by John Pinkney
My brother-in-law stepped on the gas. We were all aware that we had seen a ghost. And in each of us it had created sensations of nausea and paralysing fear. A kilometre further on we compared mental notes and agreed on what we had seen - an old-style swagman, completely transparent, with beard, cork-bobbed hat and trousers in bicycle clips. My husband was sure the man’s swag had been resting on a rock beside him. But my brother-in-law said, ‘Swag be damned! It was another of the buggers, sitting down.’
For all of us, the crunch came three weeks later. A semi-trailer crashed in the same spot and the driver was killed. I still wonder today whether he too saw the ghost and was frightened out of his wits.
AN EERIE INCIDENT involving a spectral FJ Holden was described to me by John Effre of Maryborough, Queensland.
‘My wife Audrey and I, along with four friends, had been waterskiing on the Hawkesbury River,’ he recalled. Afterwards the six of us climbed into the car to set off for home. I was driving - and the road ahead was completely empty. Then, just outside Windsor, I got one of the worst shocks of my life. On the road just a metre ahead of us a black FJ Holden suddenly appeared from nowhere.
‘Daryl, one of our friends in the car, screamed a warning - “Look out, you’ll hit it!” I slammed on the brakes, but even as I did so, the black FJ vanished. Everyone in the car was thunderstruck. We’d all seen that black Holden and in the long discussions that followed we agreed it couldn’t possibly have been a reflection or illusion. That just wouldn’t have been possible with six people observing from different angles.
‘Later a policeman at Windsor told us there had been many accidents on the road we’d travelled, including one that killed four people. He also confirmed that there were numerous reports of a phantom car.’
A SIMILAR DESCRIPTION of near-death on the road came to me from Wendy J. of Gladstone, Queensland. ‘My husband, children and I were travelling at night between Ipswich and Toowoomba,’ she said. ‘My husband changed lanes to pass a slow car ahead of us, whereupon we all got a terrible fright. A young bearded man suddenly appeared on the white line. He was walking directly into the path of our fast-moving car. As everyone screamed my husband swerved to avoid him.
‘Fearful that we might have grazed the man my eldest daughter and I looked back at the road, which was brightly lit by the headlights of following cars. But the man had gone as suddenly as he’d appeared. We all agreed there was just no logical way he could have vanished so abruptly.
‘Next day, still shaken, I took the risk of sounding like a fool and told a neighbour what had happened. Before I finished my story she asked whether the man had been in his early 20s, slim and about six feet tall, with collar-length hair. I was stunned that she had so accurately described the person we’d encountered. She told me that what we had seen had also appeared to other motorists. It was thought to be the apparition of a young man who had died on that road many years before.’
Parapsychologists theorise that some people who die violently (as in road accidents) are unable to struggle free from their earthly environments. Hauntings of this kind have sometimes been apparently resolved by ‘rescue seances’, in which the confused entities are advised that they are dead and should move on.
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Road-ghost Remembered, In a Haunting Hit Song
The phantom image of a teenage girl killed in a motorcycle accident troubled singer Jon English’s dreams for several months.
Finally English - who has made Australia his home - managed to exorcise the (possibly apocryphal) ghost by making her the subject of a song, ‘She Was Real’. Today, decades after the girl is said to have died, it is still his most requested concert number.
‘The song is based on a court case that seems to obsess everyone who hears about it,’ Jon told me when we met at Melbourne’s Channel 9. ‘It all came to light in 1982, in my former hometown, Southend, England. A young motorcyclist was charged with maliciously wasting police time. In his defence he said he’d become lost late one night and had stopped, trying to get his bearings, when a beautiful girl in bike leathers approached him, introduced herself as Susie and asked for a lift. She said she was in trouble and needed to get home immediately. She gave him a street number and promised to show him how to get there.
‘On the way to Southend they talked for a long time. He asked her out for the following Saturday and she accepted. Then, at the Cheltenham roundabout he suddenly heard a bump and she wasn’t there any more. After a frantic search he ran to a phonebox and called police. They searched till sunrise, then accompanied him to the address the girl had given.
