by John Pinkney
FACE IN A ‘HAUNTED POOL’ Two hours before he drowned at The Boulders, a cascading stream near Babinda, Queensland, Patrick McGann’s girlfriend photographed him. That night police took a photograph of the notorious death-spot using infra-red film. Patrick’s father said: ‘When it was developed the sergeant took me quietly aside and showed it to me. Patrick’s face could clearly be seen in the water, even down to the cigarette in his mouth. A priest told me, “There’s a lot of things in life we’ll never understand. This is one of them.’” Pool photograph by Babinda police
HURLED DOWN THE STAIRS The haunted bluestone stables (above) at Victoria’s Clarkefield Inn. In March 1984 an ‘unseen force’ hurled then publican Frank Nelson down steep stairs, shattering his ankle. BELOW: Investigator Bill Lawrie’s photograph of a transparent human shape in the stairwell.
DID ‘GHOST’ CAUSE PILEUP? Journalist John Westbury and boilermaker Bill Featherstone (above) were among an army of motorists who reported seeing a ‘foggy figure’ floating above Victoria’s Mornington-Frankston freeway just before a 19-car pileup.
PLEADING PHANTOM Engineer Ted Leopold (right) woke, with his wife Elsie, to see a ‘message-bearing’ ghost hovering in the room.
SWIRLING APPARITION Estate agent John Effer photographed a floating figure (right) in a Queensland house. He used a Canon AEI reflex camera which had to be advanced after firing, making double exposures impossible.
SEANCE PREDICTIONS PROVED EERILY ACCURATE On the massive stage of Melbourne’s haunted Princess Theatre, the TEN Network filmed a seance. During the proceedings an 'entity' made predictions via the shifting wineglass - prophecies that came tragically true three days later. From left, three seance participants: actress Kerry Armstrong; author John Pinkney; medium Kerry Kulkens.
SPECTRES ON STAGE On 3 March 1888 baritone Federici (Frederick Baker) suffered a fatal heart attack while descending through a trapdoor into the fires of a ‘Hell’ beneath Melbourne’s Princess Theatre stage. In the 117 years since that night, legions of visitors, performers and stagehands have described bizarre brushes with the singer’s unsleeping ghost. Illustration courtesy Bettina Guthridge
CLOCK SHOCK On the day Arthur Jackson’s funeral was held, the immense clock he’d built above Brisbane’s city hall failed to chime for the first time in 53 years.
Phantom ‘Saved’ Theatre
On 18 June 1984 a fierce fire swept through the ornate Theatre Royal, Hobart. The old building was rescued from ruin when a fire curtain astonishingly dropped of its own accord across the stage, preventing flames from spreading beyond the first six rows of seats. The Hobart Mercury commented: ‘The fact that the curtain operated on its own has not been fully explained…(but) a small fuse probably burned through and released it.’
There was an immediate chorus of dissent. Readers (some serious, some tongue-in-cheek) insisted that the miraculous deliverance must surely have been the work of ‘Fred’, the spirit which had haunted the venerable playhouse for generations. Pauline Buckley, the Royal’s manager at the time, backed the protesters. ‘Fred - not a fuse - can take credit for halting the fire,’ she said. ‘He loves his theatre - and I’m sure he was responsible for saving it.’
The Royal, built in 1834, is Australia’s oldest theatre. Throughout its 171 years hundreds of performers, patrons and stagehands have reported such phenomena as:
Stumbling footsteps and loud crashes in the darkened stalls
A voice, seemingly alcohol-slurred, which calls to individuals by name
Gusts of freezing wind blowing across the stage
Jolting sensations, resembling electric shocks, which travel swiftly across the skin
A floating human figure which lingers in the empty aisles
Seats in the auditorium inexplicably banging up and down
Among performers who have heard or seen the ghost are actress Jacki Weaver and TV and radio performer John- Michael Howson. In an interview with Ray Martin on Channel 9 John said, ‘It happened when I was playing in a Christmas pantomime. I was standing in the wings waiting to go on when I heard a voice loudly whispering, “John- Michael!” I didn’t look around because I had to concentrate on my entry-cue. The voice was persistent. It called my name three more times.
