by John Pinkney
The Making of a Haunted House
In 1876 Christopher Crawley, a struggling 35-year-old farmer, bought 210 hectares of land in Junee, New South Wales. He and his wife Elizabeth built a small brick cottage on the site (now known as the Original Homestead).
Hearing rumours that the Great Southern Railway Line might eventually pass through Junee, Crawley strategically bought as many parcels of land as his bankers would allow. He also built a hotel opposite the site mooted to become the new railway station. Crawley’s foresight and financial daring eventually made him one of the colony’s richest men.
In 1884 he built a grand homestead in front of the original cottage, which was then converted into servants’ quarters, flanked by stables and a dairy. The couple called the new house Monte Cristo (Mount of Christ) and raised seven children there. The Crawleys were lauded for their philanthropy - but dark stories were told about the unhappy lives of their employees. Mrs Crawley, who in photographs resembles Queen Victoria, is said to have ruled the household harshly. Many witnesses claim to have seen - and felt - her ghost in the present-day homestead. The phantoms of household staff - and of other personalities, so far unidentified by historians, are also said to haunt the premises.
But even in Monte Cristo’s earliest days there were reports, and in one case apparent photographic evidence, of ghosts. An intriguing picture taken when the homestead was newly built, shows a strange black figure peering from a window. The figure occupies a position where nobody - thanks to wooden blinds and heavy drapes - could arguably have stood.
At age 69 Christopher Crawley fell mortally ill. The family physician diagnosed blood poisoning caused by a starched collar rubbing against an inflamed carbuncle. Crawley died of heart failure on 14 December 1910 - and has since reportedly been seen roaming the homestead’s rooms.
In the remaining 23 years of her life Mrs Crawley is believed to have left the house only twice. She devoted herself to the Bible and had a box room converted into a chapel in which she and a priest regularly prayed. Elizabeth Crawley died of heart failure on 12 August 1933, aged 92. Monte Cristo remained the Crawleys’ family home until 1948, when the last member left.
Vandalised and in ruins it was acquired by Reg and Olive Ryan in 1963. For 15 bleak years Monte Cristo had lain empty. Except for its ghosts.
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Strangled Spectre used a Secret Door
The phantom of a theological student who hanged himself in 1930 plagued the premises of a South Australian film and TV production company during the 1980s. Workers at Pepper Studios, housed in an old mansion in Kent Town, insisted that the shadowy intruder habitually emerged from only one spot: behind the multi-track recording machine.
Al Clausen, the firm’s managing director, told me he had seen the entity several times. ‘It’s a short black shadowy figure wearing a dark gown,’ he said. ‘Usually it appears late at night. Some of us suspect it’s been responsible for interfering with the infra- red alarm system - and also for snapping lights on and off when no one’s around.’
The building was used in the early 20th century as a Bible college.
Studio owner Max Pepper said, ‘The ghost has given many of our staff members a jolt. Most of the witnesses say it’s a young man, wearing some kind of black shroud. I had so many reports that the figure had emerged from behind the recording machine that I finally asked a local Methodist minister to do some research.
‘The results were fascinating. The minister showed us old plans which indicate there’s a bricked-up door in the wall behind the machine. That, as it turned out, used to be the front door of the old theological college.
‘The legend is that a 1 7-year-old student hanged himself there in 1930. Despite all the architectural additions and alterations he’s haunted the place ever since.’
The complex’s resident spirit was generally believed to belong to a student priest, tortured by sexual problems, whose body was found swinging from a dressing gown cord.
A visiting New Zealand clergyman, Bill Subritzky, offered to exorcise the apparition. The directors politely declined the offer. ‘I wouldn’t have a bar of it,’ Al Clausen said firmly. ‘The ghost has never done an ounce of harm, even though he chills people a bit, especially when he makes the lights behave erratically where he had his cell. This is his home - and we’re happy to co-exist.’