‘A middle-aged woman answered the door. When they asked her if Susie had got home safely she burst into tears and accused them of playing sadistic games. She then revealed that Susie had died in a motorbike smash 12 years earlier - at Cheltenham roundabout.
‘The police were furious and immediately charged the young bloke with malicious mischief. In court the poor bastard kept saying, “She was real! She was real!” The magistrate was so bemused by his story that he let him off. But a lot of people left the court convinced that Cheltenham roundabout was haunted. And there are still stories in the district about a girl who doesn’t know she’s dead - and is trying to find her way home.’
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Haunted Houses
The Phantom Stain Science Couldn't Explain
When a damp, pungent-smelling stain rotted the wallpaper of their new house an Adelaide couple did everything possible to find its source. But neither plumbers nor builders could offer an answer. Scientists from CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation) analysed samples of the oozing paper, but could only report that it was ‘human or animal urine of unknown origin’. The unpleasant phenomenon coincided with terrifying bouts of poltergeist activity, a devastating explosion and repeated appearances by a spectral woman. The villa’s frightened owners were not alone in their ordeal. Reliable witnesses across Australia have reported ghostly intrusions which similarly shattered their domestic peace…
THE PRETTY BRICK VENEER HOUSE STOOD AMID flowering native trees in a pleasant suburb of Adelaide. For several days after they moved in with their son Michael, the house’s new owners, Ken and Di Klose, were delighted with their purchase. But then, quite literally, the rot set in. The couple’s first inkling that something was wrong came when they were repeatedly woken at night by footsteps. The nocturnal noises were an overture to more sinister events. At two o’clock one morning Di was shocked awake by a cold hand gripping her throat. She wrestled free by rolling from bed. ‘And then,’ she recalled, ‘the destruction of property began.
‘Ken bought a new Volvo. One day, while it was parked, the cold engine blew up - causing $9500 worth of damage. The insurance assessors couldn’t make out what had happened. They said there seemed no logical cause for the explosion. It hadn’t started in the seat of the wiring, or in the fuel injection - the places you’d expect. The investigators were equally puzzled by the swimming pool filter, which kept exploding for no reason they could find.
‘While all this was happening there was a quite frightening burst of poltergeist activity - and repeated appearances by the figure of a young woman who looked about 24 years old. Our friends saw her most frequently. Strangely Ken and I only glimpsed her from the corners of our eyes.’
The couple suffered most distress from a phenomenon in the living room: a mysterious wet stain which filled the house with a foul odour. ‘It began as a huge seeping patch on the wallpaper,’ Di said. ‘We spent a couple of months trying to dry it with fans and heaters, but it just grew worse. Finally we called in contractors to check for leaking pipes or cracks in the roof. They found nothing.
‘Then we called in CSIRO. They took samples of the oozing wallpaper…and reported back that it was “human or animal urine of unknown origin” - but they couldn’t venture anything more than that. By this time the stench was becoming so terrible I called the contractors back and asked them to cut a hole in th
e floorboards so they could check under the house. We were looking desperately for a logical explanation of everything. But instead the man in charge emerged from under the floor looking very pale, saying, “You must be haunted.” He said there were absolutely no cobwebs under the floor - and that was a sure sign of supernatural possession. Over the following weeks the stinking damp became unbearable.’
Unbowed, Di determined to retrieve her house from the forces that had invaded it: ‘One night, at the height of all the horrors, I spoke to the ghost. I said it could stay where it was - but only if it behaved itself. If it continued to make trouble we’d get an exorcist to turf it out.’
From that moment the unpleasantness stopped.
‘Neither of us had a clue who the phantom might have been,’ said Di. ‘But after a fair bit of reading on the subject of hauntings I formed a few theories. I think the ghost was an earthbound spirit who had possibly died in the house and saw us as intruders. From the time I said she could stay she seemed happier. I believe she eventually moved on to another stage of existence. I hope she’s found peace.’
