Great Australian Ghost Stories

by Richard Davis

  News of strange events occurring at the old hotel spread and the press began to take an interest, but what began as good publicity soon developed into a media circus. Psychics, mediums, amateur ghost hunters and legions of thrill seekers also converged on the hotel, demanding to be allowed to camp in the murder room and on the stairs. Eventually it became too much for the Nelsons and they departed

  Their successors, Steve and Deborah Dudley, had an equally torrid time. They suffered every imaginable mishap. Equipment failed, including three washing machines in as many days. In a short time the Dudleys also departed in despair.

  The next owner employed a couple to manage the hotel while he set about restoring it. Within a year or two the grand old building was back to pristine condition, tastefully redecorated with period-style wallpaper and fabrics and furnished with antiques. But did the ghosts approve? Well, if so, they didn’t let up on their campaign of terror. The manager’s wife was reported in 1991 as saying that she refused to go downstairs at night time because of the ghosts; and their four-year-old daughter went through a long period where she woke every night distressed and crying out: ‘I can’t sleep with that thing in the corner!’ The parents could see nothing, but the child’s fear was genuine and heartrending. Nor could they see what caused a friend, who slept in another room, to call out for help in the middle of the night claiming (like Tsantalis) that something or someone was sitting on his chest.

  If reports on the internet can be relied upon, it seems that ghostly encounters continue to occur in the old building to this day. Now called The Coach and Horses Inn it really is a very charming pub, the sort of interesting and appealing-looking place that it is hard to drive past. Those who do stop will be rewarded with good fare and good service and maybe (if they’re very lucky) a glimpse of one of the legendary ghosts.

  A ghost of mild disposition resides in a hotel in the Barossa Valley town of Lyndoch. ‘Rob the Projectionist’ (as the locals call this apparition) always appears in the same spot — a corner of the comfortable private bar of the old Lyndoch Hotel.

  Rob was popular in his lifetime. Every Saturday he travelled up from Adelaide with two feature films (on giant reels stored in steel cases), booked into his favourite room in the hotel then showed the films that night in the Lyndoch Institute. Rob seemed to get as much pleasure out of this arrangement as the entertainment-starved locals, until his wife died and he began to lose interest in movies and life. One Saturday he forgot to bring the films. He bungled the program many times and people stopped coming. Finally, on a Saturday night after he had shown films to an almost empty house, Rob committed suicide in ‘his’ hotel room. He was found the next morning clutching a photograph of his wife. The note he left simply said: Sorry, there’ll be no pictures next Saturday.

  Most people thought that was the last they’d see of Rob but that was not to be. His ghost began to appear on Saturday nights in his hotel room, much to the alarm of other guests sleeping there and the despair of the publican. When challenged the ghost always made the same reply: ‘I always have this room … every Saturday night I show pictures up here.’ When new owners renovated the hotel they demolished some of the guest rooms including the one Rob haunted and turned the area into a private bar. Rob, however, isn’t moving. His old room may now be part of the bar but, it is said, he still appears there — a forlorn figure in grey shirt and slacks — lingering among the drinkers. The bar staff sometimes ask, half jokingly: ‘What will you have Rob?’ and inevitably get the same reply: ‘I always have this room … every Saturday night I show pictures up here.’

  The old Mahogany Inn at Mahogany Creek east of Perth is also reputedly haunted and like the Coach and Horses it sports a collection of spirits. The ghosts of Mary Gregory and her stepsister Fanny Byfield (young daughters of the original licensee) have been reported as appearing in the window of an attic where they both died, fifteen months apart, in 1867 and 68. More recently this inseparable pair has been seen by an employee in one of the modern accommodation units that were built over their graves. The frightened woman reported coming upon the two little ghosts sitting on a bed; she then watched them float out of the room.