An early glimpse of Hobart’s Theatre Royal. Courtesy Theatre Royal
‘When I came off stage I was still annoyed and said, “Whoever was whispering, please don’t do it again.” They all just looked at each other. Then someone said, “You’ve heard it too. That was our ghost.”’
Jacki Weaver recalled, After a show I realised I’d left some personal belongings on stage. I went back but the theatre was all locked up - so I asked if it could be opened for me. I walked onto the stage - and then was quite startled to see that a ghostly someone was sitting in the dress circle. It had an unmistakably human shape - but I sensed quite strongly that it wasn’t human.’
The director Nigel Triffett described a similar experience - recalling that he had seen a ‘bright white shape’ sitting in the third row from the back of the empty theatre.
John Unicomb, a former manager, told me, ‘I’ve never seen the phantom myself, but people are constantly talking about it. Once, when we put on Bandwagon, an actor strolled onto the stage before a rehearsal and stood looking down into the shadowy auditorium. He heard footsteps approaching him and called out, “Who’s there?”
‘The footsteps immediately stopped - and when he switched on the lights there was nobody anywhere. No intruder would have had time to get away without being seen.’
Some investigators believe the Royal might be haunted by the spectre of a stage mechanist who was killed in a drunken brawl in the tavern which once occupied the building’s brooding basement. Others think it equally possible that the presence is the spirit of a whaler who, records show, was fatally knifed by a prostitute.
Operations manager Tim Munro assured the Sunday Tasmanian (17 September 2000) that there was truth in the old saying a ghost can make the flesh prickle. He recalled that at 3 am in 1997 he went to the gallery to angle lights toward the stage. Despite the late hour he felt comfortable to be alone in the theatre. But then - ‘Suddenly, from nowhere, I got this incredible chill inside,’ he said. ‘It was like an energy I have no words for - like a cold electric shock - went through me.
‘I knew the ghost was near.’
Bird Show Bedlam - in a Haunted Hall
The Theatre Royal is not the only Tasmanian playhouse in which a freezing wind reportedly blusters across the stage. The Burnie Civic Centre, built on the site of an old Chinese market garden, has been similarly troubled.
Possibly the most alarming manifestation occurred during preparations for a bird show, The centre’s manager Roger Morrison told me, ‘My wife Bev and I were locking up for the night - and the birds were sitting peacefully on their perches. Suddenly everything went crazy, with the birds panicking and squawking and flying against the bars of their cages. Then we saw why. The big weighted velvet curtains were billowing out from the stage, as if a gale- force wind was blowing them.
‘Of course we assumed someone was playing a joke on us - and we went on-stage to test the curtains for ourselves. They were so heavily leaded we could barely lift them, let alone send them flying. The incident not only frightened the birds, it terrified us. We haven’t a clue what’s haunting us here - but I’ve lost count of the number of visitors and staff who’ve heard or felt it.’
The phantom sometimes impinges on multiple witnesses. Six members of Burnie’s musical society were in a dressing room preparing to head home, when they heard someone playing the grand piano in the concert hall. When they investigated the hall was in darkness. At the moment one of the group switched on the lights the playing abruptly stopped. The piano stool was empty.
‘The phenomenon creates constant difficulties,’ Roger Morrison said. ‘Sometimes we find stove hotplates have been switched on in the locked kitchen overnight. Someone clumps through empty rooms and opens and closes doo
rs when nobody’s there. And for years no technician has been able to get any of our three clocks to tell the time. They just keep stopping. We even tried buying new clocks - but before long they were malfunctioning too.’
Poltergeist ‘Trapped on Tape’
Reverend John Legg, a retired clergyman, was so intrigued by accounts of apparitions and other unnerving manifestations within the Civic Centre that he spent a year conducting detailed interviews with 30 witnesses, recording their experiences in a journal. He then tried to videotape the ghost - or ghosts - at work.
