Great Australian Ghost Stories (15 page)

In Baring-Gould's famous poem ‘my lady's coach' is black and somehow we know her horses must be black too. Australia has its own pair of spectral black steeds, but rather than being harnessed side by side to a sable coach, their haunts are separated by about 200 kilometres.

One is said to appear in the courtyard of the Royal Oak Inn (one of Australia's oldest pubs, now called the Mean Fiddler) on Windsor Road at Rouse Hill west of Sydney. The story goes that on one tragic night in the nineteenth century a magnificent black stallion kicked a groom to death in the stables behind the inn. The animal was destroyed and its carcass buried but, from time to time, its ghost has made spectacular appearances, whinnying and snorting, pawing the ground with its hooves, rearing on its hind legs and flicking its ebony-black mane and tail in the moonlight. There have also been reports of its victim appearing, his
head showing the marks where the animal's hooves clove his skull.

One witness reported hearing the noises the spectral horse makes, going outside to investigate and being confronted by it. ‘There was bright moonlight casting deep shadows across the courtyard and at first I thought the big patch of black in front of me
was
a shadow. Then the thing snorted and reared up. I could see its coat shining in the moonlight and its eyes bulging and glowing like black coals. I saw its raised hooves held above my head then coming down to strike me. I threw myself off to one side. I must have hit my head on a barrel. I was dazed momentarily and when I regained my senses I struggled to my feet expecting to have to ward off another attack from the creature — but it was
gone
and there was no sign or sound to show it had ever been there. I have fought in battles and seen many terrible things in my time,' the witness concluded, ‘but
nothing
that scared me half as much as that ghostly creature.'

John Seath, who held the licence of the inn until 1910, is said to have encountered the ghost of the groom in the stables one night and claimed it was so horrible to look at he could not bring himself to describe it. Ironically, Seath himself is now said to haunt the old inn. Legend has it that he buried a fortune in coins and banknotes in its grounds and died suddenly before disclosing the whereabouts of his fortune to his next of kin. Seath's ghost, locals will tell you, has now joined the spectral horse and the ghost of the groom and wanders the inn, frustrated and angry that his treasure is lost.

 

‘The Black Horse of Sutton' is one of Australia's best-known ghost stories and a staple of the folklore of southern New South Wales. It tells of a Sutton farmer who rode into Goulburn one day to arrange a land deal. As he was nearing home on the
return journey his dogs ran out to meet him, startling his mare and causing her to rear. The farmer was thrown to the ground and killed. Meanwhile, the farmer's wife was sitting on the verandah of their farmhouse unaware of the tragedy and waiting patiently for her husband's return. In the still of evening she heard the sound of galloping hooves in the distance. Relieved, she got up and walked to the verandah rail ready to greet her husband.

Suddenly, out of the lengthening shadows came a glistening black stallion, riderless and galloping at a furious pace. It crossed the patch of lawn in front of the house without hesitating, hooves digging, sending chunks of earth flying through the air. The creature headed straight for the house and the verandah where the shocked farmer's wife stood transfixed. The stallion made no attempt to slow, stop or turn. Then, at the moment it should have crashed into the verandah rail, it vanished, just a metre from the terrified farmer's wife.

The stallion had disappeared, but the sound of its galloping hooves continued, muffled for a few moments then loud again at the rear of the house. The spectre — for, as the farmer's wife had come to realise, this was no flesh and blood creature — had apparently passed right through the walls of the house before galloping off into the hills behind.

The distraught wife took this strange and totally unexpected experience as an omen and raised the alarm. A search was made for her husband and his body was found a kilometre or so down the road. The meddlesome dogs were whimpering and fussing over it while the farmer's mare grazed quietly nearby.

This was the first tragedy to strike the family and the first time the black stallion appeared but it was not the last of either. When the widow's eldest son was killed at the Boer War the phantom steed made another appearance; and again,
when the youngest son was killed in an accident, the four-legged banshee returned.

