Great Australian Ghost Stories
Page 25
The figure of a woman dressed in white has appeared to at least two people in another bedroom, floating across the room and disappearing through a closed window. On another occasion in the same room the detached head of a woman appeared above the foot of the bed to the amazement and horror of a guest. The same woman in white (or another with a similar taste in gowns) appeared at the top of the stairs one night, calling out very clearly, twice, ‘Don’t worry, it will be all right!’ to two startled house guests. Yet another ghost was seen by a small boy who visited the house with his mother and asked after being taken on a tour of the house: ‘Who was that old man with the beard in the brown clothes who followed us around?’ No one else had seen him.
The first-floor balcony also has its share of strange happenings. One of the mediums claimed that a girl had died by falling from the balcony and, although efforts to find records of this have so far been unsuccessful, older residents of the district recall the story of a girl being thrown from the spot. The Ryans have heard footsteps on the balcony and connecting doors opening and closing when there has been no one upstairs. Lights have been seen moving mysteriously along the balcony at night and, in September 1995, a local woman driving away from the house reported seeing a transparent figure in an old-fashioned dark-coloured dress walking there.
Despite all the supernatural activity inside the house, mediums and sensitive visitors all agree that the feeling of evil that hangs over the whole property is strongest in two of the outbuildings: the stables and the dairy and, given the gruesome history of these innocent-looking structures, that is hardly surprising. Many years ago (and long before the Ryans came along) a young man named Morris worked at Monte Cristo and slept in the stables. One day he complained of being too ill to work, but his boss thought he was shirking and rashly put a match to the straw mattress the boy lay on. Morris was genuinely ill and unable to get up. He burned to death. One of the three mediums, without any knowledge of this event, came rushing out of the stables, badly shaken and claiming he could smell the stench of a fiery death inside.
Beside the door of the dairy is a small hole in the brick wall. That hole was made by a chain that held a mentally disabled man named Harold Steel prisoner for forty years. Steel’s mother was housekeeper in Mrs Crawley’s time and rather than put her son into an institution she kept him chained up in the dairy. After Mrs Crawley’s death the housekeeper was allowed to stay on alone in the house but she died of a heart attack and her absence was not noticed for several days. When the police investigated they found Mrs Steel’s body and Harold, in a wretched state, distressed, hungry and thirsty curled up on the ground at the end of his chain. He could not speak; his hair was long and matted and his overgrown fingernails had curled back into the palms of his hands. He was taken to an asylum in Goulburn but died soon after.
A few years later a local youth who had been to see the Hitchcock thriller Psycho three times came up to the house one night, found the caretaker, Jack Simpson, in the dairy and shot him dead. To this day the macabre message the murderer or someone else scratched on the dairy wall, Die Jack Ha Ha, can be clearly read.
When the ABC crew were filming the dairy at night they set up floodlights around the building. Because it was such a cold night the Ryans lit a fire in the dining-room fireplace, but within minutes they and the ABC crew were gathered outside, oblivious to the cold, witnessing an amazing sight. In the bright glare of the floodlights, smoke was rising from the second-floor chimney of the house, curling neatly in the air and then being sucked directly down the chimney of the dairy.
And the strange events keep happening. A Sydney man drove into the car park one day with his family. Even before he got out of his car the man complained that something invisible had attached itself to his chest and was clutching him painfully. After viewing the house the man said he was feeling very ill. For several weeks he could not rid himself of the strange sensation. Back home he went to a doctor, who could find nothing physically wrong with him and, surprisingly, suggested an exorcist. Suddenly one night, while he lay in bed, whatever it was that had attached itself to him let go and the pain ceased. The man was enormously relieved but horrified to see whatever it was had not gone very far. Both he and his wife could see a faint and indistinct form clinging to their bedroom wall beside the light switch.