  ‘They were sweet little girls, both dressed in cream-coloured dresses trimmed with lace,’ she told a friend. ‘One had long, pale reddish hair and the other had shorter brown hair. They were speaking to each other and they laughed together, but I couldn’t hear any sound at all. It was a bit like watching a silent movie except it was in colour and the girls were so close I could have reached out and touched them, but of course I was too scared to do that. I was fascinated by their feet. They both wore button-up boots that went halfway up to their knees. When they got up their legs weren’t moving and their feet weren’t touching the ground … they just “floated” across the room and out the door. I still find it hard to believe that I saw them … but then I’m sure that they couldn’t see me. They belonged to a different time when I didn’t exist, so to them I guess I wasn’t there. It was spooky, but somehow I felt privileged; as though I had been given a special gift.’

  Another harmless spectre has been reported as materialising (rarely but regularly) in a particular corner of the inn’s original tap room. Tradition says this is a wizened old man who sits in a favourite chair, smoking a blackened pipe. His identity and reason for being there remain mysterious.

  The rattle of chains and unearthly cries have also been reported from the cellar of the Mahogany Inn on nights when the moon is waning. The popular theory is that they are made by the ghost of James Peacock, a convict who disappeared mysteriously from the inn in the 1850s; and an old dead tree in the garden is said to be the haunt of yet another ghost — this one a man convicted of murder. His name was Malcolm and he was hanged from the tree although many believed him innocent. The tree promptly died and Malcolm’s supporters took that as a sign that a miscarriage of justice had been committed. Malcolm’s ghost (the story goes) has wandered around the tree on moon-bright nights ever since, seeking retribution. His face is reported to wear a permanent scowl, his eyes bulge and his neck is disfigured by a livid mark where the noose choked off his life.

  Over the years animals have added credibility to the Mahogany Inn ghost stories. Before the graves of the little girls were covered over neighbours wondered why their little dog trotted off in the direction of the inn at a certain time every night. One night they followed and found the little creature standing beside the graves, wagging its tail and excitedly communicating with something their eyes could not see.

  The owner of the inn in the 1980s could never get his dog to enter the tap room. The animal wandered happily everywhere else but nothing would entice it to enter the domain of the old man’s ghost. A spectral cat also appeared one night in the dining room. Doors and windows were all firmly closed when a waitress reported that a large tabby cat with distinctive markings was roaming around the tables. When the owner went to investigate the room was still sealed but the cat was gone. He was not surprised. The waitress’s description of the markings matched those of his own cat, run over and flattened by a semi-trailer on the highway years before.

  27.

  Spectral Spare Parts

  All heart they live, all head, all eye, all ear,

  All intellect, all sense, and as they please

  They limb themselves, and colour, shape, or size,

  Assume, as likes them best, condense or rare.

  Paradise Lost, John Milton (English poet, 1608–1674)

  There’s only one thing more terrifying than seeing a ghost and that’s seeing a part of one. Many of Australia’s best ghost stories, such as ‘The Ghosts in the Glen’, feature disembodied faces, hands and other body parts — and so do these macabre tales.

  An oversized and disembodied face was witnessed by a group of five surveyors sent to the Coxs River near the present town of Wallerawang 120 or so years ago. On arrival the party decided to camp in an old house on the river bank while they carried out their work. The forem
an described the house as convict-built, uninhabited and fast falling into ruin. A boundary rider from a nearby property joined the company around their campfire the first night and warned them that the old house was haunted. He described how a down-on-his-luck shearer had hanged himself from a river oak nearby, how a schoolmaster had disposed of himself the same way inside the house and how the wife of the former owner had been murdered by a swagman. The stories were good campfire entertainment but not enough to dissuade the surveyors from sleeping in the house — something they soon regretted.

  After bedding down they heard a loud thud and all the doors in the house flew open. They lit a candle and searched about but could find nothing. They closed all the doors and returned to their blankets. Moments later a horrible gurgling sound, like someone being strangled, was heard and the doors sprung open again.