Old-timers will stake their lives on the authenticity of this story, but if you ask the family's name or the exact location of the farm no one remembers. A bit of modern detective work reveals that there was a family name Ryan who owned a farm at Mulligan's Flat near Sutton whose history fits at least some of the details in the story. William Ryan was killed in the way described in the story returning from a trip, not to Goulburn, but to Queanbeyan, way back in 1857; and his youngest son did die in an accident, but there is no record of another son being killed in the Boer War. So is the story fact or fiction? Well, probably a bit of both. But we shouldn't let that detract from a damn good yarn and I for one would love to see that magnificent black stallion pass straight through a house! Wouldn't you?

 

Both of the above spectral steeds seem to have been magnificent animals, but without the slender grace of the racehorses who feature in our next three stories, all set in Victoria.

Many famous racehorses were bred at historic Bundoora Park on the outskirts of Melbourne; and two of the most famous, Wallace (first colt of the legendary Melbourne Cup winner Carbine) and Shadow King, who ran in six Melbourne Cups without winning any, are buried near the present-day museum.

It is claimed that ghostly hooves can be heard near the horses' graves and that they are made by the ghost of a mare named Lurline, who was shot by careless rabbiters over a century ago. Believers in the invisible, four-legged phantom suggest Lurline comes galloping down to investigate when she sees anyone near the graves of her famous stablemates. The
phantom hoof beats are said to be so realistic that those who hear them expect to see a horse appear at any moment — but none ever does.

 

Another story (this time from Ballarat) features a winner of the Melbourne Cup — though it is not the horse whose ghost figures here, but its frustrated owner. During the gold rush era, Walter Craig built and operated Craig's Royal Hotel, one of Ballarat's most imposing pubs. The hostelry earned the title ‘royal' after it played host to Prince Albert, Duke of Edinburgh and it continues in that tradition today as one of the state's finest boutique hotels.

So wealthy did the hotel make Mr Craig that he was able to indulge his passion for racehorses. One of these, Nimblefoot, was entered into the 1870 Melbourne Cup and, a few nights before the race, Craig had a dream in which his horse won the coveted cup. But, as he explained, there was an odd feature to the dream — the jockey riding Nimblefoot was wearing a black armband. Walter Craig died a couple of days later. Nimblefoot won the Cup and Jimmy Day, the jockey, rode wearing a black armband in memory of the late owner.

Over the years there have been reports of Walter Craig's ghost discreetly wandering the hotel. Perhaps he's searching for the 1280 pounds prize money his horse earned by winning the Cup. One witness described it as ‘a portly ghost with a bushy beard' — not frightening but disturbing because of its forlorn expression and the long, sorrowing sighs it emits and which echo along the empty corridors of the building.

 

Legendary Australian jockey ‘Darby' Munro, who rode three Melbourne Cup winners, attributed his first success as a jockey to a ghostly mare and a ghostly jockey; and his remarkable
story makes a fitting end to our horses' tales. Munro — known to his admirers as ‘the Demon Darb' — was just fourteen when he won his first race at a country meeting in Victoria. Years later he confided to well-known race commentator Bill Collins that he had had some supernatural assistance to get over the line that day.

‘It was a fair size field for a country meeting,' Munro told Collins, ‘about a dozen horses, as I recall. I got a good start and settled in nicely in third place on the inside. I made my move about midway through the race and overtook first one then the other leading horse, but my mount was tiring. He was a good little horse and he struggled on, but about 100 yards from the finish the rest of the field was fast catching us. Then another horse suddenly loomed up on the outside and shot straight past us! The new leader was a pretty rough-looking nag, but it was going like hell. The jockey wore purple and green colours and I swear he gave me a wink as they passed.

‘Now I was only a kid at the time and there would have been no shame in coming in second, but I saw red when the bastard winked at me. My horse must have been pretty pissed off, too, so when I gave him a cut on the rump he shot forwards and caught up with the cheeky bugger.

‘While all this was happening I was trying to remember who the horse and the jockey were, because I couldn't recall seeing them in the field, at the marshalling point or on the starting line. Anyhow, my little mount tried to hang on to the finish, but in the last few yards the other horse put on a spurt and crossed the line about half a length ahead of us.

‘I was cursing and swearing and sobbing because it seemed I'd come within half a length of having my first win, but then all hell broke loose. Everyone started cheering and people came rushing up to me. The horse's owner and trainer and the chief
steward shook my hand and congratulated me on
winning
the race. I opened my mouth to argue, looked around to locate the horse I thought had really won, found there was no sign of it or a jockey in green and purple and closed my mouth again very sharpish.