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Haunted Cinemas
Phantoms in the Front Stalls
When Jeff Jacklin joined Melbourne’s historic Classic Cinema as technical manager he little imagined that seven ghosts would be numbered among his workmates. The resident wraiths’ alarming behaviour sometimes made it impossible for Jeff and his colleagues to perform their duties. In the 1990s, massive renovations transformed the old building into a modern multi-screen complex - prompting staff to speculate that the changes might drive the entities away. But it was a forlorn hope. In 2005, the phantoms’ paranormal pranks were persisting unchecked…
ON A RAINSWEPT JULY NIGHT in 1999, Jeff Jacklin was working late and alone. As technical manager of the Classic Cinema in the Melbourne suburb of Elsternwick he had supervised the evening’s final screening and was sitting now at a bench near the projection booth, checking his staff’s timesheets. The chore complete, he carried the paperwork down to complex manager Ruth’s office on the floor below.
Ruth’s working-space lay locked and in darkness. Like everyone else she had gone home.
Jeff Jacklin told me, ‘I knelt down and pushed the first of the sheets under the door, for next day. Immediately I got a shock. Someone on the other side of the door was pulling at the paper. I let go as if I’d touched hot metal, and stood up. The paper remained halfway under the door, which convinced me I must have imagined what just happened. I bent to retrieve the timesheet - and something pulled at it again. The tug felt tremendously strong, like some kind of magnetism. I turned and ran. It wasn’t the first time I’d reacted in that way, inside that building.’
From his earliest nights in the job Jeff had experienced a long series of incomprehensible incidents.
‘The first thing that happened was when I was sitting in the booth in the empty building,’ he recalled. ‘Suddenly phones started ringing in the office area. I went in to check but no one was at the other end.
‘Often, when I was sitting in that projection booth, the hair on the back of my neck would start to rise. I’d sense that something was watching - and then, on several occasions, the door would open and close of its own accord, with no draughts anywhere.
‘One night, walking through the half-darkened cinema, I heard loud tapping noises all around me. The noise was coming from the plastic cupholder rests. On another night I sat at a bench upstairs to eat a few sandwiches. There was nowhere to put the Coke bottle so I placed it on the floor. While I was eating, it fell over. I set it right and it immediately fell again. While I was retrieving the bottle a second time, the handle on the rewind bench behind me started turning. I got out of there.’
So many staff members complained about the jarring phenomena that the cinema’s owner Eddie Tamur sought advice from a clairvoyant.
‘She told us there were quite a number of spirits in the building,’ Jeff recalled. ‘That was news to several of us, who’d assumed there was only one. The medium said that among them she could perceive a small man dressed in a suit from the 1930s. She sensed he’d been a regular patron of the cinema in his lifetime and had loved the experience so much he was continually drawn back. He played pranks because he was isolated and starved of company. His tricks, sometimes frightening to us, were just his way of trying to communicate. The medium advised us not to be hostile, but to speak aloud to him and say we were happy to have him around, provided he stopped interrupting us. Next time something odd happened I did exactly that - and it seemed to work, up to a point.’
A second clairvoyant, who visited the cinema soon afterward, announced that ‘a small crowd of ghosts’ (at least seven and possibly as many as 14) had made th
eir home on the premises. One of the entities, she said, was ‘a woman named Sharon’, whose name she could hear echoing around the oldest cinema in the complex.
A Melbourne bookshop owner and student of the supernatural, Drew Sinton decided to check whether a ‘Sharon’ had ever been mentioned in the cinema’s written history. He found no one of that name. But he did ascertain that soon after its completion in 1886, a section of the building had been used as a dance hall. Its name was the Sharon.
The Classic has been screening films since the early days of silent pictures - and is generally thought to have been haunted for more than a century, with succeeding generations of managers and staff rediscovering the resident spirits for themselves.
