Great Australian Ghost Stories

by Richard Davis

  TVW7, who had covered the events at Shoalwater, sent a senior reporter, John Hudson, and a cameraman, Brian Dunne, to Medina to do a follow-up story. When they arrived they found the flat full of neighbours all testifying to having seen the latest freak events (cutlery, crockery and clothing flying about) but if the pair were at all sceptical about these accounts, what happened when they ushered the strangers out and set up their equipment removed any doubt from their minds.

  They decided Faye was not in a fit state to stand up to a long interview so Hudson agreed to tell the story in front of the camera and lead the audience on a tour of the flat. At the moment the camera started to roll a tremendous crash was heard. Hudson and Dunne rushed to where the sound had come from and found a tangle of mops, brooms, buckets, tins of polish and bottles of cleaner strewn in a sticky mess on the laundry floor. There was no one in the laundry (which was freezing cold, although the rest of the flat was warm) and if anyone had left they would have had to pass the two men and would have been caught on camera.

  Faye remained seated in the lounge during this commotion but was visibly upset by it. Before resuming filming the two men made a careful search of every room in the flat, ending in the kitchen which was separated from the lounge by a bench divider. The kitchen was scrupulously clean: everything in its place, cupboards and drawers firmly closed.

  No sooner had they returned to the lounge than the whole kitchen seemed to explode. As Faye and the men watched in disbelief, the curtains billowed and all the cupboard doors flew open with a mighty whoosh and a deafening clatter. Drawers crashed to the floor spilling their contents, crockery and cooking utensils rattled, banged and broke and a steel colander fell from the wall hitting the floor with a crash like a cymbal. Next a container flew out of a cupboard and rose high in the air. It turned upside down and salt began to pour from it in a fine stream. The container moved slowly around the kitchen in loops, the trail of salt inscribing figure eights on the sink and floor until it was empty. Then it floated gently down and came to rest upright in an open drawer.

  Hudson later described the destruction he had witnessed as the strangest and most frightening experience of his long career as a journalist.

  He was reported as saying: ‘Whatever it was that was causing all the banging, scattering and smashing must have had tremendous power. Things were happening all at once. It was like a storm roaring through the room — completely unstoppable. There was nothing we could do but watch in awe.’

  Much has been written about this family’s experiences and, as with the house at Gladesville, comparisons made with the events at Amityville in the United States. The mass of detailed corroborative evidence has been tested against theories about poltergeists (the term spiritualists use to describe mischievous disembodied spirits) and most investigators have concluded that some supernatural force, either external (a ghost) or internal (generated by one of the family) was involved. Some have suggested the mother, Faye, may, unknowingly, have been the source; that her mind, burdened by anxiety, could have developed the power to move objects or created a force that took on an existence of its own, which is, some theorists say, how all poltergeists come into being.

  The family disappeared a few months later. I don’t know whether the events stopped or the family decided to suffer them in silence. I hope it was the former. Thirty years have passed and Peter and Faye are probably grandparents now. Like the family in Gladesville, they may not wish to be remembered as the victims of one of Australia’s most public ghost stories, but the supernatural is arbitrary in whom it chooses to involve and no blame should be laid on the victims. Wherever both families are I hope they have found peace and happiness.

  6.

  Australia’s Most Famous Ghost

  What beck’ning ghost, along the moonlight shade

  Invites my step, and points to yonder glade?

  Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady,

  Alexander Pope (English poet, 1688–1744)

  It is a mystery why some ghost stories catch the public’s imagination and survive while others, often more shocking and more credible, are forgotten. A perfect example is the story of Frederick Fisher, Australia’s best-known ghost story, which has been the subject of hundreds of newspaper articles in many languages, books, poems, a film, a stage play, an opera and an annual folk festival held to this day in the town where his ghost appeared — to just one man on one occasion — 185 years ago.

  Frederick Fisher was a ticket-of-leave man: that is, a well-behaved convict who had been released into the community to fend for himself. Fisher acquired thirty acres (twelve hectares) of land on the western side of Queen Street in Campbelltown and built himself a shack where the Campbelltown Post office now stands. Farmer Fisher prospered but preferred the company of his own kind — other ticket-of-leave men and itinerants who roamed the countryside. It was his custom to invite a few of these ‘mates’ over to celebrate his good fortune and most nights his table provided a bed for as many rum-soaked carousers as could fit on it or under it.

  Fisher’s best mate was his neighbour, another ticket-of-leave man named George Worrell, with whom it was said Fisher shared all his secrets. When Fisher got into debt and his arrest seemed imminent he signed over his property to George Worrell either to avoid having it seized or to give a false impression of his assets. Fisher did go to gaol and Worrell boasted how his own property increased by thirty acres: ‘It’s all mine now … all that was Fred’s … he give it me afore he went t’ prison,’ he told everyone in Campbelltown but, when Fisher was released six months later and returned to reclaim his property, Worrell was, as we might say today, thoroughly pissed off; and the scene was set for a heinous crime.