‘You know, to this day, I have no explanation for what happened all those years ago. I asked a couple of people I knew well if they had seen the other horse and rider and they looked at me as though I'd gone crackers. I've wondered if some old horse and jockey long dead had reappeared on the track at that moment just to spur me on. Maybe the wink was a deliberate challenge. If so, I'm bloody grateful! My win that day was really the start of my career.' As an afterthought, Darby added: ‘You know, Bill, when I die I wouldn't mind being a ghost on a good mount and maybe dropping in on a few big races.'

‘The Demon Darb' died in 1966 and the Darby Munro Stakes is run annually by the Sydney Turf Club in his memory. If ever you have the privilege of watching this race, I suggest you count the horses and riders
very
carefully.

The tragic slaying of thirty-five innocent people by a crazed gunman at Port Arthur in 1996 and the devastation caused to historic buildings there by a tidal surge just a few months ago are still fresh in the minds of Australians and yet, when history replaces memory, these events will come to be seen as single chapters in the long saga of cruelty and hardship that is the history of the old penal settlement. That Port Arthur is the haunt of many ghosts should surprise no one.

What is surprising is that the most haunted places in the complex are not the sombre prison buildings but the innocent-looking parsonage and the comfortable former residences of the commandant and the medical officer where families lived, for the most part happily and well, amid all the misery and deprivation that surrounded them.

Rumours of ghosts at the Port Arthur parsonage go back to the middle of the nineteenth century, when the Reverend George Eastman, a man of enormous girth, died in an upstairs bedroom. His empty coffin was manoeuvred up the narrow stairs but, when filled, it was found to be too heavy to be brought out the same way. A rope was rigged to lower the coffin from the bedroom window to the ground, but halfway down the
rope snapped, the coffin fell and the bloated corpse of the late, lamented clergyman tumbled into the garden. For many years after that people reported smelling putrefying flesh, hearing moaning or morbid screams and seeing strange lights inside the parsonage. Some claimed Reverend Eastman's corpse reappeared from time to time, spread-eagled in the garden where it had, so ingloriously, landed.

The photographer and journalist George Gruncell published an account of other strange events at the parsonage in the 1870s. Gruncell told of a doctor finding all the windows of the parsonage ablaze with light one night and deciding to call in to welcome home Reverend Hayward (one of Eastman's successors) and his family, who had been absent for some weeks. Reverend Hayward answered the door but said that his wife and children had not yet returned. The embarrassed doctor explained that he had assumed all the lights had been Mrs Hayward ‘putting things in order'. ‘Lights?' asked the puzzled cleric. ‘What lights?' Hayward and a servant had been alone in the kitchen at the back of the house and the only light burning was there. Others had also seen the bright lights and the phenomenon was the talk of the settlement the next day.

The Haywards themselves discovered light streaming from under the door of the minister's upstairs study one night soon after. The door was closed and the room apparently empty. When they peered through the keyhole the couple were amazed to see the whole room brightly illuminated but when they opened the door all was in darkness. A sceptical judge visiting the house soon after witnessed the same phenomenon, but a careful investigation of every object in the room by the minister, the judge and the doctor failed to find any explanation.

Later the sister of the Catholic chaplain at Port Arthur slept in a ground-floor bedroom at the parsonage while her
brother was away and woke, screaming, one night, terrified by a loud banging sound that seemed to come from the floor and walls all around her. In the same room a few months later a housemaid fainted and when Reverend Hayward brought her round (by boxing her ears) she told of seeing a horrible, spectral figure at the window with a knife in its hand, poised to strike some invisible victim. Gruncell himself stayed at the parsonage and heard ghostly footsteps at night when all the living occupants of the house were in bed. He also observed Reverend Hayward's distress when the minister was walking down the stairs one evening and a cold, clammy hand came to rest over his own on the banister rail. Also, in company with Mrs Hayward, Gruncell found a lighted candle in a locked room early one morning before anyone else had risen.

What the Haywards believed to be the cause of all this mischief finally appeared (as a filmy, white figure) one night to Mrs Hayward's mother, a formidable lady whose husband had once been commandant at Port Arthur. Thinking it was a burglar and fearing attack, the old lady lay still in bed and watched the figure strike a match then glide silently across her room and out the door. When recounting her experience the sharp-witted matron did not comment on the size of the spectre (or Gruncell didn't report it), which effectively eliminates Eastman's ghost as the intruder.