Dead Girl Mystery
CSIRO’s exposure to the paranormal was not confined to the study of urine-stained wallpaper. For several decades of the 20th century Australia’s pre-eminent scientific organisation was confronted by a ghost on its own premises. The haunting happened in stately Stawell House, a sandstone Georgian mansion on Tasmania’s Battery Point.
Staff researchers were reluctant (at least publicly) to discuss the mansion’s resident wraith, whom they nicknamed ‘the Grey Lady’. But retired horticultural scientist Dr Don Martin saw no reason why the truth should not be revealed. ‘The woman’s ghost appeared to me twice - in 1956 and 1957,’ he told me. ‘On both occasions I was working overtime in my office, directly under the building’s old tower.
‘Each time, something prompted me to look up from my papers and glance in the direction of the open doorway. Framed in it was the figure of a young woman, wearing a grey crinoline hooped dress with short sleeves. I sensed that the apparition was benign and friendly. But although I stared, to the extent of screwing up my eyes, I couldn’t make out any features…the face was blurred and misty. While I was trying to get a more focused view of her, she vanished.’
Intrigued by his encounter, and by comparable reports from colleagues, Dr Martin delved into the old mansion’s history. ‘I discovered that Stawell House had been used as a hospital before CSIRO took it over,’ he said. ‘I managed to talk with the matron, who was retired. She said she had often seen the ghost. The consensus seems to be that the phantom is the spirit of a young woman who became pregnant to a criminal in the 1850s.
‘The girl’s angry stepfather reportedly threw her down the tower stairs to her death.’
Spectre Stalked an Island House
In the early 1990s, workers on Queensland’s Stradbroke Island insisted that they were being terrorised, by a figure shrouded in mist. Epicentre of the haunting was an old house used as staff sleeping quarters.
One victim of the ‘mist-monster’ was an ambulance officer, Bob Terkelson. In an official report to his employers, the Cleveland Ambulance Committee, he claimed that the being paralysed him, then tried to render him unconscious. Bob had his brush with the unknown while sleeping in the ambulance service’s antiquated cottage. He told me:
‘I was deeply asleep when I was suddenly woken by an intense pain in my left hand. Imagining I’d got a cramp I tried to change my position. It was then I realised that my upper body was paralysed. I was totally pinned to the bed. It felt as though someone was leaning over me, with one knee on my left hand and two hands on my shoulders. With my free right hand I tried to push away whatever was pressing me down - but it felt as though nothing was there.
‘At this stage I became aware of a cloudy mist-like substance, just above me. In the fog was a face. It had bright, intense eyes staring directly into mine - and it seemed to be sneering. But its breath was the worst aspect. It was so putrid I almost threw up. Inhaling that overpowering smell, I felt as though I was losing control - and that I could die at any moment. The fear galvanised me. I summoned all my strength, threw myself from the bed and turned on the light.
‘The face had vanished, but I still had the strong feeling I wasn’t alone in the room. I searched the cottage for signs of an intruder, but everything was secure, with no sign of forced entry. Finally I went back to bed and managed to doze off. When I woke next morning my palm was bruised. And the room was still thick with that overpowering smell from the apparition’s mouth.’
Bob had had no previous contact with ghosts and was anxious ‘to make some kind of sense’ of what had happened. His initial theory was that the attack might have been linked to a grimacing ceremonial mask from the islands, which he had bought in Cairns, several months earlier. A visiting missionary urged him to burn the ornament, which was of a type that some tribes associated with demonic possession. He was preparing, belatedly, to follow the advice when colleagues insisted that what he had actually seen was the ‘Stradbroke Phantom’. Believed to be an Aboriginal spirit, it had haunted the island since the first white intruders arrived.