  On the night of 9 June 1826, Frederick Fisher disappeared. George Worrell resumed control of Fisher’s farm and told anyone who asked that Fisher had decided on the spur of the moment to go home to search for his former family and had sailed from Sydney on the Lady Saint Vincent bound for London. Fisher had often spoken of his wish to return to England around the Campbelltown taverns so everyone accepted Worrell’s story — for a time at least.

  Suspicions began to arise, however, when Worrell tried to sell one of Fisher’s horses and the prospective buyer demanded proof of ownership. Worrell produced an obviously forged receipt that he said he had been given when he bought the horse from Fisher. Worrell (not a very bright spark) also began to appear around town in Fisher’s clothes and inquiries in Sydney revealed that the Lady Saint Vincent had not been in port on the day Worrell said his mate departed.

  Foul play was suspected and the authorities began to take an interest in the case. The Australian of 23 September carried the following notice from the Colonial Secretary’s Office:

  SUPPOSED MURDER

  WHEREAS FREDERICK FISHER BY THE ship Atlas, holding a Ticket of Leave, and lately residing at Campbell Town, has disappeared within these last three months — it is hereby notified that a reward of twenty pounds will be given for the discovery of the body of the said Frederick Fisher, or if he shall have quitted the Colony, a reward of five pounds will be given to any person or persons who shall produce proof of the same.

  Circumstantial evidence weighed heavily against George Worrell. The police questioned him; he panicked and changed his story. He had, he now said, seen Fisher murdered but had taken no part in the crime. He named three of Fisher’s other cronies as the murderers and they were arrested but soon released for lack of evidence. The absence of a body was hindering the police and Worrell might still have got away with the crime of murder had a local farmer named James Farley (or Hurley in some accounts) not gone for a stroll down Queen Street late one night.

  About 400 metres from Fisher’s shack Farley spotted a figure sitting on the top rail of a fence. As he drew closer he realised, to his horror, that it was Frederick Fisher — not the living, breathing man that he had seen and spoken to many times, but Fisher’s ghost. The pale, ‘fuzzy’ form was bathed in an eerie white light and
there was blood dripping from an open wound to its head. The ghost looked straight at James Farley, its dead eyes holding the living man’s in a hypnotic stare. Next it let out a long and terrifying moan which Farley described as like the howl of a wounded beast. Then it raised its right arm, extended a quivering finger and pointed in the direction of the creek that flowed behind Fisher’s farm.

  Farley, by his own account, fainted at that point and when he came to the ghost was gone. Greatly distressed, Farley staggered home and collapsed again at his own front door. He was put to bed and there he lay in a state of shock for ten days. When his senses finally returned Farley sent for William Howe, the local police magistrate, and told him the story.

  Knowing Farley to be a reliable man, Howe immediately ordered a search of the creek. Bloodstains were found on the fence where Farley said the ghost had appeared and a ‘black tracker’ led the police to a spot beside the creek where he said (after scraping the surface of the water with a gum leaf and tasting the scum for ‘white man’s fat’) the body was buried. The police dug and, less than one metre down, came upon the body. It was identified by its height and build and by its clothing as the remains of Frederick Fisher. There was not enough of the face left to identify. The lower part was battered to a pulp, while the forehead and the back of the skull had been holed with some heavy, sharp implement like an axe or a pick. What the murderer had not finished decay had. The local doctor, Thomas Robinson, described how, when he lifted one of the corpse’s hands, the flesh came away and stuck to his skin.

  George Worrell was arrested for Fisher’s murder and sent for trial by jury at the Supreme Court of New South Wales on 2 February 1827. The trial lasted just one day. Worrell was found guilty on a Friday and executed at the Dawes Point Battery the following Monday. On the morning of his execution Worrell confessed to a clergyman that he alone had killed, mutilated and buried Frederick Fisher.

  There was no mention of a ghost at Worrell’s trial or in the newspaper reports of the proceedings but, by then, the story of Fisher’s ghost had entered the folklore of Campbelltown and would soon spread far and wide, across the colony and the world.

  It was recorded in Martin’s History of the British Colonies, published in London in 1835, and in Tegg’s Weekly, a Sydney journal published in 1836. Tegg’s version was attributed to a Mr Kerr, a tutor employed by Police Magistrate Howe. Charles Dickens included it in the journal he edited, Household Words, in 1853 and versions appeared in French and Italian.

  From the beginning, distortions occurred — almost every aspect of the story was changed and romanticised so that truth became indistinguishable from fiction.

  So, was there ever a ghost? Well, James Farley was a respected man, sober in his habits and God-fearing, according to his contemporaries. Sceptics suggest the ghost story was an invention by him to ensure Worrell got his just deserts but that would mean that Farley knew the whereabouts of the body, which implicates him.

  A Campbelltown barber claimed responsibility for the ghost some years after these events, saying he had been tipped off about the location of the body and had felt an obligation to point the authorities in the right direction. The barber claimed he had donned a white cloak to create the appearance of a ghost and a black cloak to make it disappear, but others dismissed his claims as an insult to Farley’s intelligence.

  James Farley lived to a ripe old age and a little known sequel to the story tells of a friend named Chisholm asking Farley on his deathbed whether he really saw Fisher’s ghost. Farley is reported to have raised himself up on one elbow, looked his friend straight in the eye and said: ‘I’m a dying man, Mr Chisholm. I’ll speak only the truth. I saw that ghost as plainly as I see you now.’