  On the second night moaning was heard and some loose boards one of the party was sleeping on began to shake violently. Next a pool of light appeared on the ceiling and in it a face slowly took form. ‘It was the most frightening and at the same time strangest thing I have ever seen,’ one of surveyors later reported. ‘It was about four times the size of a normal face and exactly like an image in a mirror except there was no mirror. And there was no head behind the face, no throat, no neck and no body supporting it. It was like a big mask, except that it was “alive” — not living, mind you, but alive. The skin was the colour of putty and the features were those of a woman but distorted by terrible pain or inconsolable grief. The eyes were opened very wide, but the pupils were milky like a blind person’s and the same horrible gurgling sound we had heard the night before was coming from the thing’s mouth.’ The surveyors lay on their blankets staring up at the frightful image, too afraid to move. After a few minutes it and the sound faded until both disappeared, but all the carefully fastened doors stood open again.

  On the third night a loud crash like glass smashing was heard, the doors flew open again and then a tall, female figure with the face seen the previous night appeared in the moonlight just outside the front door. The figure glided into the room where the men lay and stopped in their midst, looming menacingly over them.

  ‘The thing seemed to tower over us and raised its arms above us like a bird about to take flight or an animal about to attack its prey,’ our witness reported. ‘At that moment I knew what a mouse must feel like when it’s been spotted by an eagle. Anyhow, my mate Joey, who was sleeping nearest to the door, was the first to move. He leapt up and threw himself out the doorway. I went next, although my legs were shaking, and the others followed, all of us diving to escape then stumbling out into the clearing in front of the house.’

  The surveyors spent the rest of that night huddled together around the embers of their campfire. When the sun came up the next morning they cautiously entered the house to retrieve their belongings. They did not find (as they had expected) any broken glass but, although none of them was injured, the room they had slept in was spattered with fresh blood. There was a dark pool where the figure had stood and the clear imprints of their own feet where they had unknowingly stepped in the blood in their flight to escape.

  The surveyors hastily packed up, completed their work and set off on their return journey to Sydney, relieved to leave the old house to its ghostly tenant. ‘I’m the first to admit,’ our observer concluded, ‘that I was absolutely terrified by the ghostly figure, but with hindsight I’d have to say there was a strange sort of comfort in seeing that the face belonged to a body. Neither figure nor face was human, but somehow the disembodied face seemed least so. I can recall every detail of it and the sound it made to this day and I’m sure I will take the memory of it to my grave.’

  One could forgive the surveyors if they consoled themselves with a few stiff drinks after their ghostly experience, but the colourful character who is the subject of our next story turned drinking into a full time occupation. ‘Black Sandy’ Cameron is fondly remembered among the many residents of Scottish descent in the Penola district of South Australia. He was one of the Camerons who ran Penola station, where the poet Adam Lindsay Gordon worked as a horse breaker.

  Black Sandy got his name, people say, from the bushy black beard he wore — but he seems also to have been the black sheep of the clan. He lived almost entirely on a diet of good Highland whisky and his family feared he would drink himself to death. When business took them away for a few days the family contrived to prevent this by getting a nimble Aborigine to carry Black Sandy’s whisky barrel to the top of a tall gum tree and tie it there with a stout rope.

  A sober and very angry Black Sandy discovered the trick and went after the Aborigine but he, wisely, had gone bush. Sandy stood beneath the tree and studied his problem carefully. At age sixty-seven, portly and none too steady on his feet, he dared not risk climbing the tree himself but he desperately needed a wee dram.

  The solution suddenly came to him. He went into the homestead and got his gun and a large dish. One bullet carefully aimed at the barrel produced a very satisfying stream of whisky. The dish quickly filled and Black Sandy began to drink. Unable to countenance wasting a drop of the precious amber liquid he kept drinking. Eventually the cask was empty and Black Sandy was full. When his family returned they found him lying under the tree, stone dead. To add to their grief they also found the large diamond ring he invariably wore missing from his cold, stiff, right hand.

  The Camerons were not deprived of Black Sandy’s company for very long, however, for he soon reappeared in ghostly form. No, that’s an exaggeration — the only part of Black Sandy that reappeared was his right hand. That lonesome limb is said to materialise occasionally to this day at old Penola station, clutching door handles, rattling cups and prying corks from whisky bottles — and, to the chagrin of Black Sandy’s heirs, it wears the diamond ring.