The same strange, bright lights have been seen by staff and visitors to the Port Arthur parsonage in recent years and the mysterious banging heard by a house attendant. The same attendant (who, until then, had not believed in ghosts) also listened in horror one day to the stairs in the parsonage creaking loudly — first the bottom step, then the second, then the third and so on, until whatever invisible thing it was that was climbing reached the top. Objects, including a heavy vase
filled with flowers, have also been mysteriously moved about inside the parsonage at night, long after it has been locked up and the burglar alarms set.

In the early 1980s when three builders were staying in the much-haunted house renovating it, one of them reported seeing a ghost — the first recorded sighting since Mrs Hayward's mother's ‘filmy, white figure' of more than 100 years before. As the builder was entering his room one night he caught sight of a woman dressed in old-fashioned clothes. Instantly the temperature in the room dropped and the curtains billowed, although the windows were firmly closed. Seconds later the figure vanished and everything returned to normal. Another of the builders woke in the middle of the night with the sensation that he was being attacked. It felt, he said, as if someone was sitting on his chest and driving the breath from his lungs. At the same time each of the builders heard the oft-reported banging noises. The work the three were carrying out well might have upset the spirits in the old house — they were removing the second floor where much of the ghostly activity had occurred over the years and reducing the building to its original, single storey.

The Port Arthur church, now in ruins, stands a few metres from the parsonage. When foundations for the church were being dug in 1853 two convicts, William Riley and Joseph Shuttleworth, got into an argument. Riley killed Shuttleworth with a blow from a pickaxe and was hanged for the crime. The following year another convict fell to his death from the roof of the almost completed building after another argument. It was popularly believed that these two violent deaths were the reason the church was never consecrated — which is untrue. It was never consecrated to one denomination because it served all denominations. Less easy to explain is the fact that ivy, which grew in profusion on every other part of the
building, would never grow on the bloodied spot where the second convict landed.

The church also figured in a strange occurrence a few years back when a large party of tourists were assembled there at 10.45 pm on a clear, starry night. Suddenly the whole church was lit by a brilliant flash of light that illuminated every side and every corner. It was not lightning and was far brighter than any camera flash could produce.

The medical officer's residence, which housed a succession of doctors and their families, is also reputed to be haunted. When it was used as a hotel in the 1920s a lady guest was wakened in the middle of the night by a tiny girl dressed in an old-fashioned nightgown, tapping on the outside of her bedroom window — metres above the ground — and attendants in recent times have heard children's laughter coming from empty, upstairs rooms. A lady dressed in pearly grey is also said to haunt the medical officer's residence. According to a former resident this ghost was often seen drifting down a passageway in the house and terrified at least three housekeepers, who resigned in quick succession. The same resident claimed he was awakened one night by the grey lady standing at the foot of his bed, snorting loudly. He assumed she was displeased at his presence and he was not overjoyed at hers. He switched on the light and shouted: ‘Go away! Get out now! Get out of here!' and claims she did, never to return.

Strange noises (moans, footsteps, etc.) have been heard in the former commandant's residence for more than a century. Like the medical officer's residence this gracious old house, with its charming English gardens overlooking the bay, was turned into a hotel in the 1880s. Ghostly activity seems to have peaked in the last twenty years, since it, too, was restored to its original condition. Stories, and spirits, are numerous.

The ghost of Commandant Charles O'Hara Booth, the house's most famous occupant, is said to stand at the window of the room in which he slept, keeping a watchful eye on the settlement and silently weeping; and the ghost of a former nanny (dismissed after one of her charges met with an accident) has been seen in a wooden rocking chair in the nanny's room at the end of the house. This room and the innocuous-looking, spindly old chair are the subject of many stories. An attendant found the chair gently rocking by itself one Christmas Eve morning and on the same day another year voices were heard in the apparently empty room. Attempts by visitors to take photographs inside the nanny's room sometimes produce quite unexpected results: cameras jam; flashes fail to work; and when someone does manage to take a photograph, faint, shapeless, blurs usually appear on the screen.