Ticketseller and longtime staff member Delyce Litchfield reported several brushes with the unknown. ‘Quite a few times I’ve strongly sensed I was being watched from the stairs,’ she said. ‘And other people here have heard their names being called when no one was around.’ But trainees and other new employees have traditionally endured the most startling experiences. ‘They used to come to me white- faced, complaining about knockings and rattlings and equipment disappearing or being moved,’ Jeff Jacklin said. ‘But now I warn every new worker that strange things might happen. It blunts the shock for them.’
During its 119 years, the Classic building has served as everything from a community hall and dance academy to a live theatre and skating rink. Many witnesses have agreed that dancers and the distant sounds of their music are prominently involved in the haunting. The entities seem uninterested in the improvements the new owners have made to the premises.
Nothing beyond the ordinary is reported from the four new cinemas, with their CD listening posts and infrared headsets. The ghosts confine themselves to the old original cinema with its big stage, and to the site of the first projection area. Having established their boundaries decades ago, the phantoms seem never to venture beyond them.
Dead Projectionist Was ‘Bathed
in Blue Light’
The Classic is not the only Australian cinema in which bizarre events have reportedly occurred. In 1982 the old Metro in Malvern, Victoria, was plagued by paranormal occurrences that shook employees and filmgoers.
John McKenzie, then chief executive of the Cinematograph Exhibitors’ Association, told me, ‘A ghost has appeared frequently in this cinema. Staff have described the figure as being dark-suited, balding and in his late 60s. They say he was unmistakably recognisable as a projectionist employed here from 1922 until his death in 1963. I worked with this man for many years. I’ve never seen his apparition, but several times I’ve felt a presence very powerfully in the projection room.’
Russell O’Reagan, who projected hundreds of movies in the cavernous 1920-vintage theatre, said, ‘We all became used to the ghost, but it never lost the ability to startle us. One of our cleaners brought her four-year-old daughter in, early one morning. The little girl went to one of the toilets, but immediately ran out, shouting, “There’s a man in there…he said good morning.” Her mother dashed into the toilet, and saw nothing. But later on she spotted the phantom herself.
‘On one occasion, early in the morning, she caught sight of a well-dressed man, bathed in a strange blue light, standing in the upstairs circle. Another time, while walking through the empty upstairs foyer, she nearly died of fright when she saw a face - and nothing more - floating outside the manager’s office.
‘I believe I’ve seen the apparition too - but only out of the corner of my eye. One morning I was standing by the projection porthole, getting ready to change reels, when I heard footsteps coming up the stairs. Someone appeared in the doorway - I assumed it might be a colleague - but when I turned around a split second later, no one was there.’
Martin Evans, the Metro’s manager, told me, ‘I never saw the ghost, but a considerable number of people came in to report it. And there were numerous descriptions of strange things happening.’
Russell O’Reagan recalled, ‘Everyone became stressed out by what seemed some kind of deliberate campaign. We’d find phones impossibly removed from their hooks in locked rooms - and sometimes the sound volume of movies would be abruptly turned down. On one occasion, after an exhaustive search for lenses that had vanished, we found them neatly stacked under the stage. Some of the staff blamed the ghost for that.
‘But my weirdest experience came when I was working back one night. Suddenly a massive pounding sound thundered up from the foyer - just as if someone with heavy boots was stamping on the floor. But that couldn’t have been so, because except for me the cinema was empty.’
John McKenzie commented, ‘Few people working here had much doubt that the ghost was our old projectionist. People were scared by the apparition at first - but they agreed in the end that it was pretty harmless. The projectionist had been a very likeable man. He retired after more than 40 years in this job, then took his wife on an overseas trip. She fell ill and they had to return. She died several weeks later.
‘When the projectionist died soon after, we were all certain it was of a broken heart.’
Adelaide’s Film-Fan Phantom
During the 1980s an entity that glided through the stalls and melted into walls became an almost familiar sight to staff at an old seaside cinema in Adelaide. One witness to the haunting was projectionist Darrell Pick of Morphett Vale, South Australia. He told me:
‘Throughout the time I worked at the Village in Glenelg the ghost appeared more times than I can remember. Everyone believed he was one of the people who’d founded the cinema back in 1940 when it was called the Seaview. We all got the impression that he was principally interested in the financial side of our activities, because he’d always appear just before we put on a successful show.