  A much less pleasant story comes from Bookham, on the Hume Highway west of Yass. Bookham is the sort of little town motorists speed through without noticing, but it does have two fascinating ghost stories linked to one of Australia’s best-known and grisliest murders, each story seasoned with a surfeit of dismembered ghostly body parts.

  A little Irishman named William Munday, who had a very big chip on his shoulder, went on a murdering rampage one autumn night 144 years ago at Conroy’s Gap near Bookham, killing his employer, John Conroy, Mrs Conroy and three male shepherds. Munday used a sharpened shear blade to stab his victims then chopped them up with an axe and piled the pieces, in his own words, ‘ready for burning’. It took just one week from the murders and Munday’s arrest for ghost stories to germinate. The Yass Courier reported:

  Since the murder it would appear that some persons have temporarily taken up their abode in Conroy’s house and on the first night of their sleeping there a hand described as heavy as that of a human creature passed over their bodies while they laid in bed. On the second night a figure dressed in black was seen in the room where the murders were perpetrated.

  From that time until well into the last century there were stories of strange noises being heard and dismembered bits of bodies materialising around the district.

  One swagman who camped near Conroy’s Gap came staggering into Bookham one day claiming he had woken up to find a bloodied human leg sharing his bedroll and a bloodied human hand had overturned his billy, scalding the swaggie’s arm.

  ‘I puts me ’and down inside me bedroll I did, this morning just as the sun was comin’ up, and I feels somethin’ soft and wet beside me. I thought a possum or some other little animal had climbed in t’ keep warm, but when I pulled me ’and out it were all covered in blood. Then I really panicked. I tossed back me blanket and jumped up like a friggin’ kangaroo and there, lying in me bed, was this loose leg! It were all mangled and bloody at the thigh, the skin was greyie-white and the toenails, they was black. I got such a fright I must’a passed out. I came to when the sun was well up and I scrambled onto me ’ands and knees. Me bedroll was lying a few feet away and it was empty — no l
eg and not a drop o’ blood.’

  The swagman then told how he had convinced himself that the whole experience had been a bad dream and tried to put it out of his mind. But that delusion lasted only until he had built up his campfire and put his billy on to boil. ‘I was feeling a might shaky and desperate for a cup o’ tea. I leaned over me billy to see if it were starting to boil an’ I noticed what looked like a burned bit of wood lying on the edge of me fire. I didn’t remember seeing it afore, so I poked at it with the stick I was gonna use to lift me billy … and the bloody thing moved! I don’t mean it just fell over; it actually moved, first one way and then t’ other. I poked it again and this time it rose up from the ashes and I could see it was an ’and — a ’uman ’and, just like yours or mine — except there were nothin’ above the wrist and it was all burned crisp like bacon. I must’a screamed and the thing took a swipe at me billy. Next thing I know me arm’s burning an’ dripping with boilin’ water and the ’orrible thing’s disappeared!’

  Most of the good folk of Bookham who listened to his tale were prepared to believe the swagman, even without the evidence of his scalded arm; too many of them had seen or heard about the ghostly goings on at Conroy’s Gap to doubt him.

  I guess the swagman might have been lucky in one sense. If it had been the ghost in the old house on the Coxs River (which a murdering member of his brotherhood was responsible for) instead of one at Conroy’s Gap he might not have lived to tell his tale.

  The second story that may or may not be related to William Munday’s murdering rampage concerns the ghosts of two young women, seen in daylight and darkness along the banks of Stoney Creek near Conroy’s Gap. One appears in elaborate mid-nineteenth-century dress, the other in the simpler style of a later period. There have been reports of sightings of this ghostly pair for a century and more and there are at least two theories about who the women might have been. Hearsay has it that when William Munday was in police custody he made the statement: ‘I didn’t like killing Sissie; she had been kind to me.’ Sissie? There was no ‘Sissie’ (or Elizabeth) at Conroy’s Gap when the murders took place and if Munday had a sister she was back in Ireland. Was she perhaps an earlier victim and is she perhaps the older of the two ghosts?