The first half-dozen attempts drew blanks. But when he taped a rehearsal by students of the Reflexions Dance Studio something extraordinary happened: while the dancers are preoccupied with their routine the tape shows, in closeup, the big weighted curtains being lifted about 60 centimetres into the air. Boxes, which previously had been hidden, are clearly visible as the curtain rises.
‘Some doubters put the movement down to the air conditioning,’ Rev. Legg said. ‘I had no idea it could create such powerful draughts.’
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Six Cases of Stagefright
Stirling Community Theatre, near Adelaide Reputedly haunted by the spirit of a town councillor who had an affair with a colleague’s wife when the building was a town hall in the late 19th century. The infuriated husband beat his rival senseless, then crammed him into a safe, where he suffocated.
Her Majesty’s Theatre Brisbane Demolished in 1983, but the bar which replaced part of the theatre is still occasionally troubled by the echoes of a murder committed in 1900. An actor killed a colleague in a dressing room and hid his body in the ceiling. Long after the corpse had been removed the long-dead victim’s ghost continued to appear in the dress circle. Singer Jon English saw the apparition after a performance of Jesus Christ, Superstar. ‘It was a transparent figure that walked slowly from one side of the dress circle to the other,’ English said.
One of the theatre’s oddest aspects was a staircase which led nowhere. Not on the original building plans, it started near the canteen and ended against a solid wall. The sound of footsteps, seemingly ascending the stairs, often echoed through the theatre. Even more bizarre were the phantom pillars. In the 1930s, when the interior was remodelled, the upper circle was removed and its supporting columns taken out. But for years afterward, patrons complained that they had been given bad seats. Pillars had obstructed their view.
Melbourne Town Hall Several musicians have reported that while they were playing the organ on the town hall stage, a transparent male figure would appear and fiddle with the keys. In 1982 organist Thomas Hayward spoke publicly about his encounter with the entity - saying that while he was recording Percy Grainger’s Colonial Song it walked several times around the organ. He also noticed that stops were changing by themselves. Angry, he shouted, ‘Go away and let me finish!’ The intruder vanished.
Her Majesty’s Theatre Ballarat Built in 1858 and now incorporated into a new Civic Performance Centre the premises are still disturbed by the spirit of a 16-year-old girl in a white evening dress, who appears in a side-box in the dress circle. The ghost - which is also associated with such unsettling phenomena as whisperings, banging seats and lights switching on and off - has a sad provenance. In 1874 a family of musicians gave a performance in the Mechanics Institute Hall, which backed onto Her Majesty’s. The girl played the piano. Next day the Ballarat Courier published a scathing review of her performance. She fell ill and died.
Princess Theatre Launceston Theorists believe that when architect Albert Liddy suicided in the early 20th century his spirit lingered in the theatre he had lovingly designed. The record of incidents includes high-pitched whistlings, shuffling footsteps, painful drops in temperature and the commonly reported phenomenon of a piano playing with no one at the keys.
World Theatre Charters Towers Two boisterous entities, which have jostled employees and, many years ago, the manager’s small son, are believed still to inhabit this theatre, currently a cinema, in the 135-year-old town. Many witnesses have claimed the presences appear as bright, floating lights. One is thought to be the spirit of an usher who died in the building during World War II.
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The Tragic Haunting of June Bronhill
By the time she turned 23 the brilliant Australian soprano Mary Gough had already won the prestigious Sun Aria and Mobil Quest awards and was being urged to try her luck in London. The people of her birthplace, Broken Hill, subscribed to an appeal to make the trip possible. In gratitude - and following a tradition established by Nellie Melba and Florence Austral - the young singer condensed the name of her hometown into a new surname: Bronhill. When she died many years later, on 25 January 2005, the name June Bronhill was celebrated around the world.