Even as recently as 2010, a group of professional ghost-busters visited Monte Cristo and got more than they bargained for. When they mentioned that they hoped to be able to communicate with a spirit and record its voice a clear response — ‘Pick me!’ — came out of nowhere and when the ghost of Mrs Crawley repeated her oft-heard order to leave her house, her voice was captured on tape for the first time. Mrs C was also held responsible for violently rattling a firmly closed window when the group entered her former chapel and for the series of loud bangs that echoed through the house each time one of the group asked if there were spirits present.
There are many more stories about Monte Cristo — too many to retell here and more than enough to earn Monte Cristo a sinister reputation. Since the demolition of Bungaribee at Eastern Creek in 1958, the title Australia’s Most Haunted House deservedly belongs to the Junee attraction. The mysterious old house is a popular tourist destination and deserves to be visited by everyone who travels to the town, not least for the proof it provides of what can be achieved by private individuals dedicated to preserving our national heritage. The extensive collection of beautifully restored horse-drawn vehicles displayed in the coach house should also not be missed, but if you experience any strange feelings or witness anything that defies explanation while visiting don’t be surprised — it’s all part of the mystery and fascination of old ‘Monte Cristo’.
A Final Word from the Author
I acknowledge that stories of ghosts and spirits (equal in richness and diversity to any in this collection) abound in the traditional culture of Aboriginal Australians, but to do justice to them in printed words requires specialised knowledge and understanding greater than I possess.
I also offer an apology to any reader who might have been offended by the occasional use of discriminatory terms like ‘blackfellow’, ‘Chinaman’ or ‘spinster’ on the preceding pages. Such terms reflect the customs and attitudes of the times in which many of these stories are set, and in the interests of verisimilitude I have retained them in the retelling, when under normal circumstances I would not use them.
All stories in this collection are presented in good faith. I make no claim as to the authenticity or accuracy of any of these stories and would like to make it clear that although positive statements may be made — ‘the house is haunted’, ‘he or she said’, as examples — they should be taken to mean that the location is reputed, supposed or believed to be haunted and the individual was reported as saying.
Readers should also be aware that the sites of many of these stories are on private property. The inclusion of a story in this collection does not mean that the protagonists in the story, or owners or occupiers of the premises, believe in ghosts, or are willing to answer casual inquiries, discuss the story or countenance trespass on their property.
I willingly acknowledge the generous assistance provided to me by so many people from all over Australia in the preparation of my first book about ghosts, The Ghost Guide to Australia, published in 1998 and which I have drawn on extensively for this volume. Thanks are also due to Brigitta Doyle of ABC Books for her support of this project and to Rochelle Fernandez at HarperCollins and Kate O’Donnell who brought her exceptional skills to editing the manuscript.
Trying to describe supernatural phenomena and convey witnesses emotions in words requires a wide vocabulary, so let’s allow Dr Samuel Johnson — that roly-poly, bewigged father of the modern English dictionary, to whom all writers are indebted — to have the last word on the subject of ghosts:
It is wonderful that thousands of years have now elapsed since the creation of the world, and still it is undecided whether or not there has ever been
an instance of the spirit of any person appearing after death. All argument is against it; but all belief is for it.
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First published in Australia in 2012
This edition published in 2012
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Copyright © Richard Davis 2012
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National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data:
Davis, Richard Michael.
Great Australian ghost stories / Richard Davis.
978 0 7333 3107 7 (pbk.)
978 1 74309 590 4 (epub)
Ghost stories, Australian.
Ghosts – Australia – Anecdotes.
398.250994
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* Reminiscences of the Gold Fields, by Martin Brennan, published by William Brooks, Sydney, 1907. Brennan’s account of these events has a policeman’s thoroughness and concern for detail but his memory fails him on the names of some people and places. This account is drawn from Brennan’s work, contemporary newspaper reports and private sources.
* ‘Fell’ is an old-fashioned adjective meaning terrible, fierce and destructive.
* Readers interested in seeing that photograph will find it on the Lady Elliot Island Resort’s website.