Great Australian Ghost Stories (17 page)

This spectre is normally well behaved, content to amuse itself tapping staff and diners on the shoulders or blowing gently in their ears, but it has been known to lose its temper on rare occasions. Crockery and ornaments have occasionally taken flight, seemingly on their own, and crashed into broken shards. Light switches have been turned on and off by her unseen hands, sometimes at embarrassing moments. Taps are also a favourite prop for this meddlesome spook. Carefully turned off they suddenly appear to turn themselves on; and turned on (to fill a sink, for example) they will be found moments later firmly turned
off
. Valuable pictures have also become dislodged from walls and crashed to the floor — curiously without the frames ever breaking or the glass shattering.

No doubt out of consideration for the restaurant's fine reputation and its patrons, ‘Elizabeth', as everyone calls the ghost, usually behaves herself during trading hours and confines her rare destructive acts to when only staff are about to witness them.

One former employee explained that no one is really frightened of the ghost. ‘I guess we've all got used to her … and she is a
great
excuse for anything that goes wrong in the kitchen or the dining room. I always liked to think of her as one of the team; someone who was just as proud of the place as we are … and who got a bit annoyed when we didn't quite meet
her
standards.'

So, dear readers, next time you tuck into fresh bread, succulent sausages (or even sizzling tripe) don't be surprised if there's an uninvited guest at your table; and when you treat yourself to a meal at a famous restaurant check the bill of fare for phantoms.

Like restaurants, hotels seem to be among the favourite haunts of ghosts the world over. Here are a collection of spooky tales from some of Australia's most famous haunted hostelries, featuring gory ghosts, sad ghosts — and a phantom pussy.

The Coach and Horses Inn, formerly known as the Clarkfield Hotel, near Sunbury, north-west of Melbourne, has been in the news many times — not for its historical significance, its architectural charm or its good service, but for the numerous ghosts that reputedly dwell there. The old bluestone pub was built in 1857 as a stopping point for Cobb & Co. coaches on the run to Bendigo, and its two oldest ghosts belong to the gold-rush era. Legend tells of an Irish seaman named Patrick Reagan who jumped ship in Melbourne and made his way to the goldfields where he ‘struck it rich'. Unfortunately, while stopping at the Clarkfield Hotel on his way back to Melbourne, Reagan was set upon by a group of dishonest police troopers who shot him and stole his gold. A medium from Penola in South Australia visiting the Clarkfield Hotel in the 1980s claimed that she had a vision of a fierce gun battle behind the hotel, with Reagan exchanging shots with the troopers and trying to flee down the hotel steps. In later years Reagan's
ghost became a familiar sight around the hotel, usually seen racing down the stairs, clutching a bullet wound to its chest and with blood seeping through its spectral fingers.

The ghost of a Chinese miner who was involved in a fight and later hanged in the hotel is also, reputedly, still hovering about. Then there's the ghost of the intellectually disabled girl aged about eleven who appears in a taffeta dress. She, it is said, disturbed her parents during a violent argument in one of the hotel bedrooms and was killed by her father, who then threw her body down a well. Her ghost has been reported many times — a forlorn, wasted spectre draped in a tattered, lilac coloured nightgown — and a group of psychic investigators boasted of having recorded her sobbing and pleading on audio tape. It is also believed that the ghosts of both her parents have appeared in the room where the murder took place at different times and beside the well, which was filled in some years ago. The mother's ghost has been described as wild-eyed and the father's as grim and stony-faced.

With such a fraternity of ghosts in residence it is not surprising that there are many reports of sightings and ghostly encounters. In 1983 a cocky newspaper reporter spent a night alone in the stables behind the hotel in the hope of catching a ghost to write about. He didn't, but when walking past the infamous well the next morning he commented that the old pump mounted above the well was useless if it didn't work. The pump, he claimed, promptly came to life and started producing a steady stream of fresh water. When a plumber inspected it a few hours later the pump was found to be dry and completely seized up with rust.

When the owners at that time, Don and Judy Busner, sold up they thought it only right to warn their successors that the hotel was haunted and that they had often been kept
awake at night by strange noises, glasses smashing in the back bar and pictures in the murder room flying through the air. The new owners, Frank and Sharon Nelson, were sceptical but on the third night after they took over they heard strange noises downstairs at around 3 am. Frank got up and went to investigate. He stopped halfway down the stairs when hit by a blast of icy cold air, then he was struck from behind by some invisible force. He fell down several stairs and fractured his ankle. Was he, one wonders, bowled over by Patrick Reagan's wounded ghost on one of its headlong flights? A few days later while he lay convalescing with his lower leg in plaster, Frank cried out in pain. The same force, or something similar, was twisting his broken ankle inside the plaster cast!

A relative of the Nelsons who slept in the murder room one night claimed that the air turned cold in there as well and that something tried to strangle her in the middle of the night. Staff also saw near-human forms on the stairs and in the murder room. Chef Ian Ross was reported as saying he heard the door of the murder room bang one night so got up to investigate. He found the door wide open then watched a bright, glowing figure walk across the room towards the fireplace and back again. Ross was, he said, too frightened to move or cry out. His successor, Nick Tsantalis, told
The Age
he had a permanent sensation of being followed wherever he went in the hotel and had found the kitchen filled with fine mist one morning. Something heavy that he could not see also pinned him to his bed one night, he said, and for several nights afterwards Tsantalis slept in his car.

Frank Nelson was confronted by a hideous face staring out at him when he was cleaning the outside of a window one day. It was not, he swore, his own reflection and when he tried to
open the window it would not budge. Minutes before it had opened smoothly and did again after the apparition vanished.

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.