June’s studies in Britain with tenor Dino Borgioli quickly led to an engagement with the Sadlers Wells opera company where she sang in such productions as Die Fledermaus, Rigoletto and Don Pasquale - eventually achieving her first international success when she performed the leading role in The Merry Widow.
June Bronhill was leading a fulfilling and happy life - until the day she attended a rehearsal in one of London’s most famous theatres. During the morning an invisible hand began intermittently to tap her on the shoulder and continued at intervals through the day. Fellow performers assured her that the intrusions were harmless - saying it was probably the newly resident ghost introducing itself. June tried to concentrate on the music and to ignore the tappings.
Not until several weeks later did she become convinced that the presence had been trying to warn her about an imminent nightmare of ill-luck and death - a cascade of dark events that would devastate the theatre company with which she worked.
The eminent soprano’s brush with the unknown began at the Theatre Royal in London’s Drury Lane. In her autobiography The Merry Bronhill she describes the grim pattern that unfolded:
…We were rehearsing Ivor Novello’s musical The Dancing Years, and I used to wrap myself in big sweaters to keep warm…One day I suddenly felt the tap on my shoulder, I turned around but nobody was there. A while later, there was the tap again, and I accused the other cast members of playing a joke on me. But they replied that it was probably the ghost of the composer Ivor Novello, who had died in 1951…The phantom repeatedly walked in the dress circle area where we were rehearsing.
The Dancing Years toured Britain so successfully that it was booked for the West End. And it was then that the mishaps began.
Two awful things happened…There was a heatwave followed by a rail strike, and business slumped. That was only the beginning, however. I was taken to hospital with a tumour on my pituitary gland…While I was away, several cast members went for a drive. They were actually outside Ivor Novello’s house, Redroofs in Reading, when a car came around the corner on the wrong side of the road and ran into them head-on.
Three of the group, including the leading man Enrico Giacomini, were killed, and the others were badly injured. I heard about this when I was in hospital. I felt certain, then, that it was Ivor who had tapped me on the shoulder to tell me something bad was going to happen with the show - and that we should stop doing it, because it was never meant to be.
Enrico’s understudy took over, but everyone felt now the show had the kiss of death. Then another dreadful thing…The producer had told us his wife was pregnant and they were both very excited.
During our short London season she had twins. But one was still-born and the other was mongoloid.
Hostile Ghosts
The Malign Message in the Mirror
Throughout 1984 a mischievous entity engineered an unprecedented turnover of tenants in a Victorian seaside house. The ghost climaxed its series of sinister tricks by writing a word on the glass of a bathroom mirror: a cryptic message which the property’s alarmed occupants found almost impossible to remove. Australia’s long history of hauntings is crowded with such incidents, in which unfriendly intelligences have tried to drive ‘intruders’ from the p
remises…
THE PRETTY WEATHERBOARD BUNGALOW STOOD in a treed suburban street of Geelong, Victoria. When the new tenants, Tony and Doris Vouk, signed the rental agreement they nothing of the property’s recent history. But they quickly learned. Before 24 hours had elapsed the Vouks found themselves targeted by repeated ‘attacks from nowhere’.
Doris recalled, At first we imagined someone was playing jokes on us. But then we began experiencing things for which there seemed no sensible explanation. One afternoon for example a few friends were with us in the master bedroom when a big box of shoes suddenly flew from the top of the wardrobe. After we’d ducked this hail of footwear we had a good search for whatever had sent the shoes flying. But there was nothing. The shoes seemed to have been pushed by something invisible.’
Considerably more alarming was the man in the bathroom mirror. First to encounter it was the Vouks’ friend Ray Jungbauer, a former Australian weightlifting champion. ‘I’m not into haunted houses, but I do know what I saw - and it was strange,’ Ray said. ‘When I entered the bathroom I was immediately aware of a silhouette-like human figure glittering in the glass of the mirror. It looked like a photographic negative. I just stood there, unable to move. Then the thing burst out of the glass and walked straight past me. I freaked out and bolted to the kitchen.’