A SIMILARLY ALARMING entity occupied a derelict cottage near Cockle Bay on Queensland’s Magnetic Island. A young prospective bridegroom needed psychiatric treatment after self-styled friends, celebrating his buck’s night, chained him up overnight in the burned-out building. The victim told me the ordeal had pushed him ‘close to a breakdown’ but declined to offer further detail, saying he was unwilling to reopen the wound.
Other islanders were readier to talk. Fisherman Arthur Green recalled, ‘I’d heard a lot of stories about the cottage from blokes at the Picnic Bay pub. I couldn’t decide whether I should regard them as true, or just beery bulldust, until the afternoon I was walking home after a fishing trip.
‘For reasons I forget - possibly to take a stone out of my shoe - I happened to sit down directly outside that house. I regretted doing so - it was as if I’d triggered an alarm. Immediately there was a shrieking noise behind me. I whipped around and saw the smoky figure of a man. He was gesturing at me violently, obviously telling me to go away. I could actually feel the anger radiating out at me and I didn’t need any further persuading. I got up and ran.
‘I later learned that a 40-year-old man was killed, maybe murdered in that house. I think he was the one I saw. From that day I fished elsewhere.’
Spectral Snapshot
When real estate agent John Effer photographed the interior of a grand century-old house in Howard, Queensland, he obtained images he hadn’t bargained for. ‘I was definitely the only person in the place while I took the snaps and I saw nothing unusual,’ John told me. ‘But when I collected the developed prints I got the shock of my life…’ Two of the photographs, taken in separate rooms, contain the misty floating image of a woman with arms outstretched. The face, neck and hair are clearly visible.’ John was adamant that the swirling forms could not have been created by smoke. ‘The Maryborough company I worked for forbade its employees to light cigarettes on the job - and there were no cane fires burning that day. The shots couldn’t have been a double-exposure either. I used a Canon AEI reflex camera, equipped with an electronic shutter. The film had to be advanced after firing, making double exposures impossible.’
I learned that the house had formerly been owned by the Queensland Senator Dame Annabel Rankin. Several months after it was sold I spoke to the new owners, plumbing contractor Terry Ward and his wife Jan. Jan Ward said, ‘We’ve studied John’s photos and we’re in no doubt they’re genuine. A lot of strange things have happened to us in this place. When we moved in, one of the rooms was divided with modular wardrobes. In hindsight these seemed to annoy our ghost, because we were kept awake every night by the sound of banging. The moment we removed the wardrobes - restoring the room to its original state - the racket stopped. We’ve never seen the grey woman’s phantom and hope we never will. But we’re in no doubt somethin
g’s living with us…what we hear is proof of it: sounds of furniture being moved around when nobody’s there - and a grating noise like huge fingernails being scraped along the floorboards.’
ANOTHER REPORT connected with the real estate industry came to me from a Melbourne correspondent, Shirley Bramich. She described to me how an apparition tried, as she perceived it, to prevent the sale of a family house:
In 1991 a lady friend and I went to stay in Tasmania with Glen, a distant relative. His mother had recently died in the house, after a long illness. On the first night we sat up, talking endlessly, and went to bed very late. My friend fell asleep immediately in her bed opposite mine, but I was restless and uneasy. I tossed and turned, unable to settle - and then, without warning I got an unpleasant surprise.
Standing at the foot of my bed was a short, bearded man with black curly hair. He was wearing outmoded clothes and his demeanour suggested he was angry…for what reason I neither knew nor cared; I only wanted him to go away. I’d never seen a ghost before, but I knew without a breath of doubt that I was facing one now. I lay there frozen - unable to get up and run from the room, but fervently willing the man to leave. Eventually, to my relief he faded from view.
Next day I described the apparition to Glen’s nephew. He didn’t laugh as I’d feared he might, but instead looked out a stack of old family photo albums. After a long search he found a page containing a photograph of a dead relation named Eric and asked, ‘Would this be him?’ The man in the picture had black hair, a beard and old-fashioned outfit. I said yes - that looked very much like the person who had appeared in my room. The nephew didn’t know much about Eric - only that, when alive, he had been devoted to Glen’s mother.