The gate to the commandant's residence has been opened by unseen hands in full view of a group of tourists and many visitors' wristwatches stop at the moment they enter the building. A male attendant, claimed that, when alone in the house one day, he was grabbed on the bottom by an invisible assailant; and a spectral male figure with its head twisted to one side (like a hanging victim) has been seen at least twice in the hallway. Bells installed in the nineteenth century to summon servants occasionally ring when the house is empty; and a phantom coach and horses has been heard (and on one occasion seen) by groups visiting the cottage at night. One visitor started a sketch of the commandant's residence while visiting Port Arthur but did not have time to complete it. Some days later and many kilometres away the amateur artist got the sketch out to finish it from memory and found to her amazement that a female figure in period costume had been neatly and mysteriously drawn in the foreground.

A ghostly legacy seems also to have been left from the time when the house was the Carnarvon Hotel. A group of archaeologists sleeping there during restoration in 1983 had several terrifying experiences. One female heard footsteps in the night climbing the stairs and entering the room she slept in. No figure appeared but a soft groan echoed through the dark house before the footsteps returned the way they had come. Another of the archaeologists was awakened in the night by the hand and face of an elderly woman (no body or arms) looking over his bed then floating up towards the ceiling and fading away. A different female member of the party claimed to have seen a vision on the ceiling of a room where they were all playing cards one night. She saw, she said a woman being chased by a man. Her description of the woman tallied with her colleague's memory of the face he had seen; and later both recognised her in an old photograph they were shown of the former manageress of the Carnarvon Hotel.

Beside the commandant's residence stands the old powder magazine surmounted by an impressive watch tower. A reliable witness claims that he was grabbed on the arm by an invisible hand when walking nearby and on one memorable morning the sound of a ghostly bugle was heard playing Reveille from the empty tower. Directly behind the watch tower stands Tower Cottage, the former married officers' quarters. Two people who slept there at different times in recent years either dreamed identical dreams or saw the same apparition — a soldier in a red uniform leaning over the bed looking down at them.

Directly across the bay from the commandant's residence stands Jetty Cottage at the end of the commandant's jetty. The ghost of a young man, possibly Private Robert Young, who drowned near the jetty aged just twenty in 1840, is said to haunt that area. According to the account of a woman who,
staying at Jetty Cottage a few years back, woke in fright to find the ghost in her room, he has straight black hair and wears a ruffled, white shirt. Another guest at another time saw the same figure sitting on the front steps of the cottage and on the jetty on two consecutive nights. This second guest also claimed to have heard a woman screaming at exactly 10.30 o'clock each night. Others too have heard the pitiful screams that resound through the lonely cottage and float across the water.

There are many other stories of ghostly activity at Port Arthur, not all confined to these comfortable houses and cottages. The multi-storeyed penitentiary, built in 1848 and now a roofless shell, seems blessedly free of ghosts at the moment but the smaller Model or Separate Prison, where inmates were kept in solitary confinement and required to wear masks to hide their features, echoes, it is said, to the screams of a fourteen-year-old prisoner who was confined in the condemned cell for two weeks awaiting execution. Another convict, William Carter, committed suicide in his cell in the Model Prison by hanging himself with the straps of his hammock. Tourists visiting this particular cell often experience unaccountable feelings of anxiety and depression long before they are told the story of Carter's suicide. Then there are the dark cells where prisoners were inhumanely imprisoned for long periods in total darkness and total silence. Is it coincidence that light bulbs in one of these cells continuously blow, just as visitors enter?

Many prisoners arrived at Port Arthur insane and many more became so after a spell in the punishment cells of the Model Prison. To cater for these unfortunates an asylum was built. This quaint building with its three-tiered tower became a museum and the rear portion was converted into a staff tea room. Two women working at the museum had a strange experience one day when a door slammed shut, trapping them
in a small room. Try though they might, the heavy door would not budge. Their calls for help attracted two visitors walking by. The man tried to open the door from the outside but it seemed to be stuck fast. His wife half jokingly said, ‘Let me try,' and applied her slender hand to it. The door swung open effortlessly. It had never jammed before and has never jammed since. Two other employees seated at a table in the staff tea room one day watched in amazement as a heavy ashtray glided across a flat bench top and had to be grabbed to stop it falling to the floor.