  7.

  The Mystery of the Min Min

  But now the lonely diggers say,

  That sometimes at the close of day,

  They see a misty wraith flash by,

  With the faint echo of a cry.

  It may be true; perhaps they do.

  I doubt it much; but what say you?

  The Demon Snow-shoes, Barcroft Boake

  (Australian bush poet, 1866–1892)

  There have been reports of ‘ghost’ lights appearing all over rural Australia since the beginning of white settlement (and probably before), but the ‘Min Min’ is the grand-daddy of all such lights — the one everybody’s heard of and every bushman claims to have seen. ‘Min Min’ is an Aboriginal word (for what no one is absolutely sure) but the light was not named by Aborigines. According to legend, it was named after the Min Min Hotel on the old coach road between Winton and Boulia in central western Queensland, where it first appeared. There is, however, some doubt as to whether the light was named after the hotel or the hotel after the light.

  ‘Hotel’ is far too grand a title for the timber and corrugated iron shanty built about a century and a quarter ago to serve as a way-station for Cobb & Co. coaches. Most such places had bad reputations but the Min Min had the worst of any in the region. It reputedly served rot-gut liquor at exorbitant prices, doubled as a brothel and was the haunt of thieves, cattle rustlers and other assorted villains. Legend insists that many travellers and naïve jackaroos disappeared there and that the small cemetery behind the hotel was conveniently provided to bury the evidence. So infamous did the Min Min become that someone put a match to it one dark night in 1917 and it burned to the ground … or so the legend goes.

  Reliable records, if they existed, would probably disprove most of the above and reveal a much more mundane history for this miserable little hostelry. Records do show the name of the last proprietor — a Mrs Hasted — but there is no real evidence that she presided over a branch office of Sodom or Gomorrah. Records also show that there were devastating bushfires in the district in 1917 (Mrs Hasted’s brother was badly burned fighting one), so it seems more likely that nature disposed of the Min Min Hotel than a human avenger.

  The generally accepted story of the first sighting of the Min Min Light belongs to later the same year, when a hysterical stockman burst into Boulia police station at around midnight one night gabbling about being chased by a ghost. After the local constable calmed him down, the stockman told how he had been riding past the ruins of the Min Min Hotel at about 10 pm when a ball of light suddenly rose from the middle of the cemetery, hovered as if getting its bearings, then darted towards him. The stockman panicked, dug his boots in and galloped towards Boulia. Several times he looked over his shoulder and the light was still there. It followed him to the outskirts of the town then disappeared. (Sceptics who know the region may well wonder how the horse and rider managed to cover 100 kilometres in two hours — but let’s not spoil a good story.)

  In 1961, a reported sighting from 1912, predating the above (and the destruction of the hotel) by five years came to light. Henry Lamond, one-time manager of Warenda station on whose land the hotel stood, claimed that he had seen the light in the winter of that year. Its appearance had at first alarmed him, but when he realised his horse was quite unperturbed by it Lamond decided his own fear was unwarranted.

  There have been so many reported sightings since then that it would take most of this book to recount them all. Station owners and managers, policemen, ministers of religion, school teachers, shopkeepers and no-nonsense bushman have seen the Min Min Light — most of them intelligent and honest people whose credibility is unquestionable. All describe it as a round or oval ball of light glowing so it illuminates its surroundings, travelling between one and two metres above the ground either in a straight or undulating line. Sometimes it appears to stop and hover; sometimes it bobs about and usually dives towards the earth as it disappears.

  There are almost as many theories about its origin as there are sightings. The supernatural school claim that such lights are spirits of the dead: ghosts in inhuman form. Sceptics with some knowledge of the bush suggest that the lights may emanate from fluorescent fungi (such are quite common) or from birds who have brushed their wings against the fu
ngi. Fireflies are also cited as are swarms of moths, their wings reflecting moonlight. None of these is likely. Personally, I’ve never seen a mobile mushroom and the only common bush birds that hover (eagles and hawks) are not nocturnal. A swarm of moths would not be visible at any great distance. And fireflies? Well, there’s no doubting their ability to emit light but as one bushman put it: ‘You’d need about ten million of the little buggers, standing shoulder to shoulder, to produce a light that bright.’

  Traditional science groups the Min Min and other similar Australian lights along with European and North American Will-o’-the-wisps and Jack-o’-lanterns into the category ignis fatuus which simply means ‘foolish fire’ and attributes them to marsh gas (methane) or phosphoretted hydrogen, the gas that escapes from decaying animal matter. As the Min Min Light was said to originate in a cemetery the presence of the latter was possible once, but its domain is far too arid to produce marsh gas. Subterranean gas escaping through fissures or drill holes is more likely and records show the Min Min Hotel was built beside a water bore, but all theories involving gas rely on the premise that the gas somehow self-ignites, which is impossible.

  That very rare natural phenomenon, ‘ball’ lightning, which travels across the landscape at high speed, has also been suggested as an explanation but, like all lightning, it dissipates quickly and never remains visible for as long as these lights are claimed to.