the switchboard room, and as I was removing the telex room key, I heard a woman’s voice say softly, “What are you doing here?” I was extremely frightened as I had carried out a full check of the doors and windows of the building and knew it to be secure. I then hurried to the telex room (a distance of some six metres). I approached the locked door and just as I was about to insert the key, the door slowly opened. I had not touched the door at this time and there were no strong draughts that could have caused the movement.’
A report written by a corporal in 1965 reads: ‘At 0300 hours I was adding logs to the open fireplace in the billiard room. Suddenly I heard the sound of footsteps approaching the double doors that connected the ballroom and the billiard room. As I turned towards the doors they both opened fully. As the building was locked and I was the only occupant, there was no logical explanation.’
Tony Fawcett concluded, ‘In the light of these reports the Army no longer requires anyone to sleep overnight in Fortuna. “No way, you’d have to be joking, not any more,” is how CO Swiney sums it up.�
�
The article provoked outrage in a North Adelaide man’s martial breast. On 6 July 1988 - 15 months after the story was published* - he fired off a letter to the Army’s public relations office at Keswick Barracks:
* A possible explanation for the complainant’s tardiness is that he happened upon the long-forgotten article in a dentist’s waiting room.
Dear Sir,
Please refer to the attached photocopy from Woman’s Day.
…The article claims that the Australian Army is afraid of ghosts that allegedly reside in the Fortuna mansion in Bendigo…It would be outrageous if the present-day Army permitted itself to be regulated by ghosts. If the soldiers fear phantoms, how will they measure up if they encounter a real enemy? If the Woman’s Day article is factual, then the Army’s fear of ghosts ought to be a guarded secret lest some foreign country finds a way to exploit their fear.
Please inform me whether the report is accurate. And if it is, will any action be taken?
Yours faithfully,
Almost a year later, on 1 July 1989,** Australian Army Headquarters (Fourth Military District) wrote:
** The Army’s dilatoriness in responding is probably self-explanatory.
I have learnt from another officer on this Headquarters that you have still not received a reply on your query re a Woman’s Day article entitled, ‘The Ghosts of Fortuna Still Walk’.