‘We saw him when we were about to screen such films as Up Pompeii, Bedroom Mazurka and Blue Water, White Death. Eventually we began to regard his advent as a reliable signal that a particular movie would do well with our local audience. The first time I saw the apparition was when I let myself into the empty cinema one Sunday morning. I was a movie fanatic and I liked to go in just to throw the lights on and pull back the curtains.
‘On that morning I noticed an elderly, dark-suited man with thick grey hair standing in the stalls. He was looking up at me in the projection room with an enquiring expression on his face. Knowing the cinema was supposed to be shut I yelled out, “Hey! What are you doing here?” He turned, glided away and vanished through a wall, leaving me thunderstruck. Next day I told the manager and cashier what had happened. They responded calmly, saying that the ghost had been around for years. He dated back to the time when the old cinema’s ceiling twinkled with stars and the walls were latticed with roses and decorated with paintings of the Nile.
‘After that encounter I saw the old bloke quite often. Sometimes he’d come into the projection room and stand behind me. I’d always be too scared to turn around, but I’d glimpse his reflection in the porthole glass.
It took me quite a while to get used to these visits. But my co-workers (along with the ghost himself) finally convinced me he was harmless and not to be feared. It was obvious to everyone that all he cared about was the shows we were putting on. Movies were his life…even after death.’
* * *
Fear - in Australia’s Film Museum
For more than a decade, employees of the National Film and Sound Archive in Canberra campaigned to be moved to new premises. The building in which they were obliged to work, they complained, was a threat to health. And to add to a bad bargain, it was unpleasantly haunted.
The old edifice which housed much of the nation’s film heritage had been jointly occupied until 1984 by the Australian Institute of Anatomy and the Canberra morgue. Legions of the city’s dead were briefly accommodated within the building’s walls, before moving on to the crematorium or the grave. A more permanent presence was Sir Colin McKenzie’s internationally renowned collection of human organs, all preserved in formaldehyde. To intensi
fy the general atmosphere of the tomb, the sculpted heads of 10 distinguished and long-dead medical scientists still looked down onto the foyer. The faces on several of these sculptures had been taken directly from death masks. And then there were the remains of Aborigines, profanely disinterred by 19th century archaeologists and stored in the basement…
So heavily haunted were the premises that sceptics were unusually thin on the ground. Ken Rowland, manager of the printing laboratory, was one of an estimated 60 ghost-witnesses who had no hesitation in speaking out. ‘People working at their computers will sometimes feel a light brushing on the back of the neck, or a pressure on the shoulder,’ he said. ‘Occasionally you’ll see a reflection of someone in your screen, but when you turn around, nobody’s there.’
Some of the archive’s employees said they had seen the transparent figures of women on a balcony and in the library. On 1 June 1997 Dr Jeff Brownrigg told Sunday Age journalist Peter Cotton that after finishing work one night he turned a corner into a corridor and saw something astonishing. Directly in his path stood a crowd of people wearing fashions of the 19th century. ‘They seemed to have a sepia quality,’ he said. ‘The closest was a tall man with a bowler hat, wing collar and Zapata moustache. I got such a shock that I stepped back into the stairwell. When I entered the corridor again the crowd was gone.’
Next day Dr Brownrigg described his bizarre experience to colleagues, who told him they too had encountered phantoms in the archive - some events being simultaneously witnessed by up to five people. But despite his experience Jeff Brownrigg still disbelieved in ghosts.
‘Some of us here have just seen things we can’t explain,’ he said.
The phantoms were also sensed by a robot. The archive’s electronic monitoring device, programmed to register each visitor, regularly recorded the entry of two additional ‘people’ every night. As they stepped through the electronic beams the intruder alarms remained silent and the locks on the doors undisturbed.
